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Apple CEO Tim Cook Calls AirPods 'a Runaway Success' (cnbc.com)
It turns out the $159 AirPods Bluetooth earphones are selling well, or so CEO Tim Cook would have us believed. Cook dropped by the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday while on vacation, and talked about the AirPods sales. From a report on CNBC: In comments to CNBC, Cook declined to talk specifically on Apple's outlook, but he said it has been a "great holiday." He added that the company's new wireless earbuds, AirPods, are "a runaway success." When asked if more would come into stock, he said Apple's "making them just as fast as we can." AirPods debuted at September's splashy event, but saw shipping delays through most of the fall and finally hit shelves just days before the crucial Christmas shopping rush. The limited shipments were sold quickly -- ship dates are now six weeks out on Apple's website.
Pretty much the whole Surface line. The Studio is amazing.
I think what many people aren't aware of (because Apple sure doesn't go to any effort to market it) is that the new Bluetooth EarPods use a proprietary "W2" chip which adds a number of proprietary extensions to the Bluetooth standards.
The iPhone 7 has the W2 chip functionality embedded in it for any devices able to support it, and defaults back to standard Bluetooth support for everything else.
The additional W2 functionality is supposed to address some of the glitches and hassles inherent in regular Bluetooth headsets and provide a better experience.
If you're a customer who prefers using wireless Bluetooth headsets with a cellphone to begin with (and MANY people I know do), the EarPods and iPhone 7 combo promises one of the better usability experiences you can get out that combo today. Yes, it may be at the expense of giving you a traditional headphone jack. But how much that matters to you really does depend on your use case.
If you aren't an apple hater you clearly don't know much about the issue. It is completely unnecessary to buy Air Pods and its only the idiots on this message board, which are presumably shills or Android fanbois, that are making it seem like you have no other choices.
You have three other choices, all of which are better:
1) Use lightning wired headphones (INCLUDED WITH ALL PHONES)
2) Use regular headphones with the adapter (ALSO INCLUDED WITH ALL PHONES)
3) Buy *third-party* Bluetooth headphones for $10+ (or use the Bluetooth headphones you already own because why would you still own wired headphones these days)
Frankly, this is the most overblown fucking thing I have ever seen and people like you keep perpetuating the myth that the iPhone is somehow incapable of playing music via headphones without Air Pods or a dongle. And just like the MSM you are spreading false information while screaming that you are unbiased and that this is false news? FFS. Get real.
"It turns out the $159 AirPods Bluetooth earphones are selling well, or so CEO Tim Cook would have us believed."
I didn't believed it then and I don't believed it now.
Editing faux pas aside, the only thing they've been a "success" at is 1) making Apple mo' money and 2) locking users into ever-more-expensive gadgets that cannot be repaired.
iFixit gives the Apple AirPods a '0' out of 10 on the repairability scale, also known as the "worst possible score achievable". In other words, they can't be repaired, period. It appears that even Apple can't repair them, which is kind of amazing when you consider that they're the ones who built the fucking things.
AirPods make iPads look positively consumer-friendly in terms of service, and we all know what a total shit show it is to open an iPad....
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...