Slashdot Mirror
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.
or so Taco would have us believed.
They literally run away from your ear so you have to buy another pair.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
1) iPad Pro: Meh.
2) Apple Watch: Meh.
3) MBP 2016: Meh
4) iPhone 7: Meh
5) Airpods?
I'm going to go with "Meh".
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Sell a car without a steering wheel (or with an awkward extension bar), then sell the steering wheel later at a premium and claim "our steering wheels are a huge success!"
Table-ized A.I.
Because for the price of these earbuds one can buy a decent ... smartphone and wired earbuds which won't sound any worse.
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
A 1 Billion dollar box office gross, second highest at the time it came out, top 25 overall, top 20 inflation adjusted, is by any reasonable measure a runaway success.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Maybe they're popular, maybe they aren't... but what else is the CEO going to say?
#DeleteChrome
Apple took away the headphone jack
Or you could, you know, use the adaptor included WITH EVERY iPHONE...
I can believe that no matter how badly Apple treats it's faithful
Yes, giving people free adaptors is certainly "treating them badly", right up there with setting your pants on fire with a defective phone. Wait, pants on fire, that phrase... it reminds me of you somehow... hmm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How many runaways have the money to purchase an apple product?
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
And yet people are shilling out that $160 for the upsell.
SOME people are paying that because they like bluetooth headphones.
I don't; I just use the headphones included in the box. You know, the wired ones that plug directly into the phone? I have a set of noise canceling headphones too; I just leave the adaptor on that set, so to me there's no difference as I just grab a set of headphones and plug them into the phone.
What is your damage hating on people who like wireless headsets? They could use anyone else's you know, not just Apple's - as usual the Apple ones are just really well designed and so some people chose to buy them even though they are expensive.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Are they selling well because they're great, or are they selling well because people don't have much of a choice, with no headphone jack? I'm not an Apple guy nor am I an Apple hater, but this seems almost as disingenuous as Microsoft bragging about Windows 10 'adoption rate' when they fooled, lied, tricked, or literally forced their way onto people's computers. False news much?
No offense to anyone here, but I don't think I will ever understand the mindset of the Apple fanboi.
It's a simple mindset, so it's simple to understand:
You announce that you're a member of a group that the less wealthy can't afford to join, while still under pack protection so you don't have to justify your own individuality. Much like brand name shoes and handbags, the real purpose is to be seen.
Which is why you can't get Apple earbuds in discreet colors, and why they're designed to be bigger than they need to be.
tl;dr: Group fashion
Seriously, I find Microsoft's whole Surface product line to be promising, yet not quite "there" yet.
The Surface Studio, for example? Very cool concept and one of those designs that inspires a lot of techno-lust when you see it. But on a closer analysis, I just can't see the value? For the huge price tag, you still wind up with a machine with the previous generation GPU technology in it; doubly insulting when you pair it with a huge display of that high a resolution, where you really could use more GPU power to move all those pixels around.
The Surface Book? I haven't spent much time in front of one of those, so I feel less qualified to talk about it, except again - you pay a really big price premium for it over most Windows notebooks, and I don't quite see where the value is? The previous version supposedly had some issues with the hinge design that people didn't like. I think most of that was addressed in the latest revision. The whole thing just doesn't excite me in any way, shape or form though. It's just "another laptop option on the market".
And the Surface Pro 4, I'm very familiar with as I use one every day. This one absolutely stinks, IMO, in its base price configuration with the Core m CPU. If you want to see the point in buying one at all, you have to spend more money for a better configured variation. The "sweet spot" of price vs. performance is probably the Core i5 with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD. You can buy that one for around the $1,500 price point with a type-cover keyboard (which should realistically just come with the things ... you DO want one for it). As soon as you decide you'd rather have 16GB of RAM and/or a 512GB SSD though? The price starts shooting way upward. IMO, these machines have kind of a cheap plastic feel to them and I've seen a fairly high incidence of repairs needed on them too. But at the same time? The pencil works great with them, and when attached to your full size keyboard, mouse and display via the dock, you'll forget you're not using a pretty good performing desktop PC.
I think everything "Surface" from MS is starting to finally pose a challenge for Apple in the PC hardware department. And it's coming at just the time when Apple seems to be slacking off on any real focus on updating Macs (in favor of more profitable iOS devices, watches, etc.). But as it stands right now, I still prefer using my Macs. Might just be a preference for OS X over Windows 10 at this point, but that's enough to keep me using my Macs as primary machines for the time being. Still, my NEXT new computer may well NOT be a Mac unless Apple turns things around soon.
Pointing out that making all of the money is success to investors is more of a business major's job than marketing I think.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
If only I had mod points left.
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.
Good sales at Christmas time for a new product is not an indication of product success
Also include returns of the same product after Christmas and most importantly, sales following Christmas. If 1000 people get them as presents, but 900 return them, that's bad. If 1000 people receive them as presents, and post Christmas sales are lackluster, then the items sold well as gifts from people who thought they were nice presents, but wouldn't buy such things for themselves. Then the presents sat on a shelf and the receiver didn't spread the word because they were meh. Congratulations, your item is a pet rock. If 1000 people get them as presents and post Christmas sales show improvement, then your product will continue to sell well just by word of mouth because it's awesome. Apple is having to force these earbuds down people's throats, so I'm guessing they suck.
Proof positive that Apple fanboys will buy literally anything Apple puts up for sale, no matter how inane it is.
Eat the rich.
"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...
Actually the Apple price point for its mobile products have always been consciously set to position them as "affordable luxuries". What that means I can explain by analogy with the popular disinfectant, "Bactine". Pouring "Bactine" into a wound stings because it has got alcohol in it. However it's not the alcohol that kills the germs, it's the benzalkonium chloride. So why is the alcohol there? Well, when they test marketed a version without the stinging alcohol consumers didn't like it, because they couldn't feel it working.
So the price of an "affordable luxury" is chosen to be low enough to be within reach of most people, but high enough to give you a little sting that tells you that you've treated yourself to something special.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Finally Apple got its Steve Ballmer.
I'm sure we need no further proof, since Cook says so. I'm sure Bill Gates nor Steve Balmer said anything positive about Windows ME or Vista shortly after their releases.
I had a sucky sig.
The W2 chip isn't going to help at all with the two biggest flaws in the earpods:
1. Crap battery life
2. Easily lost
The only thing you can do about the battery life is remember to turn them off and carry the charging case around with you. Preventing loss will no doubt create a market for expensive bits of string to tie them together. Might as well just have had a band and stuck a bigger battery in it, solving both problems and costing a fraction as much.
Apple seems to love these anti-features. 0.01mm thinner phone so you can wrap it in a chunky case for protection and it will still bend in your pocket. Take away the headphone jack because ha ha fuck you, chump.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Personally I think the Surface Studio and Surface Book are a major WTF in the pricing department. That said the premium price for the Surface Pro 4 seems to be worth it. And by "premium" I mean you get what you pay for.
I'm typing here at the moment next to my dad's HP Spectre X2. It was a cool $400 less than the SP4 but the top configuration has a far slower processor. It doesn't feel cheap but then the entire thing is thicker, heavier, the pen isn't anywhere near as nice to use, palm detection is so hit and miss that dad doesn't take notes on it, and don't get me started on the stupid arse design decision that went into the SD card slot. Plus as soon as you like to decently spec it out you need to change models to something different which is thicker and heavier again.
I do like the fact that the Spectre has more than 1 USB port though (though the Macbook Pro style approach has resulted in dad going out and having to buy a USB fucking dongle today, because I have a normal USB key, and because transferring data to it from the SP4 via SD card is such an incredibly stupid process (start by finding a paperclip)) and I like the nod to an idea of putting an LTE modem in the device, ... even though it's only available in the USA and only on Verizon.
So far the larger Surface lineup is quite meh in my opinion but I'm a huge fan of the Surface Pro.
Fantastic. What's better than forcing bluetooth on customers? Forcing fragmentation into the market place with a proprietary standard in devices. Who doesn't love this company.
That's fair. The question was about innovation. Lots of innovative things start out as not quite there yet. I don't think there's much question that MS is beating Apple in terms of innovation lately.
Or they don't want to waste money manufacturing too many copies of a flop. The buzz over being sold out is only a bonus. After Christmas day, people actually own and use the item and the real day-to-day usage reviews start showing up everywhere. Selling out right at Christmas is the right time to decide if you should bother making many more.
They just keep getting in my way, and I can't put my phone farther away than the length of the wire which is often too short. I wanted to switched to Bluetooth but the problem with most BT headset is they are big and heavy and make me feeling uncomfortable with it on my head for too long. As for the BT earphones, most of them if not all have wires and yes, it breaks when you try to fish it out by holding at one of the earpiece. So, yes, I welcome the AirPods and similar earphones as long as they can last at least a day of continuous use.
It is legitimising the reduction in choice to the wider community.
WHAT REDUCTION OF CHOICE????
You can use any headphone made with an iPhone seven, right out of the box.
Come on.
who buy bluetooth headphones because the must has iPhone 7 needs them
I don't use Bluetooth headphones with an iPhone 7 because IT DOES NOT NEED THEM.
I want these to be a huge failure for Apple
Who is so retarded that they care if a COMPANY lives or dies? That is sick and you are a sick person for wishing failure on anyone. Do you know what Karma does with haters like yourself?
If all you CAN see is failure, failure is all you WILL see.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So far the larger Surface lineup is quite meh in my opinion but I'm a huge fan of the Surface Pro.
The problem is the keyboard. It feels weird and there's no insert key. Why would someone choose to have a PgUp key and no insert on a keyboard is beyond me.
lucm, indeed.
However it's not the alcohol that kills the germs, it's the benzalkonium chloride. So why is the alcohol there? Well, when they test marketed a version without the stinging alcohol consumers didn't like it, because they couldn't feel it working.
I buy mouthwash that doesn't sting and cough syrup that doesn't taste bad. I guess I'm just one of those free spirits that doesn't follow the herd when the herd is wrong; incidentally, you will not see me waiting in line in front of the Apple store to help Apple make $400 more per phone than the competition for similar or even inferior quality.
Of course Apple market share is in free fall so there's hope for the herd.
lucm, indeed.
Any battery operated device is going to run out of battery.
Any earbuds are easily lost. I lost my Bose QC20s. It's because they are small, not because they are Apple products.
If I ever get off my ass and start a business (i.e. never) remind me that the above AC is not going to be my director of sales. At my business, sales will be viewed as The Most Important Indicator of a product's success. That's because my business would be for-profit. Theoretically, at least.
I have to hand it to Apple for having the perfect approach to judging (and creating) product success: sales. Apple is about the money, and you basically can't do better than that, from a business perspective. (From a user perspective, everything is different, though, and that's why it's so mysterious to me that anybody buys that company's junk. But they do.) It's a refreshing reminder that not necessarily the entire economy has vowed to drive away customers and prevent revenue, the way that Hollywood is always trying to do.
Even when they do horrible, hostile, anti-user things, the users show up and throw money at them, showing that they don't judge Apple or their products' quality. What other business has succeeded at finding these types of customers? Who is better? Not even Scientologists are this good, if you believe some of the rumored numbers.
You might cast about and read the many, many glowing reviews from both media publications and users alike before you stick your foot even further in your mouth, Hater.
That's fair. The question was about innovation. Lots of innovative things start out as not quite there yet. I don't think there's much question that MS is beating Apple in terms of innovation lately.
Sorry, no.
Of course the adapter is designed to fail, just like the official charging cords, so that you get taxed for not buying a new iphone every year.
Go fuck yourself.
And if it does fail, Apple will charge you the princely sum if NINE DOLLARS for a replacement/spare.
See? No matter how hard you try, there simply isn't a "profiteering" motive here.
But keep on Hatin'...
It's called the "W1" chip; but the rest of your post is spot-on.
Fantastic. What's better than forcing bluetooth on customers? Forcing fragmentation into the market place with a proprietary standard in devices. Who doesn't love this company.
Who's forcing anything?
And W1-equipped devices are 100% backwards-compatible with standard BT stuff. You could use Apple's AirPods as easily with any BT phone, computer, or whatnot. Conversely, you can use the W1-chip equipped iPhone with any standard BT headset.
But don't let facts stand in the way of your idiotic, baseless, hatred of all things Apple (while secretly lusting after their gear)..
Or they don't want to waste money manufacturing too many copies of a flop. The buzz over being sold out is only a bonus. After Christmas day, people actually own and use the item and the real day-to-day usage reviews start showing up everywhere. Selling out right at Christmas is the right time to decide if you should bother making many more.
There are already about a zillion glowing reviews online, fucktard.
How long do you think it takes to ramp up manufacturing and catch up? They barely just shipped out the first batch in the last month.
You have to tell me the cough syrup brand.
How long do you think it takes to ramp up manufacturing and catch up? They barely just shipped out the first batch in the last month.
What are you saying?
They had some sort of technical issue that delayed the first shipments; but who knows how far along they were in the build-process when they put a hold on those first units? If they were pretty complete, then it may have been as simple as re-flashing the firmware before they sent them out, which would have taken likely under a week.
You said:
There are already about a zillion glowing reviews online
I said:
They barely just shipped out the first batch
You said:
What are you saying?
I'm saying that the size of the second batch produced is probably based on speculation on the success of the product - and you can't just flip a switch and manufacture all those devices in an instant - especially if the first batch is delayed and you have nothing to base your guess on until the last minute.
You said:
There are already about a zillion glowing reviews online
I said:
They barely just shipped out the first batch
You said:
What are you saying?
I'm saying that the size of the second batch produced is probably based on speculation on the success of the product - and you can't just flip a switch and manufacture all those devices in an instant - especially if the first batch is delayed and you have nothing to base your guess on until the last minute.
Ok, I agree that they would likely adjust production based on sales figures, but likely not for at least a quarter after the initial introduction, because initial demand is almost always higher (duh!). And I also agree that they can't just snap their fingers and have another "batch" ready-to-go at a moment's notice.
But I am also pretty sure that the AirPods are anything but a "flop", based on what I have been seeing.
But don't let facts stand in the way of your idiotic, baseless,
I can see english is your second language. Maybe look up fragmentation. By packaging a fragmentation with a common standard it is forcing fragmentation into the market place.
Careful. I heard the reality distortion field causes cancer. Maybe you should get yourself checked, you seem to be quite over exposed to it.
They have enough clout that they can "dictate" that it's not a flop for quite a while, regardless of what the customer actually wants. Once customers find out there were actually cheaper options all along there might be a lot of buyer's remorse.
Apple also works hard to make it an affordable luxury experience. My iPhone was the most powerful on the market when I bought it. (Obviously, this didn't last.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
But don't let facts stand in the way of your idiotic, baseless,
I can see english is your second language. Maybe look up fragmentation. By packaging a fragmentation with a common standard it is forcing fragmentation into the market place.
Careful. I heard the reality distortion field causes cancer. Maybe you should get yourself checked, you seem to be quite over exposed to it.
Assuming you are a Fandroid, I submit that no Fandroid need lecture anyone on "Fragmentation".
But assuming, arguendo, that the term "Fragmentation" is appropriate in this context (which I frankly find pretty specious), some amount of "fragmentation" (as you call it) is part of any change. Change requires, er, Change.
But, it's all about how you handle that Change. In Apple's case with the iPhone 7, they made the Change as painless as possible by both including a headset (like they have always done), but with a Lightning Connector, rather than a 4 conductor 3.5 mm connector like before, and including a simple Lightning to 4 conductor 3.5 mm jack, for use with any existing analog headphones/earbuds/headsets.
Seriously, what more could they have done, assuming the (obvious) fact that they saw that 3.5 mm jacks were on their way out (and, BTW, you are reminded that Apple wasn't the first to ditch the 3.5 mm jack; so others in the industry obviously agree with them regarding that issue)?
Now I agree there is an argument to be made that they should have gone to USB-C and ditched Lightning at the same time; but I feel that the headphone jack decision was made fairly late in the design process, and so "didn't make the cut" this go-around. But, IMHO, Lightning is on the way-out, in favor of USB-C (probably on the iPhone 8). And then Apple will be aligned with the rest of the mobile device industry (not to mention their own computing products) in standardizing on what is fast becoming the standard.
They have enough clout that they can "dictate" that it's not a flop for quite a while, regardless of what the customer actually wants. Once customers find out there were actually cheaper options all along there might be a lot of buyer's remorse.
There may be cheaper solutions; but it is looking like there aren't any more reliable solutions.
Have you read any of the reviews by people going on about how they can roam all over their two-story house with their iPhone sitting in some random location without losing connection? One pro reviewer said he was able to get something like 150 ft. from his phone before he lost connection. Try that with any other wireless earbuds. Can't be done.
Also, the audio quality and ease and robustness of the pairing has been noted as being quite a step above the norm for BT.
So, as I said before, it really does look like they've "hit it out of the park" on this one...
Do I wish they were closer to $100 than $160? Of course. Will I ever purchase a pair? Probably not. But, compared with other BT earphones and earbuds, they are not at all out-of-line, price-wise.
But, a lot of people don't get the difference between price and value.
Obviously, you're one of those people.
You have to tell me the cough syrup brand.
Try the cherry-flavored one from Safeway (home brand). It just says "Cold & flu" on the bottle and it tastes like melted/sludgy cherry kool-aid.
lucm, indeed.
Assuming you are a Fandroid, I submit that no Fandroid need lecture anyone on "Fragmentation".
What are you 12? You start with an attempted insult and then side step the issue? I assume you wrote something after this sentence but it's probably as waste of time reading given your opening sentence. Learn to behave and then your writing won't be a waste of time in the future.
Goodday.
Assuming you are a Fandroid, I submit that no Fandroid need lecture anyone on "Fragmentation".
What are you 12? You start with an attempted insult and then side step the issue? I assume you wrote something after this sentence but it's probably as waste of time reading given your opening sentence. Learn to behave and then your writing won't be a waste of time in the future.
Goodday.
How long have you been a member? Childish insults are the stock-in-trade on this Forum. When in Rome...
And I most certainly did not "sidestep" the issue. I attempted to explain and amplify (no pun) on the real issues involved, and how Apple had actually tried to address them.
It is you that is "side-stepping", by refusing to address my most salient points, rather than whining because I called someone a name.