First Thoughts: AirPods
I recently received my pair of AirPods (after obsessively refreshing the Apple Store app to check their availability for like 3 months straight) and have now had some time to use them. Here are a few of my initial thoughts and observations.
While some of the observations are simply due to the fact that I’ve only used the stock earbuds before and have never had wireless headphones, they still feel significant because they are in an official Apple product now. Some observations are specific to the AirPods themselves:
1. The setup experience is perfect.
Connecting the AirPods to your iPhone is about as seamless as one could imagine. You literally just open the case near your phone and it pairs. It happens so easily that you barely realize that you even went through a setup process. In contrast, connecting any other bluetooth device to the iPhone now feels clunky and slow.
2. Going cordless changes everything.
The tyranny of the cord
As someone who likes bicycles and suffers from the n+1 problem, I have an embarrassing number of bikes crowding my apartment, which means a lot of handlebars sticking out everywhere. Before, that also meant my headphones getting ripped out of my ears as often as 3–4 times per day when the cord got caught on a stray handlebar. That problem has now gone away.
Removing the cord also greatly improves other tasks where the cord got in the way, such as cooking or brushing your teeth.
Photography
One under-the-radar benefit of cordless is that it’s a huge boon for iPhone photography. Before, it always felt awkward pulling my phone out of my pocket with headphones in. I was conscious of the repetitive action damaging the cord and/or the Lightning port over time. The cord also sometimes got in the way when you were trying to frame a shot. Now the phone has been freed from this hindrance, so you can happily shoot away again while still listening to your favorite music or podcast.
Fallout?
While I understand that some people have trouble keeping this shape of earbud in their ears, I have not had any problems with them falling out so far. The only time I’ve had an involuntary departure of a headphone was after pulling the hood of a sweatshirt off of my head a little too aggressively.
The AirPods are light and comfortable to wear. So much so that, more than once, I’ve gone to tap my ear in order to un-pause music, only to realize that I wasn’t even wearing them. The only downside to this comfort is that if they were to fall out, you might not even notice it! I’m not too concerned about that yet, as to me they feel secure enough to run with.
3. They’re not perfect (yet).
Siri
Having more ready access to Siri feels potentially transformative. But after getting used to the responsiveness and accuracy of the Amazon Echo, you realize how far behind the Siri experience is from Alexa. Saying “Hey Siri” doesn’t register as often as it should. The way that Siri displays the query visually on the iPhone somehow makes the response feel more laggy, even though it may not be that much slower than Alexa for many requests.
I have often wished that Alexa had the option to display some information visually on a screen to enable more possibilities of interacting with the service in ways that are difficult with a strictly voice-based UI. For example, a request to play a video, or being able to select an option from a list of responses. I wonder if Siri’s access to a screen display can be turned into more of a strength going forward.
Controls
The lack of a way to control volume really sucks. With normal headphones, I’m constantly adjusting the volume in response to the qualities of the media I’m listening to, and the physical environment I’m in. With the AirPods, the only way to have this control is to reach for the phone and adjust it there.
Saying “Hey Siri, increase volume” isn’t an acceptable solution to this problem, especially when in public contexts like the bus or in the office. Hopefully they can figure a way to add volume control back to the headphones — perhaps work something out with the Apple Watch?
The Case
So far, the case seems to be a pretty good solution to the battery life problem. It’s very rare that I’d be listening to something on headphones for over 4 hours straight, and so as long as the case is charged, battery life becomes an afterthought. That’s pretty amazing when you consider how small these things are.
On the down side, the case still a fairly large object to carry around on your person all day. It’s about 2.5x thicker than an iPhone, which definitely adds some bulge if you’re carrying it in a pocket. In the future, it would nice if they could make it more compact, however the fact that the AirPods have to be inside it make it difficult to imagine the case being much smaller than it already is.
In addition, I’m also afraid of the case breaking or having some problem with the hinge over the long term. Apple doesn’t seem to be selling any kind of replacement case as of this writing, and so it’s a little concerning when the case is such an important part of using the AirPods.
4. They’re more than just wireless headphones.
One thing I’ve realized is that the wireless nature of these give Apple an angle of attack on products like Amazon Echo or Google Home. The home is the only place where I don’t have my phone within arm’s reach at all times.
With the wirelessness of AirPods, that access problem has been resolved. In a way, Siri could even claim to be even more available in the home, because now I can talk to it in any room within Bluetooth range of my phone. Contrast that with Alexa, which would require me to buy an additional Echo Dot to have the same access. Of course, AirPods can only be used by one person, but I find it weird to talk to the Echo when other people are around anyway.
For developers, this makes for a much stronger case to add Siri voice commands to their apps.
On the whole, while AirPods are a great product in themselves, they also feel like a first step to something larger and more significant in the future. Let’s see where Apple takes them.
