If you’re writing an article that praises an Apple device, make sure to mention all the things you think the company did wrong first, even if you get some of them wrong yourself.
Writing for Quartz, Mike Murphy says “AirPods are Apple’s most Apple-like product in years.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Philip Speicher.)
Okay, this is probably true. As the Macalope has said, the AirPods are one of those Apple products that, while not perfect, are so good when they’re good that they make you forget about when they’re not good.
First, however, let us recount the many Apple fails.
A stylus that only charges when sticking straight out of an iPad
Why couldn’t Apple have given us a cable? Everyone loves cables. If we don’t, then why do we have so many of them?
A mouse that doesn’t work when you need to charge it
The Macalope’s really not going to bother defending that one.
A $350 smartwatch that’s as useful as a $150 one
It really isn’t.
A tablet the size of Jupiter
Snort. I believe if you will look, sir, you would find that’s impossible as Jupiter has the mass of almost 318 Earths. Snort. Why, if Apple were to make a tablet that size it would swallow the Earth! Snort.
A laptop with almost no ports
A “smartphone” that doesn’t have a physical keyboard! A digital music player with no wireless and less storage space than a Nomad! A desktop computer without a floppy drive! Lame.
A phone with no headphone jack that can’t connect to the port-less laptop
The iPhone 7 has no headphone jack? Wow. Are you sure? That seems like the kind of thing that someone would have mentioned by now.
Apple was once lauded for the design, durability, and simplicity of its products. But in recent years, the company has lost its way.
Apple is stuck in this corn maze, kids! Can you help it find its way out while you wait for your dinner to come?!
Which, by the way, is entirely corn-based. Thank you for dining at Corny McCornington’s.
Many of its newer devices feel derivative of older ones…
After completely reinventing markets, they just update the products in them instead of reinventing the market every year! What’s up with that?
Of course, most of their competitors have never reinvented a market at all and just follow Apple’s lead.
Consumers appear to agree: In 2016, Apple posted year-over-year declines in both profit and revenue for the first time in 15 years.
Technically it was the first time in 13 years. But somebody said a couple of weeks ago that it has been 15 years so everyone’s running with that number because looking things up is hard.
Murphy’s not wrong that AirPods are great and if you’re in the market for wireless headphones and have Apple products you should definitely get them. But even that part of the article also gets something wrong.
It’s odd that Apple made Siri a double-tap on the AirPods, but included no other tap actions.
They did, although just one. You can set double tap to play/pause instead of Siri.
Well, at least we agree that, yeah, sure, Apple has some problems but AirPods ain’t one of them. That’s kind of an improvement.
Author: The Macalope
In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.