Look to your left. Look to your right. If you’re on the sidewalk, a subway, a train, or your dorm couch; at a WeWork, an airport, a construction site, or an open-plan office, there are almost certainly little white sticks nearby poking out of someone’s head. Apple’s AirPods have slowly and all at once taken over America’s ears.
At least, I swear that’s what’s happening. Apple doesn’t release numbers, but one industry analyst estimated last winter that up to 16 million AirPods were sold in 2018—and predicted that Apple could sell 55 million this year, and up to 110 million in 2020. The numbers seem to insinuate that AirPods might be Apple’s best-selling product. And that bit of educated guesswork was made before Apple announced its upgraded AirPods this week: longer battery life, faster connections, “Hey Siri” powers (no need to tap or press a button to summon the A.I. butler), and a wireless case that you can get included (for $199, $40 more than the cord-charged-only setup) or separately (for $79) to upgrade older AirPods. Try to order a pair right now and shipments will be delayed—already by more than a week, just two days after they went on sale.
If you have a pair (as I do), you probably swear by them (as I do). If you don’t, you’re probably wondering why everyone got the memo and you didn’t. Particularly because, back when AirPods launched two-plus years ago (with the iPhone 7—miss u home button), they were mildly polarizing, like Pepsi vs. Coke or Markle vs. Middleton.
I asked Jony Ive, Apple’s chief design officer, why he thought the AirPods at first left everyone looking like a puppy staring at a butterfly.
“I think this was common on the initial reaction to the AirPods—it’s a reaction based on an academic understanding of them, rather than a practical daily understanding of them,” said Ive. “What we tend to focus on are those attributes that are easy to talk about, and just because we talk about them doesn't mean that they're the important attributes. All that means is they're the ones that are easy to talk about.”
His point being, you can read about AirPods and see plenty of reasons not to drop $159 or more: They’re expensive. They’re one-size-fits all (which doesn’t fit all). They don’t sound any better than headphones that cost half the price or less. They look a little weird, or maybe just unexpected. We’ve had 17 years with white cords dangling from our ears, and AirPods look like someone’s run up and snipped ’em with scissors. I know I felt sheepish the first time I walked out the door, AirPods dangling from my lobes. I was A Dude Who Bought Those Apple Earbuds.
But AirPods have also altered the expectations of how increasingly complex headphones and intensely complex smartphones should work together, on your behalf. They’ve done what no other Bluetooth headphones ever had: make Bluetooth not suck (assuming you have an iPhone). They connect, immediately. They hiccup less. They require almost none of your attention for annoyances and instead deliver little moments that feel, to get a little Disney World here, delightful. They’re awkward and magical in equal measure.
You get it the first time you slip out the right ‘Pod to order a coffee, then pop it back in 30 seconds later to have the music automatically come back to life. Or when you discover, almost by accident, that you can set a series of taps to do your bidding; I tweaked mine so that gently double-tapping my right ear’s AirPod skips a track. It probably seems like I have swimmer’s ear when I’m walking to the subway, but that’s fine if it means I don’t have to pull off my winter gloves or dig out my phone to escape just how much Spotify’s Discovery algorithm thinks I want EDM remixes of Sam Smith tracks. And it’s fine because, let’s be honest, we’ve stopped caring how foolish we look when using tech in public.
But the one AirPods moment that provides my most consistent idiot-glee dopamine hit is the clicky magnetic case lid. I flick it open, closed, open, closed relentlessly in my coat pocket while I’m walking—a minor-key tactile addiction that’s reflexive at this point. Apple’s Jony Ive says a lot of man hours were spent to bring me this idiot-glee dopamine hit.
“When you are going to have objects that are inherently very mechanical, I think that it's so important that you pay attention to all aspects of the design. There is color and form and the overall sort of architecture, but then those more difficult-to-define and concept behaviors, like the noise of a click and the force of a magnet that draws something closed,” says Ive. “I mean, for example, one of the things that we struggled with was the way that the case orients the AirPod as you put them in. I love those details, that you've had no idea how fabulously we got that wrong, for so long, as we were designing and developing it. When you get them right I think they don't demand a lot from you but they contribute far more than people are necessarily aware for your sense of joy and using a product.
And this is, I think, the reason for the slow path to everywhereness that Apple’s AirPods have taken. They may be the best-selling product Apple makes right now, but they’re also the ones that most require word-of-mouth, or a leap of faith. With them, Apple fixed the annoying things about wireless headphones, which you didn’t realize could be fixed until you bought a pair. And Apple made the act of using those headphones tactile and satisfying and sometimes surprisingly delightful, but you wouldn’t know until you splurged on a pair. You need a beta-tester friend to rave a little before you make the leap. I’m not saying you should do that if you haven’t. But I am saying you’ll enjoy the hell out of the lid.
