Why AirPods Are Apple’s Best-Designed Product in a Decade
Six months after the earphones’ release, this reformed skeptic describes why using them is a transcendent experience.
Nothing Apple has released in the last ten years has defined the present and future of tech like the iPhone did. It was so different from the cellphones that came before–and offered such novel solutions to the UI/UX problems inherent in them–that its appearance on the consumer tech landscape of 2007 had much the effect of a time traveler coming back with an artifact from the future: “Here’s the phone everyone on Earth will be using in ten years. Get cracking.”
I don’t mean to say that the iPhone wasn’t derivative of a lot of amazing earlier work in mobile computing. It just didn’t feel that way. Instead, it felt like we’d all experienced a global time skip. In the primer of tech history, we had turned a page to find ourselves a few chapters ahead.
Which is why every subsequent Apple product release has felt anticlimactic. The iPad? The Apple Watch? The recent announcement of the HomePod, Apple’s Echo-like home speaker? Few would deny that these are well-designed products executed with sophistication, beauty, and humanism. Still, they feel routine and iterative; the total opposite of that global time skip.
But I’d argue that’s not fair. There has been an Apple product that feels just as revolutionary as the original iPhone. It went on sale six months ago, and like the iPhone was back in the day, it has been widely mocked for its looks and its price tag by people who haven’t tried it. But when you do try this product, like the iPhone, you can never go back. Which goes a long way to explain why, six months later, you still need to wait six weeks to buy it directly from Apple — a wait time unheard of since the original iPhone’s launch.
Think about that: People are buying this product so fast that Apple — which can bring to bear the world’s best supply chain — still can’t keep up with demand six months after launch. (Comparatively, Apple’s new 10.5-inch iPad Pro, announced this month, will ship to you next week if you order one today.) Does that prove to you that demand is loud? Of course. The mystery is why no one seems to be talking — even whispering — about it.
Anyway, I’m talking about AirPods, Apple’s true wireless headphones.
At $159, it’s easy to dismiss them as overpriced. Before you try them, they look exactly like the kind of marginal product iteration that Cupertino’s marketing department tries to spin as “magical.” It especially seems disingenuous compared to the work that other audio companies, like Doppler Labs, are doing. How can a couple of earbuds, shorn of their cables, possibly compare with augmented reality?
When Apple first announced AirPods, I joined the swishing chorus of rolling eyeballs that make up Twitter’s community of skeptics. Although the EarPods are probably the best pack-in headphones out there, the fact that the $160 AirPods shared their physical design seemed lazy and damning to me. EarPods sound okay, not great, and they have a tendency to slip out. Without a cord to tether them, AirPods seemed totally anti-user: Surely, wearing these, you’re just one loose shoelace away from $79.50 skittering down a storm drain. Unlike some people who thought AirPods looked stupid, I didn’t mind the aesthetics (and anyway, when it comes to silly-looking ear jewelry, maybe ironic San Francisco tech writers shouldn’t be the ones to throw the first lobe gauge).
But I was wrong. My supposed criticisms of AirPods were either invalidated (AirPods are weighted in such a way that they are very hard to dislodge from the ear) or largely obviated by the fact that the UI/UX of using them is absolutely transcendent.
I wish you were sitting here, so I could share with you the experience of using AirPods by just popping them in your ears. That’s the way I came around; fifteen minutes later, I’d bought a pair, a true believer.
Let’s start with the case. The chiclet-shaped box, like an app icon you can hold, has the pleasing heft and smoothness of a really good skipping stone. It even feels good in a pocket — like a gold coin, with just enough weight to assure your unconscious that you’re carrying it. The charging case is made of glossy white plastic, but it still feels premium, a testament to the fact that Apple’s industrial design ethos works toward the purity of process and aesthetic in all materials, not just aluminum and glass.
It’s no accident that Apple took such care to make the case feel good. This case isn’t just protective; it’s also a dock for juicing up AirPods from a 24-hour battery. AirPods, in fact, have a symbiotic relationship with their case. Without their case, AirPods would be harder to charge, easier to lose, and have 80% worse battery life, because by themselves, AirPods have only a five-hour charge. But because the case is designed to store AirPods , it corrals them together and charges them from a 24-hour battery when not in use. Even if you plug them into their case one out of 20 times you use them, you’ll never find yourself with earphones that don’t work when you need them. No wonder Apple took such pains to make the case feel nice and important in the hand: It effectively gives AirPods themselves the feel of infinite battery life.
This feeling of infinite battery life is a small but important part of what makes the AirPods experience transcendent. When Apple says the earphones are wireless, this is a little bit of an exaggeration. You still need to plug the case in every now and again to be charged. But the earphones themselves? They feel untethered in a way no other set of headphones I’ve ever used have. It’s not just about the lack of a cord, or that I never think about battery life; it’s that they solve the biggest friction point in Bluetooth headphones: plugging in.
Here’s what it’s like to pair most Bluetooth headphones to a new device. First, consult your headphones manual to figure out which button you need to press to start pairing. Then, press it. After several false tries (because you didn’t hold the button down long enough, or because you held it down too long), an LED starts blinking, telling you the headphones are ready to pair. Now it’s time to search around in the settings of your device. Find Bluetooth settings, then look for the Bluetooth name for your headphones (which might not be the same as the actual product name) and connect. If everything goes right, you’ll have paired your headphones with your device, but even so, if you want to pair your headphones to another device, you’ll have to go through this process again. It’s like having to perform an elaborate secret handshake every time you talk to a different person.
Now compare this to AirPods. Slide a thumbnail under the front groove of the AirPods case, then flick it open. A window on the nearest iOS device will pop up, asking for permission to connect. Once you tap “OK,” your AirPods are automatically paired with every Apple product you own. Want to juggle between them? Usually, AirPods will figure out which device you want to use based on which device you’re closest to. (If not, on Apple products, it’s as easy as selecting them from the AirPlay menu, accessible from any screen.) Got an Android device? You just pair like a regular Bluetooth device by pressing a button on the case. Not as good, sure…but hey, Apple’s always taken advantage of owning every level of the product/software/services stack.
Using AirPods is even easier. All you have to do is pop them into your ears to start listening. There are no buttons to push; it feels like AirPods are reading your mind. When you pop them out to talk with someone, your paired device will automatically pause whatever you were listening to. Put your AirPods back in, and the audio resumes. If you remove just one, all your audio is remixed for mono sound. To talk with Siri, just double tap an earphone. No other set of headphones, Bluetooth or otherwise, behaves nearly as intuitively.
The technical wizardry behind all of this is Apple’s proprietary W1 chip and a couple of built-in sensors, but it doesn’t really matter. What’s important here is the experience. With AirPods, Apple has designed a pair of wireless headphones that feels easier to use and less cumbersome to wear — both psychologically and physically — than a pair of analog cans, let alone comparable Bluetooth headphones.
Perhaps that’s not going to have the same sort of ultimate ramifications as an Internet-connected, touchscreen computer that everyone carries in their pockets, but it’s still why AirPods feel like such a time skip, despite their ultimately iterative nature. What made the iPhone revolutionary was that it had a better user experience than both the smartphones and the dumb phones that preceded it. And the same is true of AirPods. From a UX perspective, they make other headphones — wireless and wired alike — feel awkward, weighing you down and anchoring you to a spot, a power source, a device. AirPods, on the other hand, let you listen free. Once you do, you can never go back.
Which is why, next time you see someone using a pair of AirPods, you should go up and ask them how they like them. My guess is they’ll gush about them in a way you’re just not used to people gushing about technology anymore. Then, my guess is they’ll invite you to try them for yourself. Strap yourself in if you do: that time skip you felt for the original iPhone is coming, smaller but just as real. It’ll reaffirm to you that Apple might have a page or two to write in design and tech history yet.
