As a long-time fan of the iPhone mini (insert your own “THERE’S DOZENS OF US!” gif here, I’m too bitter to find one), I’ve missed a number of opportunities to ‘purchasing new iPhones in recent years.
The rent is too high, the phones are too big.
This year, however, knowing that I would eventually have to give in to the Big Phone™, and the addition of the camera control button on the iPhone 16 convinced me. I ordered an iPhone 16. It’s nice. I like it. Is it too big? Yes, it’s too big. It’s also not the most exciting thing I bought at Apple’s September event.
Now listen to this
The other thing I bought was the casually named AirPods 4 with ANC. (What’s wrong with the AirPods 4+, Apple?) These new devices don’t do anything that the AirPods Pro already did – they do less – but there are two kinds of ears in this world: the ones that can handle the plug type. headphones and those who can’t, and mine can’t. AirPods 4 with ANC are AirPods Pro for the rest of us.
EarPods were fine, but Apple knew a wireless future was coming.
EarPods were fine, but Apple knew a wireless future was coming.
Foundry
EarPods were fine, but Apple knew a wireless future was coming.
Foundry
Foundry
Remember EarPods? Of course you have a drawer full of them. They worked and they worked well. Some people still use them. The world could have kept going with Apple, including EarPods with every iPhone, and people who wanted to go wireless had to buy unreliable Bluetooth headphones until the universe thermally died. The Verge certainly seemed to want to do that.
But then Apple decided to remove the headphone jack on iPhones, which pushed us in a certain direction that just happened to make the company more money. That’s funny. But it was also a direction where we had more features, accessibility options, and just general fun.
Big things in small packages
AirPods are a classic Apple product. They’re often annoying and sometimes do things you don’t want them to do that might make you want to scream, but what they do well is so magical when it happens that you forgive them for all their flaws. I can’t imagine living without them now.
Yes, sometimes they switch to another device just to play an alert sound, even if I was listening to something on the first device. Sometimes they don’t do it switch to a device that I clearly want them to switch to even if it seems clear that I’m changing my focus. Some people find them easy to lose (mine are always in that little pocket of my jeans that I never had a use for before). Batteries are a long-term problem with no simple solution.
Apple does a really good job of demonstrating its commitment to making AirPods a great product.
Apple does a really good job of demonstrating its commitment to making AirPods a great product.
Lewis Painter / Foundry
Apple does a really good job of demonstrating its commitment to making AirPods a great product.
Lewis Painter / Foundry
Lewis Painter / Foundry
But Apple has continued to add features to AirPods over their eight years of existence. The original AirPods were wireless earbuds with easy-to-use controls that simply connected more easily and worked more consistently than other Bluetooth earbuds. And that was enough. The AirPods Pro arrived three years later, bringing active noise cancellation, transparency mode, wireless charging, and other features. Now, Apple has pushed those premium features back into the non-Pro AirPods, added other features like the ability to shake or nod to respond to Siri, all for just $20 more than the original version.
What about AirPods Pro? This made them hearing aids. Just, you know, because. Apple has shown that it is seriously committed to making AirPods a great product and a continuing part of its lineup.
It’s the little things
Apple gets a lot of credit for AirPods during its quarterly conference calls with analysts, but otherwise it’s not a quiet success but certainly one about which the noise has been quashed. (See what I did there? Yeah, you do.)
Tim Cook is often chastised for not producing products as revolutionary as those delivered by Apple under Steve Jobs. But the AirPods and the Apple Watch are huge successes on a level comparable to the iPod or the iPad, or even the iPhone. Apple’s wearables revenue in the second calendar quarter of 2024 was $8.1 billion. It’s as big as Visa, Air France, Subaru or Heineken (which together look like a rich kid’s spring break toolbox).
So this doesn’t make AirPods great out of the kindness of our hearts. But it also didn’t create the Mac out of the goodness of its heart. Sometimes it’s nice to realize that one of Apple’s best products is also one of the smallest and cheapest.
