friedmud

wiggin said:

I think the AirPods are pretty cool and will do very well, but I'd be very hesitant to draw too many conclusions based on two weeks of data following two months delay to the release and a little over a week before Xmas when people are scrambling to buy gifts. If the AirPods has been released on time, many of those orders would have been spread out over the past two months, not all concentrated the week before Xmas. And if you were giving wireless headphones as gifts and weren't planning on buying AirPods, you would have already purchased them before Dec 13th.

Since all of the numbers in the report are percentages, sales of non-AirPods tapering off because the purchase was already made and sales of AirPods artificially concentrated in a very short timeframe due to the delayed release...makes for a pretty misleading use of statistics.

Between the Beats brand (which Slice recognized as Apple owned if you read the whole report) and AirPods, Apple will dominate the market. But I really wouldn't get too excited about the "0-26% market share jump" as being anything but a one-time perfect storm of sales trends.

Prepare to be surprised next year then.  The AirPods are way better than any pre-launch review said... and word of mouth is growing fast.  These are going to continue to sell consistently well.

verthib said:

None of these work with the iPhone 7 home button. The home button requires skin contact. This is another reason why I'm not a fan of the 7. 

My NorthFace eTip gloves work perfectly well with my iPhone 7 home button.

These look good.  May get a pair for my wife (who's ears don't like Air/EarPods).

however, I love my AirPods and here my list of things they do better than the Dash:

- Charging Case
- TINY case that fits well in jeans pocket
- Instant Pairing
- Handoff to other Apple devices
- Call answering from the Apple Watch when headphones paired with iPhone (currently not possible with any other headphone!) 
- Great sounding, beam forming microphone
- Battery for each AirPod listed in Battery complication
- Can check battery for AirPods and case on iPhone lock screen just by opening the case
- Automatic pause/play by removing one from your ears
- Simple gesture to invoke Siri (better than trying to hit a tiny button - but of course you can only do one thing!)
- Charge using Lightning cable so you only need to carry one kind of cable with you for charging iPhone/AirPods

Basically: better integration makes the AirPods a better choice.

But, these Bragi Headphones provide a great alternative if the AirPods aren't for your ears...

viclauyyc said:

From now on, it will be a lot of smashing head robbery 

Why do you think these will be more popular for robbery than wireless headphones?

I commute via subway everyday with my Beats Studio Wireless headphones on.  They are double the price of AirPods and _MUCH_ easier to steal.  All you have to do is rip them off my head and run out.  You get everything you need.  Even with that I don't hesitate to use them.

With AirPods it will be essentially impossible to quickly snatch everything from someone.  Even grabbing one is tough... they are small and really close to your head.

Even if you grab one... how are you going to sell it?  Who's going to buy it?  Without the other one and without a way to charge it it's useless.

Grabbing both is going to be exceedingly difficult.  I have no doubt that a thief could get good at it and get it done... but there are going to be very limited opportunities to deploy that skill.  And...

The big problem is that even if you steal the AirPod earbuds... you don't get the charging case!  What good are the earbuds without the ability to charge (or even pair them!).  We haven't even heard yet if there's going to be an ability for you to buy a charging case separately (but we do know you can buy earbuds separately).

In general: for the low price ($160 is really not much) and for all of the problems... I can't see thieves really caring about this much.

That said: it _will_ happen... and when it does we're going to hear ALL about it... on every damn website.

michelb76 said:

Have you used it in places where there is no or bad internet connectivity? Hearing reports that for example in subways(generally no connection) you cannot change the volume on the earpods themselves..

You can't use Siri anywhere you can't use Siri... the AirPods didn't change that.

Like the reviewer mentioned... these really work best if you also have an Apple Watch... because you can do all of those activities on the Apple Watch without taking out your phone (even when Internet access isn't available).

Your other option, of course, is just to pull out your phone and change the volume ;-)