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Amazing how Apple managed to make the first cool MP3 player, then the first cool smartphone and now the first cool bluetooth headset. For almost 20 years now,
by gz5 7y ago
Amazing how Apple managed to make the first cool MP3 player, then the first cool smartphone and now the first cool bluetooth headset. For almost 20 years now, Apple has owned electronic fashion. Sony for example was unable to parlay its Walkman dominance into similar positions with new devices.
And make no mistake about it - a huge portion of these sales are people buying Apple's marketing - not buying the tech itself.
Which I think may bode well for Apple in that we are only scratching the surface of what the tech can do.
- wuunderbar 7y agoDon't forget about first cool smartwatch.
- NetOpWibby 7y agoDick Tracy, eat your heart out!
- Fnoord 7y agoThe Pebble? Still no decent replacement for it.
- jonny_eh 7y agoI loved my Pebble, but it was certainly not cool. Also didn't work as well as my Apple Watch, which I waited until my beloved Pebble finally died before buying.
- Fnoord 7y agoApple Watch is 4+ times the price. It still can't do some of the things a Pebble can. For starters, a Pebble can run a week without requiring recharge.
- sfkdjf9j3j 7y agoAnd yet it's still way cooler than the Pebble. Funny how that works.
- jonny_eh 7y agoAnd the Pebble couldn't reliably tell me the weather outside, for a whole week.
- ramses0 7y ago1) always-on, sunlight-visible screen 2) week-long (plus) battery life 3) good, simple notification + calendar support 4) ecosystem of apps (developer mindshare) Heart Rate, Sleep Tracking, Mic/Phone, Payments are all wonderful, but the drawbacks of "machine-learning-shake-to-wake", one-day battery life, and trying to fiddle with a tiny touch screen make the Apple watch less of a watch and more of "everything but a watch". Long Live Pebble / Rest in Peace.
- amatecha 7y agoDon't forget also: tangible buttons for user input, so you can change music tracks without having to look at or tap on a specific spot on a touch screen! Probably the #1 thing I miss from my Pebble OG :(
- Fnoord 7y agoThe value of hardware buttons without having to look on your screen is underrated. You can put a Pebble alarm off in your sleep. You can change a track without even seeing your watch.
- fenwick67 7y agoPebble was such a cool platform, and it is a damn shame that FitBit was allowed to purchase the company and immediately shut it down. Predatory competitor-purchasing like this should be illegal.
- brlewis 7y ago> Pebble was such a cool platform The only true part of this sentence > it is a damn shame that FitBit was allowed to purchase the company Pebble failed financially and put its assets up for sale, some of which were bought by Fitbit. > and immediately shut it down Fitbit kept servers running for years that supported Pebble devices. I'm a Fitbit employee but don't speak for Fitbit. An official response wouldn't be so terse; I'm just annoyed that this falsehood keeps going years later.
- Shivetya 7y agoI don't own either but I do know this, I can tell when someone has an Apple Watch at a glance without having owned one and only seen pictures, I cannot say the same for any other smart watch.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- rolltiide 7y agoThe tech is cool too Zero people have been swayed by the observation that the components can be acquired for cheaper And the non-iOS phone users that are married to “how much control they have” have touched an iphone since 2014.
- johnmaguire2013 7y agoSorry to burst your bubble, I'm a long-time Android user who switched to the iPhone 6S for about a year and a half, then back to a Pixel 2. Following its release, I bought the iPhone XS expecting to love it and be done with Android. Oh, how wrong I was. Siri is still garbage, CarPlay is terrible compared to Android Auto. And there's nothing even similar to Google Home. Apple's hands-free story is completely nonexistent which is fine if you've never used a decent hands-free ecosystem, but it's very hard to switch back to.
- aduitsis 7y agoCan Android today handle voice dialing non-English names in the address book? If not, their hands-free story leaves a lot to be desired as well.
- projektfu 7y agoYes, with phonetic names, an optional field like the pronunciation name in iOS.
- rolltiide 7y agoInteresting use cases, the Google variant is still a good choice but a sliver of the android market that I cant really consider it meaningful Its one vs many variants
- mhh__ 7y agoYou get that on any modern Android phone, not sure when the cutoff is but my Oneplus from years ago still gets the modern crap.
- f1refly 7y ago>now the first cool bluetooth headset [citation needed] Honstly every time I see someone wearing earpods I can't take him seriously anymore, they look _so_ bad. There's a lot of options on the market, and airpods are the ugliest of them all.
- reaperducer 7y agoWhen you talk to people, you're supposed to look at their eyes, not their ears.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- f1refly 7y agoYou don't have to talk to someone to judge his looks
- simias 7y agoI tend to agree with you, I find them pretty ugly and weird looking, but it's also clear that we're outliers here. Those things are hugely popular.
- crooked-v 7y agoAs somebody who really likes Airpods, I think they look ridiculous, but they work so darn well that the looks are totally irrelvant.
- ghaff 7y agoThe cell phone Bluetooth headsets produced plenty of eyerolls when they were the thing a number of years back too. Probably for similar reasons--you never know when I may get a phone call that's more important than you. Personally, I don't wear these sorts of things in public but that's mostly because I hate being isolated from even relatively benign environments.
- 7y ago
- eanzenberg 7y agoNot sure about the marketing swaying people these days. People are going for the easiest devices to use that get out of the way and are high quality.
- kristianc 7y agoWhich I guess would explain why there are Android phones that crush the iPhone on tech specs but make a minuscule (and sometimes negative) proportion of the industry’s profit?
- stefanfisk 7y agocrush is a strong word here, which Android phones would that be referring to? I got bored after they released the X, but at least up to and including that generation iPhones dominated benchmarks while at least being top 3 in photo quality.
- jedberg 7y agoAt this point no matter how amazing the Android is, I would find the iPhone easier. I've been using an iPhone for so long it's just second nature. At one point I was forced to use an Android for a month. I could just never get used to the interface.
- kristianc 7y agoYou find the iPhone easy to use because the iPhone is easy to use and more or less consistent in every iPhone device you’ve used. A five year old can use an iPhone. That’s competitive differentiation, which is very much part of marketing. An iPhone isn’t easy to use in the same way that git is easier to use than svn for someone who has been using git for a decade.
- swozey 7y agoWhen I had my six month affair with an Iphone 6 it took me a month (I don't get many calls) to finally get frustrated enough to google "How to reject calls" because I was so used to Android giving me a big red X that I never even considered pushing the power button to reject a call (I think that even just mutes incoming calls on Android, I forget), that X let me mute or reject based on the direction I swiped it. I could only figure out how to mute the rings which means my car radio would just be silent until the caller finally gave up. I know a lot of iphone users think it's the most intuitive machine in the world and a 5 year old can get it, and I'm obviously heavily swayed by my decade or whatever with Android but the amount of hidden/unintuitive-to-me/impossible-to-do things I found was what moved me back to Android after that trial. I spent a LOT of time searching on Google for how to do things with that phone.
- aianus 7y agoBeats invented the first cool bluetooth headset.
- thr483900 7y agoWho?
- Aromasin 7y agoAgreed. I'd be more specific and say Apple invented the first fashionable wireless earbuds. I owned a pair of the first Jabra earbuds (of which the latest edition I still use and love) and plenty of those horrid looking, wrap-around, sports ones before Apple came along; I never had anyone say "I want a set of those" until I wore my AirPods for the first time though. They just seem to nail the aesthetics every time.
- grumple 7y agoThey don’t look good. They are a status symbol that says you’re willing to spend money on a premium product and drink the Kool aid.
- Aromasin 7y agoYour speaking objectively about something that could not be more subjective...? Is part of it a status symbol? Yes of course. I dislike the rabid Apple fandom as much as the next person - but that does not detract from the fact that they have comparatively decent sound quality, a white colour-way that looks clean and distinct, are compact enough to carry in a very small pocket, all while staying affordable enough that the average first-world person could buy a pair.
- Ericson2314 7y agoGreat point. Furthermore, how much have AirBuds eaten into Beats sales? Is this more revenue for Apple or just shifting the exact product.
- jimbokun 7y agoSo of course Apple bought them. Wonder how much influence that had on current AirPods.
- ouid 7y agoWHY ARE AIRPODS POPULAR?!?!??!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Fnoord 7y ago> Sony for example was unable to parlay its Walkman dominance into similar positions with new devices. Sony WF-1000XM3 are a popular in-ear Bluetooth headphones with noise cancelling. 80 EUR cheaper than Apple Airpods Pro.
- welly 7y ago.. Which you rarely see stuck in people's ears. You do see those little white airpods everywhere though. People have them stuck in their ears even when they're not playing any audio.
- Fnoord 7y ago1) Honestly, they look ugly (like toothbrushes), just like the white iPhone looked ugly. 2) There's a lot of copy cats who look akin to Apple Airpods because Apple is a premium brand.
- tvararu 7y agoI have both. If the AirPods Pro didn't make my inner ear sore after wearing for 3+ hours, I would sell my Sony's immediately. I might sell them anyway. They are inferior in everything apart from comfort.
- iwalton3 7y agoThe other nice thing is that it appears it might be possible to change the batteries in the WF-1000XM3. (https://hifigo.com/blogs/tws/deep-dive-teardown-of-true-wireless-earbuds-sony-wf-1000xm3-hifigo https://hifigo.com/blogs/tws/deep-dive-teardown-of-true-wire...)
- rkuykendall-com 7y agoStupid name and impossible to distinguish from their other wireless headphones. This is the Dell XXHBE 34-9q276d.snfd2 vs Macbook Pro all over again.
- Fnoord 7y agoAgreed on the name. Don't want my headphones to distinguish themselves (why would I? Certainly not as "toothbrushes").
- davinic 7y agoI've wondered if Sony's music ownership interests played a large role in losing that market due to their fear of piracy.
- gumby 7y ago> Sony for example was unable to parlay its Walkman dominance into similar positions with new devices. Actually the Walkman (which was arguably Sony's second breakout product, the first being a transistor radio) Sony was definitely the cool kid. And don't forget the Playstation or the Trinitron. In fact Steve Jobs explicitly emulated and admired Sony for their (then) sense of style, customer appeal and quality. The Sony of today is a different company. Despite the PS2 success I date the decay to when they bought United Artists.
- femiagbabiaka 7y agoIt's odd that you say decay. IMO Sony's products are still quite good! I have a Sony-WM1A sitting next to me right now that's well-made, and I'm using Sony WF-1000MX3's as headphones, which are also well made. Not only that, but the Sony MDR-EX1000's that I own that are quite old are still buzzing. I can't quite say that for many Apple products I've purchased in the last decade.
- alfonsodev 7y agoWhen did Sony stop naming things the simple way (Walkman, Vaio...) and started naming stuff like that (WF-100MX3 and the like). Im saying this as half joke only :D
- sneakernets 7y agoThey've always named things this way. It was once cool to have stuff like "WF-100MX3" because it reflected the kitsch of the space age.
- robotresearcher 7y agoThis is the company that made ‘Walkman’ and ‘PlayStation’. They sometimes use terrific names.
- alfonsodev 7y ago
- kristianc 7y ago> And make no mistake about it - a huge portion of these sales are people buying Apple's marketing - not buying the tech itself. By definition all of the businesses that survive are good at marketing - Apple has managed to drive extraordinary value through positioning and differentiation and left everyone else to compete over the collapsing middle market. Sony’s precise problem was underinvesting on positioning and brand and relying on their technical advantage ... which proved a problem when everyone else caught up with the tech and they couldn’t repeat the trick with other devices. People say marketing like it’s something to be ashamed of, and that Apple should deliberately hobble itself by being bad at it. It’s really critical.
- _trampeltier 7y agoSony's problem was never the hardware or the design. The problem was, special in the beginning of the MP3 / Smartphone age, they tryed to lock everything so hard with DRM (because other parts from Sony does sell Movies and Music). The even installed something like an trojan already very early in the MP3 market. So al lot of tech guys said "bye, bye Sony" when the market still was very young. I think they lost a lot because they had been so aggresive with there software in a such young market.
- kristianc 7y agoApple had DRM on iTunes with FairPlay and AAC for around six years until the courts forced them to remove it. iTunes was still a huge business for them at the time. Sure that DRM was the real issue? Likewise, claiming that the Root Kit business (by which time the iPod had been around for a good 5 years) sunk Sony’s business seems like a bit of a reach.
- samatman 7y agoDuring that same era, Apple's slogan for the iPod was, notoriously: "Rip. Mix. Burn." They were the first company to crack the nut of digital music sales, and getting those deals with the recording industry absolutely required DRM at the time.
- yibg 7y agoNot sure if I’m typical in this or not but I’m a heavy apple user but have been mostly “forced” into it but ended up loving them. Got my first MacBook because of work. Was previously a windows / Linux user and didn’t get macs but ended up loving the MacBook Pro. Got an iPhone from work too, ended up loving that too. Got a pair of AirPods as present, use it pretty frequently now. Seems like both a good thing (like it after using it) and a bad thing (wouldn’t have gotten into it if not for the unplanned opportunity) for Apple.
- filoleg 7y agoI think one of the strokes of genius for Apple here was the fact that they made AirPods work just as well with Android phones as they do with iPhones (minus a few secondary features). Back when i bought airpods 2 years ago, I still had an Android, and they blew me away in terms of UX. Up to that moment, i have tried and failed to find a pair of fully wireless earbuds that worked as well and sounded as good (for earbuds, obviously). And even today, out of all people i know with android phones, about a third of them use airpods. Each one of them had a similar story of quiet dismissal of airpods for quite a while since the release, then they tried them, and bought them shortly after. P.S. as of now, there are a few good non-airpods truly wireless earbuds that are solid alternatives. Back when i got them, however, every single model out there I tried had some critical flaw. Things like dropped connection or sound getting choppy and stuttery in certain areas. It mostly happened on busy street intersections, so i guess it had something to do with interference from a lot of other bluetooth devices, because the exact same thing used to happen to bluetooth connection in my old car at one specific heavy traffic intersection.
- Daneel_ 7y agoYou know what doesn’t have that problem ever? Wired headphones. God I hate that they’ve removed the headphone jack.
- filoleg 7y agoOne problem that airpods dont have is the dependence on cables and having to fiddle with them every time you get them out of your pocket or getting the cable caught on clothing. As well as other cable issues, like earbuds wiggling in your ears due to cable tension or weight. Not even mentioning the cables wearing out from regular use, rendering the whole set unusable (though there are some headphones that have detachable cables that can be replaced, but those are usually featured only on pretty expensive models). Being able to just put them in your ears and instantly listen to music is something that i never thought i would care for, but after using airpods for a bit, there is no way i am going back. I still use wired over the ear headphones, but only on my desktop. The desktop scenario is perfect for wired, since it is stationary (i.e., i never have to worry about unwringling the cable or worrying about it getting caught on clothing, and they are always plugged in). P.S. i still dont get the point of your comment. You reply on the comment chain talking about Apple and their impressive entry in the field of wireless earbuds decrying the whole industry of wireless earbuds. It’s like going into a thread talking about how Tesla dominates in the EV market with their supercharger infrastructure and vehicle range, and exclaiming “you know what doesn’t have this problem? Gas cars.”
- freepor 7y agoIt’s not just the marketing - it’s that if you buy all of your tech from Apple you have 1) top-quartile product quality and 2) remarkable little upkeep to do compared to compiling a collection of multiple brands.
- asdff 7y agoWhat upkeep do you do with a $15 bluetooth headphone?
- philjohn 7y agoit's also the ecosystem. I have an Apple Watch, it unlocks my laptop automatically. My AirPods connect seamlessly to my phone for listening to music, my watch when I'm working out and my laptop when I'm doing video calls at work. Continuity, AirDrop, AirPlay ... you can't deny that Apple has built an impressive ecosystem.
- snypox 7y agoDamn Watch really unlocks macbook? I already sold mine (didn’t have a MacBook at the time) but I’ll consider purchasing one again, haha. Edit: shit, just realized how easy it is to fall into Apple’s trap.
- philjohn 7y agoThey do! It's great how slick it is, you sit down at your laptop, hit any key and it wakes up and automatically unlocks.
- pascalxus 7y agoi mean, i know airpds are the new platform on top of which things will be built. "what the tech can do"? you mean the airpods? what else is there?
- spullara 7y agoYou missed the first cool smart watch.
- lowdose 7y agoIf Apple can make the same leap from iPod to iPhone with these earbuds we are going to see a sweat new product range. Jim Collins talked about his conversations with Steve Jobs at the end of the Knowledge project podcasts. He started talking to Steve after Steve got fired from Apple.
- addicted 7y agoI strongly disagree about the fashion bit. The iPod was better than any competitor it faced ever. The UI with the click wheel was completely unmatched. Maybe the Zune, years later, came close, but Apple absolutely crushed it with the iPhone and iPod touch. The iPhone was leaps and bounds ahead of its time, to the point that the then King of the hill, BlackBerry, didn’t even think it was possible. And the smoothness of the UI was completely unmatched. The pocketPCs of the time were clunky messes. The iPhone’s UI was so far ahead that it’s now the default UI for every phone. And finally, the AirPods are a far superior experience than the alternatives. In addition though, the AirPods are extremely competitively priced.
- Fnoord 7y agoMy iRiver H340 was ahead of its time. It supported MP3 and Ogg Vorbis and had 40 GB, while the iPods of around that time were running around with 4 GB. Oh, and iTunes DRM. I bought an iPod Classic later on (with 160 GB) to experience the genius usability of the iPod. Except, I didn't experience it. The major innovation of the iPhone was that it had a capacitive touch UI (which allows finger use, gestures, etc). The iPhone did not have an App Store during release. It was missing a lot of features. It was Nokia who was the market leader around that point. I wish they fully bet on Maemo and capacitive touch instead of Windows Phone (they went the right way with the N9, but the predecessors were still too much on pen and resistive touch, or hybrid). Right now, it is oddly enough Jolla who have a partly proprietary, partly FOSS, Linux-based OS (SFOS) for which you need a paid license for. After that, they won't track you though. The iPhone would've never sustained a big pie of the smartphone market though; it is Android which killed Nokia. Official SFOS has Android emulation.
- freepor 7y agoI had a Nokia N95 when I first used an iPhone. It was clear within 5 minutes of using the iPhone that regardless of specs the iPhone was a vastly better experience. That’s how Apple defines “best” and the market has demonstrated that a huge chunk of the market agrees with them and will pay the price for it.
- nomel 7y ago
- rkuykendall-com 7y agoAirPods don't have a single competitor. There's no clear alternative on the market. It's Air Pod or... TOZO T10? Sony XB950B1? LETSCOM IPX7? KOVEBBLE IPX7? Fuck I have no idea what all these numbers and letters mean, I'll buy some Air Pods.
- farmerbb 7y agoThere's plenty of AirPods competitors on the market now with easily recognizable names. I'm a proud Samsung Galaxy Buds user myself.
- rkuykendall-com 7y agoGreat name actually.
- swozey 7y agoSony WF-1000MX3s, Jabra Elite 65ts (which I own and don't like using at all, should've returned), Samsung Galaxy Buds (my commute dailies and much more akin to airpods in use, not amazing but I love them). There are now a lot of BT5 mobile earbuds w/ good ANC in the $100-300 range. Not sure what the top of the line in the last 3 months has become as I'm now swimming in headphones. My work dailies are the Sony WH1000XM3s (which actually replaced my XB950B1s, XBs don't have ANC like 1000s do). To someone who uses Sony, AudioTechnica (loved my ATH-M50s for.. 5+ years) , Jabra. etc you tend to learn the numbering not that it's great. It's like buying a 3 series or 5 series BMW. There's usually some way to determine which class they're in from that brand, like the Sonys were 1000MX2s before they became 1000MX3s, next will be the MX4, the preceding WF or WH is earbuds vs over-ear (no idea what WF or WH actually means, though).
- thethrowboat 7y agoWhat does air pods mean? I guess they are bluetooth headphones, but what are the specs, do they work with non-apple hardware/software? I would have to search for that info, so its just the same if they were called AIR IPX7 T10.
- 7y ago
- zelly 7y agoYou act like the fashion is not tech. Their stuff looks good because of engineering all the way down. Looking good is a feature. I disagree with the idea that it's marketing. Apple does very little marketing these days. Apple products are a memetic virus.
- saagarjha 7y ago> Apple does very little marketing these days. Apple does a significant amount of marketing, and I'd argue that they've been steadily ramping it up recently. It's just that they're usually a lot better at staying out of your face about it.
- ghaff 7y agoFirst of all marketing != advertising. But they certainly do advertising specifically. A lot has been oriented around photography for a while but that's hardly surprising as people certainly don't upgrade phones for texting or phone calls.
- capkutay 7y agoRemember when the airpods first came out? SNL, Conan O'Brian, all of twitter were basically dragging it through the mud and making a mockery of them. 3 years later you can't walk around a major city or airport without seeing a significant amount of people using them.
- tootie 7y agoPeople made fun of pagers, cell phones and bluetooth headsets pretty relentlessly too.
- filoleg 7y agoDon’t forget about that one big fad called “internet”.
- psteinweber 7y agoAnd the Tesla Cybertruck. I would bet on it falling in the exact same category: Being a Meme first, and a huge success later.
- tootie 7y agoApple is marketing company.
- seppin 7y agoI hate Apple marketing, their ads always annoy me. Great products tho
- Can_Not 7y ago> first cool MP3 player The iPod was far from the first, far from the best, and maybe even technically not an mp3 player.
- nothis 7y agoReplace "cool" with "actually working great" and I'm with you.
- isoskeles 7y agoHahaha, one of the actual coolest, most fashionable people I’ve known had nothing nice to say about AirPods. She said, “Steve Jobs would have never allowed that to happen.” And to be frank, they don’t look any better than the Bluetooth headsets that were around for years before, so I have to agree with her assessment. Personal taste, of course, but I’ve also never heard anyone say that AirPods look “cool” ever. The only upside is they’re branded, so you can make yourself look like you’re the type of person who owns Apple products. Wow.
- yoz-y 7y agoStraight from the basket of pretentious people who think they know what Steve Jobs would have wanted. They don't. Even Steve from year Y would not know what Steve from year Y+1 would want.
- isoskeles 7y agoLike I said, personal taste, but I definitely took her opinion of it more seriously given her job is to sell fashionable clothes to fashionable people, and throw in some confirmation bias because I don't like AirPods. I'm not even sure what standard anyone here could use to claim that AirPods (or anything) are cool. Apple products are a status symbol, and sure they have potential to be cool, but glorifying bluetooth earbuds as such looks more, to me, like we're just conflating whatever cool means with the idea of status. I'm not saying they're mutually exclusive, but I am saying I require some actual definition of terms and proof beyond sales or people wearing them to take the claim seriously on HN. Otherwise, it just looks like a fanboy being a fanboy. But yeah, anything sticking out of your ears that has a lower profile than wired headphones falls into this goofy uncanny valley of man-melding-with-machine, at least in my view. And this is why I believe that Steve Jobs had the design-sense to see that and not allow it. But hey, maybe not, maybe the way I have articulated it is completely wrong, and this goofy uncanny valley is actually really cool.
- yoz-y 7y agoI wouldn’t say they are cool either. But I remember the time when landlines without wires were “cool”. Nobody thought putting the cord back was a good idea.
- baby 7y agoAnd the first cool smartwatch (although I would never buy one myself)
- holografix 7y agoNot so sure about _the first_ but might agree to _the coolest_ ;-) Motorola Razr was very cool when it came out.