Apple’s AirPods quickly went from initial mockery to millennial status symbol

“Of all the widely ridiculed tech products, Apple’s AirPods have experienced an extraordinary turnaround. Back in 2016, they were roundly mocked by the tech industry,” Elena Cresci reports for The Guardian. “Tiny wireless earbuds? It seemed like a recipe for disaster – streets would be littered with these lost headphones, which would clutter up city pavements like discarded gloves and babies’ socks.”
“But fast-forward to 2019 and, somehow, the £159-a-pair little pods have transformed into a bona fide status symbol. Diana Ross has a pair, Kristen Stewart wears them and a woman in Virginia has even started a cottage industry by turning them into earrings for people,” Cresci reports. “And so, the butt of the joke is not the AirPods themselves but the wealth and status of the people who wear them… As one viral tweet joked, the world’s Top 10 richest people are: 1. AirPod users; 2. The CEO of Amazon, Jeff Bezos; and 3. Bill Gates.”
“But is it fair? ‘The thing is, AirPods aren’t even the most expensive wireless headphones out there,’ says Katy Leeson, the managing director of the social media marketing agency Social Chain,” Cresci reports. “That said, the jokes about them can’t have hurt Apple – if anything, the people mocking the product have led to a sales bump. ]”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Pretty much every Apple introduction —— from the Mac to iPod to iPhone to iPad to Apple Pay to Apple Watch to AirPods —— was “roundly mocked by the tech industry” (while they feverishly attempted to half-assedly knock off Apple’s innovations behind the scenes). Expect this rather humorous state of affairs to continue ad infinitum.
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Apple AirPods 2 said to deliver deeper bass, more sensors, higher price; AirPower to launch this spring – February 11, 2019