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Comment by pwthornton | Hacker News Reader

Audio quality on them is average, not bad, but their strengths balance out those weaknesses. In particular, I find myself using headphones more often now because I always keep these in my pocket. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts with them.

Apple AirPods are the real deal. Best new Apple product in years.

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Agreed. They're basically always with me, no wires to annoy me, and sound a bit better than the standard EarPods. Sure you can get better sound out of other things, but the fact I always have them is a huge deal.

The best camera is the one you have on you right? Same thing.

Whenever I leave the house, I have a set of Airpods velcroed to the back of my phone case.

Totally agree. There's a lot wrong with them[1], but the audio is good enough and overall I find myself using them way more often than the EarPods so there's some proof in the pudding.

[1] - BT just isn't great tech and there's odd interference/cutout, often around cars; open-case-near-phone-for-battery-level is clunky and inefficient; double-tap to play/pause (voice control for audio control is just non-sensical to me) often doesn't work if it's been more than a few minutes, and seems to prefer opening the Apple Music app which I never use

I'm sad that Beats was the one headphone brand that Apple ended up purchasing when they wanted to expand that space. B&O felt like a natural synergy for them too.

I would love to be able to buy better-sounding AirPods under an Apple/B&O label.

Apple didn't buy a headphone maker for expertise at making headphones that sound good. Apple Stores sell headphones from any number of brands—including B&O—so there's nothing to gain by making their own headphones more audiophile-friendly. They still make money off of other companies' audiophile-targeted headphones, without having to actually design and produce any.

Instead, Apple bought the headphone maker whose products make money through a combination of visually-distinct brand-recognition and a high level of "fit and finish"—the same way their own hardware does. Beats slots into Apple's product-design paradigm as naturally as if they had created the brand themselves.

There's a pretty good argument they bought Beats for the music service (and it's people and relationships), which they turned into/merged with Apple music. They seem to have left the headphone business alone (other than giving one kind of Beats have the same chipset that the AirPods have).

> They seem to have left the headphone business alone

Well, why wouldn't they? Going by my argument, it was already being done "the way they would have done it."

It's like moving in with someone who already has the same cleaning habits that you do: you can just leave them alone and trust them to do the right thing, and then be happy with the results.

Apple has never really bought something and left it alone before. While the Beats headphone brand was good, some people wondered if they would change it somehow. "Beats presented by Apple" or something like that. Start putting their logo on the product, etc.

I'm not saying it would be a smart idea. I think Apple did the right thing. But Apple couple years ago may well have made a change like that.

Thisx1000. B&O, B&W, Sonus Faber, PSB... I'd run out and buy any of them with a W1 Bluetooth chip in a heartbeat.

I really do wonder if Apple will license it to anyone. For example, I'd be quite happy to get Bose noise canceling headphones with a W1 in it.

It's obvious why Beats gets it, the question is whether anyone else will.

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