Lots of people in this thread seem to be fighting about whether AirPods (and wireless headphones in general) are a viable product or not. "Wires are not a hassle and provide a better experience most of the time" crowd, vs. "Wires are awful and I'll take all the drawbacks of wireless just to get rid of them" crowd.

Generally, won't people who care about headphones own multiple pairs of headphones? I have a cheap pair of liquid-resistant bluetooth buds for workouts, and they work great for that but sound pretty bad. For walking or home use, I use either a wired set of nicer earbuds, or some wired over-ear headphones that sound amazing.

All of them combined cost less than airpods, too. If you care enough to spend money on headphones and not just use the wired pack-in ones that come with most devices, would one not just do an hour of research before spending almost $200 on something with a very obviously limited lifespan?

And as far as airpods being a platform: the author seems to think "sensors = platform". They're a nicely integrated part of Apple's whole mobile platform, but not a platform themselves. You can't use airpods by themselves, so how does that make them a platform?