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Comment by MrDrDr | Hacker News Reader

I think this is a great idea. But why just aim this as women? There are a lot of 'out there' earring designs you could consider that might make your product both technically simpler and more gender neutral.

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That was my first thought as well. But it might be actually reasonable. They have to start somewhere.

If they’ll deliver, and sell enough of these, and unless they’ll be acquired by Apple and shut down, pretty sure we’ll see gender neutral models to follow.

Yes :)

I am intrigued about "technically simpler." Can you elaborate?

So - am way out of my depth here and I agree with the comment above - but I had imagined, given the fashion aspect you could consider something similar to the ear cuff design e.g: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PO5tT-NZ-zI/UYnN0LqO7_I/AAAAAAAABy... .. as worn in many asian countries. I imagine more of the design could be aesthetic, it could allow you to place the microphone closer to the ear canal (and potentially hide components behind the ear?)addressing some of the other comments about sound quality. - very happy to be wrong about all of the above :) - just some thoughts.

Thanks MrDrDr, that's a pretty edgy design! Our first attempt was an Octopus, holding on to the ear with its tentacles! But here's the problem with the spider web design: if you put a circuit board + battery front and center, sticking forward, it looks like a gigantic tumor on the ear. There's no way to avoid that. Which is why we focused on designs that hid the board behind the earring. We also wanted the earrings to be swappable (because I don't see most women wanting to wear the same look every day.) Our challenges were: hiding the circuit board, positioning the speaker near the canal, and allowing swappable looks. We spent months just figuring out how to solve these design issues.

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