Apple AirPods
The Apple AirPods have
been officially announced at the company's big event today. They are truly
wireless earbuds, following in the footsteps of only a handful of other such
products things such as the Bragi Dash, Earin, Samsung Gear IconX, as well as
the recently unveiled Jabra Elite Sport and Bragi The Headphone.
Like all of those earbuds, the AirPods
come with absolutely no wires, not even to connect the buds between themselves.
The AirPods have Apple's new W1 chip built-in, dual optical sensors so they
only play when they're in your ears, dual accelerometers (which detect touch to
activate Siri when you double-tap), as well as a couple of microphones each.
They come with
a special battery-charging case. The battery life should be around five hours
per charge, and the case apparently provides 24 hours worth of charges.
Unlike Bluetooth headphones, these
require no pairing procedure. Once you open the lid of their case, a
"Connect" prompt will simply appear on your iPhone, and once you tap
that you're set. Furthermore, iCloud is used to let every one of your Apple
devices know that you have a pair of AirPods. A proprietary wireless connection
is used, so the AirPods will only be compatible with Apple devices running iOS
10, watchOS 3, and macOS Sierra.
The AirPods will become available in
late October for US$ 159. That price is very competitive in the nascent market of
truly wireless earbuds, so Apple could end up selling quite a few of these.
Obviously compatibility with non-Apple devices would have helped even more.
