‘Ode to the EarPods’
Basic Apple Guy, purveyor of well-made wallpaper, likes Apple’s wired earphones.
“Don’t get me wrong, I am still very much on team AirPods, but I have increasingly found use cases and situations where having a pair of good olde wired EarPods has proven quite useful,” he wrote in a new blog post. “They don’t need charging, they work with just about anything, and they’ve quietly aged into a little slice of tech nostalgia.”
Prior to 2016, when AirPods debuted alongside the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, I spent many, many years using various incarnations of Apple-branded earphones. From the 30-pin iPod connector to the 3.5mm jack to Lightning, I’ve used them all across various iPods and iPhones. A major reason I found AirPods so revelatory almost a decade ago (!) lies in their cord-free nature. However long I used Apple’s cabled earphones, the biggest frustration with them accessibility-wise, was untangling the cord. The image of a rat’s nest cable Basic Apple Guy included in his piece is scary enough for Halloween; I tried so hard to keep the cord untangled, mostly without success. My hand-eye coordination is bad enough that I’d spend what felt like eons trying to untangle the cable, a task which always involved the most colorful expletives known to humankind. Thus, the advent of AirPods freed me from such torture. From a practical perspective, I also agree with Basic Apple Guy’s fondness for the EarPods’ remote. While the gestures/stem control on AirPods is fine, I’ve never particularly enjoyed the sensation of pressing or swiping close to my ear. I tolerate it, but it’s sensory input that doesn’t at all feel good.
Between my slew of AirPods in my office, all of which span myriad generations and surnames, and my Beats Studio Buds+, I’ve surely no shortage of wireless earbuds to use; if something happens to one pair, I easily can reach for a backup. For travel purposes, however, I’ve made a point to have a set of the $19 USB-C EarPods as a emergency earphone solution in case my AirPods die or, worse, get lost or stolen.
The EarPods are an inexpensive safety blanket—a great addition to my tech travel kit.
