Yale University sophomore Lindsay Jost once found Apple AirPods so objectionable she roasted them in an op-ed for her daily college paper.
“I think what makes AirPods look so stupid is the fact that they look like you left Q-Tips stuck in both your ears. They also stick out super far to the point where it looks like you want everyone to see that you have them,” Jost, 20, told MarketWatch in an email. “I equate it to basically like Juuling but for your ears.”
‘What makes AirPods look so stupid is the fact that they look like you left Q-Tips stuck in both your ears.’ —Yale University sophomore Lindsay Jost
But this past fall, Jost opted to “sell out” and purchase a pair of AirPods after her Beats by Dre headphones were stolen.
“I thought that I would love the simplistic design and ease of use but — at the end of the day — I do feel like I should’ve just gotten Beats again,” she said. “They fall out at the gym and are quite annoying to charge.” She does, however, like that she can keep one AirPod in and still hear her surroundings.
Jost’s journey from AirPod hater to AirPod purchaser mirrors the path many consumers take when a polarizing new product hits the market. Experts say a mix of time, continuous exposure, relatively high product quality and early adopters helps guide people from disdain to acceptance. (Apple did not return a MarketWatch request for comment.)
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It pays for companies to make sure that people who subscribe to their twists on old products go from being fashion victims to cool cats. Apple’s $17.4 billion wearables business, which includes the Apple Watch and AirPods, increased in revenue by 35% last year.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo called AirPods Apple’s most popular accessory, despite their mixed reception in 2016.
Last year, TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo called AirPods the company’s most popular accessory yet, despite their mixed reception when they were launched. Interest over time has risen, according to Google Trends, particularly in recent months.
Kuo is bullish on AirPods and their mass appeal. He estimated that Apple shipped approximately 28 million AirPods in 2018, up from 14 million to 16 million in 2017, and says that could rise to 110 million AirPods by 2021 with wireless charging.
Not every futuristic gadget finds a following. Google Glass, the futuristic-looking smart glasses relaunched by the tech giant in 2017, stumbled during their initial 2014 run amid privacy concerns and the persistent public perception that they looked, well, ridiculous. They’ve yet to catch on. (Google did not immediately respond to request for comment.)
Experts say a mixture of time, exposure, high product quality and early adopters helped make them more acceptable.
Fortunately for Jost, the iPhone maker’s wireless earbuds just got easier to charge: Apple on Wednesday rolled out its second-generation AirPods ($159) with an optional wireless charging case (an extra $40), hands-free Siri access and better battery life. They’ve had to overcome a lot of online scorn. AirPods, which protrude below the ear and whose aesthetic has been likened to cigarettes and electric toothbrushes, inspired doubt and mockery upon their 2016 debut.
Many worried they would easily lose the pricey, thumb-sized earbuds; plenty more just thought they lookeddumb. It didn’t help their image when a photo of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani wearing upside-down AirPods surfaced last year on Twitter TWTR, +1.26% .
LGA, crossroads of the world. https://t.co/zzA6NpWqCl pic.twitter.com/RyvtCocKCf
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 27, 2018
“Finally saw AirPods used in the wild today and can confirm that they look just as stupid IRL as they do online,” tweeted Quartz workshop director Sam Williams in late 2016. But in the months and years since their debut, AirPods seem to have worn consumers down.
One reason for their apparent success: AirPods over time have crystallized into a meme-driven millennial status symbol. Ninety-eight percent of customers are either “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their purchase, according to a May 2017 survey by Experian and consulting firm Creative Strategies.
One reason for their apparent success: AirPods over time have crystallized into a meme-driven millennial status symbol;
For others, familiarity eventually breeds a compliment. “It took me a while to get used to them in general, just because this was a whole new design,” Tim Bajarin, Creative Strategies president and a longtime Apple analyst, told MarketWatch. “You just eventually kind of get used to it.”
Continuous and repetitive exposure will eventually make them seem as normal as apple pie. The more people who use them, the less odd they seem, said Kate Nightingale, founder of the U.K.-based human experience consultancy Style Psychology Ltd.
Peer pressure, however subtle, also helps. Young people selecting a new cell phone were influenced most by their friends, according to 2011 research published in the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications.
Continuous exposure makes them seem as normal as apple pie. The more people who use them, the less odd they seem
Family was the second most influential group, while salespeople were the third. Beyond human influence, young adults were most heavily influenced by advertising, technology blogs, followed by traditional media like newspapers, magazines and radio.
Bajarin likened consumers’ slow embrace of AirPods to their initial reluctance to buy the iPod and iPhone. The second-generation AirPod incorporates hands-free access to the voice assistant Siri; most people have become accustomed to his/her voice.
Kit Yarrow, a San Francisco-based consumer psychologist and author of “Decoding the New Consumer Mind,” recalled thinking it was strange to see people walking around in public with a Walkman and headphones in the 1980s.
Companies are banking on consumers thinking new products are unusual enough to intrigue us, but not too unusual to put us off. “Most new things are notable initially, and after a while become so much a part of the fabric of our lives we don’t notice them,” Yarrow said.
Wireless AirPods also allow us to stay connected to our phone without being tethered to it physically.
Some critics acknowledge that even accessories we now accept as cool can look wackadoodle if you think twice about it. The latest bizarre accessory foisted upon the unsuspecting public: micro handbags the size of a tea bag.
By the time the novelty wears off, experts say Apple — which walks that line between a technology and luxury-goods company — will likely have another product to grab our attention. From iMacs and iPods to iPhones and iPads, the company has redefined consumer products.
Wireless AirPods appear to free us of our physical connection to technology. They allow us to stay “connected to the phone, and therefore the world, without being tethered to it directly,” says Ian Bogost, who writes about technology for the Atlantic.
“We’ve reached the point with AirPods where they’ve vanished back into the background — it’s like wearing jeans or carrying a certain kind of bag,” Bogost told MarketWatch. “It’s a thing that if you choose to notice, you do, but otherwise it sort of fills out the hip silhouette of a person on the street.”
By the time the AirPod novelty wears off, experts say Apple will likely have another product to grab our attention.
Some people — even AirPod users — remain unmoved. “They still absolutely look stupid in my opinion,” said Jost, the Yale University student. “I still do use mine because they’re past the point of returning them, but I wouldn’t buy them again.”
“I saw a guy with Air Pods and thought again how stupid they look, and then I saw a guy right next to him with a long set of regular corded headphones and to be honest that looked pretty dumb too,” Columbia Journalism Review writer Mathew Ingram tweeted last year.
Even the Twitter backlash can have a positive effect for AirPod aficionados. It can make them look defiant, cool and — rather than make them look like slavish followers of Apple who need to wear the latest product — actually give them an air of “I don’t care what you think” cool.
Apple investors appear to think Apple’s still too cool. The company’s AAPL, -2.07% shares are up 23.3% for the year-to-date, while the Dow Jones Industrial DJIA, -1.77% is up 11.1% and the S&P 500 Index SPX, -1.90% is up 13.4% over the same period.
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