My oh my, is Apple getting a lot of hate from professionals reviewers for the new EarPods. Gizmodo calls them “garbage,” and The Wirecutter’s mixed review says they are no better than $10 earphones. But lots of new iPhone 5 users on Twitter today are saying “ftw.”
I actually like them too. Then again, I liked Apple’s old earbuds as well. They were cheap and cheerful. The price to performance ratio was really good.
The new EarPods sound way, way better than the old ones. In fact, to my ears, the new EarPods have more bass than a pair of $160 Tour earbuds from Beats by Dr. Dre, which are marketed for their extra bass boom. And they cost $130 less to boot.
Apple says the EarPods were three years in development, born of an intensive process or prototyping and 3D digitization of hundreds of different ear canals. The guts are based on a baffle design, which moves more air, and feature a cone made of paper, not plastic like most other earbuds.
I’ve spent the morning listening to the new EarPods. They sound great. There’s good separation of the instruments and pretty good bass. The bass isn’t as good as that from a pair of AKG K414P headphones, which I used as a reference. But the bass is better than the bass from a pair of Tour earbuds from Beats by Dr. Dre. I listened to some electronica (a mix by Adam Freeland), some classic rock (Martha by Jefferson Airplane, which sounded great) and some reggae (The Pioneer’s Longshot Kick De Bucket, which could would have been bassier. A lot bassier actually). I also watched a couple of TV and movie trailers, including the new Walking Dead trailer.
The EarPods are perfectly comfortable. They are light and airy. They don’t hurt my ears, even after extended listening. They don’t slip out, even when I shake my head. That’s not true for everyone though. Some of the other writers on the Cult of Mac were complaining about fit.
The wire is a pleasantly rubbery. Not too bulky, but not tangly either. On the right-hand speaker wire is a mic and remote, which works well. The volume/play/pause button has been beefed up and is a lot easier to find and manipulate than the fiddly one of old.
On a related note, there has been a lot of wailing about the placement of the headphone jack on the bottom of the iPhone instead of the top. It causes a problem if you tend to listen to your phone while it’s sitting in a charging dock, for example. But the change makes sense. I keep my iPhone in my back pocket, upside down. In this case, the headphone jack is in the prefect place — pointing up.
I’m not a snooty audiophile, and I know that a lot of more discerning listeners are going to hate the them. But for everyday listening, the EarPods are really really good.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
