Each gold dot is a magnet that holds each pod to the bottom of their cases. Instead, they have a silver seal with two gold dots. But the i9WS and LK-TE8 don’t have microphones. People can use these microphones to talk to Siri or take calls. On the bottom of each stem, a normal AirPod has a tiny metal seal over a metal microphone grille. ![]() It also has lights that alternatingly blink red and blue, like a police siren, right after you turn on each pod. The i9S TWS, for example, has tiny power on/off buttons on the stem of the pods. There’s also some tiny differences on the actual AirPod earbuds. If normal AirPods are a symbol of late capitalism, what, exactly, are counterfeit AirPods? Earlier this year, Caroline wrote the essay “AirPods Are a Tragedy,” an anthropological look at what AirPods mean. Rather than try them out myself, I gave them to Motherboard staff writer Caroline Haskins to try out for a few weeks. I bought three different pairs of counterfeit AirPods. These AirPods were not, in fact, “Designed by Apple in California.” There was the relatively upscale AirPlus ($45), which came in a box that looked exactly like an AirPods box and was being sold at legit-seeming electronics stores, there were AirPod knockoffs called i9WS ($20) and LK-TE8 ($20), which were sold at pharmacies, kiosks, electronics markets, and street fairs, and there were actual counterfeit AirPods ($75), which were sold in boxes that said “AirPods.” Upon closer inspection, the text and photos on these boxes were a little blurry. I don’t know whether counterfeit and knockoff AirPods say more about the people who love or hate AirPods and Apple, but on a trip earlier this year to Hong Kong and Shenzhen, I saw counterfeit AirPods everywhere. This is all to say that there’s been a backlash to AirPods even as lots of people have either embraced them or at least begrudgingly accepted them. Can’t afford them? Well, I hope you like dongles. AirPods feel like the end result of Apple destroying the headphone jack and replacing it with something that kind of sort of works better but also costs $159, needs to be charged every few hours, and is easily lost. It’s been a while, I think, since a specific gadget made a large number of people Actively Mad.
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