Apple’s real hit in 2024 won’t be the iPhone 16

As a long-time iPhone mini fan (insert “THERE ARE DOZENS OF US!” gif here, I’m so sad to find it), I’ve had the opportunity to purchase numerous new iPhones over the past few years.

The rent is too high and the phones are too big.

But this year, knowing I would eventually have to give in to the Big Phone™, I was tempted to add camera control buttons to the iPhone 16. I ordered an iPhone 16 and it’s good. great. Is it too big? Yes, it’s too big. It’s also not the most exciting thing I bought from Apple’s September event.

now listen to this

Another product I bought was the cheerfully named AirPods 4 with ANC. (AirPods 4+, what’s wrong with Apple?) This new device doesn’t do anything that AirPods Pro haven’t already done. Do less work. But there are two types of ears in this world. One is an ear that can handle any plug style. What doesn’t work with earphones, mine can’t. AirPods 4 with ANC are the AirPods Pro for all of us.

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Remember EarPods? Of course. The drawers are full. They worked and they worked well. Some people still use it. The world could keep spinning with Apple including EarPods in every iPhone, while people who wanted wireless would have to buy unreliable Bluetooth headphones until the heat of space died down. The Verge certainly seemed eager to do so.

However, Apple decided to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone, which pushed us in a certain direction that would make more money for the company. That’s interesting. But it was also about providing more features, accessibility options, and just general fun.

Big things in small packages

AirPods are Apple’s flagship product. They may often be irritable and sometimes do things you don’t want them to do, making you scream, but what they do right is so magical that you forgive them for all their faults. Now I can’t imagine living without them.

Yes, sometimes even if you are listening to something on the first device, you switch to the other device to play the beep. sometimes they don’t Switch to Device I clearly want them to switch, even when it seems clear that I am shifting focus. Some people think they are easy to lose. (I always have them in a small pocket in my jeans that I’ve never used before.) Batteries are a long-term problem with no easy solution.

Lewis Painter/Foundry

Lewis Painter/Foundry

Lewis Painter/Foundry

But Apple has been constantly adding features to AirPods over the eight years since they were released. The original AirPods were wireless headphones with easy-to-use controls that paired more easily and worked more consistently than other Bluetooth headphones. And that was enough. AirPods Pro were released three years later and featured active noise cancellation, transparency mode, wireless charging, and other features. Now Apple has brought those premium features back to the non-Pro AirPods and added other features like responding to Siri by shaking your head or nodding. All of these features cost just $20 more than the original version.

And what about AirPods Pro? It made hearing aids. Just because. Apple has shown that it’s serious about making AirPods a great product and an ongoing part of its lineup.

It’s the little things

Apple got a lot of credit for AirPods during its quarterly conference call with analysts, but otherwise, AirPods aren’t a quiet hit, but a decidedly noise-canceled product. (See what I did there? Yes, I get it.)

Tim Cook is often chastised for not producing products as life-changing as those Apple released during the Steve Jobs era. But AirPods and Apple Watch have been hugely successful, on par with the iPod or iPad, if not the iPhone. Apple’s wearables sales in the second quarter of 2024 were $8.1 billion. That’s as big as Visa, Air France, Subaru or Heineken (which all put together sounds like a rich kid’s spring break toolkit).

So, kindness of heart isn’t what makes AirPods great. But neither did they create the Mac out of the kindness of their hearts. Sometimes it’s nice when one of Apple’s best products is also one of its smallest and cheapest products.