The AirPod Connect Sound Is Beautiful

An utterly cheesy, totally true essay about wireless earphones

Siobhan O'Connor
OneZero

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Photo: Photographer and videographer/Getty Images

TThe first time I saw a pair of AirPods in a pair of ears, I thought they were a joke. They were so absurd looking as to be hilarious, and my best guess was that my friend, a tech journalist who’d gotten his hands on a loaner set well before launch, had for some reason snipped his buds from their tangled wires and put them in his ears to amuse me. We sat across from each other in the TIME newsroom, where we worked back then; he’s a bit of a joker, and I’m an easy laugh.

After he explained that he was testing what would become, for me later, a life-changing piece of technology, I snapped a pic and posted it to my IG with the caption: “This is the only person in the world who will ever make AirPods look cool.” (He is handsome, and also French.)

I decided then and there that I would never own this peculiar-looking Apple product, and I stuck to it for years.

II spend a lot of my time in Google hangouts. This confers a number of benefits, connecting me with my boss and other members of the Medium team, which is largely based in San Francisco. I live in New York and have colleagues and direct reports in many U.S. cities. This technology brings us closer, but it also introduces friction. Shitty AV is a daily…

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Siobhan O'Connor
OneZero

I write and edit, usually in that order. Priors: VP, Editorial @Medium, exec editor at TIME, exec editor at Prevention, features at GOOD magazine etc.