The Journey To AirPods pt.2
Now this is a story how some fake headphones almost made me the next Helen Keller.
If you are reading this, then that means you are either (1) curious about my transition to AirPods or (2) want to hear about the pain I had to go through to get there. Either way, welcome back! Last time I described my history with headphones overall and hinted at where my desire for AirPods started to flourish. As I mentioned last time, buying the appropriate Apple headphones nowadays on Amazon is expensive and unreliable. How unreliable you may ask?
So, around February/March this past semester my headphones were starting to break down. Yes, similar to its cousin the "lightning cable", the end of the cord started to tear. This resulted in an unfortunate static sound on some occasions. A trivial annoyance to some. But we all know OU is a beautiful campus, and it's a pleasant walk through every day to and from my classes. And obviously, music is necessary when trekking up and down the hills of Athens. But when every step-down Morton Hill results in "Sunflower" being cut out to static, then there's a problem. With the unfortunate destruction of my previous headphones, I had to improvise.
I was very hesitant to purchase another pair from Amazon and decided to try out my beats. Now I got the beats for free last summer when I purchased my new MacBook Pro. And I've seen people wear them out in public but in my personal opinion; not everyone (including me) should wear beats out in public. For me, I feel self-conscious on how they look on my head. When I do wear them, I usually wear a backward baseball cap to make it not look so weird. But that brings us back to the original problem, why not wear them in public? I personally feel the beats will throw off my outfit. As crazy as it sounds, I like having my outfit match with two to three colors max. Adding teal and navy headphones to a red and black combo doesn't cut it for me.
So here I am, desperate for music but too afraid to put on some Beats. What is a poor college student to do? Millennial problems. I eventually decide to cave in and buy a new pair of headphones off Amazon. They were around $15, and the reviews were… decent. I usually have better luck with products when reviews are not all 4-5 stars. So, I purchased them and in two days they were here! I took them out of the box, and they looked like regular apple headphones. But after reading the first line of the instructions, I knew I made a mistake. Apparently, these are wired headphones, compatible with this generation of iPhones. Just like how I wanted and ordered them. However, I can't just listen to music right away if I plug it in.
Instead, I have to SYNC IT TO BLUETOOTH then listen. I do not understand the logic behind that at all, even to this day! Why would I buy a pair of wired headphones only to then sync them to Bluetooth?! I connected them and used them the next morning on my walk to class. I tried pressing the volume button to raise it up a bit. But it wasn't going. None of my commands were working. As I continued to walk to class, I pulled out my phone and it was completely locked up. A little annoyed I tried again to adjust the volume. It finally budged and so I put it back in my pocket. But then as soon as I step onto New South… BOOM! These headphones had a mind of their own!! The volume was way too loud. I've never heard any apple headphones get that loud and the fact that these headphones did it on their own, nearly damaging my hearing, annoyed me. I went the rest of the day without those headphones and basically set them aside to never use again.
So now what? By this point, I decided it was time for AirPods but I still have to wait till I have enough money to buy them. Plus, at the time Generation, 2 wasn't announced yet. But I still needed my music. Luckily someone in the Mod decided to leave some painter's tape on the table. Yes, I decided that it was a more feasible option to MacGyver my way out of this situation. I wrapped so many layers of painter's tape on the end of the cable and to be honest it works very well even to this day. Sure, you can't bend the cord too much at the base of the plug but that makes sense. I dubbed them as my "emergency" headphones. My mom gave me her old apple headphones since she got an iPhone Xs, so there's no immediate need for them. But the mission is still in progress. Soon these AirPods will be mine and I will join the trend that has taken the world by storm. But until then I still have headphone stories to tell.
