If the original AirPods have taught us anything, it’s that Apple can make a success out of a product which gets widely panned.
The Apple AirPods Max are official. Apple’s over-ear, noise-cancelling headphones were announced quietly via a press release, but that hasn’t stopped the internet erupting into a sea of comments — and there are a number of people seemingly not digging the aesthetics or price of the new headphones. For those scoring points on social media with ‘hot takes’ on what part of the anatomy the new case for the AirPods Max does or doesn’t look like — be warned. You may be laughing now, but Apple will probably have the last laugh. If we look back, a number of Apple products have shown up and been ridiculed before going on to become hugely successful — the AirPods Max could be just the next product in line to experience the same career trajectory. Step with me, if you will, back to January 2010. Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and introduced us to iPad. Cue hysteria from some corners of the internet over the name Apple had opted for. Why not iTablet? How about iSlate? While the churlish comments flowed, Apple was busy building something bigger. With iPad sliding in neatly alongside iPod and iPhone, a powerful triumvirate had been formed, and ten years on the iPad is by far the most popular tablet series, and currently holds our best tablet in the world acclaim. The name ‘iPad’ is far from a joke now. It’s worked its way into common vernacular and for some, it’s now the word they opt to use instead of saying ‘tablet’. Let’s skip forward to September 2015 and another Apple launch event where iPad is yet again at the center of some naming contention. However, this time it’s an accessory generating guffaws from online commenters. «It’s called Apple Pencil.» When Phil Schiller said this on stage, you could hear the laughter from the audience inside the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium — a mix of humor, and perhaps shock, that Apple had been quite so on-the-nose with the name for its stylus.
