I am a fan of Apple products so when Apple finally released the “Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mike” in Singapore at SGD 128, I grabbed it. I was looking for a new earphone (for the kick and fun of it and reward myself after a year of work) so I decided to try this earphone since I am very much an Apple fan boy.
Today, my new Apple earphones arrived and that’s within 1-2 days of order. I ordered them online on Sunday late night and got it on Tuesday afternoon. That is very efficient supply chain ! It did arrived in a brown looking courier box but when I opened, the beauty appeared in front of me.
As usual, Apple products come in a nify well designed box. It is an amazing little box that is nice and pretty. Apple designers are so so so good.
Removing the casing from the box, you can see the nice box although it did look like a pear shaped pair of aliens eyes to me (not sure if you know what i mean)
The other part in the box is more interesting. There is a very unique capsule in the box. Looks like a white medicine pill to me. On the left, it is written as S while the right is written as L
Opening one side, you can see the spare eartip. So the left side is the SMALL eartips while the right side is the LARGE eartips. The one attached to the earphone itself is the medium size (which fits me pretty well). So this is the container for the different sizes of eartips to fit different people’s ears !! AMAZING !
Again, it is an amazing design from Apple. I have the Creative earphones that comes with different sizes of eartips and it is just stuck in some plastic holder that you will not keep at all. It is NOT in such a well designed and handy capsule. This is Apple, the best consumer product company in the world, as far as I am concerned. Look at their design for something as small as spare eartips !
At the bottom of the box, th
e instruction manual can be found. Opening up, I was expecting some boring manual but yet I am surprised to see a spare set of replacement mesh caps. This is for you to replace in case the original ones get blocked that you cannot even clean it properly.
Now that’s an additional kudos to Apple. I don’t see that very often (except in high end earphones such as Shure etc). Well done !
Now turning to the earphone box itself. At the back of the box, it stated clearly this product is designed in California and made in China. Just in case you don’t know that 🙂
Removing the earphones, I see an absolutely beautiful set of earphones. It is so pretty and so cute that I cannot even bear to use it even. Look at the white ear piece and then the sweet looking almost translucent ear tips. Oh what beauty.
At one side of the wire leading up to the earphones is the famous Remote and Mic function buttons. Very niffy except that I personally find it too close to the earphones (almost touching my face when I using the earphone. I cannot even see it and need to feel for it instead). I feel that it should be much lower so that I can see it. But then the mic would not pick up the voice speaking then. So I can understand.
I could not test it as I am still using a much older generation of Apple 30GB iPod (no one got me a new one for Christmas :p) and not the latest iPod touch or iPhone which the earphone was designed for. So the volume control and start/pause/skip functionality does not work for me at all.
Using it for the first 1/2 hour, I enjoyed the improved quality of the sound very much (over my existing Creative earphones). I think my iPod music sounds so much better than before. I played a set of different variety of songs (English, Chinese, Disco, Vocals, Pop, Rap etc). This is especially when I play music of the high bass. Even in cases where the vocals are important, the songs come across as clear and tight. Good stuff here.
I am in love with Apple. The greatest consumer product company! All my life ! 🙂
Hey there, Steve Jobs. I get that you’re trying to promote your earphones as revolutionary despite the fact that they are identical to many others already in production.
You may also want to look into getting some quality headphones. Google Sennheiser over-ear headphones.
128 SGD… I can get a same standard headphone with different brand at 50 SGD. Apple just too expensive.
Haha, I just got mine too. The sound quality is amazing. And it is really comfortable too. And at this price point it’s hard to get a quality 2 driver headphone. That’s not considering the matching aesthetics and remote + mic.