Cook: AirPods shipping over the “next few weeks”

AirPods

We were originally promised the AirPods in “late October” before Apple delayed launch because, as the company explained in a statement, “we don’t believe in shipping a product before it’s ready.” Since then, multiple sources reported conflicting availability information pertaining to the product, ranging from end of November to year-end to January 2017.

According to an alleged reply that a MacRumors reader received after emailing Tim Cook, Apple’s first Bluetooth earphones with an in-house designed W1 wireless chip will be shipping to customers over the next few weeks.

Here’s the back and forth:

Customer’s comment: “Give us a release date. I really bought in to the wireless vision you painted. Now I’m stuck waiting with my EarPods but can’t charge my iPhone 7 at the same time which I need to do at work. Let us know if it’s a month or six months, because then I’ll just buy some other wireless headphones.”

Tim Cook’s response: “Thanks for your note. Sorry for the delay—we are finalizing them and I anticipate we will begin to ship over the next few weeks.”

According to MacRumors, the email seems to originate from Apple’s corporate servers.

The AirPods feature a six-hour battery, with the included Lightning port-equipped charging case extending their run time to up to 24 hours.

The earphones take advantage of Apple’s in-house designed W1 wireless chip to provide features like invoking Siri by double tapping one of the AirPods, zero-configuration pairing with multiple Apple devices through iCloud and more.

Source: MacRumors