| Monday, February 19, 2007 |
01:46 - Keep your fascist laws out of my ear canal, maaan
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Okay, here's something I don't get.
It's no secret that a lot of people don't like the standard earbuds that have shipped with the iPod since it was first released in November 2001. They work great for me, but I'm probably in a minority among people I know; most iPod owners with whom I'm acquainted tend to use their own favorite headphones or earbuds, and that's fine. Just means that if you measure iPod penetration by how many white earbuds you see in, say, the gym—where they've become almost a visual cliché—you'll be underestimating it.
But something else that's also become a visual cliché is people wearing the earbuds backwards. With the right in the left ear and the left in the right, with the lobes sticking backward from the stalks, in clear defiance of the little "L" and "R" printed on them. In fact, I'd say that of any given ten pairs of white iPod eabuds I see jiggling on a treadmill, nine are being worn backwards.
Why is this? Is it that much more comfortable for people? If so, how did Apple manage to get it so wrong? And why does it fit perfectly well for me of all people, the correct way—and feel really irritating if I reverse them?
I think there probably is a parallel universe out there somewhere; but instead of everyone having goatees, the differentiating factor is that people wear their iPod earbuds the right way around.
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Brian Tiemann
