While walking around downtown San Francisco yesterday, I saw five people wearing AirPods, those new wireless earphones from Apple that appear to be floating just outside of people’s ears.
And this is at a time when Apple’s store in the Union Square neighborhood has none in stock, while Apple’s online store has a six-week shipping delay on AirPods. “We’re working hard to catch up with the incredible demand,” Apple chief executive Tim Cook told analysts on the company’s earnings call last month.
It’s safe to say that AirPods are among the hottest consumer electronics products out now. But another product that’s gotten a lot of buzz lately, the Spectacles glasses from Snap (the company behind messaging app Snapchat), is nowhere to be seen.
I literally haven’t seen one pair in real life in San Francisco — or even during a weeklong visit to Los Angeles last month, despite Snap’s headquarters being in the city’s Venice neighborhood. I asked an employee in Apple’s Union Square store if he had seen anyone wearing Spectacles, and he said no, but he does know someone who bought them but never wears them — the battery died and she hasn’t recharged it, he said.
True, Snap has taken an unorthodox approach to selling Spectacles. First they were only available…