Apple delays AirPods shipments

SAN FRANCISCO — Apple’s anticipated AirPods headphones will no longer ship this month as planned, after the tech giant said it needs "a little more time" before it starts selling the new wireless ear buds, which are designed to work with its newest iPhones.

Apple showed off the AirPods last month, during an event where it also introduced the new iPhone 7 smartphones, which were designed without a standard headphone jack. But unlike the iPhones, which went on sale in late September, Apple had said the AirPods would go on sale in late October. Now the company is not saying when they will be released, or why it needs more time.

You can still listen to audio on the new iPhones by using other wireless headsets or plugging into the phone’s charging port, although older headsets may need a plug adapter.

"We don’t believe in shipping a product before it is ready, and we need a little more time before AirPods are ready for our customers," said Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller on Wednesday (Oct 26).

The delay comes on the eve of Apple’s scheduled event on Thursday (Oct 27) for its updated Mac computer line, when the AirPods’ availability was also expected to be announced.

The AirPods delay is the first hardware-related postponement in more than five years from Apple. A version of the iPhone 4 in the colour white was announced in June 2010, but did not ship to customers until April 2011 because of a production problem. On the software side, Apple delayed the release of iTunes 11 in 2012 by a month to fix bugs.

Reviews of pre-production models of the AirPods suggested the device needed fine-tuning. "During my testing, one of the AirPods had trouble holding a charge, so Apple swapped it out," wrote Mr Walt Mossberg, of the technology website The Verge, in September. Other reviewers noticed problems with music playback, a key feature of the AirPods.

The introduction of the product spurred criticism that the cordless earphones could be easily lost.

American comedian Conan O’Brien mocked the device with a spoof of an iPod ad that showed people dancing and the AirPods flying out of their ears into a sewage drain. AGENCIES