Some things not built to last

Let’s start with a set of normal, wired earbuds

I should have started to realize what Apple was doing when I was sitting in the Phoenix airport in November, waiting for a 1 a.m. flight, looking between my feet at a tiny but familiarlooking grey silicon dome with a hole in the centre of it.

The dome itself wasn’t the mystery.

I figured out pretty quickly that someone had lost one of the soft caps of their earphones. We were heading home from the road, packed full of the Nevada desert.

We’d made the 678-kilometre run down from Beatty, Nev., to the strangely named, completely land-locked Sky Harbor airport, the last part of the trip (including passing through the aptly named Nothing, Ariz.) in the dark.

Pitch black, unfamiliar and narrow roads always up the ante, as does dropping off a rental car at an unfamiliar off-airport drop site after trying to find a gas station to fill up the car within the required-in-the-rental-agreement 10 miles of the drop-off.

You get a bit frayed — or, at least, I get a bit frayed.

Maybe that’s why I didn’t realize the significance of the fugitive earphone piece for two flights.

The first one was an entertainment system free hardly full overnight flight, perfect for catching up on sleep.

I woke up mid-flight to discover that another passenger, liberally coated in what appeared to be liniment, had taken up residence in my row, completely enveloped (head included) in a cocoon of winter clothing. The kind of seatmate who might be sleeping, or might actually be dead. The second flight, after a hectic run through customs at Pearson Airport in Toronto, was when I discovered the earbud cover I’d seen so long before in Phoenix was actually mine, that it had been knocked free while I was rearranging my computer bag, and that watching a movie would now involve literally poking a sharp stick — well, the pointy remaining part of my headphones — into my ear. I know, I know — First World problems.

Then, last week, the penny dropped. Well, actually, more than a penny. More like 32,999 pennies, the number you’d need if pennies were still a thing and you wanted to buy a pair of “Apple AirPods Pro In-Ear Noise Cancelling Truly Wireless Headphones — White.”

Yes, list price, $329.99. To be honest, I had to look the price up again online — I couldn’t imagine that was the real price. But it was. I’d wondered for ages why Apple had dropped having an earphone jack on new iPhones and had moved from earphones to wireless earbuds — they just seemed so small and easy to lose. Oh, and the wireless ones have to be individually charged, too.

Now, you certainly don’t have to buy the absolutely top-ofthe-line version of wireless earbuds. You can buy much, much cheaper ones. (Though anyone who’s raised teenagers will know that some extreme pressures can arise.) And it’s worth pointing out that the top-end models have been listed as sold out in many places.

But, expensive or cheap, it just seems like another thing that’s easy to lose, drop in the sink, otherwise accidentally destroy or permanently misplace. (Oh, and apparently you can get earbuds with cords that tie them together so they are at least as hard to lose as a set of wired earphones. I find that almost ridiculously funny.)

I can’t tell you how many sets of normal, wired earbuds I’ve seen dropped and run over on city streets as I walk home.

It’s not just obsolescence that’s planned.

Sometimes, all you have to do is take advantage of everyday ordinary carelessness.

All the way to the bank.

The kind of seatmate who might be sleeping, or might actually be dead.