Topic

Headphones

Private listening, and what it did to public space.

2: in technology
9:48: average
20 min: in total
8: across the network

Headphones across the network →

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10:27

AirPods

Apple · 2016

AirPods are Apple-designed wireless Bluetooth earbuds announced 7 September 2016 and launched 20 December 2016. They use optical sensors and accelerometers to detect ear placement and pause audio automatically. A proprietary W1 SoC chip enables efficient Bluetooth 4.2 audio and battery management. Full feature support requires iOS 10, macOS Sierra or watchOS 3 or later. On non-Apple devices, they function only as standard Bluetooth headphones. Within two years, they became Apple’s most popular accessory.

9:09

Bluetooth

Bluetooth killed the headphone wire—but only by accepting ten metres as a ceiling.

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9:37

Crucial

Crucial was the brand under which Micron Technology sold its consumer memory and storage products, until the brand was discontinued in 2026.

8:44

Personal computer

A personal computer is a computer designed for personal use and operated directly by its user, rather than shared through time-sharing on a mainframe or minicomputer.

9:10

Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt is a hardware interface, developed by Intel with Apple, that carries PCI Express, DisplayPort and power over a single cable to connect external peripherals to a computer.

9:46

Silicon Graphics

Silicon Graphics · 1981

Silicon Graphics built the first practical hardware-accelerated 3D graphics systems. Its Geometry Engine — designed at Stanford under ARPA — delivered ~6 million geometry operations per second. It pioneered scalable cc-NUMA architectures in the mid-1990s. But its reliance on proprietary MIPS and failed transitions to Itanium and Xeon eroded its position as PC graphics commoditised. It filed for bankruptcy in 2009.