It's not like I woke up this morning and said, "I'm going to buy some ridiculously expensive headphones today," even though they'd been on my radar since they came out a week after I bought my original series 2 AirPods.
I bought a pair for Ben for Christmas, not knowing if he'd actually like them or not. He'd been having so many issues with his own bluetooth earbuds that I figured it couldn't hurt. And since he'd just come back into the Apple fold with a new phone, I knew—based on the experience with my AirPods—they'd work flawlessly. (One of the few "it just works" things about Apple that actually does work the way it's supposed to.) Unfortunately they were on backorder and just finally arrived this past week. At first he didn't want them because of the cost and because he didn't need them. "You take them. You listen to your headphones much more than I do."
Well TLDR, he finally acquiesced to my demands that he keep them and he's loving them. I was still happy with my original AirPods except when I tried to use them in noisy environments (like Starbucks, where they still seem to think the music needs to be at disco volume). The noise cancellation feature—which by all accounts was awesome—was reason enough for me to lust for my own pair. Unfortunately, they've remained on backorder, and the fact no matter when I ordered them they wouldn't arrive until next month was reason enough for me to hold off buying them.
That was, until today. Out of curiosity I went online and checked availability. Still showing next month for a home delivery date, but they were in stock and available for immediate pickup at not just one, but both the Scottsdale Apple stores. We were sitting in Starbucks at the time and I waved to Ben across the table to get his attention (because the noise cancellation is that good) and after plucking one bud from his ear, I asked, 'Wanna drive over to Scottsdale?"
And the rest, as they say, is history.
UPDATE 1/12: In use, the noise cancellation is AMAZING. It easily blocks out 98% of the horrific music at our local Starbucks.
We read the whole thing. M and G