Apple knew it was going to take something big to help cushion the blow of its decision to drop the headphone jack from the new iPhone. For the company, the answer arrived in the form of AirPods, wireless Bluetooth versions of its EarPods built around the new W1 chip.

At the time, the headphones were slated to arrive the following month, but, well, the company clearly still had a lot of tweaking to do, admitting toward the end of October that it would need some time “before AirPods are ready for our customers.” The company wouldn’t divulge the source of the required tweaking, but various reports have since highlighted some combination of software/hardware problems.

Looks like the little buds are now officially available through Apple’s site, priced, as expected, at $159. Apple’s certainly cutting it close here (in the States at least), the delivery date is listed as just before Christmas (and, for that matter, Hanukkah) — Wednesday, December 21.

Our own Matthew Panzarino apent some quality time with the headphones back in September, just after they were unveiled in San Francisco, and was generally impressed with what with he saw/heard.

Source: techrunch