Apple headphones suck build quality wise - part 2, final conclusions

Note: This is a followup to my previous post about the low quality of the apple iphone and/or ipod headphones.

Just look at those awful headphones (why yes, I know that photo suck, but you can thank nokia for crappy ccds). These are iphone's and they are almost 1 year old. They completely disintegrated few days ago. Trouble started when the rubber rings around the the earpieces fell apart. Then around two months later, the rubber around male connector fell apart too because the iphone's female connector is a hair smaller than the headphone's male piece. At the same time the wire at the connector was chipped. I had to fix it with carefully applied electrical tape, but that worked only for a short while - right earbud stopped working. The wire snapped inside the microphone piece.

So with this day, I threw away two apple earphones, which were around 1 year old. The third pair lost the rubber around the earpieces months ago even though it was in the drawer all the time and never used! I have to stress that the headphones were always handled appropriately so the last one to blame about the quality of the earphones is me.

Apple headphones suck build quality wise

Believe it or not but I have already seen one headphones completely disintegrate (from my classic hd ipod - 30GB), and my iphone's earbuds are going the same way, unfortunately. I thought that first set of headphones was just unlucky (and I borrowed them to my brother), but now the next set is going the same way.

I figured they should be handled carefully, and so I did. And I even used them very moderately. I have those iphone earbuds for 6 months now and now they are nearing their end.

The rubber rim which connects earphone speaker and the outside case just starts to crack after some time. When the rubber gets completely destroyed (couple of uses after it cracks) internal speaker just falls out of the case and that is generally the end of the headphones.

All this considered, I'm dissappointed by the quality of the headphones. Now, I do have a strange feeling that other apple hardware might not have long life after all. Now macbook's power cord suddenly doesn't feel sturdy at all (never was truth be told) etc.

On the pictures you can see how the rubber rim just starts to crack. I applied some loctite glue on it but it is very uncomfortable in the ear so I'll have to polish it a bit.