Free Airpods for developers
A few months ago my partner started a masters in counselling. In doing so, it was time for an upgrade from the 2010 Macbook air I’d handed down to her years earlier (still going strong despite the dead battery, which I know is easily replaceable, but the first I ordered was DOA and I never got around to a second attempt)
So she ordered an iPad, with a pen (as yet unused) and Apple threw in a free pair of Airpods, part of the ‘back to uni’ specials they run (on top of standard discount for students, 15%??).
I’ve been resistant to Air Pods, I justified it with:
- the batteries can’t be replace, it’s just e-junk*
- I love my iphone, but I will not buy into the cult of apple (no macbook, no appletv, no icloud, no macOS, etc, etc)
- who want another devise that can go flat? Another battery to keep charged
- Sounds quality issues over bluetooth*
- Nothing wrong with the free corded headphones (tho you had to require a FFFFF dongle FFS, or switch to corded headphones which work on NOTHING ELSE)
*Not sure the validity of these claims, only read the headlines. Again, it was mostly about having some excuses not to buy them.
The only draw card I saw, with Airpods I could charge while using them. But when I consider that this was a design flaw that Apple themselves implemented I was resistant to hand over more money to solve their short comings in product design.
My partner loved hers, immediately. I was resistant even to try them, in fear I might like them. So months passed, and I forgot all about Airpods.
And then one day, my phone was low on battery, and I had an important meeting that I had to join via my phone. I had 30 seconds to solve it, thought of her Airpods, and borrowed them.
Within 10 seconds of opening the Airpods, they were connected & working. Wow! That was easy. Best technology experience I’ve had in a very very long time.
I was instantly sold, I wanted Airpods! but that just created a new problem. My partner got these for free!! They are worth nothing to Apple, and I’m already sick of giving them $$$$ for overpriced hardware.
I resigned to maintain using the standard corded phones, but now I felt their inferiority every time I used them.
And then a week later, I stumbled upon OpenBase. I can’t recall exactly how, no doubt I was googling (with DDG, naturally) for some documentation, or a library (working on the mvp/prototype for SearchShare).
I was impressed, it’s far from a new idea, it’s been done, but badly. OpenBase immediately seemed useful, rather than spamy. It clearly laid out a bunch of metrics, documentation, reviews, license. All details I use to determine if this package is a good choice for my project. Usually this involves NPM/Yarn => Github or RubyToolbox => Github (via the mostly useless intermediary that is RubyGems).
But what is this golden cup countdown in the top right hand corner, intrigued, I clicked.
A competition? And the prize is AIRPODS!!!!!!! This is it, my chance. To get what I desire, how I desire!!
I scanned the terms and conditions, yes, they will ship to NZ, terms seem pretty standard. And then I googled the name and found they were backed by YC, so that seemed legit enough to me.
There was 1d 16h on the clock, and someone was already on top of the leaderboard with 12 or so reviews. But this competition runs **every week.** Next week, will be my week. I will win these airpods!
And I promptly moved on and completely forgot about it.
But as it happens I was building out an express app that week, so I ended up landing on OpenBase quite frequently, and I was actually using a bunch of these packages, basing some of those decisions on the data presented. So writing two tweets worth of review on the experience was hardly a job, and I’m all for helping the next dev avoid the same problems. (I even submit PRs for bad docs && readme’s!!!)
Game on, a strong defense
There were 4 or 5 days on the clock this round. And only one user on the leaderboard, with a single review to their name. I decided upon a strategy, based on last weeks experience. When I saw the leaderboard, with someone 11 reviews ahead, it discouraged me from competing. So I decided to bash out 9 reviews, put myself at the top of the leaderboard and scare away competitors. I didn’t just pump them out in one sitting, but over the day, each package I added (or had previously added, but did some work with) I quickly threw up a review while the experience was fresh.
I primarily focused on why I’d chosen this package over another, or how it compared to one that enabled the same use case. Those ‘ah ha’ moments that occur after using something for a little while, but are not clear from the first pass of the docs.
The strategy worked, no one was competing with me over the next 3 days.
High Noon, Bot Showdown
With 24–48 hours to go, things started heating up. Overnight, Vicky & Suraj had made it a competition.
But upon looking a little closer, something did’t seem right. For one, they clearly hadn’t used github to login (or their github profiles were empty) and their reviews… well their reviews were weak. Poor english, non sensical, garbage really. And they had VOTES! (reviews are worth 10 points, votes 1. I was running an all reviews strategy here).
Pretty suspiciously, I’d say obviously, bots. Which hey, I expected. But I was expected the quality to be a bit higher. These seemed too obvious.
Credit to open base, within a few hours, these accounts were removed. And I was back on top! This also game me some confidence that there was any value in continuing.
Hilariously, after these bot accounts were removed, I received a flood of upvotes across all my reviews, from the same accounts that had upvoted for the bots. Either a) they we’re playing the sabotage game, trying to take my account down as a bot as well. Or, and more likely, b) their bot game was so weak they weren’t even validating they account to vote for, and rather just voted account on top of the leaderboard (which a few hours earlier had been their bot).
Either way, Cheers!! :)
Round 2 of the bots came in the last 4–6 hours. Suddenly new competitors were racing to the top, with more low value bulllllsh**t reviews. I mean, one left the `”` marks before and after their reviews which was…. well…. obvious…
With a few hours to go (11ish NZ time) I threw in a final review to tie it up, 170 points a piece and went to bed. I knew full well these bots would be removed, but it gave me a smug sense of pride to beat the bots without cheating. I imagine anyone who beat Lance Armstrong feels the same.
And now I have free Airpods! Big shoutout to the OpenBase team, and good luck with the product. I know I’ve continued using it since, and will continue to. Looking forward to seeing what the next version offers. I know when I was in DevRel this was the kind of site that I would have made my homepage.
Hilariously, my airpods arrived within a few days from the states, with another package from the states that I ordered **5 MONTHS AGO**. Welcome to New Zealand.
