Awesome User Experiences: MacBook and Headphones

Awesome User Experiences is a new series of posts on really cool user experiences. If you have any awesome user experiences with gadgets or anything, please share it!

I’d like to start off the series with MacBook and headphones. I think it works with any Mac that has OS X, but since I haven’t really confirm it on any other Macs, I’ll stay with the MacBook. Let's begin!

Lousy User Experience:
Remember those times when you plug in your headphones, and when you attempt to play something, your ear is blown out by the loud volume.

Awesome User Experience:
When you plug in your headphones in a MacBook, the volume level is automatically lowered so that you won’t blow out your ears.

It appears that whenever you plug in your headphones, the volume level is changed to an optimal level for your headphones. So even if your volume level is originally muted, after your plug in your headphones, the volume level will be adjusted. This makes sense since it is assumed that if you plug in your headphones, you want to listen.

It is also nice to know that if you unplug your headphones, the volume will return to what ever it was before. If it was muted, it will return to the muted state. If it’s on full blast, it’ll return to full blast.

Neat, heh.