PS -
Sennheiser = German
Bang & Olufsen = Danish
Bowers & Wilkins = English
Spotify = Swedish
Apple = American
Beats = American
Perhaps that played a role as well for Apple.
Wow, trying the patriotic "buy American" angle? Really??? I won't even bother given the excellent post #27.
The gist of calls for B&O, B&W, Sennheiser, etc is the objectively-rated quality of sound almost any other headphone maker delivers vs. Beats. I think the shock & despair is driven by the clash of the halo "we" have around Apple vs. Apple's purchase of this company whose products are often ranked toward the bottom in terms of the most fundamental, generally-most-important quality of such products. For example, "we" will take great offense if any Apple product is rated even second by even a rating source positioned for maximum objectively like Consumer Reports. Yet here, our "God" is buying a company with products that can't even make the top 10, except in points important to shareholders. I think the crowd here are consumers more than shareholders. And I think the backlash is more about yet another round of feeling like Apple is not focused on the next big thing but something that maybe it should have been chasing years ago.
I don't know what people's problem with Beats is, I own a pair of the Solo HD's and they are brilliant, very durable and the sound is great. Yea they are bass heavy but they also work great with other types of music, I listen to all different types of music and I love Beats.
That's good for you. In yesterday's thread, I posted a "now that it's reality" bit that concluded with how long it would take for Apple's formal endorsement (by actually buying Beats) to yield the shift from "Beat's is junk" to "Best headphones ever" and "shut up and take my money". I wondered if it would be days or weeks or months but that thread had the Apple faithful swinging toward the positive as the day progressed. Posts like yours will become more abundant now and the free PR factory will pile up reason-after-reason to rationalize this acquisition.
At this point (and IMO), most of the rationale that makes the most sense seems to better fit shareholders than consumers but posts like yours are the classic play of "I love <Apple product> so you should too". It won't be long until there's a chorus of these for every "but Beats sounds like crap" counters, then the latter will be tagged "trolls" and smacked down by the masses.
The new model looks handsome, particularly in the blue/grey. They look deliberately designed to broaden the brand's appeal beyond the urban/ghetto/thug/gangster* market. I'd imagine that Apple's valuation of Beats was significantly influenced by knowledge of this launch.
I hope not. If Apple can have $3B squeezed out of them based on how something looks rather than the "whole" of what such things can deliver, I foresee many more sharp skins over crap guts wooing more money out of Apple.
I've used my brother's Beats, and I'm pretty confident that people criticize Beats because they are significantly overpriced. If I could get them for $120-$140 it would be a different story, but at $200 they should really sound better.
Maybe. But I think that even the average joe is reasonably programmed to have some knowledge of audio quality. One of the recurring jokes over the last 50 years is the young bachelor living in the cheap apartment furnished with cheap furniture surrounding the $17K stereo system. The speaker end of the A/V equipment chain has always been subjective in terms of judging the audio quality (kind of like how it's very difficult to get any objective comparisons of other things like mattresses). However, even with the subjectivity, get off this site and look up head-to-head reviews of Beats vs. other headphones and see what those most concerned with audio fidelity have to say. Generally, Beats ranks poorly, even against phones that cost much less. For instance, there's just a few such references in this article:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-just-paid-3-billion-214621365.html but you can search yourself.
Yes, if they were priced lower, people may be more forgiving about the quality issues but if you look through audio reviews like you look at Apple information, you see that the crowd tends to revolve around quality of sound first and the skin later… even down in the lower price points. "We" make the same arguments of quality over price for Apple's own products, often justifying the so-called Apple premium by waving the superior quality of the "whole".
People haven't actually used Beats they are just pilling on because subconsciously its a way for them to hate minorities without being direct about it. If Dr. Dre had no involvement with these head phones people would be talking about how great they are because of all the bass.
Does race have to be spun every time there's any way to spin it? While it's possible that any given grouping of people could have some racism issues, I doubt that the bulk of the negative sentiment is centered there. I think the focus of the negativity is again in the perception of product quality and trying to reconcile with the "God" (Apple) and the halo of "we only want to be the best". If Apple means what they say, this group seems to recognize that there were many other, better options they could have acquired which would have been a better match for "we only want to be the best". As it pertains to the hardware side of Beats, this one looks like it comes with a big "fixer upper" chore for Apple. That too can make sense if spun that way but the constant brag of Apple's endlessly deep bank account doesn't seem to align well with buying a "fixer upper" acquisition.
My god would people STOP whining about "BeatsRumors"? Every time something is talked about that is RELEVANT and INTERESTING (to me), every single comment is a huge complaint. It happened, it relates to Apple, GET OVER IT! Nobody is making you read this site if you're not happy with it, but I, for one, am.
I think Beats is taking the beating
for the welling hope that Apple is about to deliver the "next big thing" on par with iPod, iPhone and iPad but then shocks us with an acquisition that looks like it might have better fit in 2008 or so. Headphones? Subscription code/app? 1-2 guys for music curation?
I think the crowd is increasingly hoping for a flying car and growing anxiety that "God" is rolling out a sapphire glass rectangle or a "fixer upper" headphone acquisition or incremental updates to next big things launched years ago. "We" have expectations set for iWatches, iTV, iCar, i<Wow> and are only seeing hints & rumors of what might be called little innovations (maybe a retina air, maybe bigger screen iPhones, etc).
If this had been an announcement of Apple purchasing Tesla, we would jump to conclusions of iCar. If it was Apple buying Dish, we would jump to conclusions of the cable-killer service. But it's Apple buying a headphone maker with a small music subscription business and it's hard to have similar leaps of excitement.
As simply as I can say it, there is this great expectations gap. We expect "magical" wow and moves like this don't seem to be much toward delivering it. It's hard to imagine looking back in 2020 and laying this in with the big innovations of iPod, iPhone, iPad, Beats. Even if Apple makes Beats the best headphones and leverages the Beats subscription service into the best music subscription service in the world, are either or both of those on par with iPod, iPhone and iPad? Personally, I think not.
In this thread: people who have never owned a Beats product claiming to be audio professionals who claim that Beats are crap and that all other headphones are tuned flat and only Beats processes the sound in any way
While that is probably true, it's sooooo easy to read objective reviews written outside this bubble in which Apple can do no wrong. Try to find objective reviews of Beats phones vs. other brands these non-audiophiles are referencing that show Beats being found to be the superior choice for sound reproduction. That's very hard to do. It could be one huge audio conspiracy in which the independent audio reviewers all conspire against the Beats brand or they could simply be calling it as they see (er hear) it.
I really don't think the negative wave is about Beats. It's the shock in trying to reconcile Apple's spin of only wanting to deliver the best buying a company that seems to deliver what are typically rated near the worst. Again, "fixer upper" bargains can be bargains all the same. I'm sure Apple can work on Beats hardware to up the quality over time. But even there, why bother with the acquisition? Why not just make Apple-branded superior phones rather than buy a poorly rated brand to fix up? It's not like Apple doesn't know how to make portable speaker devices for the ears. They've been doing it for longer than Beats has existed.
Yet Beats hold 60% of the market and Sennheiser does not.
A great argument for shareholders. Since ________ sells the most, they are the best. That one is one of the defaults in Apple superiority too. Yet, Windows runs on more than 90% of all computers sold everywhere, but we won't argue that the Windows OS is superior to OS X. Android runs on more smart devices than iOS, but we won't use that one to argue Android is superior. Android smart phones outsell Apple phones but that doesn't make us argue for their superiority either. Etc.
Beats has done a GREAT job marketing what are typically rated as poor quality products such that they can get a lot of people to pay a lot for them. That is very impressive. I again think the backlash is that while shareholders can certainly appreciate that kind of benefit, the consumers want great quality products at a good price. "We" work pretty hard to rationalize all of Apple's products that way even though we know that Apple tacks on a pretty rich margin too. Beats though is not Apple and "we" are struggling with rationalizing this buy from a consumer (not a shareholders) point of view.
