Peripheral tech must have absurdly lucrative margins. I see it in my niche interests too. Cycling or golf gps are like hundreds of dollars. They are the same products they were 15 years ago: cheap lcd screen with a cheap gps radio and some severely underpowered cpu with noticable input lag. Designed to fall apart in a few years. Still same prices they always were, maybe they get away adding another $50 a year to the price on occasion. It is like they hit their price point and margin number and are perfectly happy making probably >60% markup on us who have no option otherwise. Yes we could potentially order prototypes trivially for cents a unit from same places in china the first party manufacturers go to, but minimum order is probably 1000 units.
That is literally the sole moat of these companies: minimum orders from china and the fact we can't spend the ad money they can to move that volume quickly. Not tech or offering a good deal. Just being there already with money and doing the inevitable. Being the more productive drug dealer quicker to move the kilo to the captured audience and bankrolled to get the next several and scale.
For cycling tech, if you're outside the US, check out Chinese manufacturers like iGPSport and Magene.
Picked up a spider-based power meter for around £290 and a big computer for £150. Both are great, and work just as well as their western counterparts costing significantly more.
That's not what they were saying and the same can be said for those listed. But that they can cost the same as a Macbook Neo which arguably has significantly more technology in it.
Exactly and its just interesting to think about that such insane engineering has gone into a product that costs less than 4 wooden chairs. Yes it can be explained logically but its just an interesting thought.
A Moto G also has more technology than a Nakajima WPT-160 typewriter (which is still in production) but the latter costs more. Comparing "technology for the buck" across totally different kinds of products and markets sometimes just doesn't make any sense.
The point isn't for it to make sense necessarily, it's just simply an interesting thought and not one that always needs a logical answer in every case.
First off, $150 more isn't a small amount to be considered "in-line" with the others. That's roughly 40% more.
The difference is also Apple neither has the audio legacy of those companies nor the quality of those products to warrant that kind of premium. To Apple, it is just another market they can go after, but a lot of those companies built their entire foundations on audio. You are not going to convince me Apple is in the same category as the company that invented the Walkman and CDs.
Also, if you look into the teardown videos, it's really a cheap driver from China - all plastic, not even using aluminium for the basket, just literally hard-glued onto the body. It's not repairable nor eco-friendly. It's anti-consumer. Sony uses Aluminium housing for their drivers and they are the cheapest in the lot.
Ex studio tech here. Legacy doesn't cover contracted manufacturing.
I'm not defending apple here, but using chinese drivers (which I assume is a synonym for poor quality) is fine so long as they are binned for performance, and matched/tuned to housing. I'm assuming the mic inside the ear cup is there to do dynamic EQ.
Also the drivers are screwed into a solid aluminium housing, so they aren't glued.
NS10s which are the standard reference mixing speakers were chosen not because they were high quality, but because they were average. If you could get your mix to sound good on those, it'd sound great anywhere.
So yeah, they are expensive. Would I buy them? probably not. I'm reasonably happy with my plantronic jobbies. Are they perfect? no, are they comfortable? yes. Is the active noise cancelling actually effective? also no, but then ANC is only really useful for a small subset of noises types. (even on Sonys. )
Weird response. He said "I don't understand how a pair of headphones can be $549" and you responded "here are some headphones that are priced at $549".
Yeah. We know. It's just hard to understand how anyone can value headphones at this price. It's lunacy.
It costs that much because people are willing to pay more for better sound, better noise cancelling, etc, even if the returns are diminishing. Perhaps a $500 pair of headphones only sounds 3% better than a $200 pair. But people will still shell out for better headphones. Sometimes they just think it is better even if it isn't actually measurably better. The existence of numerous successful products on the market is evidence that this is a niche where people are willing to pay for such products.
It's kinda like, who decided that TVs and phones should cost the same? Or who decided that a khinkali should cost 3 times as much as a xiaolongbao?
You just casually threw in these claims without backing them up, when it has been proven that the Sony model (and even the others) you listed outperformed the Airpods pro in those exact departments at the time of its launch.
My comment literally also says "Sometimes they just think it is better even if it isn't actually measurably better."
I also have "etc" in my first sentence, which may include such things as: a stylish aluminum exterior, bells and whistles such as spatial audio, a more seamless bluetooth connecting experience with Apple devices, and so forth. These do not matter for everyone, but some people clearly care about that.
It seems that you are quite belligerent and trying to pick a fight across many of my comments. Why?
> It seems that you are quite belligerent and trying to pick a fight across many of my comments. Why?
Sorry, this is not the case at all, I am just trying to understand the justification for your original comment on the justification of the price (and quality).
Reading your parent comment and the responses, I feel be missing the point others are trying to make. There's much less technology, components, and material in a headphone compared to laptops. The circuitry in the headphones is closer in complexity to a charger than a laptop.
The cost of something doesn't always correlate with the technology, components, and material. A Hermes bag doesn't even have a single circuit in it compared to headphones and laptops. Yet it costs more.
How much is your house worth? Whatever someone is willing to pay for it today. That's it. There's no right price. If they can cover costs and make a profit (or better yet a huge profit), then they're pricing it right. Sure, it doesn't work for you. It doesn't work for me either, which is why I don't have a pair. But they seem to be profitable, so there are enough people out there that want them. I just got off a plane a couple days ago and three people within one row around me each had AirPods Max on. Go figure. They're the new status symbol, I guess.
My Sony XM3's still going something like 8 years now. Incredible value.
I have a lot of Apple gear, these would be obvious next choice because of integration, but I struggle to justify why otherwise. They heavy, going to pain to repair and cost much more.
I mean, if we're talking any pair of headphones... a good Television certainly costs more than that, why should good sound be less worthy if investment?
Or Sennheiser momentum 4, 150 bucks and sound at least as good if not better, have absolutely huge battery compared to tiny apple one, more comfortable and generally work much better with non-apple ecosystem (also apparently they support multi-device pairing but I haven't used that one).
Don't pay the novelty price shortly after release, these go down quite a bit after introduction, ie last year Sony are basically the same device.
I'm a slight audiophile, enough to own a Schitt stack and lower-end planar magnetics, overall cost would be slightly more than the AirPods Max 2. I did try the previous generation and walked away with no emotional response either way to the quality of the sound.
The Apple tax makes me extremely skeptical that I would get $500+ worth of sound quality, however ANC upsets that equation quite a bit. For around the same cost I could get a much better set of DAC+Amp+Headphones but it would sound objectively worse in a noisy environment.
You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device, for what that's worth (many "true" audiophiles would fail an A/B test for AAC).
The previous generation were also REALLY bassy, and there's nothing wrong with that, bassy headphones are how to make things sound "fun" and that's why the likes of Beats make so much money. That categorically makes it not audiophile, though, because it just takes an EQ/pre-amp to achieve the same effect (which can be toggled on and off).
Ultimately, my most basic issue with these is that if you're willing to blow 500 bucks on headphones, then going modular (DAC+Amp+Headphones) will give you more room to explore something that you apparently really enjoy.
That is through a ADC then DAC, at least for the previous iteration, analog direct to the drivers was not supported. You would be compounding distortion, and largely throwing away what the external DAC+Amp had on offer.
> You also can't experience true lossless on any bluetooth audio output device
Pretty sure you can... there's no technical reason you cannot use BT purely as a digital-only lossless data carrier. Whether or not current devices exist that work this way may be another story though.
As a (sane) audiophile, I happily use Apple devices for enjoyable listening. Their headphones have amazing clarity and soundstage for their size. If you keep in mind that AirPods are calibrated to your ears with your iPhone's FaceID camera, they provide nice, tailored sound.
I also have nice, but not over the top equipment. Yes, some of them sound nicer and more detailed (you can't compare large, 100W/channel bookshelf speakers with headphones, can you?), but for getting 95% of what they provide without any effort is pretty worth it.
Last, but not the least, Apple used Wolfson DACs in their iPods for most of their lifetime. Their replacement DACs are not worse than the Wolfsons, but probably even better.
That’s what Apple states, yes, but I suspect that it’s also used for calibrating the inner microphones of newer AirPods which is used for the “live eq” which works by listening the feedback inside the ear.
From my experience, Apple can sometimes “forget” to tell things.
Modern Apple gives you control over everything by hiding it in Accessibility settings. You can control almost everything about AirPods and give them custom EQ there. But it doesn't have that.
I love this “oxymoron” label slapped on me, without knowing what audiophile actually means.
Its meaning has distorted as much as how the word hacker is distorted.
Yes, I love listening to music and quality audio, but don’t have a soundtrack to benchmark systems. My bar is simple: Do I enjoy what I hear? It doesn’t have to fit into a recipe. It should be enjoyable, period.
A pair of Apple AirPods can be as enjoyable as two $10K speakers powered by a separate stack costing $20K. It’s akin to loving that hole in the wall restaurant as well as that Michelin rated one. Both are enjoyable in its own sense.
Well, I use the same amp, turntable and tuner for the last 30 years, and the same CD player and speakers for the last 10 years.
Changed the speakers since I had no space for the older Akai set, and replaced the CD player since the older one was acting up.
Replaced the Logitech Bluetooth receiver for a Fiio DAC last week since I found one for a bargain.
Everything is connected with high quality yet 30 year old cables.
I believe that’s a pretty sane evolution for someone who grown up with music, and performed some.
Oh there is a difference. but I strongly suspect its not as pronounced as you think it is.
THe biggest difference that most people hear is EQ. (oh these are very bassy, or too clean, etc, etc)
The people that have external DACs are almost certainly hearing a difference in EQ rather than _quality_. Is that a problem? for me I couldn't care less. However when that starts bleeding into advice or gatekeeping, then it becomes an issue.
(I am a former sound technician for both recording studio (analogue and digital) theatre and TV)
Personally, I run all my signal chain flat (incl. speaker crossovers). No equalizer, tone & loudness is off in every step of the chain.
Given the same set of speakers, I'm pretty sure that almost anything I throw in to the chain will sound pretty similar (unless it's designed to color the sound some way). This is one of the reasons why I don't plan to change any parts of it .
For me the DAC has some serious benefits in the sound quality department, though. First, it doesn't have the 3dB loss like the Logitech, second I can stream AAC or aptX to it, which really sounds better than SBC, given the song is mastered correctly and has the detail which can be carried by the codec itself.
I listen to some of the albums I have as CDs in streaming services and even though it's labeled as "lossless" I can hear that the files are butchered pretty badly.
I have a nontrivial listening rig in my house. I've spent thousands in headphones over the years (which happens quickly at $300-500 a pop). The finest ones I've owned MIGHT edge the Max out in certain conditions, but
- The Max add ANC
- The Max are wireless
- The Max are seamlessly integrated with the rest of my Apple gear
so to me that makes them the go-to -- so much so that I actually sold off the other headphones when we moved last year. I just wasn't using them.
The tl;dr is that the Max -- even the first gen -- do indeed perform very, very well.
Sennheiser HD 800 S is $1700 and has been around for years. Or the Meze Elite Tungsten at $4,000 - if Apple can get 80/90% of the way there at $549, they'd be a steal for the right customer.
The quality x price curve is not linear. Expensive materials and engineering often produce only incremental quality improvements, if any. Sometimes the improvements are only cosmetic. So Apple's headphones would need to be a lot closer to the best of the best than 80-90% in order to justify their price.
The feature that applies a hearing test as an equalizer setting make the APM sound pretty damn good, so much so it ended my 20 year long headphone-collecting hobby.
Before hearing-tuned EQ became a thing, trying headphones was like trying food. No matter what someone else said it was no guarantee you'd like the sound. Conversely, you might find a cheap pair that sounded spectacular to you. The APM will sound very good to just about anyone, with the hearing test EQ applied.
I think every headphone maker (or better yet, DAC maker) should have this feature. Audiophiles are often old, a hearing test EQ can make them hear music like they're 20 again, and they'll pay for it.
As said, different markets. If you look from the same perspective, the last iPhone I ordered is 3x the price of a last generation MacBook Air.
$549 is pretty reasonable if the headphone has the sound detail it's advertising. Given how AirPods Gen 3 sounds, I'm sure that thing sounds pretty amazing.
If you don’t understand then you should invest some time learning microeconomics, marketing, and moats. Principles from (at least) those 3 areas are involved here.
To give 3 examples:
1. The marginal value of these products is in the mind of the individual buyer. No individual is buying both the AirPods Max 2 AND the MacBook Neo for personal use. You can’t compare marginal value across two different individuals.
2. The MacBook Neo has a different set of substitutable goods vs the AirPods Max 2. This affects margin. AirPods Max 2 buyers are likely heavily bought into the Apple ecosystem already.
3. With the Neo, Apple are in some sense subsidising entry into the Apple Ecosystem and ‘getting them young’. Wouldn’t surprise me if there’s zero or negative margin. With the AirPods Max 2 they are exploiting people who are already bought into the ecosystem. Margins will be high.
Well, in the market segment of Bluetooth ANC headphones, there's not that much. Bowers & Wilkins and Focal come to mind, both audiophile luxury brands and similarily overpriced.
On the other hand, the flagship Sony is quite a bit less than AirPods Max.
Doesn’t Sony have the best codec on Bluetooth? It definitely has worse noise cancellation than my AirPod, but afaik it should have better audio quality on paper.
Yeah, but if you're using Apple phones/tablet/computers they only support AAC Bluetooth anyway unless you add a Bluetooth dongle, which kinda defeats the purpose of ever using Airpods.
They're priced vs. peer closed-ear headphones, not the rest of the Mac line. They perform accordingly, at least once you factor in a mild Apple premium (say, 15-20%).
I say this because I was able to compare them to my own $400 Sennheisers (which are somewhat awkward because they're wired, and really require a headphone amp to shine), and found the Max to be just as good.
There are also a number of online reviewers who've said the same thing, among them developer, Tumblr millionaire, and headphone addict Marco Arment. He famously described the Max as his favorite closed-back headphone.
Yeah, I have a more complex project I'm working on with Claude, but it's not that Claude is making it more complex; it's just that it's so complex I wouldn't attempt it without Claude.
So you think your experience building tools for other devs is the same as every other domain of software to the point that you would declare the whole field of software engineering is a solved problem?
Gamedev, systems programming, embedded development, 3D graphics, audio programming, mobile, desktop, physics/simulation programming, HPC, RTC, etc.. that’s all solved based on your experience?
Unfortunately, I’ve found it’s really good at Wayland and OpenGL. It even knows how to use Clutter and Meta frameworks from the Gnome Mutter stack.
Makes me wonder why I learned this all in the first place.
I don't think it's intended as that kind of binary. It's more like "yeah, it's flawed in that way, and here's how you can get around that". If someone's claiming the tool is perfect, they're wrong; but if someone's repeatedly using it in the way that doesn't work and claiming the tool is useless, they're also wrong.
Nobody said that. But as you say, it's just a tool. Tools need to be used correctly. If tools are unintuitive, maybe that's due to the nature of the tool or due to a flaw in it's design. But either way, you as the user need to work around that if you want to get the maximum use out of the tool.
> Otherwise please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.
the title being the changelog is still probably the better choice because the discussion here and linked are about guidelines in the page rather than absolute rules or a discussion about the title alone.
Many of the other guidelines have exceptions too, and various strengths. E.g. "Throwaway accounts are ok for sensitive information..." is a pretty weak guideline in practice while "If the title contains a gratuitous number or number + adjective..." is often over-enforced by automatic tooling and stuff like "Please don't use uppercase for emphasis..." CAN sometimes just make sense where a use of italics might easily get missed WHILE OTHER TIMES BEING THE REASON THE GUIDELINE WAS ADDED.
The pricing on these always seemed a bit crazy to me, like the value is way off compared to other Apple products
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