“Even before Apple acquired Beats, there existed a loud contingent of audiophiles who were quick to dismiss Beats by Dre Headphones as overpriced pieces of junk with mediocre sound, at best,” Yoni Heisler reports for BGR. “The popularity of Beats, they often argued, was nothing more than clever marketing ably masking a run of the mill product.”
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in May 2014: Beats. A triumph of marketing over sound quality.
“In a recent post on Medium, Bolt prototype engineer Avery Louie tore down a pair of Beats by Dre Solo headphones and found that the luxury often associated with Beats (to the dismay of serious audio buffs) may ultimately be nothing more than a shrewd smokescreen,” Heisler reports. “Louie writes that Beats adds superfluous parts to its headphones in order to give their products more heft.”
A little bit of weight makes the product feel solid, durable, and valuable. One way to do this cheaply is to make some components out of metal in order to add weight. In these headphones, 30% of the weight comes from four tiny metal parts that are there for the sole purpose of adding weight. — Avery Louie
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: The purchase of Beats Electronics adds grist for those poor, lost souls who claim that Apple’s products are a triumph of marketing over quality; that Apple offers the same mediocrity as everybody else just with higher price tags and better ads. These people obviously have never used Apple products, but Apple did itself no favors in dispelling this misinformed trope. Apple only reinforced it with the purchase of Beats Electronics.
Jony Ive must have to work very hard to suppress his gag reflex whenever he’s confronted by a pair of Beats headphones or speakers.
Also, we have to wonder where (or if) Yoni’s and Avery’s articles would be placed in Apple’s forthcoming human-curated “News” app?
BTW: For our Apple Watches’ Bluetooth headphones, we went with the JayBird BlueBuds X Sport Bluetooth Headphones in Midnight Black ($125).
So far, they work perfectly, the battery life is excellent, and they sound just fine during runs and while working out (better than many wired headphones we’ve tested).
