[androdev]

It is one thing to sell a niche luxury product that nobody really needs (like Rolex) but it is an entirely another thing to turn a near-essential product like earphones accessory into a luxury product and have customers queue up for it!

I am a big fan of pre-iPhone Apple and I have been a very happy and "value conscious" user of their OS X products. But I am not blind to see their trickery of not giving a free earphone accessory for a mobile phone and luring customers into such ridiculous alternatives. This is a terrible trend, they should bring in a law to force companies to include a free earphones with mobile phones.

The reality is that all of us would like to indulge in some "premium experience" in some aspect of our lives. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so I am not here to argue why one should not buy Apple stuff. It is just that I notice a lot of youngsters who can't afford Apple gear end up buying it in order to blend in. Makes me hate Apple like I hate people peddling drugs outside schools.

[yd_gli]

I think most of us Indians complaining about the 60k price tag tend to forget that we are not the intended customer base for Apple. We never were and we never will be. Apple knows very well that our import duties kill any viability their products have in our ecosystem. A few will buy and I don't think Apple will mind.

[Mafia]

Seems reasonable!

I just spent 1.5L on hearing aid for my dad. The hearing aid is much more larger and offers similar functionality!

[Godzilla]

It really depends on the quality. People who are into headphones/audiophiles know that good quality head phones are quite expensive. Please note that this product is competing against Sony XM4 and the likes which are quite expensive (30k) in the first place.

Have to wait for the reviews and comparisons to see whether it is worth the premium.

[Pacifica]

These days Apple pricing seems to be beginning to tend into outrageous territory in some cases.

But on the whole, they do tend to launch excellent products that offer very good value.

I'm still using my original iPhone SE because I find the square edges easy to hold one-handed. For a 2016 phone it is still fast, very usable, and gets the latest iOS updates.

My son uses an iPhone 7 and it is perfectly fine too.

We had an old 2006 20-inch iMac lying around that I dusted off and gave to him for online classes. That 14-year old dinosaur simply blows away the Chromebook that his school recommended. It's still fast, crisp, and even in 2020 the screen is just gorgeous, especially compared to a useless 11-inch Chromebook screen. And after 14 years Apple tech support will enthusiastically answer questions about this old iMac (I wanted to ask about dual-booting Chrome OS alongside Lion).

The only non-Apple hardware I own that feels similarly bulletproof is my tricked-out 2012 ThinkPad X230. Nothing else comes close.

Apple products are be pricey up front, but they work intuitively, are innovative and well-built, and last really long, in most cases.

[navin]

Originally Posted by gusfring

60k when there's established ones at half the price (like the Sony one)?

Originally Posted by narayans80

Thank you Apple.

I have NOT heard these Apple headphones but found both Sonys (XM3 and XM4 to be a bit too bass-heavy for my taste. Again I don't listen to bass-heavy music so it's just a personal preference.

Originally Posted by ninjatalli

This seems to be a brilliant product. The pricing is insane but it will sell. Damn - the 2014 Beats acquisition by Apple is finally going to pay out after half a decade!

Beats were another product that I did not care for (aurally). That they sold in numbers is a different issue. There are many who are happy to buy a fashion statement over pre sound quality.

Originally Posted by viXit

Are they outrageously priced? Maybe not.
Are they the best sounding headphones ever? maybe not?

I don't know much about Apple products although I do use an iPhone (only because I am too dumb to use an Android) and an iPod Classic (I am probably the last man alive still using one). I also used a Blackberry till the company failed so my technology choices aren't the smartest.

I would hazard to guess that there will be several headphones from companies like Audeze, HiFiMan, AKG, Sennheiser, Beyer Dynamics, B&W etc that will offer "better" sound for less cost.

However, that's not Apple audience. I am also pretty sure these headphones will be the next fashion statement on college campuses. Apple is able to leverage its brand to extract more from customers than just about any other hardware computer company. The best way to take advantage of this product introduction is to buy more Apple stock.

$55,000 used to buy a Tesla 3 would be worth a lot less today than the same $55,000 used to buy a Tesla car when the Tesla 3 was introduced. Your choice.

[Mustang Sammy]

Originally Posted by whencut86

Sir, I agree that Apple is good with their audio products but claiming that their sound quality is world class is taking it too far. No offence! They are at best good to great but never world class. Also before AirPods were released, many other audio equipment brands had their wireless earphones, other wireless in-ear products and sports earphone products already in the market. So technically, Apple was not the first to bring in such a product in the world market. So as Apple claimed that this is the world's first iPhone with dual sim for the iphone 11 or xs series, they can claim that airpods are the world's first wireless earphone for the iProduct lineup. Nothing more, nothing less.

Where Apple excels is in the seamless and delightful user experience that their devices provide.
Sure, other headphones may have superior audio quality. However, none will connect as easily to the audio source as the AirPods, and none (in my limited experience) provide the ease of use that the AirPods do.
The iPod was also not the world’s first MP3 player, but it was beautifully designed and the easiest to use. The rest is history.
The price on these headphones is a bit obscene, though.

[satchit_bhp]

You should see this.

Originally Posted by androdev

It is one thing to sell a niche luxury product that nobody really needs (like Rolex) but it is an entirely another thing to turn a near-essential product like earphones accessory into a luxury product and have customers queue up for it!

I am a big fan of pre-iPhone Apple and I have been a very happy and "value conscious" user of their OS X products. But I am not blind to see their trickery of not giving a free earphone accessory for a mobile phone and luring customers into such ridiculous alternatives. This is a terrible trend, they should bring in a law to force companies to include a free earphones with mobile phones.

The reality is that all of us would like to indulge in some "premium experience" in some aspect of our lives. One man's trash is another man's treasure, so I am not here to argue why one should not buy Apple stuff. It is just that I notice a lot of youngsters who can't afford Apple gear end up buying it in order to blend in. Makes me hate Apple like I hate people peddling drugs outside schools.

[ValarMorghulis]

The first impressions of the Apple AirPods Max have started pouring in:
MKBHD

https://youtu.be/UdfSrJvqY_E

CNET

https://youtu.be/HTeFoIUlAkA

[v1p3r]

Originally Posted by viXit

O.T " BHPian viper: 60% of what you paid for the airpods is for iPhone specific features, what are you doing without them?

I paired them up and did all the fit tests and all of that with an iPad that I borrowed briefly. Then I was off to the races.

[DeepakS]

Apple is truly a perfect example of corporate evil that has ever existed.
Their pricing strategy and audience targeting is downright unethical.
While companies like Tesla are giving benefits of the economies of scale to the customers and taking the onus of bettering the future of this planet in their own style, Apple is being a class A jerk by it's continuous trend of increasing prices with each generation just because it currently enjoys a very unique position of having a cult-like following of hardcore loyalists and people who fancy buying it's products but cannot afford them.
Apple, unlike ALL other known tech companies deliberately keeps their products last-gen and feature starved.
Sure Apple has released a few products that have totally turned the market trend a full 180 degree like the Airpods and iPad. But more often than not, their products aren't superior as they claim, but their implementation is so good that the overall experience is great.
A few examples:
They removed the headphone jack citing the lack of space inside the phone which would be used for some other crucial components. This was a big load of bullcrap since they were using super huge bezels on iphone 7, which was already a waste of design/space. They did this so that they could push Airpods down our throats.

They still continue to use huge notches on their iPhones, whereas the whole industry, including small vendors who sell their phones for 10-12k, now have a bezelless/hole-punch/sliding camera mechanism. And it's not like they manufacture the display panels in-house and haven't yet successfully made a notch-less display. They source their AMOLED panels from Samsung but yet choose to not get the better ones coz they'd lose a major point of publicity for their next phone. They exploit their designs as much as they can.

They famously said with a cocky attitude that people don't want a phone with a screen size larger than 4 inches(iPhone 5), but we all know how they shot themselves in the foot with that one.

Dual speaker/ super loud speakers on a phone were so common and beneficial for such a long time but Apple chose to not have them on their phones. That is until they launched it on iPhone 7 and called it "magical". Guess what did they call the water proofing on their iPhones?

They held out on type-C ports on iPad for such a long time. But since they saw Microsoft Surface taking away much of the targeted corporate clients, guess who ate up their dictator-like decisions and introduced Type-C port with OTG support. Without fail, after increasing prices of almost every other product, when faced with tough competition(and a still ongoing defeat) from economically-priced Chromebooks for classroom/students, Apple till-date offers an exceptional and truly amazing tablet experience in the basic iPad at just $299. This is the same Apple which charges $200 for upgrading SSD from 128GB to 256GB and $999 for a set of 4 wheels for a desktop.
You want a prettier iPad with slightly better features? Spend $550 for iPad Air. Or even $800 for an iPad Pro.


Apple goes out of it's way to make their devices almost impossible to repair. Your airpods' battery has degraded after 2 years? Good luck getting new batteries. Time for new $200 Airpods. Your INR 90,000 iPhone's screen shattered? Good luck, time for either shelling out INR 35,000 for either a new display, or 51,000 for a new phone after you trade-in your broken one.



So many more points to discuss and debate. But i think everybody knows how Apple does it's business. Sure it has great software and support and ease-of-use is unparalleled, that doesn't give it right to fleece it's customers and keep them devoid of good stuff at a reasonable price.

[Cessna182]

Originally Posted by Sebring

Correct me if I'm wrong but the battery on QC35 and the Sony XM3/4 can be replaced, right? It's a replaceable part. Love the QC25 BTW

It can be replaced but it needs a bit of soldering to attach it. Also it is becoming difficult to source a good battery these days due to restrictions on import of batteries in courier packages.

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by thecarguy

In the links, you posted above ANC performance and sound quality on the Bose and Airpods is pretty evenly matched. (8.4,7.4 for Bose vs 8.6,7.3 for Airpods). In terms of call quality Airpods are rated 6.5/10 and the Bose 7.5/10.

Overall they are still rated best in class inspite of being over a year old now. The review doesnt take into account the quality of life improvements that you get along with features such as spatial audio, transparency, audio sharing, seamless integration with other Apple products, form factor (the size of the buds and the case) and most importantly after sales service. Sony's aftersales service is really bad, Bose can be quite good to average.

Originally Posted by thecarguy

Airpods sound average even for wireless earbuds especially when you can EQ the bose or sony to a neutral sound.
Saying this as an owner of Airpods Pros and Sony XM4's.

You can EQ Airpods to neutral sound on an iPhone, not sure about Androids though. But I am not sure why would you do so unless you are into sound production in which case I have to ask what are you doing with a bluetooth headphone and not an analogue IEM.

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Apple is truly a perfect example of corporate evil that has ever existed.

Look a capitalist enterprise trying to make more money! They must be holding guns to people's heads.

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Their pricing strategy and audience targeting is downright unethical.
While companies like Tesla are giving benefits of the economies of scale to the customers and taking the onus of bettering the future of this planet in their own style, Apple is being a class A jerk by it's continuous trend of increasing prices with each generation just because it currently enjoys a very unique position of having a cult-like following of hardcore loyalists and people who fancy buying it's products but cannot afford them.

Unethical? Will people decide how much profit a company should make on a product they R&D and sell? Do you want to live in a capitalist USA or a socialist Venezuela?

The latest Samsung phones are much more expensive than iPhones in USA these days. I never see Apple owners calling out Samsung an evil corporation on every Samsung thread. People are NOT fools. If they see the value in a product they will buy it. Just like how Toyota is an evil corporation in India and they dont hold a gun to anyone's head either.

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Apple, unlike ALL other known tech companies deliberately keeps their products last-gen and feature starved.

So they must be shooting themselves in the foot and the sales should have crashed?

Their silicon is on the cutting edge and they design it in house. A technical powerhouse like Google could not make the face id work properly on their flagship phone and abandoned the feature the very next generation. Look up since when have iPhone been using hardware based encryption for storage and when Android got it. Or how the iPhone 6S used the NVME controller for storage. Similarly, iOS is not installed on any other phone and is not a trojan OS designed to mine user data for advertising. I wish you gave examples of how? I am pretty sure designing a CPU is harder than putting a copper coil inside a phone for wireless charging.

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Sure Apple has released a few products that have totally turned the market trend a full 180 degree like the Airpods and iPad. But more often than not, their products aren't superior as they claim, but their implementation is so good that the overall experience is great.

If Airpods pairing wasnt one tap process on the phone or they did not have rock solid connectivity or microphone performance, they would have been a massive failure. The biggest thing going for them is they just work like you think they would without wires.

They are a wireless headphone with connectivity which is as deterministic as a wired earphone which is to say that each time you open that case, they will connect without fail irrespective of what you are doing on the phone just like when you inserted a pair of analogue earphones into the 3.5mm connector and expect them to then work,

Originally Posted by DeepakS

A few examples:
They removed the headphone jack citing the lack of space inside the phone which would be used for some other crucial components. This was a big load of bullcrap since they were using super huge bezels on iphone 7, which was already a waste of design/space. They did this so that they could push Airpods down our throats.

It came with a 3.5mm jack in the box so you could use your analogue headphones. I assume they consciously decided to give up customer whose use case was listening to music wired along with charging the phone at the same time.

Why did other non evil corps though decided to take away the headphone jack by the way? Couldn't they have retained it and saw their sales soar and while also having some high paying Apple customers come their way?

Originally Posted by DeepakS

They still continue to use huge notches on their iPhones, whereas the whole industry, including small vendors who sell their phones for 10-12k, now have a bezelless/hole-punch/sliding camera mechanism. And it's not like they manufacture the display panels in-house and haven't yet successfully made a notch-less display. They source their AMOLED panels from Samsung but yet choose to not get the better ones coz they'd lose a major point of publicity for their next phone. They exploit their designs as much as they can.

Yes and that notch serves a purpose. So where do you propose they put all those sensors? Who has done it differently? Do you know how face id works? Do you know what it takes to fit for what is basically a Kinect into a notch that size?
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbrea...ense-microsoft

If you were a phone company, would you sell highly profitable phones if you can or 10-12k phones with barely any margins? Ask any company which is selling those phones if they would like to be Apple or a Samsung. Why doesnt Mercedes sell a car priced the same as a Maruti Alto? What an evil exploitative corporation.

Originally Posted by DeepakS

They famously said with a cocky attitude that people don't want a phone with a screen size larger than 4 inches(iPhone 5), but we all know how they shot themselves in the foot with that one.

And what do you know - iPhone 5 is widely regarded as one of the best iPhone Apple ever released. And how exactly did they shot themselves with that one?
https://www.stuff.tv/features/ranked...iphone-3g-2008

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Dual speaker/ super loud speakers on a phone were so common and beneficial for such a long time but Apple chose to not have them on their phones. That is until they launched it on iPhone 7 and called it "magical". Guess what did they call the water proofing on their iPhones?

Because a 2 trillion dollar company with 66% of the total mobile industry profit does not know what they are doing.

Originally Posted by DeepakS

They held out on type-C ports on iPad for such a long time. But since they saw Microsoft Surface taking away much of the targeted corporate clients, guess who ate up their dictator-like decisions and introduced Type-C port with OTG support. Without fail, after increasing prices of almost every other product, when faced with tough competition(and a still ongoing defeat) from economically-priced Chromebooks for classroom/students, Apple till-date offers an exceptional and truly amazing tablet experience in the basic iPad at just $299. This is the same Apple which charges $200 for upgrading SSD from 128GB to 256GB and $999 for a set of 4 wheels for a desktop.
You want a prettier iPad with slightly better features? Spend $550 for iPad Air. Or even $800 for an iPad Pro.

iPad and Surface laptop isnt even the same thing. iPads have never been used as enterprise machines except for creative work using the Apple Pencil in which case a Surface wont ever replace it. Speaking from experience as I have a Lenovo Ideapad with Lenovo pen and an iPad Pro 10.5 with Apple Pencil. I would be understating it if I said that Lenovo is a piece of junk.
iPad also has almost 30% of the tablet market share worldwide and that includes tablets from all other vendors and whatever crap they call tablets and growing.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/19...blet-shipments

Mac's on the other hand though are permeating enterprise customers including the enterprise I work with. We have over 3k MacBook's deployed within the organisation which are being supported by 2 - yes you read it right - TWO guys. The windows on the other hand needs a whole first level support desk outsourced to a vendor. And guess what, even with higher upfront costs, they are much cheaper in the long run.

Here's some more
https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost...he-enterprise/

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Apple goes out of it's way to make their devices almost impossible to repair. Your airpods' battery has degraded after 2 years? Good luck getting new batteries. Time for new $200 Airpods. Your INR 90,000 iPhone's screen shattered? Good luck, time for either shelling out INR 35,000 for either a new display, or 51,000 for a new phone after you trade-in your broken one.

Apple's prices are ridiculous in India but then India isnt a big market for very expensive phones anyway. And NO, you dont have to buy new Airpods if the battery gives up. I can get a battery service which costs me $70 odd and I essentially get new Airpods Pro.

Can you get battery replaced for Bose earbuds or Sony's or Samsung's or any of the 100 other ear buds and if you do, can you tell me at what cost?

Originally Posted by DeepakS

So many more points to discuss and debate. But i think everybody knows how Apple does it's business. Sure it has great software and support and ease-of-use is unparalleled, that doesn't give it right to fleece it's customers and keep them devoid of good stuff at a reasonable price.

The whole post is just bitter.

P.S. I did not want to reply to this but I couldnt let it go. Whole lot of personal opinions and very little or nothing at all to back it up.

[extreme_torque]

Originally Posted by satchit_bhp

You should see this.

Manduka is a third party company. I am not sure what is to see here.
https://www.manduka.com/pages/collections-yoga-mats