[kiku007]

Originally Posted by DeepakS

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.

The highlighted part caught my attention. Would you please care to explain that?

I've driven a Tesla and I love it BUT I wouldn't buy one as yet since their quality and build quality isn't quite up there to match the premium pricing. They are making progress in the right direction though.

So I'm really surprised you brought Tesla into this discussion because they aren't cheap and they are at the bottom of the reliability scores. Both of which are opposite to Apple.

If pricing is your only gripe with Apple then try the preowned/refurbished ones. They'll provide incredible value and save you the time of typing a thousand words on how a particular Apple product isn't worth it's retail price.

But hey don't stop being a critic of Apple or any brand for that matter. Calling out the negatives and asking for more is good for everyone in the long term. But just don't browbeat a brand for no good reason every time they do something.

[Trust_In_Thrust]

I bought Iphone 5 many years ago and sold it off same day due to pathetic battery life. I was using Pixel2xl since 3years and changed to Iphone 12 recently. To me apple products are overhyped both in terms of hardware and software even more. I am also using Airpods and Airpods Pro. I find audio quality lacking when compared to my Bose soundsport or Bose QC35ii. The only place I see Apple really delivers in the iPad area ( have two for the kids and an ipad pro 10.5inch) which Android really does not have true alternative. The market for apple is more driven by people looking at showing off then really caring about latest technology or feature set.

This can be seen how they have designed the so called case of AirPods Max. They are designed for bling rather than to protect the headphones. I also wonder with nearly 400gms weight how long or comfortable will these be. And with so much weight Apple still says it is a piece of amazing engineering.

[anoopGTkrish]

I own the following devices:

1. XM3
2. Yamaha EPH 200
3. Airpods Pro
4. ATH M50 X
5. Sehhheiser HD 203

Based on using the above this is how I would rate my airpods:

- Sounds Quality : For sheer sound quality, I would rate the airpods at the lowest among the ones I use
- Convenience/ Mobility : For convenience and mobility, airpods would be at the top with the form factor and fairly long battery life. Even the case is easy to slip into your pockets
- ANC : I prefer XM3s over Airpods pro for the ANC. XM3s ambient sound feature is also better than the transparency mode

As per MKBHD first impressions, I have noticed that the Max Phones lack most of what makes the air pods pro special.

- With that minimal case, there is no way I would be able to slide this into my backpack with peace of mind. Apple will probably sell a max case later for 90$
- Sound quality is at par with air pods pro as per his initial impression. With the bigger cans and drivers, was hoping for better sound quality (maybe detailed reviews might change this)

Waiting for detailed reviews before deciding whether its a dud.

[Rocketscience]

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

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.

Totally agreed on the whole capitalist part, anyone in their position would obviously want the maximum money provided they can get away with it so that makes perfect sense, but off late as an appreciator (i won't say fan) of their very well thought out and designed products i seriously feel as a neutral observer and a user of their products that they are losing ground and it is not unfair to call them out for that, a course correction is surely required, just because of their well earned goodwill does not mean they will get away with it all the time in the future although they have been doing in the past, the competition is quietly making constant improvements and closing the gap and exceeding while costing a fraction of cost, they all practically used to be clones of Apple, this is how far ahead it was and no, i'am not just talking about Samsung, i'am not sure where they are headed, they are frankly no apple to command such ridiculous premium.

Also coming to the whole Apple silicon thing, i too believed in the hype when i bought my iphone 11, believing it will be invincible for 3 years atleast, but with the ios 14 update, this thing actually has micro stutters, for example in widget selection screen, in sticker selection page in whatsapp, in Asphalt 9 (here it is the worst and unless you exit each and every app, it will lag and it will have constant stutters), this is a new low for apple as my phone had perfect performance in ios 13, this can be expected from Samsung but Apple seems to have messed it up this time, even benchmarks for HTML 5 are constantly substantially downgraded and so have geekbench scores for some devices like iphone XR.
No it is not as bad as the updates in my previous samsung s8, but a 1 year old phone with the fastest mobile silicon in the world having random stutters is not a very reassuring sign, i really hope they fix it in the future, i doubt they would.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

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

See, this is where Apple is on the wrong train and too arrogant to admit it, face ID was a decent idea in 2017, its execution as usual pretty flawless and no, no one has a better face ID solution, but they have something better and that is under display fingerprint scanner, Apple could and should have used it too as it solves the same problem, in a much more elegant way, hell, Apple should have been the first one to come up with it, but Jobs is long dead. It is 2020 already and the notch looks just ridiculous, i really have a hard time believing that android phones are actually ahead of Apple here, they have had bezel less, notch less displays since 2018 now and those are high refresh rate too, i can bet you anything apple will get rid of the notch and will surely come with a high refresh rate display too, but Apple taking more than a couple of years more than android competitors to do it is what i mean, that they need course correction and functioning on old goodwill, this 2 trillion dollar company has to think differently, it doesn't take long for fate to turn around.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

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

Again, just because they are successfully getting away with it, does not mean they should not be called out for their arrogant practices.

See, they actually do hold features for next generation models, i have not seen anyone discuss this but, this year's iphones (12 mini, 12 and 12 Pro) use the exact same camera hardware as last year, yet last year only the main camera had Deep Fusion and night mode, if the same silicon can handle those very important quality modes in main camera, it can handle those in the ultrawide and front camera as well, yet they chose not to, and enabled it this year because obviously they need stuff to market their latest phones, if that combined with not including chargers and earphones, not getting rid of their useless notch not an arrogant and taking their loyal customers for granted practice then i don't know what is.

I have owned iPhone 5,6 and now 11, and no, no one will ever hold a gun to my head but i want to buy and love their products because they still have a lot of potential, but they are surely ruining them for people like me, they are also sitting on a notchless iphone and one with a higher refresh rate display, they might release it next year or maybe the year after, it will come, i bet.
And no, battery life is not why they are holding the phones back they can get away with it is what it is, others vendors have larger batteries in phones which have a similar form factors and thickness/weight, Apple is by all means using a cheaper less energy dense, slower charging battery in their phones (and selling it for the cost of an Mi Phone), they will switch to a better unit too in the future, which the competition is using today, again this is Apple we are talking about and the competition really were just clones of Apple just a few years ago.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

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.

And India has replied back in kind, although popular iphones don't sell as much as they ought to in India, because at the end of the day, business is business in a capitalist economy, and if they are serious about doing good business here, they will have to lower their prices to stay at par with USA atleast, i know about the whole tax structure thing but don't want to extend this already long post, long story short, OnePlus for example is dead serious about India and they actually price their phones much lower than even its USA dollar converted price, because they actually do want to sell, if there is a smart business person in Apple India they should do the same too, but then i guess India doesn't matter to Apple and they don't want our business and won't get rid of their arrogance, well maybe one day they will.

Also you forgot to mention, 70$ battery replacement is for one piece of airpod, a pair of them costs 140$ to replace battery whereas a new one costs 159$, i'am not great at Maths but Apple does not want to change your airpod's battery, hell, they are infact not changing it at all and the service center gives you a new pair when you go for battery service (whatever that means), i have checked with them.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

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.

I wanted to let this post go too, but at the end of the day, this had a few personal and outdated opinions too, i tried to be as neutral as possible, no idea if i succeeded or not though. Human nature doesn't allow us to be 100% fair and unbiased i guess.

[vb-saan]

Originally Posted by anoopGTkrish

- Convenience/ Mobility : For convenience and mobility, airpods would be at the top with the form factor and fairly long battery life. Even the case is easy to slip into your pockets
- ANC : I prefer XM3s over Airpods pro for the ANC. XM3s ambient sound feature is also better than the transparency mode

I have not used the Sony, and though ANC is great in crowded commute (say in a train), what I like the most about the Airpods is the transparency mode. I find using that mode more often than the ANC. And yes, small size of the charging case is another advantage.

With the size and price tag of the Max, I believe even similar options from Apples' own Beats may look VFM.

[2000rpm]

Originally Posted by kiku007

The highlighted part caught my attention. Would you please care to explain that?

If pricing is your only gripe with Apple then try the preowned/refurbished ones. They'll provide incredible value and save you the time of typing a thousand words on how a particular Apple product isn't worth it's retail price.

Apple is a shamelessly capitalist company, lets not try to even compare it to Tesla which started off on a mission to change the Car industry and has done that successfully! The fan boys should learn to accept this fact I guess and buy whatever they feel like and not suggest others to buy second hand (that comment was below the belt in my view for a fellow BHPian)

Dont you think Apple had made a huge negative environmental impact by

• Removing the head phone jack
• Eliminating removable and replacable batteries
• With their charger strategy (sticking to lightening port and not moving to a universal charger - C-Type).

Dont forget the battery gate and Apple's crack down on independent after-sales which is meant to drive customers to replace their products rather than repair them.

All the above moves were with a capitalist motive!

With great power comes great responsibility, and Apple has chosen to use the power for maximization of capitalism (nothing wrong with that).

[satchit_bhp]

Apple is selling these on its website.

Originally Posted by extreme_torque

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

[DeepakS]

Look a capitalist enterprise trying to make more money! They must be holding guns to people's heads.
Do you seriously agree with Apple's pricing policies? Just because you're financially capable of buying something doesn't make Apple a great company.

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?
- YES unethical. How else do you explain charging $200-$400 for something as basic as memory/storage upgrade? Nothing magical or innovative there mate. It's a daylight robbery. People still buy them, yes, but it's unreasonable.


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.
- I don't support Samsung either. Samsung is as shitty as Apple albeit in a different way. Samsung sells different sku's for the same models in different countries. While charging the top dollar for their S and Note series in India, Samsung still chooses to sell the Exynos versions of their flagships in India and many other countries while the USA gets the top-dog Snapgragon SoC. Even the camera system Samsung uses is slightly inferior to what it has access to, i.e., Isocell vs Sony IMX. Google Wear OS is such a great and polished OS for watches yet Samsung continues to push/promote it's Tizen OS just because it can. Doesn't make Samsung right or fair.
People are NOT fools? What else do you call a person over-extending himself/herself and taking credit/loan/EMI to get the latest iDevice just because of the validation, hype and sense-of-achievement associated with Apple? People are blinded by the image/aura Apple has created. You gotta agree with me that not all Apple decisions are good! Butterfly keyboards which essentially made a $2000 computer unreliable and unusable? iPhone throttling in disguise of "battery preservation" ultimately misleading people into thinking they needed a new iPhone? Shipping phones till 2019 with a 1 Ampere charging brick WHILE their phones, since iPhone X, supported 18 watt charging. Removing charging bricks and earphones from their new phone boxes in disguise of "environment betterment" and shipping em with a cable which they know pretty well works only with chargers which came in-box since 1 year versus the chargers they've shipped since the other 9 years. Half bake, half assed and dumb-witted.


So they must be shooting themselves in the foot and the sales should have crashed?
With customers like you who go out of their way, armed to the teeth with some pdf's and articles, disregarding the median income of Indian households, forgiving Apple of their sins, how could ever the sales crash?

Their silicon is on the cutting edge and they design it in house.
- Agree. This is where Apple shines and also sucks. Their silicon shines on iPhone and the new M1 products. But let me just take you back the memory lane just 2-3 years back. The current Macbook Air design was introduced in 2017-18 iirc. In typical Apple fashion of "If it's works, definitely try to fix it" the geniuses at Apple took the perfectly working CPU cooling solution, which is, CPU fan adjacent to the heat sink and the placed it on the corner of the chassis. What is the fan cooling if not the cpu, you ask? Nothing! What is cooling the cpu you ask? Nothing. For this very reason my Macbook Air i3 2020 runs with it's fan on if i play anything above 720p videos. Despite having a good Intel silicon under the hood, they crippled it.

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.
So what? Who even asked for FaceID? If it was so important, why didn't apple put it on their macs? The TouchID was perfect and still works great on Macbooks, iPhone SE and the newly launched iPad Air 2020. NOBODY asked for it. Infact you yourself gave the correct answer in your statement. Google couldn't get face ID work, Google dropped it. Thing to note: Google did NOT remove the fingerprint system, it was always the primary unlock system. It just tried to add more feature. Apple couldn't get butterfly keyboards work, Apple freaking stuck to those for years and let go only after super bad reviews from public. There's nothing wrong in innovating, but not at the expense of user experience.

Look up since when have iPhone been using hardware based encryption for storage and when Android got it.
- When did this become iOS vs Android?

Or how the iPhone 6S used the NVME controller for storage.
- Thanks Apple! The base 16GB storage, out of which 10GB was user-accessible, the world is a better place because it's NVM Express. Life changing!

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.
- Agreed with the security part of iOS.
You do know Apple only customizes and tweaks it's processors, right? They're still ARM based and Apple didn't make/invent/produce ARM. I sincerely hope you know that.


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.
- Agreed. But why did they remove the headphone jack which could've been used by those economically weaker? If Apple cares so much about the environment, why did it make this decision which produces so much e-waste?

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,
-So you're saying we should hail Airpods because they work like they were designed to? God THIS IS what and how Apple needs it's customers to think. Thanks for affirming it.

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.
- Thanks for letting us know that Apple decides how customers should use their devices.



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?
- I strongly disagree with the big corps removing headphone jacks. Still disagree. Bad decision.


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
- Again, WHO asked for it? On the other hand, people ARE asking for a notch-less design.

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.
- If i were a phone company, i'd be ethical, non-cocky and certainly pay heed to the feedback of market.


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
So?

Because a 2 trillion dollar company with 66% of the total mobile industry profit does not know what they are doing.
- Big numbers don't maketh a good company.

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.
- I notice how conveniently you ignored my comment about iPads being used in school. Sure iPad and Surface isn't the same thing, thats why iPad is trying to become Surface by adding a keyboard, and then adding a pencil, and then adding a trackpad, and also enabling USB mass storage and also finally giving a file manager. Surely not the same thing.
By this logic, maruti has approx 50% share of the market, does this make it a safe car? Does this make Maruti's continuous denial of making safe cars for Indian a good thing just because it's profits and super high and it's a massive company?

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.
- Surrounded by 3k Macbooks, it's no surprise you speak so highly of them.
Here's some more
https://www.jamf.com/blog/total-cost...he-enterprise/



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.
-SO? India being a small market gives Apple the right to charge more? That is the most ridiculous statement in favor of Apple i've ever seen.
That $70 odd is 50% price of new Airpods. Do you mean to tell me that batteries should cost 50% of a product which includes R&D, Advertising, Overheads, Shipping, Profits, etc? How do you make any sense of this?

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?
-Nope you can't. It sucks.

The whole post is just bitter.
- Just a point of view.

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.[/quote]

Originally Posted by kiku007

The highlighted part caught my attention. Would you please care to explain that?

I've driven a Tesla and I love it BUT I wouldn't buy one as yet since their quality and build quality isn't quite up there to match the premium pricing. They are making progress in the right direction though.

So I'm really surprised you brought Tesla into this discussion because they aren't cheap and they are at the bottom of the reliability scores. Both of which are opposite to Apple.

If pricing is your only gripe with Apple then try the preowned/refurbished ones. They'll provide incredible value and save you the time of typing a thousand words on how a particular Apple product isn't worth it's retail price.

But hey don't stop being a critic of Apple or any brand for that matter. Calling out the negatives and asking for more is good for everyone in the long term. But just don't browbeat a brand for no good reason every time they do something.

Tesla has continuously lowered it prices and even launched a lower priced model because the battery tech became cheaper.

[kiku007]

Originally Posted by DeepakS

Tesla has continuously lowered it prices and even launched a lower priced model because the battery tech became cheaper.

A couple of things happened in recent times.
Tesla Model S price was slashed to $69,420. You might want to check Lucid's price announcement which led to this.
Tesla Model 3 entry price was slashed to around $35,000. Around the same time Tesla was shutting some retail stores and was moving towards online sales. Also, the ADAS/Autopilot feature/option cost increased.


Do note that Tesla pretty much lost money on every car it sold.

Originally Posted by 2000rpm

Apple is a shamelessly capitalist company, lets not try to even compare it to Tesla which started off on a mission to change the Car industry and has done that successfully! The fan boys should learn to accept this fact I guess and buy whatever they feel like and not suggest others to buy second hand (that comment was below the belt in my view for a fellow BHPian)

This is epic. Suggesting someone to buy preowned is below the belt?
I can't count the number of posts and threads in this forum that do that.

Apple is a shameless capitalist company and Tesla is on a mission to change the Car industry? You might really want to revisit who's the fanboy here.

[raksrules]

Originally Posted by 2000rpm

The fan boys should learn to accept this fact I guess and buy whatever they feel like and not suggest others to buy second hand (that comment was below the belt in my view for a fellow BHPian)

This forum is literally having 100s of treads of people asking for and 1000s of posts of people recommending used cars to others depending on their situation. How is recommending used / refurb phones a "Below the Belt" thing?

Not sure why people get so worked upon when Apple introduces something. If you don't like it, don't buy it. No one is forcing you to buy one. I use iPhone and don't even pay attention to what Samsung or anyone else offers. They may also have things I don't like but I don't start hating them for what they are doing.
This is more like there are people here who (desperately) want to own Apple product but cannot live with their pricing structure and feature set (or lack of) and then start bashing them left right and center and justify why they are E-Corp.

Sometimes I feel people are hating Apple due to starting many of Anti Consumer things (and rightly so) like removing headphone port, now charger and earpods. This is because although they themselves anyways don't intend to buy the Apple product, they are worried that the brand they use / follow will adopt the same practices (has happened before) and cause them problems.

[v1p3r]

Can the mods please step in? We have relentless fanboys on one end and capitalist-haters on the other. While I do enjoy my popcorn, others may add fuel to this spark.

[ValarMorghulis]

LoL. A simple FYI thread on Apple headphones devolved into a mess.

Guys, buy if you want else ignore like most of us ignore the Lamborghini Urus. No one's complaining about this particular SUV making the entire segment look expensive. Peace out.

[venkats2001]

I think this discussion is taking a very unpleasant turn. It is one thing to debate the pros and cons of a new product launch, but this is becoming a battle of Apple fanboys vs. Apple haters. And it is now morphing into debates around corporate evil and greed.

Ultimately, people should buy it if they think it adds value to their life. What they perceive as value is totally up to them - be it ease of use, performance, audio quality, durability, price, features that save time, or plain prestige and status symbol.

If folks are taking loans that they cannot afford to buy these products just to show off, well that's on them. It is a bad decision and they have to live with the consequences. Just like if I buy a Mercedes that I cannot afford.

I have only owned one Apple product my whole life which is the iPod Classic 30 GB, 14 years later it still sounds great. All my phones have been Android and they all have lasted 3+ years (LG G3/Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge) with technology that is relevant for usage even today and acceptable specs. My personal view is that unless you are a professional who needs very specific tech for your work/passion, most of the latest devices work perfectly fine - be it Apple or non-Apple. It then becomes a function of what I called out earlier - perceived value.

To each his own.

[mobike008]

I have become an Apple fan over a period of time. And, over the last few years have been slowly but, steadily getting integrated into their eco-system

I got the following at home

iPhone 12 ProMax
iPhone XSMaX
iPhone XSMax
iPad Pro 10.5
Home Pod "Mini"
Apple TV 4K
MacBook Air (M1 Chip)
Apple Watch 4 (GPS)
Apple Watch 4 (GPS)
PowerBeats Pro
AirPods Pro

Well, I think have spent a small fortune to be part of the Apple Universe But, I'm not complaining one bit regarding the high prices of each of these products.

Because every product that I listed above is outstanding and reeks of quality. The seamless integration between the hardware and software is surreal. Like I work on a notepad on my MBA and pick it up on my iPhone and then continue on my iPad. That convenience and integration is something one needs to experience to know how useful it is

Another beautiful example is handing off my music from my iPhone to HomePod Mini just by going close to the Mini (no gesture or touch required) and voila the music is transferred to Mini and vice-versa

Experiences like above is what is Apple's core strength apart from their HW/SW integration and unbeatable and silky UI (That silkiness carries forward to their events as well. Sometimes I feel Apple Events production quality is higher than high budget hollywood movies)

But, for someone who loves Apple, I'm also reeling with shock at the $550 price tag for the AirPods Max But, like many pointed out on this thread, no use complaining about their high prices. Apple isn't forcing anyone to buy their products but, I find it amusing that so many people gripe about Apple all the time regarding their high priced products but, still their sales charts are burning away so hard that they will need to call in a fire-engine while as per the claims that it keeps the products feature starved, price obnoxiously high, they should be out of the market by now knowing this trend from the last many years. But, nope they are now the most envied company in the world

Anyways, I will swallow hard and try to digest the high price and would still love to buy the AirPods Max if they can do one simple thing- Beat the sound quality of my 2.5 year old Sony 1000 XM2 (which I would rate as the best headphones in the market in the $300 or INR 30,000 range). Ofcourse, the XM3, XM4 are probably even better. I doubt if AirPods Max can beat XM2 quality but, in the unlikely event they do- Apple has a customer in me for the AirPods Max

[dark.knight]

Audiophile and brand-snob alert :

I'm afraid that Apple is playing way, way, wayyy above their league with this pricing, I can agree that they own the mobile division in terms of snob factor (not quality), but this space they won't even be top 10.

TOO many brands at that price range - Bose, Seinnheiser, Bang & Olufsen, Sony, Beyerdynamic, Klipsch, Bowers and Wilkins, Shure, Teufel. Then there are middle of the line, somewhat average stuff like Harman Kardon, Marshall, JBL, Polk etc.

Apple will sell this, as usual by the millions, but there is no justice on earth, on the one hand cheap and plasticky Mi sells mediocre everything by the millions and Apple sells strictly average everything at 500% premium, causing people to ignore the real quality brands.