111–120 of 139 posts
Its the fault of Dr.Dre. He uses the inexperience of kids to get the cash of their parents into his pockets. Nothing to admire. Kids have become business targets for the reckless. Dre belongs to these.
Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many…
You should check your premise. With companies like Bose and Bang & Olufson around for several decades, it's hard to imagine how your claim that they entered a market where every company was focused on sound quality first could be true. The ingenious thing that Beats by Dre did was market the Bose sound and product to fans of hip hop, R&B, and pop electronica. All three of these genres, with their particularly die-har…
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I'm not saying I'm not dumb at times. FWIW, I have a $20 pair of Sony unknown model # headphones I picked up at Ross. I bought them because they were over ear and cheap not because they're white, have Sony logos on them, or because I wanted to make a statement about what group I'm in or not in. But yeah, HN is also very group membership oriented and people spend extraordinary amount of time to build things with thing…
I don’t think it’s dumb at all. Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe. Just try doing a startup in Somalia.
Whilst I dislike Beats, I admire them a lot. They entered a market where every company was focusing on sound quality first, aesthetics second and they came in with a new take: headphones should look good (I actually dislike the style but a lot of young people seem to love it), and should have a lot of bass to make certain types of music - music listened to by young people - sound good (again, I dislike this but many…
I completely agree. The typical Beats buyer who just want nice looking headphones that sound kickin'. Shame on their competitors for failing to understand their audience. (And personally I wouldn't put much stock in what the audiophiles think. The homoeopathy-grade "facts" and "truths" which pervade much of the audiophile world are in my opinion far more contemptible.)
Certainly, Beats has done an excellent job of generating a brand image and marketing a product. However, many other companies in the headphone market would have had a challenge doing the same, because if they were to court the casual listener market, they may risk losing the traditional audiophile market.
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Why is buying headphones based on their audio quality superior to buying headphones based on their aesthetics?
because headphones are for listening not for looking
it costs Beats a mere $14 to make according to some experts I'm reasonably sure that Beats does not actually design nor make these headphones - they chose a design already produced by one of the many Chinese manufacturers, using existing parts, and asked for their brand to be put on it. This is common among many brands and is known as "OEM". Look at these, for example: http://www.ovleng.com/index.php?m=index&a=produc…
While for many products you would be right, for Beats you are wrong. They really did spend quite a while getting the design right. The design was also very controversial, while low end headphones had bass forward designs, they had build costs far lower than $14, and had lots of sound quality issues. (Beats is colored, but relatively cleanly so) Anyways the design actually was fairly novel, you can read more here: htt…
The OEM doesn't get credited, since it's all part of the contract and their reason for existing. After all, why would Beats "break the illusion" they created?
I find the Beats-bashing to be very suspect. It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd. Why aren't we angry about every other thing that's endorsed by celebrities? Why this one in particular? I don't think the folks behind Activia yogurt "played everybody for a fool" or "had us over…
>It's funny how a hobby (hi-fi, audiophile, whatever you want to call it) dominated by white men just happens to get so incensed over something marketed by and to the urban crowd. Isn't peddling overpriced shit to underprivileged (and underinformed) population the actual problem here? You have there a white guy, Jimmy Iovine, selling shit product to poor urban youth, and it's audiophiles who are at fault for exposing…
They're not exactly producing a product I want, but I'm pretty okay with that. I don't feel the need to "expose" them or claim that they "have everybody over a barrel." I just... don't buy them.
> You have there a white guy, Jimmy Iovine, selling
> shit product to poor urban youth, and it's
> audiophiles who are at fault for exposing this fact?
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> Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe. That's utter fear driven rubbish. Humans survive and thrive all the time without joining a group.
Where? Alaska in an old bus? Even there, humans benefit to a small degree from law enforcement that strongly discourages the next hunter from shooting them and taking their possessions. There are some survivalists who may or may not be able to operate for a while on this basis, but even if they aren’t “joining” a tribe, they are protected by tribes. get rid of all the tribes, and new ones would spring up and we’d be…
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While for many products you would be right, for Beats you are wrong. They really did spend quite a while getting the design right. The design was also very controversial, while low end headphones had bass forward designs, they had build costs far lower than $14, and had lots of sound quality issues. (Beats is colored, but relatively cleanly so) Anyways the design actually was fairly novel, you can read more here: htt…
They chose their words very carefully in that article. Saying that they're "working on" a design doesn't mean they're the only ones doing it locally. It's very common to choose a design from and then work with the manufacturer to customise it - which does count as "designing". The OEM doesn't get credited, since it's all part of the contract and their reason for existing. After all, why would Beats "break the illusio…
Keep in mind that doing an original design is not a terribly high bar, but yes beats were a custom designed part. They worked with an OEM the same way Apple worked with an OEM. That doesn't mean it is good, just custom.
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> Humans cannot survive without the protection of a tribe. That's utter fear driven rubbish. Humans survive and thrive all the time without joining a group.
Excluding hermits, living anywhere is living within a tribe. The largest tribe is currently that which accepts a commonly defined currency in exchange for providing value of some sort.