Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 351 posts

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#61

Post by apalmer »

sz4kerto wrote: post #42
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

> reinvented the higher-end headphone marke There's zero high-endness about Beats headphones. They're all right (at least if they were priced around 30% of their current price), but really, they don't sound particularly good.

Factually true, but as they created and own pretty much the entire market for $300 headphones, one has to concede they have the title of high end headphones... high end doesnt necessarily mean highest quality.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#62

Post by coralreef »

izzydata wrote: post #34
Osmium wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's uncontroversial about that? The iTunes Store did make (legal) digital music mainstream. That's not to say it was the first store of its kind, but it was certainly the first to have widespread success.

CDs are digital music, everyone was listening to digital music before apple did anything. People were using walkmans long before the iPod. The point is trying to credit apple for "digital" music as opposed to "analog" music. That is just absurd. Credit them from making a business out of selling digital music, but not for making digital music popular.

Or maybe "digital" means "mp3 delivered over internet" in this instance.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#63

Post by higherpurpose »

6thSigma wrote: post #37

I would have never guessed that Apple's largest acquisition ever would be Beats.

Me neither. They could be doing so much smarter acquisition for that money, or much less, such as buying Imagination, and creating their own fully integrated SoCs, with both CPU and GPU.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#64

Post by taylorlapeyre »

sz4kerto wrote: post #42
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

> reinvented the higher-end headphone marke There's zero high-endness about Beats headphones. They're all right (at least if they were priced around 30% of their current price), but really, they don't sound particularly good.

It doesn't matter if you're paying for sound quality, fashion, or the brand name. They cost $150-$300. That's higher-end.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#65

Post by chc »

izzydata wrote: post #34
Osmium wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's uncontroversial about that? The iTunes Store did make (legal) digital music mainstream. That's not to say it was the first store of its kind, but it was certainly the first to have widespread success.

CDs are digital music, everyone was listening to digital music before apple did anything. People were using walkmans long before the iPod. The point is trying to credit apple for "digital" music as opposed to "analog" music. That is just absurd. Credit them from making a business out of selling digital music, but not for making digital music popular.

You're being pedantic. The author was clearly not talking about media formats like CDs, which store music digitally as an implementation detail but are still a physical object that you buy just like records and tapes. It seems pretty clear that the author is talking about music whose primary form is purely digital, like MP3s that you could download on your computer and transfer to your iPod.

Put another way: Anybody can tell you what a CD looks like — round, shiny, flat, about yea wide — but nobody knows what an MP3 looks like, because it is a purely digital format. The difference of physicality is the salient part here.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#66

Post by [deleted] »

sz4kerto wrote: post #42
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

> reinvented the higher-end headphone marke There's zero high-endness about Beats headphones. They're all right (at least if they were priced around 30% of their current price), but really, they don't sound particularly good.

[deleted]

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#68

Post by k-mcgrady »

andrewmunsell wrote: post #43
k-mcgrady wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously people have their preferences but there is a point you made that puzzle me: >> "too many taps to[...]just shuffle play a playlist." I don't have my phone on my but isn't there just a shuffle button on the play screen and I thought another one at the top of a playlist? Personally I have an account with Beats and Spotify. I keep my Spotify one for desktop usage. I don't like using any streaming service throug…

To shuffle a playlist, you actually have to hit the play button for the playlist so it begins playing in order. Then, you enable the shuffle feature in the now playing screen, and then you can skip past the first track to a random one. I just checked and don't see any specific shuffle buttons, but if there's one I'm not seeing then that'd make me happier. It's not a huge deal, but it's still one of those things I sho…

Just checked and you're right. It's something I use on Spotify all the time but I guess I've never noticed on Beats - mainly because I'm listening to new curated playlists mostly so shuffle isn't a big deal there.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#69

Post by hsod »

SDGT wrote: post #44
gareim wrote: post #25

Apple redefined the mp3 player market, the ultraportable laptop market, the smartphone market, the tablet market, and now they're buying a company that reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Is it smart of a brand that has traditionally created their own iconic images to buy another cultural icon for $3 billion? I don't think so. Maybe this gets used a lot, but would Steve Jobs have done this? Or would he have c…

> reinvented the higher-end headphone market. Rebranded mid-range electronics with pop star endorsements and hype. Do people really consider Beats to be high end?

Obviously "high-end" refers to how much people pay for them, not the objective sound quality of the headphones.

But I guess using the obvious interpretation wouldn't let you seem smart by shitting on something popular.

Re: Apple Confirms Its $3 Billion Deal for Beats Electronics

#70

Post by abalone »

The most interesting reveal from Tim Cook's quote is that he only mentions the music service and the talent, not the headphones.

That's super interesting. It basically means Apple looked at this like a typical Apple aquihire / component technology purchase (of the service), that just happened to have a multi-billion dollar profitable accessories business attached to it. That makes it a very unique kind of deal.

Post reply on HN