I suppose they're buying Bose too.
Shh! Bose and Apple ink secret deal to settle 'noise-cancelling' suit
Bose has settled its patent dispute with Apple-owned Beats over noise-cancelling tech for headphones, although details of the deal remain confidential. Bose had sued Beats back in July, claiming that the newly fruity firm infringed on five of its patents for headphones relating to noise-cancelling, a technology Bose said it …
COMMENTS
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Monday 13th October 2014 12:28 GMT Ivan Headache
When
did Bose enter the headphone market?
Certainly not in 1974.
According to the firm's own website, Dr Bose didn't come up with the basic idea for noise cancelling headphones until 1978.
Therefore any claim that Bose has been working on noise cancelling technology for 40 years is bogus.
(And I'm sure that I heard a story about RACAL doing noise canelling headgear for pilots at about the same time.)
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Monday 13th October 2014 13:10 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: When
Perhaps interestingly, the Wikipedia article is little more than a stub so far as history is concerned, but I think I recall reading about the idea in Wireless World in the 1960s. My guess would be that Bose, like RACAL, investigated the idea initially using larger speakers and then Bose realised it could be made to work with headphones.
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Monday 13th October 2014 21:05 GMT roger stillick
Re: When ?? try 1970 when Marine SSB Radio became std...
Early 1970's the Technical Material Company - TMC - offered a SSB solution to AT&T for upgrading their Costal -Harbor radio telephone systems to world standards (ssb)...
included was an English discrete Vocoder and an optional IF-shift noise canceller, Plessey later made an Analog Vocoder chip for mobile use... all Plessey chips were used in the AN/PRC-25 Manpack, a portable SSB military radio B/4 secure radio...
Dr. Bose had the idea of getting the noise signal NOT from the signal itself but from the place it is being listened to / at...and THAT is very much a new idea and very much patentable... Bose proceeded from there to develop the external noise cancelling system thru all their line of stuff and offered to license it to anyone who wanted to use it... everyone came and used it, there are USD $30 Japanese headphones, and there are USD $500 German headphones, all licensed and blessed by Bose.
Beats Audio / Apple Industries naturally passed, the rest of the World just Laughed and waited for these 2 deadbeats to blink, (and They Just Did)...
IMHO= to play in a World market you need to always play well with others...Beats / Apple is learning...RS.
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Tuesday 14th October 2014 18:54 GMT Ivan Headache
Re: When ?? try 1970 when Marine SSB Radio became std...
The question was "When did Bose enter the headphone Market?" so your answer "try 1970..." is not relevant, nor is any reference to SSB and Plessey.
I worked in the pro-audio business from about 1970, on and off for about 9 years and then full-time until the end of the 90s.
In all that time I never saw a pair of Bose headphones. Sennheiser, AKG and Beyer were the dominant pro manufacturers with Koss dominating the domestic hifi side until Sony and Audio-Technica seemed to push them aside. There were other brands, but mostly irrelevant
According to the Bose website and it's official time-line, Dr Bose conceived the mathematics for noise cancelling-headphones while on a SwissAir flight in 1976. Its prototypes appeared ten years later in 1986 but they were not in production until 1989, and then not available in the consumer space until 2000.
It is therefore disingenuous (and bogus) for Bose claim that they have been developing noise-cancelling headphones for 40 years,
Although I can't immediately find proof, I'm convinced that RACAL were using an identical system of 'anti-noise' at the same time that Bose claim to have invented it. (Bose quote: "ANR is a technique to reduce unwanted noise by introducing a second sound source that destructively interferes with the unwanted noise," ). In the claim against Beats, the earliest patent is from 2004 and appears to introduce the digital domain into the second souce sound - something that should be fairly obvious to anyone working in that area.
Also, your claim that "..everyone came and used it, there are USD $30 Japanese headphones, and there are USD $500 German headphones, all licensed and blessed by Bose." is contradicted by Bose themselves here:
"Our patents cover our unique approach to active noise cancellation," Carolyn Cinotti, director of public relations at Bose.
"Other companies may have their own unique approach. We don't license our technology to other headphone manufacturers."
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Tuesday 14th October 2014 07:31 GMT circuitguy
Re: When
the problem with these dates is really about different noise cancelling tech. most pre 78 tech dealt with signal noise issues, but not room noise cancellation. earplugs and headphone noise reduction is the newer and somewhat tougher thing to due. Then there is the materials vs induced negative wave tech...etc....
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Monday 13th October 2014 18:32 GMT petur
Re: How wonderful !
Are you talking about Bose being inferior hype?
I've never been a Bose fan, but when looking for a small speaker for travel, and having spent too much cash on really inferior crap from JBL, I settled on a Bose soundlink mini.
It surprises everybody I demonstrate it to. There's a nice user review on youtube [1] comparing the sound from it with a JBL (the sound of the youtube vid was done with a zoom H1 recorder).
It may not be HiFi, but that's not what I got that tiny speaker for. Kudos for Bose to get that much sound out of such a tiny thing.
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Monday 13th October 2014 14:55 GMT Peshman
Re: Interesting...
@Si 1 - How does pulling Bose products from Apple stores equate to losing the entire Fanboi market? Bose have their own stores and can be bought at multiple retail outlets not owned by Apple. Their inline mic range for Apple products is a vertical market if anything. They'd survive just fine without them.
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Monday 13th October 2014 15:04 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Interesting...
I'd be curious to see how many fanbois are really Bose customers anyway. Usually Bose are owned by upper middle class people, especially if said people travel for a living. Sure, a lot of overlap with Apple users there, but I'd assume most Apple fanbois were already Beats fanbois too, which their known penchant for overpriced kit.
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Monday 13th October 2014 15:56 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Interesting...
There are people who buy Bose are people who buy things because they look pretty and are expensive. These people also buy iMacs and iPads and iPhones and MacBooks. They'll probably even have a 2nd 30" Apple Cinema Display that they just use for photos.
These people are easily led when all things Maccy start saying "ooh, these Bose thingies are not right for our kit".
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Monday 13th October 2014 22:22 GMT bill 27
Oh a "suit"!
Here is read that as a "suit". I was trying to figure out why someone would want to wear, especially a "suit", something that would block your hearing. Come to think of it, I might have had uses for it back when I was employed, but I never wore a "suit", and had to attend meetings.