Apple SILENCES Bose, YANKS headphones from stores Apple has quietly removed Bose headphones from its stores, following a noise-cancelling patent spat that Cupertino settled with the music tech company last week. The latest move, spotted by 9to5Mac, comes after Bose slung a sueball at Apple-owned headphone maker Beats in July this year. At the time, Bose alleged that Apple …
At least the punters visiting Apple stores will have one less crap over priced headphone to choose from.
On a side note, I'm informed that the latest Beats models are actually pretty good. However the stigma of wearing a headphone with a "b" on each side will prevent me from swaying from my favoured Teutonic brands plus Audio Technica.
> On a side note, I'm informed that the latest Beats models are actually pretty good.
Hmmm. I must check them out. It wouldn't surprise me too much. Beats seem to have good acoustic designers, even if they've traditionally designed for a certain market/sound. They're a damn sight better at it than Bose!
"On a side note, I'm informed that the latest Beats models are actually pretty good. However the stigma of wearing a headphone with a "b" on each side will prevent me from swaying from my favoured Teutonic brands plus Audio Technica."
That will be the Beats Solo 2, announced around the time of the takeover. They've toned down the bass that made previous Beats headphones popular with the hip hop crowd (but not so good for most other types of music). Likewise, I'd rather go without a B on each ear.
"From Middle High German bōse, bāse, from Old High German bōsi, from Proto-Germanic *bausijaz, *bausuz (“inflated, puffed up, arrogant, bad”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰew-, *bew- (“to blow, inflate, swell”)."
Inflated, puffed up, arrogant, bad, to blow... Perfect companion for apple I'd have thought!
"I've always assumed Bose removed the umlaut from the o just in case anyone had a German dictionary." - The company is named after its Indian founder Amar Bose, so not sure there would have been an umlaut to begin with...though I doubt it would make a difference, crap sound for the gullible would still be crap sound for the gullible.
I was bored in a shopping arcade full of handbags and shoes. So lacking the ambition to hang myself, and hoping to escape the clouds of estrogen, I wandered into a Bose store.
On a shelf was displayed a Bose own-brand bookshelf stereo system. I read the price tag from the distance as $349.99 (US). As I got closer, the price tag came into clearer focus: $3499.99
So I immediately pried off one of the speaker covers expecting to find that the speaker cones made from something exotic, perhaps iridium plated panda hymens; something that could justify the eye-watering price. While the sales clerk was leaping over the counter in panic, I was busy discovering that the speaker cones were made of crap cardboard. Not just cheap paper, but obviously-crap cardboard.
Parasites.
maybe the box and "ferric fluid rare earth magnet" is really clever on the Bose?
Soundwise any I heard seemed rubbish compared to an LS3a, or more damningly a big MDF box full of rockwool and cheap OEM 6" driver unit.
What does a cone made iridium plated panda hymens look and sound like?
@ (more than) abit (crazy): "Did you bring a CD, a tape, an LP..."
So when your wife is browsing the endless shoes and handbags, you wander around the shopping mall with an LP tucked under your arm? And a C90 cassette tape rattlling around in the pocket of your anorak, covered with lint? Dragging these pinnacles of High Fidelity Reference Samples along everywhere, just in case an unexpected Bose Factory Outlet store suddenly appears through the mountains of handbags, like a mystic apparition through the swirling clouds of estrogen.
No. I didn't. I went with pulling off the speaker grill.
Either Sennheiser or cheap no name Chinese at under £3 if going outside my castle.
My 1926 metal diaphragm 2K + 2K Bakelite and Alloy cans sound better than some branded stuff today. (transformer needed unless between 120V and the anode of a triode).
1980s Military gear is dreadful, seems like 1960 telephone earpieces inside.
Apple bought out Beats for stupid money and kicks out the obviously superior product (*Bose) in both a retaliatory and anti-competitive move.
Wow. Just... wow.
(* yes, yes, I know there are better and cheaper products out there than Bose, but Beats are not it)
P.S. I use a pair of plastic $9 TDK HP 100 headphones myself. Had them for over 5 years now. Only had to replace the ear foam once. Best damn cheap headphones I've ever heard. My test was using them while listening to music that I know every pop crackle to that I've heard literally over a thousand times over the last 3 decades. I'd buy another pair in a split second if I could find them on the shelf.
Prior to this, Bose sponsored some kind of American sporty thing with a condition that the players must not be seen on or off the field wearing Beats. Does that also count as "retaliatory and anytime-competitive" or can we only apply those adjectives to Apple?
Bose and Beats - both great ways to keep audiologists in Porsches.
Bose R&D is in MARKETING so it's amusing that they'd sue for something technical. Their hardware is paper, plastic, wood pulp, and standard audio chipsets. One or more DSPs in every system injects some acoustic smoke and mirrors to get the product out the door. #1 thing that I hate about my car is that I could not get it without a Bose system that sounds like a 1970s factory radio.
To 70-year-old ears with artillery induced tinnitus, even the cheap kit sounds good and a second-hand 1970's "Hi Fi" sounds just fine, thank you. I certainly have no need to pay high prices for sound I can't hear.
Oxygen-free copper? C37 varnish on the volume control? Heh!
http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm#reviewdares
http://sound.westhost.com/madashell9.htm#unbelievable
It's a good point. Once you reach 60 expensive hi-fi and ridiculous screen resolutions both become irrelevant.
I wonder slightly if one reason that Apple is now making big phones is that the target hipster market is now saturated and it's the over-50s that have all the money (and the reading glasses). Certainly I found myself considering the 6 plus for several minutes before deciding that no, one more operating system was just a faff too far to maintain.
I use Grado SR60i for domestic sounds and Sennheiser PX100 - II foldaways for traveling. Bleats or Bozos are way overpriced for the quality and Apple buds are a pain in the canals imho. Each to their own.
Picking up a pair of Rogers LS6a speakers very soon, they will destroy even some of the most expensive earwarmers.
I have these headphones, they were bought for me as a present. I think they are pretty good when I use them on long flights - I guess that is their intend purpose. I personally would not have paid the asking price but they are not bad, in fact they seem better than other noise-cancelling headphones I tried.
There is just one little gotcha with noise cancelling earphones on long flights.
The "standard" crappy sets you get to listen to need a certain volume to work, so you dial it up, say, 7 (on a scale of 0 to 10) to get a level where you can follow a movie over the background noise.
When you plug in a decent noise cancelling set, you can turn it down to about 4 or so and you can follow it with good clarity, and you settle down to follow it either to the end, or until you doze off. AND THEN THEY MAKE A CABIN ANNOUNCEMENT, WHICH IS PUT THROUGH AT VOLUME LEVEL 8 TO MAKE SURE EVERYONE HEARS IT. Owwww.
On the plus side, it's highly unlikely you'll sleep through any cabin announcement..
@FF
That's why the legal Carry On bag and/or LapTop Bag are crammed with gadgets so that one can enjoy one's own selection of movies without being disturbed by pesky announcements. One flight from HK to Toronto, I rewatched the entire original (Carl Sagan) 13-episode Cosmos series start to finish on a laptop with only one interruption to answer 'Chicken please. Thank you.'
Best Flight Ever.
Bose produced respected, if high-end, audio equipment
Bose produced expensive kit. Respected it was not...
I looked on in horror when I first pulled the front off an 802. Their "full-range" claims were audibly bollocks, but I really could not bring myself to believe that any company could make "fidelity" claims from that heap of crap...
Vic.
My wife has a pair a small Bose speakers running off the headphone socket of a 21inch TEAC TV, and they are OK - There is too much, badly controlled, bass; but if you turn the TV's bass down it is OK. We got them because, although the 1920x1080 screen gave a great picture, the TV's internal speakers sound similar to what you hear from a teenager's earphones when they have them inserted in their ears and turned up to full volume.
There is too much, badly controlled, bass; but if you turn the TV's bass down it is OK
Yup - seems to be a generic trend with Bose kit. I used a couple of Bose Companion 3 speakers for a while, but they were only just about tolerable with the bass control on the base box turned all the way down.
Some Bose products I've heard in the past have been outstanding. Their main claim to fame in the beginning was their ability to engineer really impressive reflex cabinets out of very small enclosures.
The Bose speakers I bought for the wife had a great sound and the stereo panorama had a very wide "sweet spot" as advertised for that model, but they did need driving a lot harder than the El-Cheapo Boxes they replaced to get the same apparent volume *level*.
Bose made affordable weatherproof outdoor speakers before anyone else did, and demoed them in a fishtank to prove they would work - albeit with degraded acoustics - while very wet indeed. Although only partially impressed with the results of the speakers mentioned above, I was tempted to deploy these for those July barbecues in NY where the weather can go from "nice'n'sunny" to "up scope" in an eyeblink (we get more rain over the year than Seattle does) but in the end the money was needed for more important stuff.
Bose made a home theater system that would drag a very convincing stereo pan from 78s before anyone else could do the trick affordably. Now I can get that out of a $400 Pioneer home theater system inna box but then?
But that was so many years ago.
I suspect to most people it doesn't matter as the point in most systems these days seems to be to pay a few grand for it then play it with so much bass the whole affair rattles so loudly you can't hear where the money went.
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