Bose had to have seen this coming. The patent on noise cancelling expired and now its a free for all. Plus, its apples store. Every item would have been listed at apples sole discretion.
Most major brands are better than beats by a long shot.
However, most brands are beginning to cheap out IMO. I had a pair of sennheiser headphones back in like ~2005, they lasted like 11 years before the cups started to fall apart. I replaced them with a new pair of sennheiser which lasted ~12 months before they began to fall apart... Not only that, the old sennheiser was SUPER comfy, the new ones hurt my ears after a while... Replaced the new sennheiser with another model, fall apart in ~12 months...
Now I'm just using some Asus gaming headphones, quality is not Bose level but its good enough, and the cups have lasted longer than the last 2 pair of sennheiser I've had.
Looks like Bose has multiple patents for noise cancelling technology. Did a major one expire?
Have expired for a long while. It just took some time for serious competition, like the Sony MDR-1000X and its descendants, to come out.
Those patents are really old actually. Noise cancelling was unknown to the general public prior to the first quietcomfort headphones from Bose but it had been in use for decades before in Bose aviation headsets.