I can certainly understand when going to make a purchase wanting to choose a reliable brand. However, if you know nothing about headphones, why do you suddenly need an expensive pair now that Apple are selling them?
Bought airpods pro, love the noise cancelling sound, think they sound great (to me)
Bought homepod, sounds great
As a customer, I just trust that Apple will not put out a crap product in this price range. It may be missing a headphone jack or some audio balancing features that audiogeeks will care about. I trust that they will sound very good (to my average ears), good good and most importantly have a great resale value if I get bored with them
They will also make a great gift for the people on my list that have everything
I have a very hard time believing you're not aware of this, and feigning ignorance in order to criticize the fact is just disingenuous.
According to that link’s definition of a “Veblen” good, if Apple had raised prices, then demand would have increased. Either someone in charge of pricing Apple products missed out on huge revenue increases by failing to raise the price, or it’s not a Veblen good.
And there is no contention that the amortized cost of an iPhone SE, iPad Mini, or MacBook Air gets you the lowest cost to quality ratio of any competing product that also last the longest.
The iPad Pro, the iPhone X, and the Mac Pro were all shockingly expensive. I remember the chatter on Hacker News like it was yesterday.
The first two sold like gangbusters and the last is less of a Veblen good and more of an anchor price for the rest of their lineup.
Apple's 'affordable' version of a product is always "a good price for an expensive X", rather than actually cheap. And they go up from there.
There isn't even a competing product for iPad Mini.
Maybe a case can be made for the highest end Apple products are Veblen goods, but that's a far less interesting comment than all Apple products are Veblen goods.
In contradiction to your post which I replied to, Apple has raised the price of their flagship iPad and iPhone, and continued to bust through sales records. That's Veblen enough for me.
They have also lowered the price of their most affordable product in a category, and in any case, this being tech, each new product isn't the same as the predecessor, which complicates the analysis.
I don't think "people buy the latest flagship iPhone because it's expensive" is as true for Apple as it is for, say, BMW.
But it's reasonably true, and there's a trope to go with it: Apple keeps releasing products where the commentariat say "that's so much money for an X! who is going to buy this?" and then sell millions of that product.
Seems like a useless concept to me. If the flagship phones are getting better and better each year, why is it noteworthy that the price might increase? Is there a business that sells a better product at the same price as an inferior product?
For example, these cost more money than an average resident of Sierra Leone earns in a month. You could donate to feed their family.
Or for $550, you could spend $300 on buying a Kenyan family 5 sheep, $100 on gifting 5 Serbian women a month of literacy classes each, and $150 on 15 rides to school for refugee children in Egypt. Taxes not included.¹
You have airpods and airpods pro, and you don't care enough about sound to spend an hour or two researching headphones. Why would you want these then? What about your current headphones isn't good enough that you are willing to pay $600?
> They will also make a great gift for the people on my list that have everything
I mean, so would a really great pair of headphones that costs $200 less. Also, if you are giving out $600 headphones as gifts, I would like us to be friends.
I'm just saying I get having trust in a company, but what you are describing sounds like more than that.
This happens in just about every hobby. e.g. Some people buy expensive golf clubs and don’t know how to properly swing them.
My brother spent $2,000 upgrading his golf clubs, and didn't improve his score at all. GP said he's willing to spend an extra $200 to avoid two hours of research. Most of us here make at least $100/hr. The opportunity cost alone makes the purchase reasonable.
Well, that's definitely the type of thing you don't let people know, haha
It’s like they have some kind visceral reaction to seeing someone who isn’t being thrifty and researching every little thing out with spreadsheets.
It doesn’t affect you. They’re not telling you to do it.
If you want to get a better deal by doing the research then do it.
I’ll probably get these for the same reason as the parent; I vaguely want some air pods but I haven’t got around to it and I prefer this form factor.
I trust apple not to sell useless knockoff rubbish in a shiny box. My relationship with them is no more complex than that.
Anyway, the issue for me is that these are supposed to be audiophile/professional grade headphones - something you buy explicitly because you want the best audio quality. If you need these in the first place, then it's worth doing 20 minutes of research to see if it's the best quality for your money, or even in general.
I hate to say it, but I agree with the comments that mention these being more of a status symbol than anything. There's nothing wrong with that either, but that's the reality. I mean, they are pretty much guaranteed to perform worse than high end Sennheisers while still costing more, so what else could it be?
I find the argument of "I need professional grade headphones to do my job, but don't have the time to research the best option" just disappointing I guess.
I own AirPods Pro myself, but those are intended for a different market and are actually a decent value (compared to the Sony which has better sound quality but worse integration with Apple stuff).
This is where you’re wrong. That’s not the audience they’re targeting. Their target is Apple users bought into the ecosystem who may or may not use AirPods. If they see an Apple made headphone, they implicitly trust it to be not crap and hardy even if it may not compare well to the competitors. Your passionate arguments for why there are cheaper alternatives don’t matter, this has been the same argument for a lot of Apple made products. They are one of the few companies on the market that has demonstrated a commitment to quality (for a premium, of course) for the masses. Their brand is very very strong.
I am not an audiophile and I don’t care to be. I like AirPods and my first reaction to this was: oh nice, my Bose headphones are pretty old. These look quite pricy but it’s Apple, I trust that I’ll get a fairly reliable product that looks beautiful and works really well with my phone (no custom janky apps).
No, they are not.
It's unlikely professionals are buying any wireless headphones and professionals definitely don't want/ need ANC.
These are headphones for people who want good quality sound and value the other features these offer. If you don't find the other features these offer appealing, they aren't worth the money.
Almost every criticism of these pits them against top end wired audiophile headphones... that's not what these are primarily competing against.
Would you pay $100 for a 100MB usb drive? Would you not react and try to dissuade a friend from making a purchase you recognize to be ill-considered?
It’s your money, do what you want, but people are upset because there are (probably, since we dont know yet) better options that don’t have an Apple pricetag. The purchase would be based on complacency with a brand, and not conformity to rational principles and knowledge.
Few have already posted that they would buy this because it’s Apple, in order to avoid 1-2 hours of research. I really hope these aren’t the same people complaining about how terrible capitalism is.
I'm not about to be upset that someone still wants a Yubikey though.
Sure it does. This religious consumerism is favouring one of the biggest polluters on earth, with products that are as hard to repair as possible. And the favorism it's not even warranted: Apple produced a bunch of crap over the years. But zealots just ignore that.
And not only has this a negative effect on our shared resources, many people also plainly abhor when other people refuse to think.
Also, the comment about people refusing to think is a bit obtuse, don't you think? Assuming that people who buy Apple products don't think is a ridiculous claim. At least recognize that those people might have a different calculus for their purchasing choices.
It's nuts how much toxicity there is around Apple.
Some. They also make good stuff. But look at Louis Rossman's Youtube channel, he rants about the common defects in the bad Apple products better than I could.
> Also, the comment about people refusing to think is a bit obtuse, don't you think? Assuming that people who buy Apple products don't think is a ridiculous claim
It was the nice variant of what I was trying to say ;) The mechanisms of Apple fanboyism work like a religion or a cult, and that's not a novel thought by me. In that context it's not absurd, it really is what happens: People buy these products often enough without an ounce of thought, it's religious conviction and our primate brain wanting to signal status. Not always of course, but often enough. And that does produce the negative reaction in others -> parent was asking.
Just in case: I did not say that people care about how things work. You get in every category Apple sells products in other products that are more affordable, do not suck and look good. Besides, many people buy Apple products that they can not afford, that's part of the problem.
OK buddy. Lemme go find you a soap box. BRB.
And it looks like you are implying comments like mine are made without thought, which would be neither nice nor correct.
That's a myth.
I mentioned 2011, which is well before the nasty keyboards.
You guys are spending a lot of effort to respond to things I didn't say, including anything at all about competitors. Sony Vaio laptops probably hold their value longest, AFAIK, but that doesn't mean Apple laptop haven't traditionally held value quite well.
Apple products have high resale value, at least before the recent keyboard crap, because many people find them to be very useful for a very long time.
That's what I should have said.
It's a similar story for me with smartphones. My first was a Droid X2. After about 9 months I switched to an iPhone 4 and used it for the next 5 years. Then upgraded to a 6s which I only retired for an 11 Pro last year because work bought it for me. They all work fine today.
I babied every Dell/Sony machine and that Droid just like every Apple product I've purchased since; this is just the proof I've found in the pudding after eating both kinds.
I very much doubt you can find anything to substantiate your claim that Apple is one of the biggest polluters on earth.
They feel uncomfortable that the person above can shell that money on stuff that is slightly more than what they can afford. They then need to rationalise their decision that they made the best choice.
If I make $50 an hour, I am not going to waste 8+ hours searching and doing spreadsheets to figure out 'what is the best for the money' because I am already losing 50$ per hour. The new pair that is 'cheaper' costs as much as the device itself + as much as I 'paid' searching for it.
If it isn't my hobby, there is no reason to waste time on it.
I can't even imagine why my response sounded "upset".
> someone who isn’t being thrifty and researching every little thing out with spreadsheets.
No, I don't think spreadsheets are required. I probably wouldn't spend $600 on something that doesn't seem like it usually costs that much without reading a couple of reputable reviews first, or maybe checking to see if the features I want exist in a popular cheaper brand. OP isn't doing this because OP isn't buying the headphones to fulfill any need, but because they "trust apple". It's bizarre and hard to understand for anybody who isn't used to thinking of $600 as pocket change, I guess.
> I’ll probably get these for the same reason as the parent; I vaguely want some air pods but I haven’t got around to it and I prefer this form factor.
This was the part that confused me. OP has AirPods and AirPods pro and claims that he loves both. The part I don't get is blindly dropping $600 to buy something that doesn't even solve a problem for you. Apple puts it out, OP buys because it's an apple product.
> I trust apple not to sell useless knockoff rubbish in a shiny box. My relationship with them is no more complex than that.
This is the part that DOES upset me.
You think Apple never made useless rubbish? As we speak I'm typing this on a piece of shit 2019 MB Pro issued by my job. It sucks. Bad design (no ports, no magsafe, no escape key).
* Knowing little about headphones it would take me more than a couple hours to research properly
* I don’t enjoy this research. So unlike most leisure this could be evaluated as a time cost against other activities like working on my business, which translates into a money cost.
* There is a seamlessness when everything is apple. It all works very well together. Having another sort of device makes it the odd duck out and a source of friction even if it is superior on one or two metrics. These headphones will seamlessly switch between multiple devices and work with Siri/Apple music etc
* If there is ever a problem, Apple support is excellent and there are apple stores all over the world. I’m also in the stores reasonably often if I need to buy some other thing, check out a product or need servicing on another device. Apple also offers excellent mail service with premade labels and pickup. Servicing things is work, so this servicing convenience lowers the effective cost.
I won’t personally be buying the overear headphones. I really like my airpods and have tinnitus so I’m not sure I should be using noise cancellation. But hopefully the explanation above gives you some explanation of how buying an apple product can make more sense once you’re already in the ecosystem.
Can't speak for others, but I simply want good quality over ear headphones for sitting at my desk listening to music while coding. I have a set of decent AKG over-ear headphones, but I'm tired of the cable and there are times when ANC would be nice. It would also be nice to have a set for watching TV in the evening.
Not sure why so many people have their panties in a twist about this. Apple makes arguably the best wireless tech in the business. People keep comparing these to high end wired headphones (without ANC) which completely misses the point.
Also, please get me a line on these wireless over ear headphones with good sound and ANC you can pick up for $200.
Edit: I should admit that you are correct that $200 (MSRP, not paid price) won't buy a fair competitor. More appropriate is $350, which is what the XM4/QC35 II cost.
It's good to have a realistic comparison. All these comments comparing it to wires, non ANC headphones, and studio monitor headphones are pretty far off base.
- Sennheiser HD650s
- Schiit DAC
- Schiit Amp
They sound good (price ~$500, more after the DAC/Amp), but the build quality of the HD650s is poor, they feel like plastic crap. The Schiit devices are really nice and I like them.
Sennheiser also differentiates one of their lower models simply by stuffing a piece of foam into the ear cup to make it sound worse and then sells it cheaper than a more expensive model with the same driver. I find this to be a pretty disgraceful way to differentiate.
I think these Apple headphones are probably a better overall product at a cheaper price point. They've improved the beats products and the build quality is better than Sennheiser.
Audio stuff has a lot of snake oil around it and (ironically) a lot of extreme anti-brand tribleness that I'd argue is more irrational than what the parent comments suggests about buying Apple stuff. (Hatred for bose for example).
I think it's more about signaling some sort of in-group status than about the products themselves.
All of that Sennheiser stuff is currently in a cabinet, because it's a hassle to use and Airpods/Beats studio work better day to day.
My usage is 50/50.
Plus, the old apple stuff was hilariously bad on certain sound things; but it’s clear they’ve focused on it, and usually that means it’s fine.
Could they have had a great listening experience with a more established audio name? Sure, but so what. Those companies failed to reach these customers. Apple will sell them a new listening experience (for them) and they will love it. If they don't love it, they will return the product. That's how it works. No good or evil, just products and customers. If the customers like them and find value Apple will sell a lot of headphones. If not, these will go on the trash heap of other failed Apple products. Customers always have the final say.
Adding 550 for something that will sit on one's head for hours and hours isn't outlandish in comparison.
I'm in the Pixel 4 / cheapish Sony headphones camp, but for people riding the high tide it doesn't look out of place pricing wise.