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How Apple Can Take Its Headphones To the Next Level
redletterdave (2493036) writes "Apple is one of the biggest headphone makers in the world thanks to those signature white earbuds that have shipped with every iPod, iPhone, and iPad since 2001. But even two years after earbuds became 'EarPods,' the design could still be improved — and competitors are taking notice. Amazon recently unveiled a new pair of in-ear headphones that are magnetic, tangle-free and $5 cheaper than Apple's $30 EarPods, while smaller startups are promoting their own wireless and customizable 3D-printed earbuds. But Apple has an ace up its sleeve, in the form of patents for a set of headphones with 'one or more integrated physiological sensors' designed to help users keep track of their body stats."
They make me sick, literally. Give me on ear headphones any day
buy Beats
Read the reviews... Beats might be the Hipster headphone du jour, but on the quality vs price curve, it doesn't work out. Sure, if you want to look "hip" and "happin'n" and "young, dumb, and full of cum", buy Beats. Or you could buy a decent pair of headphones.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Why would the writer think that adding body sensors are an answer, instead of improving the fucking sound?
Or spend a lot less, and buy skull candy earbuds.
Take all the Beats intellectual property, drawings, and inventory, throw it in a wood chipper, and then set fire to the resulting chips.
instead of adding a bunch of features I don't need, didn't ask for, and make the product more complex, expensive, and likely to fail?
My good sir, how dare you besmirch the efforts of those who are trying to make our economy grow ever larger and ever faster? Don't you WANT a booming business environment? Is buying overpriced junk that fails early and often, and leaves our planet an empty husk, REALLY too high a price to pay for petty amusements and diversions that further line the pockets of the already-wealthy? How selfish of you!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It's hard for the customer to make a good choice when the good choices are removed from the market and replaced with disposable junk.
Do you have any actual evidence that Apple or somebody affiliated with Apple has paid or otherwise compensated Timothy for placing this submission on the front page?
If you're going to make such allegations, please provide at least some evidence or proof that astroturfing is indeed taking place.
Astroturfing is a real phenomenon, but it's also important not to "cry wolf" about it. False alarms, like I suspect yours is in this case, make it harder to expose actual astroturfing when it does happen and can be proven.
Heard at the Apple Headquarters monitoring their users:
Oh no, we've got excessive vibrations on little Johnny (User 2317687491XXL), I think he might be pounding his meat again, better shut down his web access.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
"Why would the writer think that adding body sensors are an answer, 'instead of improving the fucking sound?"
:D Listening to THAT on even a decent set of headphones won't help it any.
:|
They have to go a bit further back than the hardware I think. I've you've looked at a waveform for what passes as music these days, you would agree
The folks that put this stuff together need to understand that the entire waveform isn't supposed to look like a solid block just barely under the clipping threshold.
My Bose noise canceling headphones have worked just fine for several years.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Skull Candy is crap. Beats is crap. Skull Candy at least doesn't charge an arm and a leg for it.
And people make fun of others spending too much money on Apple?
Exactly how big do you think the market is for $500-$1000 headphones?
Do you buy Monster cables too?
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
There's nothing that compares with Sony Professional headphones, and they're less expensive than you'd expect. Normally I hate Sony but the pro headphones are one heck of a product line.
Of course, they're ... heh heh heh .... "somewhat" larger and heavier than earbuds, and as for looking hip ... not. Unless the audio engineer look is somehow "in." Be sure to wear thick glasses with black frames.
Just what I want -- for my NSA-backdoored, malware-infested, free-apps-spying-on-me smart device to ALSO be able to exfiltrate my vital signs. You think GPS location and when you use your device tells alot about your life habits, wait until heartrate and blood pressure are available. Advertisers would LOVE this data: "look, our ad is exciting to this person". Worse, they could also detect heart conditions and uniquely identify the person wearing the earbuds. Think about that for a second. Instead of just assuming that this iPhone was registered by person X so it's probably being used by that person, it'd be able to know if someone's borrowing it (and using a cloud data lookup, by whom.) Wait until the NSA ("we kill people based on metadata") starts using vital sign 'fingerprints' and bombing them with no verification.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Slashdot's moderation system sucks. It's the worst system there is, except for everything else that's been tried.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
How about: use headphones, not earbuds.
Circumcision is child abuse.
In my spare time, I've been an audio technician for the past 5 years. Before that, I was a DJ as a hobby, and I've been on stage crew occasionally for the last decade. My current professional job involves system engineering on a multi-million-dollar sound system.
At home, my headphones are a $30 Sennheiser over-ear pair, and I carry $15 earbuds that I can only describe offhand as "black".
It is my professional opinion that all of the audiophile bullshit is bullshit. On a low-end sound system using the cheapest components you can buy, the worst component is your ears. That's where all of your problems start, and you're trying to pay lots of money to compensate throughout the rest of the system.
If you want a pair of headphones that sound great to you, forget about brand names and fancy features. Sit down with a pair of cheap headphones, and listen to the tones in music/tv/whatever that you find most pleasing. Some folks like to hear the deep rumble of heavy bass, while others (like myself) prefer the crisp clarity of vocals that the high end provides. Still others like the nostalgia of 60's disco and AM radio, so they'll have both high- and low-end, but cut out midtones entirely. Know your ears and your tastes, and that will tell you what frequency response you'll be happiest with.
Next, think about features. This should not be a difficult decision, as it mostly just relates to lifestyle. If you ride a bus or train to work and listen to audiobooks, noise canceling is probably a decent choice. Otherwise, it's probably not worth the price. A good fit is more important for keeping unwanted noise out, so if you're in the market for earbuds, look for ones with adjustable rubber. On my traveling pair, I actually have different rubber cones for my ears, because my ears are different sizes. My wife doesn't like in-ear styles, so she carries a pair of folding on-ear headphones in her purse. That was a criterion when we bought them.
Finally, go to Google, and research candidates. Brand doesn't matter nearly as much as having the right headphones for your ears. Buy a cheap pair with the right criteria and try it out. As a general rule, all headphones are made with thin wire and fragile construction that falls apart at the slightest trauma. That's the nature of the beast. Expensive brands just tack on bigger profit margins.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Luckily I have the impression that 3D TV is on the way out already...
-- Cheers!
That's not only in America. Here in the Netherlands there was a program on TV not long ago about how manufacturers design their products to break down after a few years. There are several ways to do this; the chips in printer cartridges being the most well-known one. But they also told us that Samsung designed the plastics in their washing machines so that they degrade when in contact with the detergent you use to clean your laundry. And many manufacturers build in 'time bombs' in the software of their products, so that they stop working after a certain period.
-- Cheers!
While it might be happening, that kind of intentional weakening is actually very rare. I also suspect that that Samsung incident wasn't intentionally planned. We simply have better capability to engineer things accurately to a lower price point, which also leads to more flimsy materials.
It is my professional opinion that all of the audiophile bullshit is bullshit. On a low-end sound system using the cheapest components you can buy, the worst component is your ears. That's where all of your problems start, and you're trying to pay lots of money to compensate throughout the rest of the system.
If you want a pair of headphones that sound great to you, forget about brand names and fancy features. Sit down with a pair of cheap headphones, and listen to the tones in music/tv/whatever that you find most pleasing..... Next, think about features.....
I agree with that for the most part except there is a degree of difference between crapware phones and brands like Sennheiser, even in the $30 range. I know that because I went to a store and tried everything they had and stuff from Sennheiser, Bose etc. sounded noticeably better than the utter crapware. That being said the difference is not massive but there is still some difference in sound quality. I ended up sacrificing sound quality for features and got Bluetooth headphones with a built in remote. I also agree that audiophiles can be properly full of BS. A good way to get a laugh is to go to amazon.com, look up a popular set of cheap ass headphones and read some of the lengthy comments written by the audiophile crowd. You'll be tempted to think that they expected live concert quality sound from the thing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Get a set of Sennheiser PX-100 II, or Sennheiser PX-100 IIi if you want a microphone and controls.
Much better sound quality than any earpuds, more comfortable, plus no microphoning noise from the cable like you get with earpuds and in-ear units. Seriously, the PX-100 series is an absolute bargain for how good of a sound quality you get, they're right up there with fullsize cans and lightyears ahead of shit like Beats or Skullcandy.
Eat the rich.
In my spare time, I've been an audio technician for the past 5 years. Before that, I was a DJ as a hobby, and I've been on stage crew occasionally for the last decade...
In other words, you really have fucked up your ears.
No wonder $15 earbuds sound good to you.
No, he's right. In 90% of the situations that you'd use headphones you wouldn't get much mileage out of anything above decent $15-$30 earbuds. Don't get me wrong, I've got my expensive monitoring headphones for tracking, and I have a set of studio monitor speakers for my home recording setup, but I equally enjoy m $30 Pioneer phone buds and Creative desktop audio set for the kitchen. To a point the grandparent and I have it slightly easier than the people who absolutely want to have earthquake bass. You don't get earthquake bass with any kind of fidelity out of small drivers. It's just not physically possible. All these "bass enhanced!" tiny headphones and in-ears just have a resonant spike somewhere in the lows. Better lows? Bigger drivers. That means over-ears. And then they are either open and comfortable for large periods of time, but leaky as all hell meaning you either suffer from sound degradation from sound leaking in from outside so forget "fidelity", or you're annoying the crap out of everyone around you by the loud noise leaking away from you. Or you get closed over-ears. And sweat your ears off after anything longer than 20-30 minutes. And then you realize that if you add it all up, you can get an awful lot of enjoyment out of a good cheap pair of phones, and save your money to get a good amp and speakers with good drivers and crossovers for the spaces where you can listen to music on your own terms, in actual high fidelity.
They are *earphones* for pete's sake. How about you make the sound better? You know, the reason people buy them, to listen to stuff...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I used to travel a lot and that's when I got the headphones. But now I'm desk bound, the Bose work great. Diminishing the noise from the environment is a much lower hanging fruit than perfecting the reproduced audio signal.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
How about: use headphones, not earbuds.
sign me up. No earbuds will stay in my ears. If i remain perfectly still, they will simply fall out in a matter of minutes. My ears even seem to have some mechanism to actively eject the plug style buds that get shoved in the ear canal.
Cute, but no. One of my first stage jobs was with a great stage manager, who did several decades of concerts dating back to the Big Band era. He was nearly deaf from it, so before the first show of the season he called all of the techs together, handed out pairs of high-quality earplugs, and warned us that if he ever found us not wearing them without a good reason, we'd be fired.
At every show since then, I've either worn earplugs or an in-ear monitor whenever the main amps were on. It's also worth noting that the stage crew isn't usually in front of the speakers, so all together I'm usually listening to less than 70 decibels, even at the loudest gigs.
Protective equipment is not just there to make the lawyers happy. It's there so that a decade later I don't have to hire someone else to tune a system.
He probably ... is constantly going "Hunh?" to his wife.
Well, yes, but that's just because I'm inattentive, not deaf.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Some sensors to warn the dumbass wearing the headphones (with volume at 11, naturally) that they are about to walk into something (say, a wall, a manhole cover, a train, a taxi, etc) might be a good idea.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.