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Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores

Apple has long sold Bose headphones and speakers in its retail stores, including in the time since it acquired Bose-competitor Beats Audio, and despite the lawsuit filed by Bose against Apple alleging patent violations on the part of Beats. That's come to an end this week, though: Apple's dropped Bose merchandise both in its retail locations and online, despite recent news that the two companies have settled the patent suit.

7 of 328 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Tit for tat by rmdingler · · Score: 5, Funny
    True.

    And the NFL isn't doing very well with their Beats women & children shenanigans either.

    --
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  2. Re:One crap audio brand battling with another by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I always find it amazing that audiophiles want 'flat'...this is nice is you want to listen to 'audio' as opposed to music. Unless I'm doing sound design work where the stuff is intended to be in a variety of types and styles of music (i.e., owned a company that use to provide instrument samples / libraries for synth companies), I'm not going to want to listen to anything flat.

    Audiophiles—at least the ones who competently seek ways to improve quality, as opposed to the pseudoaudiophiles that spend $200 on a power cord—often listen to a wide range of music. For us, flat is a virtue, because any accentuation of frequency ranges that makes one style of music sound better invariably makes another style of music sound worse.

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  3. Re:One crap audio brand battling with another by sound+vision · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Flat" relating to headphones usually means a flat frequency response, unless you are talking to people who don't have a clue (which is a very real possibility). A flat frequency response is the goal of a high fidelity system, the very word "fidelity" means trueness to the original source, which is what you get with a flat frequency response. The idea that a speaker needs to distort the sound because it "sounds good" is absurd, and in fact it's the exact same rationale audiofools have for preferring vinyl. Vinyl inherently has an uneven frequency response (among other things) and it is those characteristics that give it is distinctive sound, leading some to prefer it. It is distinctive but it is low fidelity, just like a poor set of speakers. Besides, if you want the treble or bass jacked up or some other frequency band notched, that's what equalizers are for. Although it should be noted they are called equalizers because the intent is to bring an equal loudness to all frequency bands - aka, a flat frequency response. To compensate for speakers that are not already flat.

  4. lol by Charliemopps · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So 3 companies, all of whom make electronics that consist of about 99% hype and about 1% tech, sue each other?

    What's funny is Bose has been at this a very long time. Don't buy Bose people! It's a scam, it's always been a scam. There are plenty of good stereos and speakers out there, Bose doesn't make any of them. And beats? That's literally the cheapest Chinese headphones they could find this month and they slap a Dr Dre sticker on it.

  5. Re:One crap audio brand battling with another by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Informative

    You consider $230 a considerable amount of money? Do you live in Sub-Saharan Africa or some shit?

    I live in Romania, where the headphones I mention cost around half the average monthly salary. There's a wide range between Third World poverty and your presumably US income, and many Eastern Europeans would balk at spending so much for headphones.

  6. Re:One crap audio brand battling with another by Aighearach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any work done in photoshop because it's more true to the source or some shit. Sort of like how audiofools never seem to have a problem wacking off to lossy jpegs but put on an mp3 and you'll never hear the end of it.

    No, it is like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any extra photo filters applied after the artist has already completed and distributed the image. Yes, of course the artist uses photoshop; just like the recording professionals use distortion!

    The reason you want a flat frequency response from the speakers is because the sound has already been properly distorted by the artist. Just like, a computer monitor with accurate color will reproduce the colors the artist chose in photoslop!

  7. Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Every time I've priced them out against something like Sony, that's correct.

    However, against Asus, who IMO makes better products, they are much more expensive. Let's do it now.

    Holy shit, the only Apple laptop that doesn't use Intel Integrated, is the 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display. It's come along a lot, but still sucks if doing anything 3D that actually uses the graphics card.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/...
    Differences: +.1GHz Lenovo
    256GB SSD (Lenovo) vs 512GB SSD (Apple)
    Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (Lenovo) vs 2880 x 1800 (Apple)
    Screen size: 15.6 (Lenovo) vs 15.4 (Apple)
    Graphics: 860M (Lenovo) vs 750M (Apple)
    Weight: 5.29 (Lenovo) vs 4.46 lbs (Apple)
    Apple lacks a built in Gigabit Ethernet port. It has 2 Thunderbolt ports (basically can be considered proprietary, given usage at the moment)

    Cost?
      $1,269.99 vs $2499
    So 2 laptops with almost all specs, exceeding the Apple's specs for the same price. (~230 for a 512GB SSD, if you want to increase storage that way, which still puts it at 60% of the cost)