Apple Recalls Beats Pill XL Speakers As Fire Risk

An anonymous reader writes: Apple has released a voluntary recall announcement for the Beats Pill XL range of speakers, advising customers that the rechargeable device is a fire risk, and advising them to stop using the devices immediately. Apple bought the manufacturers out in 2014 after the successful release of the XL speaker range in November 2013. The announcement reads in part: "Because customer safety is the company’s top priority, Apple is asking customers to stop using their Beats Pill XL speakers. Customers who purchased a Beats Pill XL speaker should visit www.apple.com/support/beats-pillxl-recall for details about how to return their product to Apple, and how to receive an Apple Store credit or electronic payment of $325."

Comments

Noone can argue

[Endloser]

that those speakers aren't hot.

Re:Noone can argue

[Megane]

But they sure can't be beat... sss.

Re:Noone can argue

[BronsCon]

This is what happens when marketing leads engineering: too much sizzle.

Re:Noone can argue

[KGIII]

LOL Microsoft might suck but I do not recall them actually having a product that could kill you and your family (and neighbors if you live in an apartment).

Re:Noone can argue

[Endloser]

Did you forget about the Xbox?

Re:Noone can argue

[geoskd]

LOL Microsoft might suck but I do not recall them actually having a product that could kill you and your family (and neighbors if you live in an apartment).

That might have something to do with the fact that they are largely a software company that does some hardware. Assuming you were comparing them to apple, apple is primarily a hardware company that does some software...

Re:Noone can argue

[KGIII]

No. I did not forget. I did not know about it. Thank you though.

Re:Speakers are for luddites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously can't believe you come here every day to type the same fucking shit. I guess everyone needs a hobby. Fucking loser.

Profit?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

So wait, you're telling us that we can purchase a new Beats Pill XL for $249, then turn around and get $325 electronic trade-in? That's $76 profit!!!

Re:Profit?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, you cannot buy them. They've been recalled. Remember the link you clicked on?

Re:Profit?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.amazon.com/Beats-XL...

Re:Profit?!!!

[tlhIngan]

So wait, you're telling us that we can purchase a new Beats Pill XL for $249, then turn around and get $325 electronic trade-in? That's $76 profit!!!

Probably, though word of the recall probably hit the retailers so they won't sell anymore to anyone.

But I believe Apple has to refund the cost to everyone who bought one even if they bought it at the launch price. And the overhead to go and check to see what everyone really paid may outweigh the fact that a few people who bought one yesterday might make a few bucks in profit.

After all, people don't keep receipts so if you're going to have a policy that applies to them, it better be uniform - if people who don't have receipts get $325 and people who do get what they paid, well, if you paid less, you'd "lose" the receipt as well.

And I'm sure the extra money helps Apple maintain their image - if you're going to profit, it's just extra incentive to send in the unit, and well, exploding fire-y things is probably something Apple wants to avoid. If it means paying an extra $75 to people, so be it.

The real question is - was this done by Apple themselves or did the CPSC or other agency demand Apple do it?

Re:Profit?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Haha! That link is not direct through Amazon but the frontend for MicrosoftStore, where they've already been pulled. You can get the non XL version from there for $199, if you want to live dangerously.

Re:Profit?!!!

[dimeglio]

Why does it matter? If Apple pulled them voluntarily then good for Apple. If it's a government agency, then great for them as well in doing their job. The issue is more about getting the OK to sell the product in the first place. Clearly, this thing wasn't tested properly.

Re:Profit?!!!

[lgw]

In America, you don't (yet) need government permission to sell a product, with a few exceptions e.g. drugs. Product liability is your problem, after the fact. Most producers of products with wires inside choose to interact with Underwriters Laboratories, because only a fool buys anything electric that's not UL listed.

UL does quite a good job in testing, but rechargeable batteries have some oddball corner cases, and I wonder how comprehensive UL is there (they're downright picky about all sorts of materials requirements related to how stuff burns).

Re:Profit?!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I like to buy cheap junk from China which is definitely not UL-listed. I just don't buy anything that might have to be plugged in or that I would be upset when it went up in flames. If I need reliability, I spend the extra.

Makes my wallet happier.

Re:Profit?!!!

[geoskd]

because only a fool buys anything electric that's not UL listed.

Yeah, the first thing I look for when I'm out shopping is that good ol' UL logo. I don't trust any of that CE shit, and god help em if all its got is CES.

People dont have the first clue what the hell any of them are. If you were to ask five random strangers off the street, you would have a better chance of one of them knowing the capital of Uzbekistan than of knowing what one of those marks means. The likely closest you'd get would be a general description of the FCC.

Re:Profit?!!!

[lgw]

That CE shit is socialist - start giving it credit for anything, and next thing you know your taxes are higher, and you have an unnatural fondness for cheese.

Seriously, though, it's the stores that will usually check for the UL logo for you, thanks to liability fears. The buyers for the big chains know what it means, and that's an important reason why producers bother.

Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Anybody who pays $325 for a pair of speakers has already been burnt enough

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Hussman32]

$325 isn't even entry level for audiophiles. I don't even want to disclose what I paid for mine.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Please share. I submitted a question to slashdot asking about recommendations for high end headphones for someone with a hearing disorder (severe tinnitus) and it got rejected.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[jandrese]

They're crappy speakers in a tube. $325 was a ripoff.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing audiophile about Beats. It used to be Monster Cable. So expensive garbage.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[HornWumpus]

At least half of 'audiophiles' are just morons trying to impress each other with how much money they spend on garbage.

I won't use the term anymore. 'Audiophiles' think LPs sound good, 4k$ is a reasonable price for a power cord and ceramic speaker wire hangers make the sound better.

We need a new term for 'cluefull audiophile'.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[pr0fessor]

I really like the sound of tube amps and speaker cabinets made of actual wood as apposed to regurgitated fiber board. $325 isn't the price of one speaker cab.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[countSudoku()]

Not surprisingly, I got some Beats headphones for the kid for xmas and after slight usage had to return them for service. The hinges looked like they were designed by Dr. Dre himself as they were built around a pin(metal, and not liquid metal) that could unseat itself with normal use and then lodge itself into the (plastic)works making the hinge not stick or extend properly. Anyway, it was after normal return period so I just took them to the nearest Apple Store and they repaired them for free. I got the kid a different pair that had a hinge designed by Snoop Dogg, so you KNOW it's good to go, little nephew.

If you spent $400 on the speakers, don't be sad, I spent that much on two pairs of "high-end" headphones. These kids with their Beats Headphones and their hoola-hoops, WTF is next?!

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you're an idiot, doesn't mean every other audiophile is.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[gstoddart]

LOL ... I'm pretty sure audiophiles aren't running speakers PC Mag lauded for "thumping, powerful Bluetooth audio" and portable design and which were available in pink.

Not even a little.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently you don't know the difference between mp3 and flac, or you have excessive wax buildup in your ears. Try some q-tips.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[nitehawk214]

Anybody who pays $325 for a pair of speakers has already been burnt enough

That was a sick burn .

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[sexconker]

Please share. I submitted a question to slashdot asking about recommendations for high end headphones for someone with a hearing disorder (severe tinnitus) and it got rejected.

It probably got rejected because you're a fucking retard if you want to use headphone while you already have a severe hearing disorder AND you want to overpay for the privilege.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Amouth]

No clue on headphones but for floor speakers i love B&W's

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses
lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for
each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps,
assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on
SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much
worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.

I started
collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I
downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just
sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrangewell don’t get me
started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps.
FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t
stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you
may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll
be glad you did.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[sexconker]

Just because you're an idiot, doesn't mean every other audiophile is.

It just means the last line is redundant.

Idiot(X) :- Audiophile(X).
Idiot(Hussman32).
Audiophile(Hussman32).

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[DigiShaman]

Bit rot occurs when the physical media holding the files is unable to recover from a CRC. This is far more common to occur with CDR media, not so much with HDD in comparison. Should a file become corrupted, it can be heard as an audible "blip" or skipping sound. MP3 and FLAC is not immune to a hardware level bit rot issue. Lossless and lossy only pertains to data compression. And assuming no media failure, both the MP3 and FLAC files will be the same till the ends of time.

If you're really paranoid, you can always run a MD5 or SHA1 checksum against your entire library of files and keep the results in a txt document for future reference. Should you suspect a corrupted files, re-run the check. If the checksum is the same, no loss occurred. If it's different, yeah, corrupted file.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually troll, I need some that have more bass and treble due to hearing loss. The cheap ones never work right without using a graphic equalizer.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Megane]

Really! You can't even buy a good audiophile volume knob for less than $500!

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[sound vision]

There doesn't need to be a term for it, you can just be someone that appreciates good playback equipment and production in music. The word "audiophile" is now thoroughly linked with the kind of idiots you described. That kind of stench can never be thoroughly erased.

The incredulous claims about vinyl and cabling have been around for a long time, but more recently computers have opened up a whole new level of foolery. There are programs out there that supposedly "keep your audio data in the CPU cache" instead of RAM and have some BS rationale as to why that improves audio quality. Then there's the high-res music stuff that's been gaining particular traction in recent years (not to be confused with lossless compression which has gained traction around the same period) especially as "respected" musicians have come to launch placebo-based product lines for people who want their music oversampled to several times beyond the limit of human hearing. I keep this link handy as a particularly thorough rebuttal to the claims they make:
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo...
The other nice thing about this link is it's from xiph.org - you know the guys who developed FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, etc.? They know more about audio reproduction, particularly digital audio reproduction, than Neil Young will ever know. He lacks either the will or the mental capacity to educate himself on the shit that's coming out of his own mouth when he gets up on his "digital music is terrible" soapbox. It's like, even if they accept that etched PVC disks aren't the pinnacle of audio reproduction (welcome to 1940), they have to invent some convoluted, cumbersome, expensive way to do digital audio so that their playback system is esoteric enough to please the Gods of Rock. I think Neil takes a particular shine to the "expensive" aspect, since he stands to profit from it all. But hey I'm sure he's a renown philanthropist or something, plus remember he wrote a couple decent songs 40 years ago? Fuck Neil Young.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[HornWumpus]

There are companies that make exactly what you are looking for. Hearing aid companies.

Any kids headphones will boost the bass, but what you are looking for is a hearing aid.

Do you really expect there to be a headphone with a frequency response built to compensate for your hearing loss? Perhaps what you a looking for is a 10 decibel notch filter.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[lgw]

With B&W you're generally paying for the artwork, not so much the speaker. If you love the way they look, that's fine - who's to say what art is worth? A lot of the "crazy" $10k audiophile speakers are really just solid $1000 speakers plus the price of the "look" of the speaker - and as long as people realize that's what they're paying for, what's to criticize?

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

I make my own speaker and I prefer mdf to real wood as it has no color on his own and a great damping factors. However I sometime glue nice exotics 1/8" wood planks over it to give it a natural finish. You can make speakers that sounds like they cost 4000 for 400 if you skip on the wood finish....

But I agree on the tubes amp.

Re: Already been burnt by the price

[WhatHump]

I have an acoustic neuroma (benign tumour on the auditory nerve), which combines high frequency hearing loss with tinnitus. I use Sennheiser buds (can't remember the model). They're decent. No amount of equalisation will give me back my hearing above 2kHz, but the Sennheisers are pretty good and were under 100 bucks.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Amouth]

I would agree with you if you only look at their top shelf high priced speakers but they do make some very good quality more traditional speakers which offer great sound quality for the money.

I've got two floor standing load speakers and two of their book shelf variants of the same line. Both offer wonderful sound quality and while not cheap in price where not super expensive. I believe i have ~1,000$ total in for all 4, and they have lasted me now 17 years with zero signs that i'll ever need or want to get a different set.

I will agree that a lot of B&W speakers on their top end are works of Art as much as they are speakers, i just can't justify that for a speaker (although i do for paintings so i also can't argue with what people view as Art)

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[KGIII]

I have been happy with Cambridge SoundWorks. Look into their "professional" grade stuff as much of their consumer stuff is garbage now.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[KGIII]

...

woosh ...

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[KGIII]

Or he just prefers a different sound.

Re: Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

And that's how you destroy your hearing even further.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

In a blind test, you wouldn't be able to tell a difference. It's placebo and you are an idiot.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[onkelonkel]

"incredulous" - a word that sounds like "incredible" but means something entirely different.
 
Grammar Nazis for Jesus

Re: Already been burnt by the price

[Anonymous Coward]

Pedophile, noun. Someone who is into children for no good reason.
Audiophile, noun. Someone who is into over priced audio equipment for no good reason.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[geoskd]

In a blind test, you wouldn't be able to tell a difference. It's placebo and you are an idiot.

There are specific circumstances where various types of amplifiers sound different. Tube amplifiers when driven beyond their ratings tend to degrade somewhat gracefully meaning they distort the sound less than other types of transistors. That having been said, if you're using your amplifier in such a way that you are noticing this actual behavior, your amp is too small and you should get a bigger one. At 100 dB, a 25kW amp is going to sound massively better than a 50W amp no matter what kind of amp it is.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[AmiMoJo]

Actually the vinyl thing is real, because of the loudness war. Long story short CDs can be a lot louder than vinyl. If you tried to put a typical 90s/2000s rock/pop CD mix onto vinyl the manufacturer would either tell you they couldn't make it or the needle would jump out of the tracks when you played it. It's a physical limitation of the medium.

So the mix on vinyl versions of albums has to be less loud, i.e. better mixed than the CD release. Okay, you add some noise, but at least the master isn't horribly distorted and full of clipping. It's a good compromise until they release the "remastered" CD a decade or two later.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[HornWumpus]

Remixed CD tracks (with the loudness turned down) still have better S/N ratios than vinyl. Alternatively get better taste in music and just put the Beeber down.

Vinyl is also pre-distorted. To keep the highs audible. Of course that distortion is balanced against the frequency response in common moving magnet phono cartridges. Break the bread to buy a decent moving coil cartridge and you're back to having fucked sound and using an equalizer to fix it. Analog is joy.

Of course any claims of vinyls superiority is made a joke by the typical USB turntables available today. It is just a stupid hipster thing. Even if you accepted the argument that a new LP on a direct drive turntable with a good phono cart was better, it would mean nothing when you were talking about a $250 USB turntable.

This all started when the very first CDs were just the LP mix. Those sounded like tinny crap. It's now 35 years later and people are still repeating the story and never ever thinking for themselves.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[Hussman32]

I bought a pair of Vienna Acoustics second hand, the look is part of it, but they also can handle more power than my receiver can send so I haven't heard distortion.

So much of the sound quality depends on the room, the receiver, the speaker configuration and balance. I'm barely versed on it but after a while you can hear a lot that you didn't before in your favorite tracks.

Re:Already been burnt by the price

[sexconker]

Go ask your doctor what headphones he recommends for compensating for your hearing loss.

Yo Mama

[Anonymous Coward]

Yo Mama's Beat is so hot her ears are always burning!

Re:Speakers are for luddites.

[Anonymous Coward]

King Frosty piss must be pissed for losing frost piss!

Piss!

Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers

[Anonymous Coward]

My Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers have been working fine for 50 years
and they don;t even get warm.
What's in a Beats speaker that causes the conflagration?
Or is it the crappy music that kids play today?
The nice thing about the Jim Lansing D-130 is the efficiency.
Even a 10W amplifier can blast you out of the room.

Re:Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers

[ihtoit]

lithium battery.

Yep, those things that don't like being vibrated to shit.

Re:Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers

[geekmux]

My Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers have been working fine for 50 years.

Yup. Pair of Pioneers going on 45 years here. They don't make 'em like they used to.

and they don;t even get warm. What's in a Beats speaker that causes the conflagration?

Well, to be fair, they have this rather nifty feature with the fact that it runs on a rechargeable battery...you know the kind that our government refuses to acknowledge as "hazardous" amidst a sea of torched consumer products.

Or is it the crappy music that kids play today?

No, that just makes your ears bleed and make you scream for real singers to emerge again. It doesn't really do anything to your speakers that likely played their fair share of crappy 70's disco.

The nice thing about the Jim Lansing D-130 is the efficiency. Even a 10W amplifier can blast you out of the room.

Yup. In that sense, it's pretty damn awesome.

Re:Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers

[steveg]

Hmmph.

My Dahlquist DQ10s are practically brand new. Bought them in 1975. Still sound great, even though I had to re-cone the woofers about 15 years ago when the paper gave out.

Re:Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers

[Anonymous Coward]

That's ok; vibration would be the result of the speaker producing sound.. These work as an anti-gravity device! (though somehow they keep the field localized to a persons wallet..)

Re:Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers

[geoskd]

Yup. Pair of Pioneers going on 45 years here. They don't make 'em like they used to.

The hell they don't. I bought a single channel Bluetooth at Radioshack during the post mortem, and the sound quality out of it is every bit as good as the pair of cerwin vegas my parents bought back in the 70's. Granted it wont handle 200Watts, but the sound quality is awesome for a piece of equipment that was supposed to retail for $99.95.

I also defy anyone to find car audio speakers from the 70s that can beat a decent pair of modern kenwood for raw power or sound quality.

Even Bose speakers put out incredible sound compared with the stuff you could get back in the 70s and 80s. Speakers today are smaller, louder, higher fidelity and cheaper.

Re:Speakers are for luddites.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously can't app you app here every app to app the same apping app. I guess everyapp needs an app. Apping app.

Apped that for you!

Apps!

Sounds like a...

[Anonymous Coward]

bitter pill Apple swallowed with Beats.

Re:Sounds like a...

[HornWumpus]

Apple knows its market.

Beats speakers are better because they cost more and are sparkly. Perfect fit for Apple.

Re:Sounds like a...

[c]

Beats speakers are better because they cost more and are sparkly.

Sparkly... sparky... whoops. Honest mistake.

Re:Sounds like a...

[Bing Tsher E]

Apple bought the Beats company for the brand name and the large subscriber database from the music service. Apple suffers from a problem of being 'your parents brand' and wanted to buy something hip.

It's a lot like if JC Penney bought Beats, but don't tell Apple.

Good news everyone!

[SeaFox]

Apple has a replacement product: The Beats Suppository XS.

Re:Good news everyone!

[Anonymous Coward]

But does it inflate and give gentle electric shocks while doing it?

Laying it on thick aren't they?

[pecosdave]

FTR: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world

Yeah, I admit their hardware is pretty good, and it's certainly up near the top in design and reliability, but damn, saying it that way sure does look like a conflict of interest.

Re:Laying it on thick aren't they?

[HornWumpus]

Get out FA reader. We don't like your kind.

Re:Laying it on thick aren't they?

[cdrudge]

That isn't the actual recall notice, it's the press release about the recall notice. Just about every non-financial press release I've ever read has some blurb equally fluffy about the company or division that is releasing the press release.

Re:Laying it on thick aren't they?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Get out FA reader. We don't like your kind.

It's not like you go for objectivity around here, either.

three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[ihtoit]

ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS??

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[ArcadeMan]

Hey you, calm the fuck down. Those speakers are not three hundred dollars.

They're three hundred and thirty dollars.

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[ihtoit]

I think my heart just imploded.

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[Anonymous Coward]

How else is Dr. Dre going to pay off all those loans he took out for medical school?.....-whisper,whisper- wait, he is not a medical doctor, well does he have a doctorate in anything? -whisper,whisper-...no.....are they made out of gold....no....yeah...SCREW THAT!

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[HornWumpus]

You don't want to know what Bose will charge you for a clock radio.

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[danomac]

Which cost about $10 to make. No wait, less than that, as they obviously took shortcuts somewhere. Otherwise they wouldn't be catching fire.

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should try the 500USD Bose countertop radio instead. They've been selling those for over a decade and obviously someone is buying them.

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not just any old desktop speaker, it's an utter garbage speaker that is easily outclassed by all competitors which has links to Dr Dre. You want to be a cool as Dr Dre don't you?

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[Camembert]

$325 for good audio can be a sensible investment for the music loving computer user.
That is, if it is indeed good audio.
Instead of designer desktop speakers, I bought this at approx $400/pair inline retailer Price: http://www.krksys.com/krk-stud...
Bigger and uglier but musically quite satisfying and fun to edit my home movies on.

Re:three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker??

[ihtoit]

mine's an ugly setup too, but boy does it sound sweet.

First, the really loud shit:
Sansui 331 4-channel amp (a 1975 vintage original!) feeding 4x Goodmans GLS250 shelf monitors

Then, the studio stuff:
Acoustic Solutions 5.1 home theatre (which probably has a higher per-channel output than the Sansui!)
5xCambridge Soundworks satellites (rescued from a blown DTT2200 setup)

All fed using Tech+Link interconnects. And no clearly I didn't pay £25 per cable. Smart-arsed me only paid £5 for a random box of loose cables from a yard sale. Most turned out to be TL interconnects and Belkin USB cables.

Total cost: £85 including cables.

One can only hope Apple will sort Beats out

[TigerPlish]

Apple pays attention to sound quality. This is evident from what comes out of the iphone, ipad, mac mini.

Beats, on the other hand, dips the music in sweet syrup, then wraps it in a soft blanket and then gives the bass a +10db boost. That's what their headphones sounded like to me.

I can only hope Apple will show beats what music really sounds like.

And as for bluetooth speakers, I use a JBL Clip. At least JBL remembers how to make good sound. Beats never learned. Plus it's really hard to clip a Pill to your backpack.. unless you improvise a carrying handle out of 1/2 inch velcro like a bud of mine did.

Re:One can only hope Apple will sort Beats out

[Anonymous Coward]

"Apple pays attention to sound quality. This is evident from what comes out of the iphone, ipad, mac mini." Citation?

Are you calling their iPod earbuds high quality?

Re:One can only hope Apple will sort Beats out

[sound vision]

What's with the talk of syrup and blankets? 10 dB boost in the bass range is at least a real description of its audio reproduction characteristics. Although I don't think you'll get much deep bass out of a, what is that, 2 inch driver? It wouldn't surprise me if they just took some off-the-shelf mass produced driver, maybe consulted Dr. Dre on the styling, and released the product.

Re:One can only hope Apple will sort Beats out

[sound vision]

He was probably referring to the output from the devices, not the headphones bundled with them. I've only ever owned one iPod, which is a Nano (3rd or 4th gen, I forget) and I actually have some issues with the sound on it. If you play everything straight, it's fine. But if you try to use the equalizer, the sound will almost invariably clip somewhere in the signal chain... it looks like the equalizer presets all *boost* certain bands without reducing any, causing the signal to clip. And it happens somewhere pretty early in the signal chain, because it gets clipped before it hits the volume control - turning down the volume doesn't alleviate it. If the iPod actually let you change individual bands in the EQ (like my Rio Karma from 2003...) you could fix the issue yourself. Or if Apple had tested the EQ before shipping it. Or if they had changed the EQ's behavior during any of the firmware updates they did. No, I don't think "Apple pays attention to sound quality" is accurate. Maybe the equalizer in newer iPods doesn't suck (maybe it does?), but the iPod was already a mature product line when my model was released. It should have been fixed way before that point.

Last songs

[Anonymous Coward]

If there was a "black box" monitoring these speakers, would it reveal a "bucket list" like this?

1. Great Balls Of Fire - Jerry Lee Lewis

2. Ring Of Fire - Johnny Cash

3. Play With Fire - The Rolling Stones

4. Fire In The Engine Room - Richard Thompson

5. Disco Inferno - Trampps

Inquiring minds want to know!

Re:Last songs

[bswarm]

You forgot "Burning down the house - Talking Heads"

Re:Last songs

[ArcadeMan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Points at Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Hideki!

Time to hunt on eBay!

[ArcadeMan]

Buy broken speaker on eBay, get 325$USD in Apple store credit!

Re:Time to hunt on eBay!

[Anonymous Coward]

Or, keep the speaker and send them some ashes instead.

Feature

[nitehawk214]

I thought setting the heads of people that use Beats on fire was a feature.

right its

[Anonymous Coward]

For once, someone knows the difference between its and it's.

Re:right its

[HornWumpus]

I'm wright 50% of the time!

IObviously the speakers used by

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Spinal Tap

Rechargeable speakers?

[tompaulco]

Why would you need to recharge speakers? I don't even own any speakers that need to be plugged into a wall outlet, let alone be plugged into a recharger. Why is the "save the world" crowd so enamored with wasteful battery technology?

Re:Rechargeable speakers?

[Anonymous Coward]

To make it portable.

More like..

[danknight48]

Apple allows clueless customers (followers) a second chance to make an "intelligent" purchasing decision.

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you brought this product for $400 at a local box store 2 days ago you only get $325 back? If someone has a receipt for the purchase for more than this shouldn't they get the full refund?

Beats got beat

[Anonymous Coward]

More overpriced and mediocre crap from Apple.