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Apple To Unveil High-End AirPods, Over-Ear Headphones For 2019 (bloomberg.com)
According to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and Debby Wu, Apple is "planning higher-end AirPods, a new HomePod and studio-quality over-ear headphones for as early as next year." From the report: The Cupertino, California-based company is working on new AirPods with noise-cancellation and water resistance, the people said. Apple is trying to increase the range that AirPods can work away from an iPhone or iPad, one of the people said. You won't be swimming in them though: The water resistance is mainly to protect against rain and perspiration, the people said. Slated for 2019, the earbuds will likely cost more than the existing $159 pair, and that could push Apple to segment the product line like it does with iPhones, one of the people said. Apple is also working on a wireless charging case that's compatible with the upcoming AirPower charger.
There are over-ear headphones coming from Apple, too. Those will compete with pricey models from Bose Corp. and Sennheiser. They will use Apple branding and be a higher-end alternative to the company's Beats line. Apple originally intended to introduce the headphones by the end of 2018, but has faced development challenges, and is now targeting a launch as early as next year, the people said. A previous Bloomberg report was plugged, teasing a new version of the current AirPods that will feature a new chip and support for hands-free Siri activation. They are reportedly launching later this year.
There are over-ear headphones coming from Apple, too. Those will compete with pricey models from Bose Corp. and Sennheiser. They will use Apple branding and be a higher-end alternative to the company's Beats line. Apple originally intended to introduce the headphones by the end of 2018, but has faced development challenges, and is now targeting a launch as early as next year, the people said. A previous Bloomberg report was plugged, teasing a new version of the current AirPods that will feature a new chip and support for hands-free Siri activation. They are reportedly launching later this year.
When they announced the homepod (then delayed it) I though, "oh brother, they are so far behind in the personal blue tooth speaker market".
Boy was I wrong. Homepod is the biggest advance in audio reproduction technology is 50 years.
Seriously, all other consumer grade speakers are stereos that don't properly account for room geometry, the fact that sound disperses differently depending on frequency, nor do they have compensation of non-linear effect.
uop until the homepod every bit of effort was in making speakers that were more phase linear and could maintain that across large amplidude difference and frequency mixes. that is they were pefecting the transducers. But that does nothing to actually reproduce the holographic nature of a real sound field. emitting sound from 2 points can never ever reproduce the 3-sound field. It fails to account for the different dispersion of different frequencies. On top of that room reflections and absorptions modulate the sound field in frequency dependent ways that are un acounted for.
The homepood is far from done but it's self monitoring phased array can accounbt for this, and it's computational processing can dynamically adjust to non-linearitys and produce soundfields more structured than a steropair can-- all from a single can.
it will only get better but this is the watershed moment when audio replication technology for consumers changed.
I have no idea what they are planning. They already have Beats headphones so why they want to re-invent that makes no sense. On the otherhand perhaps they are going to introduce directional sound fields into headphones (they wont be the first, but chances are their audio processing technology will be more sophisticated).
I would bet they will make them so that when you tilt your head or face different directions the sound field changes so that it's like you are turning in a real sound field. Great for video games. Machine gun fire would stay in the right spatial position no matter which way you turn. You could tell the difference between a helicopter flying over in front of you or behind you.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Let's assume their headphones will also have noise cancellation, the real question is - will their noise-cancelling headphones be better than Bose? You may not like the Bose audio quality but they are the king of noise cancellation.
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