It might be worth reading up a bit – Beats music was included too, and Apple's product quality is generally considered to be pretty good.

That's not what I said, I said the licensing didn't carry over. Of course Beats Music was included in the purchase, but the deals Beats had with the music industry (licensing agreements) were nullified during the acquisition, from my understanding. So building on top of the Beats infrastructure wouldn't make -that- much sense. I'm sure some code was recycled, but the apps are very very different from one another. You could argue that Beats was more ironed out.

Not sure why I was downvoted, you can search online and see analysts questioning the streaming service deal because of the licensing being unlikely to carry over post-purchase. You can also see them chiming in on massive margins that Beats makes from their headphones and how it helps Apple seal more of the supply chain. The headphones were clearly the play, not Beats Music.

Nope they bought Beats Music too https://www.apple.com/pr/library/2014/05/28Apple-to-Acquire-...

I never said Beats Music was not included in the deal, I said the licensing was not. I said "rights" but I meant licensing agreements.

The acquisition was for the licenses foremost. The hardware and brand were secondary.

In some areas of the app at least, it looks like a basic re-skinning: http://imgur.com/a/2SKMV

> which have insane margins and are a "status symbol" that doesn't relate to quality at all...much like Apple itself.

Except Apple stuff is generally quality. My macbook pro is still the best laptop I have ever used 3 years later.