1) The "premium mobile audio" market is going to be the next huge market where Apple and Samsung face-off. It's no coincidence that Samsung announced their new line of premium headphones just a week before the Apple-Beats rumors began: http://www.samsung.com/uk/news/local/samsung-launches-level-...

2)Despite the tech communities denial, Apple and Beats are very much in sync. Beats is first and foremost a fashionable hardware company for the mass markets, which APPLE IS TOO. People in the tech community, and Hacker News more specifically, are having a hard time grasping this deal because they still see Apple's roots as a niche tech company of superior quality, whereas they've long moved to a mass market company. For a long time Apple was seen in a similar light as Beats; they charged a premium for commoditized product (personal computers with operating systems) and were heavily driven by marketing. Wether Hacker News wants to accept it or not, they're both predominantly mass market fashionable hardware companies that charge a premium for their ostensibly superior products. Beats has created a justifiably large brand, whether techies want to accept that fact or not. As the dominant hardware company, Apple is just acquiring a fast up and coming trendy hardware and accessories company, just as happens in every other industry. This deal makes sense.

http://www.dailydot.com/technology/apple-beats-jimmy-iovine-...

There's zero high-endness about Beats headphones. They're all right (at least if they were priced around 30% of their current price), but really, they don't sound particularly good.

Getting people who don’t care about how their music sounds that much and who don’t work with audio to seriously consider buying $300 headphones, that’s the achievement.

Those people used to either use the headphones that came with their devices, or they bought some cheap headphones (way under $100, probably even way under $50). Beats managed to attract those people to their products and managed to sell them to them for substantially more than they were previously ready to spend on headphones.

That’s what’s meant when people talk about Beats creating a new market. Buying expensive headphones just wasn’t a mainstream thing before Beats.

Honestly, I don’t even have much of a problem with that. People spend more money on better headphones. Sure, they spend too much for merely average headphones, but those are already better than anything they had before and once they buy into them I think it becomes way easier to convince them to try other headphones. Who cares if they spend too much?

Apple definitely bought the brand, not the headphone tech. Otherwise with such a cash stash they would have bought any of Beyerdynamic, Grado, Sennheiser, or the newer entries to headphones like Marshall (the Major is so-so but the Monitor is awesome)

While I'm still such a fan of sound quality that I will continue purchasing terrible-looking headphones, I can't deny that Beats are sexy as hell.

Consumers, right? :)

But even on technical quality Beats bring something new to the table. They have a built in amp for christ's sake. They lowered the bar for amped audio to something the masses would use. It is a typical story of reducing friction/barrier to entry and reaping rewards.

Every conversation I see about beats speaks of them as garbage and pure marketing etc etc. But this is entirely missing the point of what made beats a success. You can choose to bury your head in the sand or you can open your eyes and actually learn something from the beats phenomenon.

Sure, perfect match for Apple.

Beats headphones are not designed to deliver music accurately, they are designed to make it sound cooler.

Beats is like the Instagram of music. Yeah, you'll get an objectively higher quality from Photoshop, but Instagram is easier to use and makes things look cool.

Apparently there are quality issues with Beats, but that is exactly the sort of problem that Apple is well-equipped to solve.

The interesting thing, to me, about this is that Beats (the headphone, not the streaming music service) has the high price and is currently high-school chic, but similar things have been said about Apple. In Apple's case they're aided by the product's function being on par with the design.. The Beats stuff seems to consistently fall short of the quality of sound offered by Sennheiser and Sony's stuff.

Hence the public talking about "wifi" instead of "wireless ethernet connected to the internet."

The public doesn't know and doesn't respect the world as it was before the products became available which they feel express themselves.

I am/was with you in believing that high price doesn't mean "high-end," but that association has now become useless for communicating with the rest of the world.

The same can be said for the word "decimate." I've given up trying to use it properly and/or correct anyone. It's over. Also using "data" as plural. The world doesn't want a plan, it wants a dream.

The way I see it, the answer seems to be "no." The headphones are bulky, the logo gaudy - just not Steve. The advertising - think of the superbowl ads that rankled Seattle fans - just not really Apple's style or ethos.

I can't underestimate Apple - they are a wildly successful company, and may well see something great that I can't. Guess we'll just have to see.

Jobs would have wanted products perhaps like Bose - expensive, overpriced but ultimately good quality underneath. Beats is lower middle quality underneath all the plastic and Jobs wouldn't be able to sleep at night if he thought anything lower middle quality ever shipped out of his factories.

Where did you get this from?

I don't know, would he have? You asked the question in such a way as to imply the answer that no, he wouldn't, but you can't actually know that for sure. Also, we shouldn't be holding Apple to the standard of 'Steve Jobs was perfect so if he wouldn't have done this then it's bad'; Jobs made his share of mistakes anyway.

The confusing part is that Apple is spending $3bn on a company that makes mediocre, overpriced headphones with lousy sound quality. It makes no sense to me that they would buy a company like this when they have the money to create their own headphone line with better technology, equivalent or better design, and overall better result, likely at a lower price.

I guess we'll have to see where things go from here.

The deal would make no sense whatsoever if not for the music streaming service. It's interesting that they get the headphone business along with it - my hope is that they will gradually beef up the quality of the headphones in the process.

Total end-to-end control of music from creation to consumer listening.

Of course we can keep playing the what-if game, but I think there's a bit more to this deal than meets the eye.

If "Beats Suck" turns into "Beats are Really Good, and Less Expensive", then they will lock up a good deal of the higher end headphone market.

There may also be some interesting exploration of what's possible with a headphone-based wearable. Plenty of room in that particular fashion accessory...much more so than in a watch.

Let's look at this from a different angle... What if Apple already has a super cool headphone based wearable tech.

Maybe Apple RND came up with something like "Google Glass minus the visor" a while back. That something could well look like a chunky set of headphones, right?

Now let's take a look at the current wearables market... The high profile items are things like Glass, Pebble, Samsung Gear. And they're almost all painfully uncool (outside of Sillicon Valley, anyway).

If Apple were going to launch its chunky iHeadphones, it would know that it'd be up against the "dork factor." So it would make sense to spend some cash to negate that. If so, purchasing the coolest headphone manufacturer you can find, and tying their brand to your upcoming tech, makes a lot of sense.

While I applaud your imagination, this seems to go against Apple's vision of elegance and miniaturization (i.e., the perfect technology is invisible).

And then patent the idea:

Claim 1: Headphone connector means comprising a plurality of means that are incompatible with all other brands of means

I would argue that they've already been left behind on the music front. iPods are dead, no one wants to buy tracks on iTunes for $1.29, iTunes Radio was too little, too late. A lot of Apple fans are proudly using Spotify or other services on their iPhones. Heck, even the musicians associated with Apple are getting uncool.

So, at least a Beats acquisition is something.

http://www.billboard.com/biz/articles/news/1538108/itunes-cr...

That said, Apple hasn't had much impact on other types of music delivery--although it's probably worth noting that the business models associated with those other types of music delivery are a lot less clear than selling individual songs is.

I think so. Apple built the iPod and purchased SoundJam because they realized the world had changed. Buying CDs in stores and feeding them into your CD player was inevitably going to be replaced by digital media players/sales. iPod/iTunes filled this demand for many years but now the world has changed again. People don't spend $200 on iPods anymore but they will spend $200 on Beats headphones. They don't like feeding digital media files into their digital media players -- streaming is much easier. They also don't care much about owning music anymore or understand why a song costs 99 cents when they can goto YouTube and listen to it for free.

I heard that kind of talk when Steve died.

I'm sure there were plenty of products (AppleTV, smartwatch) in the pipeline before Jobs passed away. The question is, outside of those long-rumored about products, what next? This purchase of Beats just seems like a bad omen of acquisition rather than invention.

Maybe I'm wrong and the Apple-Beats combination will create a new product that changes how we look at headphones. Maybe I'm right and Apple is losing their vision. Only time tells and either way, it'll be interesting to look back on these crazy decades.

We'll see next week what they'll have to announce.

If you watch MKBHD's videos on youtube, he shows why beats headphones sound good and why there's plenty of others that sound better for a cheaper cost.

Basically it's not really a move Jobs would've done but that's what happens when your co-founders aren't running the company anymore. It's like the NFL draft.

I'd say Google is going up and Apple is going down.

They already made one - iTunes Radio. It sucks. Also Jobs was strongly against music streaming as he didn't think people wanted to rent music.

>> "Basically it's not really a move Jobs would've done"

You knew him well did you?

Rebranded mid-range electronics with pop star endorsements and hype.

Do people really consider Beats to be high end?

This might have been true five years ago, but it's not very accurate any more. Beats have come and gone as a fashion piece.

But I guess using the obvious interpretation wouldn't let you seem smart by shitting on something popular.

People who buy them do and that's what matters.

I would have gone with something like Ford and Lincoln, where they really are almost completely rebadged.

You mention "interiors are upgraded, accessories are upgraded" - a 2010 Escape looks and feels cheap. Plastic everywhere, everything creaks and squeaks when you lean on it a little. The Lincoln has (actual) wood paneling, things like retractable running boards and even a nearly ten year old Navigator feels nicer, so I'm not sure how you can say it's not like the Toyota-Lexus difference.

Do audiophiles really agree on anything?

To be fair, from what I've read Bose has the best noise cancelling system, albeit at a high price.

I'm not incredibly persnickety about audio quality and don't think I can tell the difference among various "good" headphones. But I have a pair of Bose headphones and like them.

I wonder if Steve would have backed out of the deal because of the video that was posted online prior to the announcement.

Something tells me that Steve wouldn't have done the deal to begin with though.