mike_galloway

The law of unintended consequences -  not putting a charger in every product is likely to increase the number of cheap and maybe poor quality products. Although other companies substandard products are not really Apples problem.

randominternetperson said:

sirdir said:

mike1 said:

rundhvid said:

Apple says this supports up to 96kHz, and means users "can enjoy high-fidelity, full-resolution audio."

—except ’s own Hi-Res Lossless in 192 kHz 👀🤭

Soooo???? You're saying they therefore shouldn't have improved it all then?

Probably that you can't call something 'full resolution' if you yourself deliver a much higher resolution. 

The average human can detect sound in the 20Hz to 20 kHZ.  96kHz is way outside the range of human hearing.

kurtvdpoel said:

It is physically impossible to insert a plug in a socket and touch the life metal parts, not even with a penny. Plug and socket are constructed that way.  Both have to follow strict standards. If both are constructed as imposed by those standards, nothing could happen to the girl. 

That’s not to say Alexa should have such a challenge.  That’s not acceptable behaviour for a smart speaker. But the little girl was never in danger. Not even when she had done what Alex instructed her to do. 

winstoner71 said:

emig647 said:

I really don’t understand this, especially when Bethesda was $7.5B. 

Just going to leave this here: https://medium.com/halting-problem/zyngas-offices-now-worth-more-than-zynga-the-company-47a704d48249

Because everyone has a phone. There isn’t one person out there who doesn’t have at least 1 game on their phone, be it if they play it or not. Mobile gaming is a huge deal, more so than any other platform. 

kiltedgreen said:

MacQuadra840av said:

macgui said:

Clearly most of you aren't familiar with high-end headphones. They can range from 2-10x the cost of these Apple headphones, easy.

It's comical the way some idiots pick one feature of these headphones then compare their little POS headsets and claim some kind of victory.

And suggesting that these have to be binned when the battery dies? Idiocy. Replacing batteries in AirPods isn't really very practical, and comparing that to replacing the batteries in the Max is again another exercise in stupidity.

These are pricey for the casual listener. Not all that pricey when compared to a litany of high-end headphones, if these live up to the claims. 

Clearly you are not familiar with Apple's marketing.  These are a far cry from being high-end headphones.  They are just excessively overpriced cans.  You don't have to be so insulting to people in your comment.  No professional recording studio or person would buy these.  They will buy the high-end headphones from reputable companies in the industry that know audio very well.  Apple is not that company.  Apple is known for mediocre audio quality in their products.  Apple does not even allow you to adjust tone quality in any of their speaker products.  These are heavily marketed as BLUETOOTH headphones to use with your iPhone for playing back heavily compressed audio files.  Something a professional audio person would never listen to.  Yes, Apple charges an extra $35 for an audio cable, but again, that is not what Apple wants you to do.  These are just overpriced ugly headphones that no one will be buying, except for a few fools that think anything with an Apple logo is somehow magical.

I’m familiar with Apple’s marketing - I bought the original Macintosh at release and have spent plenty on their products over the years and currently have 4 of their products.

I wasn’t trying to insult anyone, I was just surprised that people were so surprised at the price. I agree, no professional studio or audio engineer would buy these and Apple is clearly not aiming their marketing for these headphones at those people as can be seen from their web site.

You will find that Naim Audio’s NAC 552 pre-amplifier, costing £21,000 doesn’t allow you to adjust the “tone quality” either and such controls are very rare to find on a loudspeaker anyway. As for the mention of Bluetooth, again, Apple are not aiming these are audio engineers, they are being aimed at Apple’s usual audience (Pro Apps notwithstanding).

I think they look very attractive, much more so than the endless lumps of unimaginative black plastic that pass for the design of most headphones. To say they are overpriced is unwise when you have not even heard them; you may be right, but they combine a number of features which for a lot of people will be very appealing. If no one is buying them then I’m not sure why the shipping times are already lengthening unless it’s all the fools, in which case Apple will happily take their money!

crowley said:

mike_galloway said:

Why does the connector in the phone iPad etc even matter? 

AppleInsider said:

The EU continues to maintain that a common standard would reduce electronic waste

sevenfeet said:

genovelle said:

rcfa said:

Most people never heard of lossless? Really?

Anyone who’s ever heard of these silver discs calls “CD”s has heard of lossless.

Only Napster, music piracy in conjunction with slow internet, metered cellular data and expensive flash memory brought us the “blessings” of lossy audio compression algorithms.

So, no, lossless isn’t “niche”, it was and should always be the normal case, lossy compression should be the exception.

CDs are not lossless. They are limited to 16 bits and 44.1 kHz while lossless is at least 24 bits and 96 kHz. Every record theses days is recorded well above CD quality. 

CDs are lossless. They do not use a compression technology that throws away data like MP3 or AAC. That is the meaning of "lossless". Do not confuse that with the sampling and bit rates, which certainly do make a difference to the overall sound profile.

As for what Eddy Cue said, yes Spatial Audio will probably make a bigger difference to most listeners than lossless.  Most people get their music from their phones now and since lossless Bluetooth isn't a thing, Spatial Audio/Dolby Atmos makes more sense because it can be implemented with what most listeners already have.

That being said, I'm in the minority of users who does have the ability to easily show the difference between lossy AAC and lossless and especially HiRes audio. I have a dedicated 2 channel listening room, a smaller 5.1 home theater listening room and a larger 7.1.2 Dolby Atmos home theater. I spent some of today listening to the Atmos tracks in the Atmos theater and it sounded nice....not unlike the similar content on Tidal (which I also subscribe to mainly since I use the Roon player). I've been waiting for Apple to go lossless for a LONG time, and we got the added bonus of HiRes lossless which I wasn't expecting.

The problem for me now is that Roon has made it really easy to pipe my lossless and HiRes music to wherever I am in the house at the best possible quality. Apple Music and Airplay can't do that right now which makes using it for day to day listening a lot harder. Airplay can do straight 16 bit/44.1 CD quality lossless right now (it's been part of the standard since Airplay 1 was invented two decades ago). But I usually try to listen to HiRes audio these days if I can and that's going to be hard to feed my DACs which already connected to Roon.

narwhal said:

I think Apple should drop everything to 15% commission. The current situation is too complicated. As an under-$1M developer, I can't sell or buy apps without being bumped to 30% commission. Better to just keep it simple for everyone at 15%. Apple can handle the decreased revenue from the large developers.

Here's another idea: Apple should consider dropping the commission even further to 5%. So the App Store is basically a loss leader to sell hardware. It will lead to more apps in the App Store, will end all the gripes and lawsuits from developers about high rates, and basically kneecap other app stores from gaining a foothold.

grayfox691 said:

It's hard to feel anything but bad about this. That's the problem with multi national companies being a thing these days. There is no loyalty nor sense of community for these companies. Apple, much like other huge International corporations prioritize its current and future wellbeing without any thought given to where they came from. Apple will continue to play all sides in order to get favor with whom ever it needs to increase its revenue and influence. I don't know what the answer is to all of this but at the end of the day I think companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others have too much power. I don't like the idea of not sharing the wealth but at the same time as an American company I'd like to see apple spend some of its resources to balance that equation with (for example) some effort on improving its manufacturing footprint in the US. China won't be cheep forever. 

As an Apple customer from 2005 the few repairs I have had (apart from 2 iPhone batteries 5 years old) - all have been out of warranty and free.