Those Crazy Kids Over At Apple Have Done It Again! This Time They Invented..... $550 Headphones
Six years. It's been SIX YEARS since Apple acquired Beats by Dre and we finally have the first, true, over-the-ear headphones from our overlords over at Apple. They decided to keep their entire headphone division under the Air Pod umbrella, which was certainly a choice. And what they've presented to you, here today, is a pair of $550 noise-cancelling headphones that will pair to your devices slightly faster than the competition. If you're someone who simply cannot wait those three extra seconds, then these are certainly the headphones for you.
I have no doubts about the sound quality. Between Apple and Beats they have some of the best resources at their disposal in the entire industry. But will they be noticeably better than say, Sony's noise-cancelling bluetooth headphones that will put an extra $200 in your pocket? No, probably not. But they do come in more colors, so that's something. Kinda like... yanno, Beats. Apple bought Beats, sat on them for six years, and came out with more expensive Beats. Granted, they also bought a streaming service in that $3 billion acquisition, so it's not like they've just been sitting on their thumbs doing nothing for six years. But when they acquired a headphone company I expected a little more than a jacked up version of what was already available.
Most people don't care enough about high end sound quality to drop half a grand on headphones. If they truly did, Tidal's HiFi streaming would have them as the industry's leading streaming service. Instead, they have 3 million subscribers to Apple Music's 72 million, both of which are dwarfed by Spotify's 286 million monthly users (144 million premium subscribers). How did Spotify get that top spot? They're the cheapest. If the internet has taught us anything, it's that people LOVE music. They just don't want to pay for it. $550 headphones with a zillion more affordable options on the table, in the midst of a pandemic, feels like a misreading of the room from Apple.