4 ms·

You nailed it so well in this comment, I have been pointing out this from when they launched Apple Music. The classic excuse which people hide behind is "but t

You nailed it so well in this comment, I have been pointing out this from when they launched Apple Music. The classic excuse which people hide behind is "but they don't have a monopoly". Sure, they don't have a monopoly in precise terms. But the power they have to push products in new verticals is just unfair to the competition as they can't compete on equal terms. Jabra's parent company in total earns less than 10% of what Apple earns selling just Airpods. It would be really sad if we lose iconic companies like Bose to these "want to own everything" tech giants. Sidenote: This downvoting pattern on critical comments on any threads related to Apple has been absurd for quite some time. Somehow we have entered into a territory where say a company like FB always is upto no good for most here but the opposite is true for Apple.

hindsightbias 6y ago
Interesting. I haven’t used greasemonkey in years, but was considering looking at it to filter out Apple threads. One week it’s all valiant Epic and fervent downvoting of those questioning the viability of the lawsuit, to a next week everyone agreeing with the judges surly review of the case. Looking at the top Apple threads for the last month, it hardly looks like HN is some positivity echo chamber: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=false&query=apple&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa... Bose used to be a gorilla in IP and was happy to sue Beats as soon as Apple announced they were buying it. Highly probable any settlement may have included carrying their products for some period of time.
- actuator 6y ago
  > Bose used to be a gorilla in IP and was happy to sue Beats as soon as Apple announced they were buying it Maybe they saw the writing on the wall and chose that path to fight on. > Highly probable any settlement may have included carrying their products for some period of time. Apple would have sold Bose products just for the retail cut they can get. They are considered premium and for a lot of categories Apple didn't have competitors till now, so it was better to just sell products like Bose for the retail cut.
kortilla 6y ago
Apple AirPods wouldn’t have sold so well if the existing Bluetooth headphone space wasn’t such trash. AirPods isn’t a great example because the product was so much better than anything else out there in the same category (ear buds). Maybe a better example would have been Apple Music?
- actuator 6y ago
  I am not a fan of earpod form factor at all but Jabra's wireless earphones are rated better by many sites like Wirecutter and at least I find the sound quality of Jabra much better.
  - hombre_fatal 6y ago
    Even if Jabra is better, how many people discover Jabra as they cycle through a bunch of pretty bad options? It's kind of like suggesting that Lenovo's T14s (I picked it at random) laptop is better and cheaper than a Macbook, so why would anyone a Macbook: People still have to wade through the X1 series, the P series, the rest of the T series, the X series, the Yoga series, the E series, the L series, the 11e series, just to find that one Macbook-killer. Or they can just go to apple.com and buy a laptop and be done with it. Except in this case, it's bluetooth earbuds.
    - actuator 6y ago
      Isn't that the point we are making here? This would eventually lead to a handful of companies dominating so many major markets. Jabra, Spotify are not competing with Apple on just merit. Apple has the advantage of pushing Airpods, Apple Music on their Macbook/iPhone customers because they have the cash and branding space on a red carpet for them.
      - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
        Apple is successful because they make good products. I'm extremely satisfied with Apple Music, my iPhone, and my Airpods Pro. So are almost all of my friends who use them. We all want to blame a boogeyman for all of our problems. There are plenty of alternatives available to Apple Music, the iphone, and the airpods. How many brands make wireless earbuds? how many phones? and Spotify, Amazon Music, Google, etc, all offer competing music streaming services. Apple certainly leverages many advantages is has, so does every other company. That doesn't make it monopolistic.
Nasrudith 6y ago
Wait until you hear about General Electric and their subdivisions - their massive market dominance made them so competitive it allowed them to shrink quite a bit so many of these are past tense. They made lightbulbs, generators, appliances, aviation electronics, healthcare and have their own finance and research wing. They never came anywhere close in scope to GE. Seriously why the massively different standard for "tech giants"? The only thing I can say is calm down. Electronics hardware manufacturing company makes electronics isn't anti-trust, it isn't even news.
seanhunter 6y ago
Bose is indeed an iconic company. That said, as a long-time bose user their products are deteriorating in obvious ways. As a heavy traveller (pre-crisis) my first pair of quietcomfort headphones were fantastic. They were so far ahead of anything else I had ever owned that when in a jetlagged state a sadly left them behind when departing a plane I had no hesitation in immediately buying another. These lasted a quarter of the time I had the original pair before the pads became uncomfortable, split and I replaced them. Still a pretty good pair of headphones but the second time the pads fell apart I decided that it was time to relegate these headphones to "backup" status and upgrade to wireless. I decided to get a bose pair even though I had reservations. They were ok - the sound quality was not as good as either of the previous wired pairs, but I figured that was the price you pay for the convenience of bluetooth wireless. They worked well until like my first pair I left them on a plane. OK no more bose - I bought a pair of Sennheisers. For the first month these were fantastic and half the cost of bose. I liked them so much when my wife wanted headphones I bought her an identical pair. Then one day they just decided they would no longer pair with my bluetooth devices. No idea why, no way of fixing them and when I looked online lots of other people have had the same problem and end up sending them back to Sennheiser and getting a replacement pair. I can't be bothered to do this so I go back to bose. My latest pair of bose QC headphones are by far the worst. The audio quality is worse than any previous pair of bose headphones I've owned, and the microphone is so poorly placed that I've given up using them for calls - whenever I did this in the past I ended up spending half the call explaining to the other person that I didn't need to speak up - I was already talking unreasonably loudly it was just that the microphone didn't work properly. Headphones seem to be going through the "tornado" phase right now where demand is soaring and quality is plummetting. The way for Bose to distinguish itself would be to go back to making good noise-cancelling headphones (which it used to do very well) but I think it is most likely they will follow the race to the bottom and get crushed by larger competitors. As a long-time fan of Bose headphones at the moment I won't be sad to see them disappear.

hindsightbias 6y ago

Interesting. I haven’t used greasemonkey in years, but was considering looking at it to filter out Apple threads. One week it’s all valiant Epic and fervent downvoting of those questioning the viability of the lawsuit, to a next week everyone agreeing with the judges surly review of the case. Looking at the top Apple threads for the last month, it hardly looks like HN is some positivity echo chamber: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=false&query=apple&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa... Bose used to be a gorilla in IP and was happy to sue Beats as soon as Apple announced they were buying it. Highly probable any settlement may have included carrying their products for some period of time.

actuator 6y ago
> Bose used to be a gorilla in IP and was happy to sue Beats as soon as Apple announced they were buying it Maybe they saw the writing on the wall and chose that path to fight on. > Highly probable any settlement may have included carrying their products for some period of time. Apple would have sold Bose products just for the retail cut they can get. They are considered premium and for a lot of categories Apple didn't have competitors till now, so it was better to just sell products like Bose for the retail cut.

kortilla 6y ago

Apple AirPods wouldn’t have sold so well if the existing Bluetooth headphone space wasn’t such trash. AirPods isn’t a great example because the product was so much better than anything else out there in the same category (ear buds). Maybe a better example would have been Apple Music?

actuator 6y ago
I am not a fan of earpod form factor at all but Jabra's wireless earphones are rated better by many sites like Wirecutter and at least I find the sound quality of Jabra much better.
- hombre_fatal 6y ago
  Even if Jabra is better, how many people discover Jabra as they cycle through a bunch of pretty bad options? It's kind of like suggesting that Lenovo's T14s (I picked it at random) laptop is better and cheaper than a Macbook, so why would anyone a Macbook: People still have to wade through the X1 series, the P series, the rest of the T series, the X series, the Yoga series, the E series, the L series, the 11e series, just to find that one Macbook-killer. Or they can just go to apple.com and buy a laptop and be done with it. Except in this case, it's bluetooth earbuds.
  - actuator 6y ago
    Isn't that the point we are making here? This would eventually lead to a handful of companies dominating so many major markets. Jabra, Spotify are not competing with Apple on just merit. Apple has the advantage of pushing Airpods, Apple Music on their Macbook/iPhone customers because they have the cash and branding space on a red carpet for them.
    - ntsplnkv2 6y ago
      Apple is successful because they make good products. I'm extremely satisfied with Apple Music, my iPhone, and my Airpods Pro. So are almost all of my friends who use them. We all want to blame a boogeyman for all of our problems. There are plenty of alternatives available to Apple Music, the iphone, and the airpods. How many brands make wireless earbuds? how many phones? and Spotify, Amazon Music, Google, etc, all offer competing music streaming services. Apple certainly leverages many advantages is has, so does every other company. That doesn't make it monopolistic.

Nasrudith 6y ago

Wait until you hear about General Electric and their subdivisions - their massive market dominance made them so competitive it allowed them to shrink quite a bit so many of these are past tense. They made lightbulbs, generators, appliances, aviation electronics, healthcare and have their own finance and research wing. They never came anywhere close in scope to GE. Seriously why the massively different standard for "tech giants"? The only thing I can say is calm down. Electronics hardware manufacturing company makes electronics isn't anti-trust, it isn't even news.

seanhunter 6y ago

Bose is indeed an iconic company. That said, as a long-time bose user their products are deteriorating in obvious ways. As a heavy traveller (pre-crisis) my first pair of quietcomfort headphones were fantastic. They were so far ahead of anything else I had ever owned that when in a jetlagged state a sadly left them behind when departing a plane I had no hesitation in immediately buying another. These lasted a quarter of the time I had the original pair before the pads became uncomfortable, split and I replaced them. Still a pretty good pair of headphones but the second time the pads fell apart I decided that it was time to relegate these headphones to "backup" status and upgrade to wireless. I decided to get a bose pair even though I had reservations. They were ok - the sound quality was not as good as either of the previous wired pairs, but I figured that was the price you pay for the convenience of bluetooth wireless. They worked well until like my first pair I left them on a plane. OK no more bose - I bought a pair of Sennheisers. For the first month these were fantastic and half the cost of bose. I liked them so much when my wife wanted headphones I bought her an identical pair. Then one day they just decided they would no longer pair with my bluetooth devices. No idea why, no way of fixing them and when I looked online lots of other people have had the same problem and end up sending them back to Sennheiser and getting a replacement pair. I can't be bothered to do this so I go back to bose. My latest pair of bose QC headphones are by far the worst. The audio quality is worse than any previous pair of bose headphones I've owned, and the microphone is so poorly placed that I've given up using them for calls - whenever I did this in the past I ended up spending half the call explaining to the other person that I didn't need to speak up - I was already talking unreasonably loudly it was just that the microphone didn't work properly. Headphones seem to be going through the "tornado" phase right now where demand is soaring and quality is plummetting. The way for Bose to distinguish itself would be to go back to making good noise-cancelling headphones (which it used to do very well) but I think it is most likely they will follow the race to the bottom and get crushed by larger competitors. As a long-time fan of Bose headphones at the moment I won't be sad to see them disappear.