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Bought airpods, they worked great Bought airpods pro, love the noise cancelling sound, think they sound great (to me) Bought homepod, sounds great As a custo
by r0fl 6y ago
Bought airpods, they worked great
Bought airpods pro, love the noise cancelling sound, think they sound great (to me)
Bought homepod, sounds great
As a customer, I just trust that Apple will not put out a crap product in this price range. It may be missing a headphone jack or some audio balancing features that audiogeeks will care about. I trust that they will sound very good (to my average ears), good good and most importantly have a great resale value if I get bored with them
They will also make a great gift for the people on my list that have everything
- untog 6y agoNo doubt Apple will have made a great product but that doesn't oblige you to buy them! What would the Airpod Max bring you that your existing Airpod Pros don't? What problem will they solve? It sounds like you're just buying things because Apple decided to sell them.
- tartoran 6y agoBuying apple also buys status
- bitcharmer 6y agoExcuse me, what?! How do you define status? Owning apple gear?
- halgir 6y agoOwning Apple gear signals status among a significant portion of the population. Maybe not for you, me or the majority of HN's clientele. But even for those who don't buy into this definition, adhering to it can still bring tactically social advantages. I have a very hard time believing you're not aware of this, and feigning ignorance in order to criticize the fact is just disingenuous.
- bitcharmer 6y agoCould you please define what status advantages Apple gear offers?
- halgir 6y agoApple gear is, to a degree, a classic Veblen good. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
- lotsofpulp 6y agoThen why did Apple lower the prices of iPhones, iPads, and MacBook Airs? According to that link’s definition of a “Veblen” good, if Apple had raised prices, then demand would have increased. Either someone in charge of pricing Apple products missed out on huge revenue increases by failing to raise the price, or it’s not a Veblen good. And there is no contention that the amortized cost of an iPhone SE, iPad Mini, or MacBook Air gets you the lowest cost to quality ratio of any competing product that also last the longest.
- halgir 6y agoYou're right, there's not a direct and linear increase in demand as price goes up. I concede my Veblen point.
- samatman 6y agoThey didn't. The iPad Pro, the iPhone X, and the Mac Pro were all shockingly expensive. I remember the chatter on Hacker News like it was yesterday. The first two sold like gangbusters and the last is less of a Veblen good and more of an anchor price for the rest of their lineup. Apple's 'affordable' version of a product is always "a good price for an expensive X", rather than actually cheap. And they go up from there.
- lotsofpulp 6y agoAnd the iPhone SE, iPad Mini, and MacBook Air are extremely competitively priced, especially if you amortize over their lifetimes versus competing products' lifetimes. There isn't even a competing product for iPad Mini. Maybe a case can be made for the highest end Apple products are Veblen goods, but that's a far less interesting comment than all Apple products are Veblen goods.
- lethologica 6y agoAnd what's wrong with that if you can afford it like the OP said they could?
- boogies 6y agoWaste. Physical electronic waste and opportunity cost. For example, these cost more money than an average resident of Sierra Leone earns in a month. You could donate to feed their family. Or for $550, you could spend $300 on buying a Kenyan family 5 sheep, $100 on gifting 5 Serbian women a month of literacy classes each, and $150 on 15 rides to school for refugee children in Egypt. Taxes not included.¹ ¹https://cwsbestgift.org/ https://cwsbestgift.org/
- cestith 6y agoOr you could buy yourself a really nice set of $200 headphones and still send $350 to charity.
- untog 6y agoYou're asking what's wrong with wasting money?
- schwartzworld 6y ago> As a customer, I just trust that Apple will not put out a crap product in this price range You have airpods and airpods pro, and you don't care enough about sound to spend an hour or two researching headphones. Why would you want these then? What about your current headphones isn't good enough that you are willing to pay $600? > They will also make a great gift for the people on my list that have everything I mean, so would a really great pair of headphones that costs $200 less. Also, if you are giving out $600 headphones as gifts, I would like us to be friends. I'm just saying I get having trust in a company, but what you are describing sounds like more than that.
- kube-system 6y agoSome people may enjoy listening to nice headphones and don’t enjoy reading about them. This happens in just about every hobby. e.g. Some people buy expensive golf clubs and don’t know how to properly swing them.
- fatbird 6y agoGP is self-indulgent, not mentally ill. My brother spent $2,000 upgrading his golf clubs, and didn't improve his score at all. GP said he's willing to spend an extra $200 to avoid two hours of research. Most of us here make at least $100/hr. The opportunity cost alone makes the purchase reasonable.
- bussierem 6y ago$100 * 40 hours * 52 weeks = $208,000 per year. You may want to take a step outside the HN "bubble of people bragging about their salaries" and realize that this is NOT a common salary level. Most people make less than half that unless they live in SV (and even then, many are making <200k a year...)
- tengbretson 6y agoHow many ears do you have?
- texasbigdata 6y agoHonestly as someone with $4,000 in-ear headphones that are just beautiful, the AirPods are great. I mean, subjectively crappy on any 1 on 1 dimension vs some competitor on the audiophile forums, but they sync, charge fast, shift between devices, etc. My usage is 50/50. Plus, the old apple stuff was hilariously bad on certain sound things; but it’s clear they’ve focused on it, and usually that means it’s fine.