Despite Patent Settlement, Apple Pulls Bose Merchandise From Its Stores 328
Apple has long sold Bose headphones and speakers in its retail stores, including in the time since it acquired Bose-competitor Beats Audio, and despite the lawsuit filed by Bose against Apple alleging patent violations on the part of Beats. That's come to an end this week, though: Apple's dropped Bose merchandise both in its retail locations and online, despite recent news that the two companies have settled the patent suit.
Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:2, Insightful)
And so is Apple.
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And so is Apple.
Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware.
Further, that slight price difference is fully justified, given the engineering research Apple puts in to ensure that the hardware all works together in complete harmony; most PC manufacturers rely on Microsoft to do that job via drivers and software bridges.
The result is a machine that takes very good advantage o
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[the] price difference is fully justified, given the engineering research Apple puts in to ensure that the hardware all works together in complete harmony
Apparently, autosuggestion is a very powerful marketing tool. :)
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:5, Informative)
Without needing VMWare or any third-party VM, Apple (unlike Windows or Linux) fully supports dual-boot out-of-the-box.
That's a function of the bootloader, not the OS. GRUB, the default bootloader for most Linux distros of any popularity, supports dual-boot, tri-boot, quad-boot, however-the-fuck-many-boot, right out of the box. In fact, the Windows bootloader supports this, as well, though it's a bit more work to set up.
I'm sitting here typing this on a Mac, because the platform does have its advantages, but dual-boot isn't something unique to the Mac.
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:4, Interesting)
it's part of the OS
When was the last time YOU wrote a fuckin' bootloader? Last time I did that was oh, about... a week ago. It most certainly IS a separate piece of code--maybe bundled with other bits of the OS, but it isn't the same binary. A bootloader needs to be SMALL. A kernel can be quite LARGE (and that is the OS *proper*).
Citation [osxbook.com], because I fully expect you to be a dumb shit and claim I'm wrong:
BootX (/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX) is the default bootloader on Mac OS X.
BootX is also the name of an open source bootloader (different from Apple's BootX) that allows dual-booting Mac OS and Linux on "Old World" machines.
At this point, BootX draws the Apple logo splash screen, and starts the spinning cursor. If booting from a network device, a spinning globe is drawn instead.
Depending on various conditions, BootX tries to retrieve and load the kernel cache file.
The next step is to "decode" the kernel. If the kernel header indicates a compressed kernel, BootX tries to decompress it (typical LZSS compression is used, as you compress this kind of data once but expand it many times). Since the kernel binary can potentially be a "fat" binary (code for multiple architectures residing in the same binary), BootX checks if it indeed is (fat), and if so, "thins" it (figures out the PowerPC code).
BootX attempts to decode the file (possibly "thinned") as a Mach-O binary. If this fails, BootX also tries to decode it as ELF.
If the above fails, BootX gives up, draws the failed boot picture, and goes into an infinite loop.
If BootX is successful so far, it saves filesystem cache hits, misses and evicts, sets up various boot arguments and values (such as whether this is a graphical or verbose boot, whether there are some flags to be passed to the kernel, the size of installed RAM), and also calls a recursive function to flatten the device tree.
Finally, BootX "calls" the kernel, immediately before which it "quiesces" Open Firmware, an operation as a result of which any asynchronous tasks in the firmware, timers, or DMA get stopped, etc.
If you mean bundled the same way OS X is, then GRUB is part of the OS too, since distros package it up with the kernel.
You fail. Please do not ever write system software because it would be worse than The Poettering. This comment is on par with you claiming that iOS is part of the "Linux theme". FFS, you keep showcasing how ignorant you are about system dev, so please do us all a favor and SHUT THE FUCK UP.
The worst part is that you make some pretty intelligent comments--until you get into talking shit out of your ass about things you clearly don't know diddly about. So again, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
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When was the last time YOU wrote a fuckin' bootloader? Last time I did that was oh, about... a week ago.
And you think that makes you qualified to talk about the value of commercial hardware? I don't think so.
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Admit it, Jane. You not only inhaled--you drank the bong water afterwards.
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Second, it's not a separate bootloader, like GRUB or Chameleon, it's part of the OS.
If you have "a bootloader as a part of the OS", I think you're sitting in front of a hypervisor/VM system. ;-) Otherwise the things you just said make little sense to me.
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:5, Informative)
But mainly, as I clearly stated above, what you are missing with other products is that you don't have the option of dual-booting AND, at the same time, running the SAME foreign OS install in VMWare or the like. If you want to do that you are stuck with 2 different foreign OS installs, and your files won't be in sync.
I didn't say dual-booting was unique to Mac. Read it again. What I wrote was that it's BETTER. Especially if you have VMWare. While that's a third-party product, it enables you to do what other OSes won't do, even with VMWare.
Without specifying which VMWare product it is a bit difficult to see what you are getting at - workstation or full ring-0 hypervisor like ESX ?
If you mean just the option of booting a virtual disk (vhd) which you can also use in an emulator, Windows has had that for 5 years (since 7) without needing a third party emulator (VirtualPC from MS).
If you mean having the option of booting a vhd and having also a full hypervisor that can run that vhd as a virtual machine, built into the OS, Windows has had that for six years on the server OS versions, and two on client (Windows 8) - Hyper-V is built in along with native-boot-from-vhd.
There are also Linux options for both boot-native-from-vhd and built in hypervisors.
So, struggling a bit to see what it is you think other OSes can't do ?
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:4, Informative)
Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware
Actually, the high-end Mac Pro is currently cheaper [extremetech.com].
I know you can do that with other OSes, but they all require 3rd-party VM software to do it. Apple builds it in.
This has nothing to do with VMs.
Bootcamp is little more than a setup and partition tool. You can have multi-boot (keyword: bootloader) on all PCs including Macs, but you can't just go ahead and install OS X on most of the ones not designed in Cupertino.
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You missed the point, too. [...] I don't know any other OS that quite supports this.
That's not an OS feature.
That's REALLY an advantage.
I don't see an ADVANTAGE there. It's a convenient feature (also available under different systems, as pointed out by an AC here [slashdot.org]), but rarely necessary.
You don't need to access your game from the host anyway, since you want to game natively.
As for your other software, you can also use WINE/Crossover and if that fails have a little barebones XP (like Gamers Edition @ ~250 MB) that can run the rest. (You can have that installed in ~5 minutes (!) and be done with it.) In my experience V
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:5, Interesting)
You are an idiot.
I was using the same NT 4 install as a native boot and under VMWare, under the original VMWare beta. Back before it was Workstation, back before Player or any of the server products existed. Back when you had to build the kernel modules by hand after tweaking the kernel. Back when the only VMware version available outside the company was for Linux. Back before OS X was released.
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Reactivation on hardware change (Score:2)
As long as the guest is OK booting under either hardware (physical and virtual) dynamically, it should work fine. It's been a long time since mainstream OSs couldn't do that.
Does a Windows guest still require the user to telephone someone in India when switching between physical and virtual machines after having used up all Internet reactivations?
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Because you complained about modding like a twat, modbomb on the way to as many posts of yours as I can, once I get me one of them piles of 15 I get regularly.
While I understand the sentiment, as I have been tempted to do the same in the past, I respectfully ask you to not abuse the mod system this way. The mod system is meant to be used to rate each post on it's own merits, not the poster themselves. I'm not judging Jane.q here, but even trolls can make a good point on occasion.
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:5, Informative)
Every time I've priced them out against something like Sony, that's correct.
However, against Asus, who IMO makes better products, they are much more expensive. Let's do it now.
Holy shit, the only Apple laptop that doesn't use Intel Integrated, is the 15" Macbook Pro with Retina display. It's come along a lot, but still sucks if doing anything 3D that actually uses the graphics card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/... [newegg.com]
Differences: +.1GHz Lenovo
256GB SSD (Lenovo) vs 512GB SSD (Apple)
Resolution: 3840 x 2160 (Lenovo) vs 2880 x 1800 (Apple)
Screen size: 15.6 (Lenovo) vs 15.4 (Apple)
Graphics: 860M (Lenovo) vs 750M (Apple)
Weight: 5.29 (Lenovo) vs 4.46 lbs (Apple)
Apple lacks a built in Gigabit Ethernet port. It has 2 Thunderbolt ports (basically can be considered proprietary, given usage at the moment)
Cost?
$1,269.99 vs $2499
So 2 laptops with almost all specs, exceeding the Apple's specs for the same price. (~230 for a 512GB SSD, if you want to increase storage that way, which still puts it at 60% of the cost)
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We can always go and compare a gaming rig to a proper business laptop, but that just doesn't make sense. There are few important things missing from the configuration from Lenovo. First is the IPS panel, you are able to get 4K TFT monitor for far less than retina resolution IPS panel. Second major issue is that Apple comes with proper 8h battery life while Lenovo will run out around 4h. Third is professional Windows license, which OS X certainly compares to.
If you try to get true Lenovo mobile workstation t
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Also I forgot to mention that Apple SSD PCIe drives perform about twice as fast as your average SSD on SATA port... which does not come cheap as well. Together with double capacity you are looking at performance that even money cannot buy for this particular Lenovo machine. Higher-end Lenovo's can easily match that, but it comes with a price.
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware.
So what? Apple makes their decisions on a different basis than I do. They choose parts based on maximum availability and profit. I choose parts based on price:performance ratio. I can build much more machine for significantly less money. Who cares if some other corporations are also trying to milk me?
I can ALSO install VMWare on the Mac
Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.
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Yeah, I can also install vmware on my PC, and run MacOS in it, because some people have worked around the roadblocks that Apple put in the way to prevent users who pay for their software from doing that. How odd that Microsoft will permit me to virtualize their OS, but Apple won't. It's almost like they're bigger assholes than Microsoft. No, wait. It's exactly like that.
Microsoft's _business_ is to sell their operating system. Apple's _business_ is to sell computer hardware. If you claim that you can't see the difference then you are either deeply dishonest or an idiot.
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"Actually, as many review comparisons have noted over the years, Apple's products are priced only a very little bit higher than what other PC manufacturers offer given the exact same hardware"
This is true. But give a PC buyer a choice between a PC that comes with a bluetooth keyboard and mouse, thunderbolt, wireless 802.11ac, and 4 usb 3 ports at one price and another PC with the SAME CPU and RAM and harddrive but comes with wifi keyboard and mouse, no thunderbolt, wireless-n, and 2usb3 ports + 2usb2 ports
Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:4, Informative)
And so is Apple.
Apple products are expensive, but generally have good design and performance.
Bose and Beats have good design, but have always been deemed to have poor performance by people who actually review them for their sound qualities.
I'm not hating... check the reviews.
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Bose headphones have always been overpriced, and don't hold up under heavy use.
In my experience, real professionals use Sennheiser. At least, when I worked in radio, about 80% of the DJs and engineers I knew used Sennheisers, and laughed at me when I asked whether Bose was really any good--"on TV, sure".
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not a pro, but I do love my Sennheiser flyspeck, and my Audio Research cans are pretty much the best sounding I've ever used. no idea what the coil hardware is, or what the magnets are, but it's like being kissed on the neck by Shahin Badar. I had a Bose radio, it went back because I thought it was broken. Sounded like shit. Or that could've been Radio 1.
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I'm not responsible for the Wikipedia article.
I'm not responsible for the fact that he was stupid enough to play with a gun while he was high.
I'm not responsible for the dog-crap his band started putting out after he offed himself.
But he was an excellent and innovative guitarist, composer, and bandleader who deserves heaps more recognition than he got.
I've long since outgrown idols. But I continue to admire him for his music.
Who cares what the man looked like? The point is to listen [youtube.com].
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I always think it's funny when people get really snarky making wrong grammar corrections.
"Their" refers back to "Apple and Bose", although "stall" should be plural. The sentence is saying "so why should we care about which crap is pulled from Apple and Bose's respective stalls".
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I make my living as a writer and editor
Use your skills where they make a difference, then. Hint: in many cases a "grammar train wreck" is fine as long as the meaning is not ambiguous. Conversations and comments on slashdot are two such cases.
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Re:Bose is overpriced crap and always has been (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, English is proscriptive, not descriptive (yes, I know the Grammar Nazis hate that), so if the meaning is clear and unambiguous, and likely to have been used by a native speaker, then it's "correct". His train wreck was correct enough, and more correct than the wrong correction issued after.
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>Product Description
>There are houses, and then there are mansions; there are cars, and then there are Bentleys, There are headphones, and then there are AKG K 701s — get the idea? AKG K 701s aren't for everybody, only people who demand the best performance from their phones and absolutely will not compromise on sound quality. If that's you, then prepare to be throughly satisfied. From the first time you feel their luxurious 3D-Form ear pads and self-adjusting cushioned leather headband, you'll
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AKG isn't even that great. For pro work these days people are moving to Audio-Technica and Shure.
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For casual listening, yeah. For serious external noise, though, noise isolation is a lot better than noise cancellation. I have a pair that lets me play back existing tracks at a manageable level while beating the ever-living crap out of a drum kit. Now that is clean sound.
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Can to tell us the brand/model of your better-than-active-noise-cancellation headphones?
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Can you tell us / Care to tell us
Note to self: stop posting after midnight.
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You know, I honestly don't remember. I only use them when I'm playing kit, because they're basically built into hearing protectors, and weigh about as much as my Macbook Pro. :-)
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Can to tell us the brand/model of your better-than-active-noise-cancellation headphones?
He's deluding himself. What he's using is ear defenders.
Try this... Stick your finger in your ear. Create a good seal so outside sound is well blocked.
Do you hear nothing? No, you hear a background roar of muffly rumblings.
Or try putting ear plugs in and sit still. Do you hear less? Yes.
Now move your head. Say just slowly move it around. You hear a bunch of noise from the ear plug itself rubbing in your ear canal.
A sealed cavity around your ears traps in all the local noise. It's worse than nothing.
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Actually, a small (but not insignificant" amount of sound comes from around the ear as well - bone conduction can transfer the lower bass notes to the ear directly (it's why you can't have perfect silence except by being in an anechoic chamber). Of course, your ears when wearing ear defenders does crank up its gain - people in anechoic chambers do report hearing blood rushing through their veins in the ears, their heartbeats, etc. All n
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I'm about 80% deaf in one ear, so instead of higher frequencies I get permanent tinnitus, which is basically exactly that - it varies according to things like heart rate. It's like listening to an old modem, or something like a ZX Spectrum loading a game. 24x7. It came on as an adult, so it took a bit of getting used to - some people can't cope and suffer depression or even become suicidal over it.
Re:One crap audio brand battling with another (Score:5, Insightful)
Audiophiles—at least the ones who competently seek ways to improve quality, as opposed to the pseudoaudiophiles that spend $200 on a power cord—often listen to a wide range of music. For us, flat is a virtue, because any accentuation of frequency ranges that makes one style of music sound better invariably makes another style of music sound worse.
Re:One crap audio brand battling with another (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Flat" relating to headphones usually means a flat frequency response, unless you are talking to people who don't have a clue (which is a very real possibility). A flat frequency response is the goal of a high fidelity system, the very word "fidelity" means trueness to the original source, which is what you get with a flat frequency response. The idea that a speaker needs to distort the sound because it "sounds good" is absurd, and in fact it's the exact same rationale audiofools have for preferring vinyl. Vinyl inherently has an uneven frequency response (among other things) and it is those characteristics that give it is distinctive sound, leading some to prefer it. It is distinctive but it is low fidelity, just like a poor set of speakers. Besides, if you want the treble or bass jacked up or some other frequency band notched, that's what equalizers are for. Although it should be noted they are called equalizers because the intent is to bring an equal loudness to all frequency bands - aka, a flat frequency response. To compensate for speakers that are not already flat.
Anybody with enough money for a pair of good audiophile headphones will be buying the "pro" beats, which have neutral sound by all reports (I've never tested them).
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True. On the other hand, we also go to a lot of trouble to make sure it doesn't sound like crap on systems that aren't flat, because we know that some people will listen that way. I've spent many hours doing critical listening in my car, through iPod headphones, etc.
IMO, as long as a system has reasonably smooth response, even if it isn't flat, it sounds acceptable. Where you get into trouble is when your speakers are too small, and in a misguided effort to boost the bass response, the hardware engineers
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down to at least 30 Hz
Not everyone has a thousand bucks lying around for one of these speakers, though... 30 Hz... Man, I'm happy, when I get 50-60 ;)
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They used to. Now they just make it 'loud' unless the musicians have enough clout to insist otherwise.
Re:One crap audio brand battling with another (Score:5, Insightful)
That's like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any work done in photoshop because it's more true to the source or some shit. Sort of like how audiofools never seem to have a problem wacking off to lossy jpegs but put on an mp3 and you'll never hear the end of it.
No, it is like saying you prefer to look at photos that haven't had any extra photo filters applied after the artist has already completed and distributed the image. Yes, of course the artist uses photoshop; just like the recording professionals use distortion!
The reason you want a flat frequency response from the speakers is because the sound has already been properly distorted by the artist. Just like, a computer monitor with accurate color will reproduce the colors the artist chose in photoslop!
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Except to truly appreciate what the artist "meant", you'd have to use exactly the headphones they used when mixing. If they used Beats, and you use ones with "flat" response, you're still getting the "wrong" experience. Even more complicated, you really need to be using the headphones that an artist thought you'd be using. They might be using headphones with "flat" response in mixing, but purposefully dialing back on the bass knowing what the effect would be for fans listening through Beats, such that th
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Except to truly appreciate what the artist "meant", you'd have to use exactly the headphones they used when mixing. If they used Beats, and you use ones with "flat" response, you're still getting the "wrong" experience.
You haven't met any real audio engineers have you. I don't even think Dr.Dre would use Beats headphones when preparing the final track for release.
The things is, it never does (Score:2)
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All monitor have color correction
No. Most monitors do not have color correction. They have no way to tell what colors they are putting out, so they have no way to correct their color output. A few flat panels have color correction built in, but they are very expensive.
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Depends on your current pharmaceutical load. Remember the 60's? (Or was it the 70's?)
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Flat is desirable because it makes it easy to appropriately color your current choice in music with the eq.
It's important to define audiophile. Some like quality equipment that produces superior results when used properly. Others (audio weenies)spend thousands on cables that don't work any better than a typical consumer cable and then 'break them in' for some reason, buy magic crystals to hook on the connectors and pay $50 to have their room conditioned over the phone.
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I always find it amazing that audiophiles want 'flat'...this is nice is you want to listen to 'audio' as opposed to music.
That's funny. I don't remember taking a hearing aid to a concert so I could turn up the bass on live music. Flat response is what I want my speakers to produce. If bass is what was supposed to come out of a song, then the producer / engineer should have taken care of that at the mixing desk.
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But you know what they say about a phool and his money...
That he would be better off springing for a spell checker?
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You consider $230 a considerable amount of money? Do you live in Sub-Saharan Africa or some shit? Try something by Audeze next time, mister big spender.
I'm an American and I think $230 is a considerable amount of money to spend on stuff. Mainly on crappy headphones.
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Dude, like, you know, butt-rock was the 80s.
`73 was a pretty awesome year in music though. Crocodile Rock, Dark Side of the Moon, Aerosmith, Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Tequila Sunrise... and that only brings us from January to April!
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No, it was the 90s/early 00s. I quit listening to US FM radio when it was decided that Nickelback was worthy of airplay.
I left the country just a couple of years later. Coincidence? Perhaps not.
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By `91 or so "Butt-rock" was already a synonym for Hair Rock, which is basically Glam Metal where the music sucks or is not notable; all glam, no metal. Butt-rock means the same thing, just with an insulting way of describing glam.
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I seem to recall that it started after an "No Rock But Rock" ad campaign that got turned into "Butt Rock" by various wags because it was being used to push stuff like Nickelback and Seether. That was in '91, IIRC. "Glam" to me means New York Dolls, Roxy Music, and Bowie during his Ziggy Stardust/Aladdin Sane period. KISS were also sort of glam. Not the same thing at all as Glam Metal/Hair Metal which is not the same thing at all as Butt-Rock.
Maybe it depends on who you talk to, or what part of the country y
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Or maybe you're right. '91 and '01 were both pretty traumatic years for me personally, and I still sometimes get memories of the two periods mixed up.
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Hair rock and Butt rock are definitely the same thing. And Glam rock definitely also means the same thing today. Perhaps there's a distinction to be drawn between glam and glam rock just as there is between punk and punk rock, which are completely different genres. Nickelback and Seether are whine rock.
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Land of the free, my ass.
Not exactly free, but a $9500 ER bill is pretty cheap.
USA! USA! USA!
Tit for tat (Score:4, Insightful)
I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.
Of course the players do it anyway, and Beats apparently pays the fines for them... but still.
Incidentally, the NFL isn't doing very well with regards to their endorsement deals - first Microsoft, and now Bose.
Re:Tit for tat (Score:5, Funny)
And the NFL isn't doing very well with their Beats women & children shenanigans either.
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I imagine Beats/Apple isn't too happy with Bose's shenanigans regarding telling NFL players they can't wear their Beats headphones until 90 minutes after the end of the game.
This.
I just wish they'd compete on audio fidelity instead of who can be more petty, since that's one thing that both of those brands are sorely lacking.
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Reality is by far the majority of products in the modern market place driven largely by 'exclusivity' compete on PR=B$(lies for profit) and idiot pseudo celebrity endorsement (liars for profit) and of course contaminating and corrupting every internet review web site they can. This of course because in the face of reality, the majority would mock the crap out of the rich idiots buying 'exclusivity' like it means something beyond being a poseur douche.
Re:Tit for tat (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is you have a conflict of endorsements.
The NFL is being paid directly by Microsoft and Bose to promote their stuff - Microsoft and Bose can put "Official NFL Product" on those things.
The problem is, the teams and players don't really see much of that money because it goes straight into the league. Sure, they may get a few bucks in the way of stadium improvements and such, but you can bet most of that money isn't going into their paycheques.
So the players and teams often have their OWN endorsement deals. This money goes directly to the team and the players themselves. Sure some goes back to the NFL in terms of league fees and whatnot, but it's extra income for the team and player.
So what's a player to do? Be forced to wear Bose which nets them ZERO dollars in the end? Or wear their Beats which nets them millions in extra dollars in their pocket?
It's obvious why the players are defying the rule. And in fact, you have to admit, it's getting a LOT of marketing for Beats as well - I mean, they're being fined, in public, for wearing Beats. With photos. In the news. Now what is better marketing - the player wearing it on the field or a news conference, or having it plastered all over the news with closeups of the offense with news they're being fined for wearing Beats headphones (and barely a Bose mention!).
It's actually kind of brilliant marketing - Bose gets made out to be the bad guy, and Beats gets plastered all over the news section, so much so that the $10,000 fine is well worth it - marketing expense.
List of NFL Finable Offenses, with fines [deadspin.com].
Heck, one wonders if they're going to get a bunch of stickers to stick over their Bose headphones with the iconic "b". I mean, it doesn't get more interesting than that - they wear Bose headphones, but they're sporting the "b" that clearly indicates Beats.
They are competitors (Score:4, Insightful)
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Remember when Microsoft used its monopolistic position in one market (OSs) to unfairly favor its product in another market (web browsers)?
How is that different from Apple using its position in the high-end phone market to unfairly favor its product in the headphone market?
lol (Score:5, Insightful)
So 3 companies, all of whom make electronics that consist of about 99% hype and about 1% tech, sue each other?
What's funny is Bose has been at this a very long time. Don't buy Bose people! It's a scam, it's always been a scam. There are plenty of good stereos and speakers out there, Bose doesn't make any of them. And beats? That's literally the cheapest Chinese headphones they could find this month and they slap a Dr Dre sticker on it.
Re:lol (Score:4, Insightful)
Bose noise cancelling headphones are not a scam. They were qualitatively far far better than anything else on the market when they came out and they still seem to be better today.
I'll be taking my rather ancient set of QC3s on the plane tomorrow.
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I call BS. The Sony's barely worked. I tried them back to back with the Bose.
Active noise cancellation is not about HiFi. It's about high background noise environments like on airplanes or in offices.
Try a set of Bose QC3s in a quiet environment, listening to music through a stereo of any quality will not be better than something with a large seal and a half decent speaker, but that's not the point. I doubt people could actually tell the difference in a quiet environment. If there's nothing to cancel, cance
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I borrowed a friend's Bose QC3s and compared them to my own Audio Technica and Sony noise cancelling headphones. They were on a par with the Sonys and slightly better than the ATs, but not by much. The Sony cans where more comfortable as well, especially in terms of the feeling of pressure in your ears you get from noise cancelling.
Having said that I use some fairly cheap Sennheiser in-ear monitors on aircraft now. The isolation is better than any noise cancelling headphones can ever hope to achieve and the
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My non-noise-cancelling closed ear SRH-440's have better sound than any pair of headphones Bose has ever made and they cut out more background noise as well. I recently wore them trackside at a car race to prevent hearing damage, worked perfectly.
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They patented it.
If physical patents were treated the same way as intellectual property patents are now, Bose would rule audio.
Is Bose over priced? yes. I won't pay for a name, but some will. At least it works.
All Beats has is a good marketing director.
Re:lol (Score:4, Interesting)
As a former audiophile (my ears are getting old), here is my take on Bose. Yes, Bose did some research on speaker design. To say it changed things...? Well, Bose went one direction, whereas the mainstream speaker companies went another direction. And a lot of other companies, and the NRC of Canada also did research. For more info (maybe not much on Bose) see Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms by Floyd Toole (Aug 22, 2008) (book or kindle) if you want too much information.
Research: one thing common in marketing audio, automobiles, --- political ideologies, can be summed up as: we did research (or thunk it up, or it was revealed to us) and we have unique technology/knowledge/beliefs that is superior to any other speakers/ political ideology. Just pick up any issue of Popular Science of Mechanics from 1970 to 1990, or listen to Faux News.
A little thought (gee!) will quickly reach the concept that research or clever insight by one person is rarely exclusive, and rarely exhaustive (there is a lot more going on that their insight doesn't address).
Bose's direct/reflective (I think that's what it's called) technology in it's early 801, 802 and some other models created a large sound-field with a large sweet-spot, or almost no sweet-spot. (A sweet spot is the place the listener sits to get the full stereo effect). This can be, hmm, I'll use the words very different and seductive. On the other hand, those Bose speakers could suffer from comb filtering effects, lumpy frequency response, phase shifting effects, and limited frequency extension at both high and low frequencies. Not exclusive to Boze, sometimes instruments sounded larger than life. The 20 foot long piano.
Other Boze Speakers not using the direct/ eflective lack the large sound-field effect. About 1998 I needed new speakers, and tried with an open mind to check out Bose products. I found:
1. almost exclusively sold at the time in Bose owned stores
2. information, specifically frequency response specification were not provided by the company. this was/is very unusual for a speaker company. I eventually figured out that the entire Bose line at the time had little frequencies below 50hz.
The rest of the speaker/audio community was mostly working toward flat frequency response, reduction of box resonances, controlled dispersion or the sound coming out of the drivers, and greater extension in low and high frequencies.
A joke among audiophiles, in response to the great success of Bose--they sell by far more speakers in America than any other company, is "Friends don't let friends by Bose."
The rational reason (there are irrational reasons) is that Bose does not offer good value. For $X00 spent on Bose, it is almost generally possible to get a better speaker from another company for the same amount of money.
Final issue, look up the lawsuit between Bose and Consumer Reports. Bose sued Consumer reports over a review. Consumer Reports eventually won, but Bose almost bankrupted them. Which may partially explain why you rarely see any reviews of Bose in the audiophile press. And Bose likes it that way.
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Bose's direct/reflective (I think that's what it's called) technology in it's early 801, 802 and some other models created a large sound-field with a large sweet-spot, or almost no sweet-spot. (A sweet spot is the place the listener sits to get the full stereo effect). This can be, hmm, I'll use the words very different and seductive...........
Gee, thanks a lot. You just made good stereo seem terrifically exciting. I have single sided deafness and can never expereince stereo. Nobody, even doctors or audiologists, ever really explained what I am missing out on. Maybe they were being kind.
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I've had good results with some of their phased array equipment. Then again, most people don't need a phased array.
such drama (Score:2)
One less inhabitant... (Score:2)
One less inhabitant in Apple's walled garden.
seriously... this is news? (Score:4, Insightful)
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There's a chance it goes deeper than that.
Not only did Bose sue Apple after Apple acquired beats, but they also started playing dirty pool with tactics like the NFL headphone rigamarole. Apparently something about Beats + Apple sent Bose into the heavy offensive strategy. Now Bose has to fight the fight that they started.
Re:You could see this coming (Score:4, Insightful)
> I have a feeling that Bose' CFO is not happy but not unhappy. It's business.
I have a feeling that setting the lawyers on an effective retail outlet for your goods is really bad for business.
If someone sued me, I'm certainly not going to do business with them in the future.
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I'm a commercial litigator. While it's true that companies would prefer not to sue their key partners, in reality it's very common for companies that work together to be involved in litigation. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they like it, but if you work with a company for a long time it's inevitable that you will have some disputes that you can't settle amicably. To an extent it's just a cost of doing business.
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Uh... what?