Apple Recalls Beats Pill XL Speakers As Fire Risk 104
An anonymous reader writes: Apple has released a voluntary recall announcement for the Beats Pill XL range of speakers, advising customers that the rechargeable device is a fire risk, and advising them to stop using the devices immediately. Apple bought the manufacturers out in 2014 after the successful release of the XL speaker range in November 2013. The announcement reads in part: "Because customer safety is the company’s top priority, Apple is asking customers to stop using their Beats Pill XL speakers. Customers who purchased a Beats Pill XL speaker should visit www.apple.com/support/beats-pillxl-recall for details about how to return their product to Apple, and how to receive an Apple Store credit or electronic payment of $325."
Noone can argue (Score:1)
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LOL Microsoft might suck but I do not recall them actually having a product that could kill you and your family (and neighbors if you live in an apartment).
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No. I did not forget. I did not know about it. Thank you though.
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Probably, though word of the recall probably hit the retailers so they won't sell anymore to anyone.
But I believe Apple has to refund the cost to everyone who bought one even if they bought it at the launch price. And the overhead to go and check to see what everyone really paid may outweigh the fact that a few people who bought one yesterday might make a few b
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In America, you don't (yet) need government permission to sell a product, with a few exceptions e.g. drugs. Product liability is your problem, after the fact. Most producers of products with wires inside choose to interact with Underwriters Laboratories, because only a fool buys anything electric that's not UL listed.
UL does quite a good job in testing, but rechargeable batteries have some oddball corner cases, and I wonder how comprehensive UL is there (they're downright picky about all sorts of materia
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That CE shit is socialist - start giving it credit for anything, and next thing you know your taxes are higher, and you have an unnatural fondness for cheese.
Seriously, though, it's the stores that will usually check for the UL logo for you, thanks to liability fears. The buyers for the big chains know what it means, and that's an important reason why producers bother.
Already been burnt by the price (Score:4, Funny)
Anybody who pays $325 for a pair of speakers has already been burnt enough
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$325 isn't even entry level for audiophiles. I don't even want to disclose what I paid for mine.
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Please share. I submitted a question to slashdot asking about recommendations for high end headphones for someone with a hearing disorder (severe tinnitus) and it got rejected.
It probably got rejected because you're a fucking retard if you want to use headphone while you already have a severe hearing disorder AND you want to overpay for the privilege.
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There are companies that make exactly what you are looking for. Hearing aid companies.
Any kids headphones will boost the bass, but what you are looking for is a hearing aid.
Do you really expect there to be a headphone with a frequency response built to compensate for your hearing loss? Perhaps what you a looking for is a 10 decibel notch filter.
Re: Already been burnt by the price (Score:1)
I have an acoustic neuroma (benign tumour on the auditory nerve), which combines high frequency hearing loss with tinnitus. I use Sennheiser buds (can't remember the model). They're decent. No amount of equalisation will give me back my hearing above 2kHz, but the Sennheisers are pretty good and were under 100 bucks.
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Go ask your doctor what headphones he recommends for compensating for your hearing loss.
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No clue on headphones but for floor speakers i love B&W's
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With B&W you're generally paying for the artwork, not so much the speaker. If you love the way they look, that's fine - who's to say what art is worth? A lot of the "crazy" $10k audiophile speakers are really just solid $1000 speakers plus the price of the "look" of the speaker - and as long as people realize that's what they're paying for, what's to criticize?
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I would agree with you if you only look at their top shelf high priced speakers but they do make some very good quality more traditional speakers which offer great sound quality for the money.
I've got two floor standing load speakers and two of their book shelf variants of the same line. Both offer wonderful sound quality and while not cheap in price where not super expensive. I believe i have ~1,000$ total in for all 4, and they have lasted me now 17 years with zero signs that i'll ever need or want to g
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I have been happy with Cambridge SoundWorks. Look into their "professional" grade stuff as much of their consumer stuff is garbage now.
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I bought a pair of Vienna Acoustics second hand, the look is part of it, but they also can handle more power than my receiver can send so I haven't heard distortion.
So much of the sound quality depends on the room, the receiver, the speaker configuration and balance. I'm barely versed on it but after a while you can hear a lot that you didn't before in your favorite tracks.
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Re:Already been burnt by the price (Score:4, Funny)
At least half of 'audiophiles' are just morons trying to impress each other with how much money they spend on garbage.
I won't use the term anymore. 'Audiophiles' think LPs sound good, 4k$ is a reasonable price for a power cord and ceramic speaker wire hangers make the sound better.
We need a new term for 'cluefull audiophile'.
Re:Already been burnt by the price (Score:5, Funny)
Hearing the difference now isn’t the reason to encode to FLAC. FLAC uses
lossless compression, while MP3 is ‘lossy’. What this means is that for
each year the MP3 sits on your hard drive, it will lose roughly 12kbps,
assuming you have SATA – it’s about 15kbps on IDE, but only 7kbps on
SCSI, due to rotational velocidensity. You don’t want to know how much
worse it is on CD-ROM or other optical media.
I started
collecting MP3s in about 2001, and if I try to play any of the tracks I
downloaded back then, even the stuff I grabbed at 320kbps, they just
sound like crap. The bass is terrible, the midrangewell don’t get me
started. Some of those albums have degraded down to 32 or even 16kbps.
FLAC rips from the same period still sound great, even if they weren’t
stored correctly, in a cool, dry place. Seriously, stick to FLAC, you
may not be able to hear the difference now, but in a year or two, you’ll
be glad you did.
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...
woosh ...
Re:Already been burnt by the price (Score:5, Informative)
The incredulous claims about vinyl and cabling have been around for a long time, but more recently computers have opened up a whole new level of foolery. There are programs out there that supposedly "keep your audio data in the CPU cache" instead of RAM and have some BS rationale as to why that improves audio quality. Then there's the high-res music stuff that's been gaining particular traction in recent years (not to be confused with lossless compression which has gained traction around the same period) especially as "respected" musicians have come to launch placebo-based product lines for people who want their music oversampled to several times beyond the limit of human hearing. I keep this link handy as a particularly thorough rebuttal to the claims they make:
http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo... [xiph.org]
The other nice thing about this link is it's from xiph.org - you know the guys who developed FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, Opus, etc.? They know more about audio reproduction, particularly digital audio reproduction, than Neil Young will ever know. He lacks either the will or the mental capacity to educate himself on the shit that's coming out of his own mouth when he gets up on his "digital music is terrible" soapbox. It's like, even if they accept that etched PVC disks aren't the pinnacle of audio reproduction (welcome to 1940), they have to invent some convoluted, cumbersome, expensive way to do digital audio so that their playback system is esoteric enough to please the Gods of Rock. I think Neil takes a particular shine to the "expensive" aspect, since he stands to profit from it all. But hey I'm sure he's a renown philanthropist or something, plus remember he wrote a couple decent songs 40 years ago? Fuck Neil Young.
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Or he just prefers a different sound.
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"incredulous" - a word that sounds like "incredible" but means something entirely different.
Grammar Nazis for Jesus
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Actually the vinyl thing is real, because of the loudness war. Long story short CDs can be a lot louder than vinyl. If you tried to put a typical 90s/2000s rock/pop CD mix onto vinyl the manufacturer would either tell you they couldn't make it or the needle would jump out of the tracks when you played it. It's a physical limitation of the medium.
So the mix on vinyl versions of albums has to be less loud, i.e. better mixed than the CD release. Okay, you add some noise, but at least the master isn't horribly
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Remixed CD tracks (with the loudness turned down) still have better S/N ratios than vinyl. Alternatively get better taste in music and just put the Beeber down.
Vinyl is also pre-distorted. To keep the highs audible. Of course that distortion is balanced against the frequency response in common moving magnet phono cartridges. Break the bread to buy a decent moving coil cartridge and you're back to having fucked sound and using an equalizer to fix it. Analog is joy.
Of course any claims of vinyls superior
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I really like the sound of tube amps and speaker cabinets made of actual wood as apposed to regurgitated fiber board. $325 isn't the price of one speaker cab.
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Not surprisingly, I got some Beats headphones for the kid for xmas and after slight usage had to return them for service. The hinges looked like they were designed by Dr. Dre himself as they were built around a pin(metal, and not liquid metal) that could unseat itself with normal use and then lodge itself into the (plastic)works making the hinge not stick or extend properly. Anyway, it was after normal return period so I just took them to the nearest Apple Store and they repaired them for free. I got the ki
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Just because you're an idiot, doesn't mean every other audiophile is.
It just means the last line is redundant.
Idiot(X) :- Audiophile(X).
Idiot(Hussman32).
Audiophile(Hussman32).
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LOL ... I'm pretty sure audiophiles aren't running speakers PC Mag lauded for "thumping, powerful Bluetooth audio" and portable design [pcmag.com] and which were available in pink.
Not even a little.
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Anybody who pays $325 for a pair of speakers has already been burnt enough
That was a sick burn .
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lithium battery.
Yep, those things that don't like being vibrated to shit.
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My Jim Lansing & Jensen Speakers have been working fine for 50 years.
Yup. Pair of Pioneers going on 45 years here. They don't make 'em like they used to.
and they don;t even get warm. What's in a Beats speaker that causes the conflagration?
Well, to be fair, they have this rather nifty feature with the fact that it runs on a rechargeable battery...you know the kind that our government refuses to acknowledge as "hazardous" amidst a sea of torched consumer products.
Or is it the crappy music that kids play today?
No, that just makes your ears bleed and make you scream for real singers to emerge again. It doesn't really do anything to your speakers that likely played their fair share of crappy 70's disco.
The nice thing about the Jim Lansing D-130 is the efficiency. Even a 10W amplifier can blast you out of the room.
Yup.
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Hmmph.
My Dahlquist DQ10s are practically brand new. Bought them in 1975. Still sound great, even though I had to re-cone the woofers about 15 years ago when the paper gave out.
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Apple knows its market.
Beats speakers are better because they cost more and are sparkly. Perfect fit for Apple.
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I'm wright 50% of the time!
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Sparkly... sparky... whoops. Honest mistake.
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Apple bought the Beats company for the brand name and the large subscriber database from the music service. Apple suffers from a problem of being 'your parents brand' and wanted to buy something hip.
It's a lot like if JC Penney bought Beats, but don't tell Apple.
Good news everyone! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple has a replacement product: The Beats Suppository XS.
Laying it on thick aren't they? (Score:3)
FTR: Apple designs Macs, the best personal computers in the world
Yeah, I admit their hardware is pretty good, and it's certainly up near the top in design and reliability, but damn, saying it that way sure does look like a conflict of interest.
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Get out FA reader. We don't like your kind.
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Get out FA reader. We don't like your kind.
It's not like you go for objectivity around here, either.
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That isn't the actual recall notice, it's the press release about the recall notice. Just about every non-financial press release I've ever read has some blurb equally fluffy about the company or division that is releasing the press release.
three hundred dollars for a desktop speaker?? (Score:5, Insightful)
ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS??
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Hey you, calm the fuck down. Those speakers are not three hundred dollars.
They're three hundred and thirty dollars.
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I think my heart just imploded.
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You don't want to know what Bose will charge you for a clock radio.
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Which cost about $10 to make. No wait, less than that, as they obviously took shortcuts somewhere. Otherwise they wouldn't be catching fire.
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That is, if it is indeed good audio.
Instead of designer desktop speakers, I bought this at approx $400/pair inline retailer Price: http://www.krksys.com/krk-stud... [krksys.com]
Bigger and uglier but musically quite satisfying and fun to edit my home movies on.
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mine's an ugly setup too, but boy does it sound sweet.
First, the really loud shit:
Sansui 331 4-channel amp (a 1975 vintage original!) feeding 4x Goodmans GLS250 shelf monitors
Then, the studio stuff:
Acoustic Solutions 5.1 home theatre (which probably has a higher per-channel output than the Sansui!)
5xCambridge Soundworks satellites (rescued from a blown DTT2200 setup)
All fed using Tech+Link interconnects. And no clearly I didn't pay £25 per cable. Smart-arsed me only paid £5 for a random box of l
One can only hope Apple will sort Beats out (Score:2)
Apple pays attention to sound quality. This is evident from what comes out of the iphone, ipad, mac mini.
Beats, on the other hand, dips the music in sweet syrup, then wraps it in a soft blanket and then gives the bass a +10db boost. That's what their headphones sounded like to me.
I can only hope Apple will show beats what music really sounds like.
And as for bluetooth speakers, I use a JBL Clip. At least JBL remembers how to make good sound. Beats never learned. Plus it's really hard to clip a Pill to y
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... [wikipedia.org]
Time to hunt on eBay! (Score:2)
Buy broken speaker on eBay, get 325$USD in Apple store credit!
Feature (Score:2)
I thought setting the heads of people that use Beats on fire was a feature.
IObviously the speakers used by (Score:2)
Spinal Tap
Rechargeable speakers? (Score:2)
More like.. (Score:2)
Apple allows clueless customers (followers) a second chance to make an "intelligent" purchasing decision.