[emcq]

It feels like we are seeing the result of diminishing returns with technology advancement.

To make a product that Apple believes is significantly better than the competition they had to design a very intricate solution that includes:

* High end look and feel not similar to the bulk of their products with lots of textile webbing and memory foam ear cups. These get way more wear and tear than normal electronics being exposed to sweat, sunscreen, etc. On top of that these must be safe for long skin exposure and comfortable across many head shapes and sizes. * High quality magnets with custom speaker design for low THD and large frequency range. * 2 custom ASICs built for sound processing and low power bluetooth and 10 audio cores each. * 10 microphone array for ANC and wind noise cancelation. * Multiple accelerometers + gyros head tracking with spatial audio.

It you remove one of those components, I'd be surprised if Apple still shipped this. At least 40 people worked on designing and engineering this new headphone. There are not many companies in the world with the right kind of talent for this and Apple happens to be one of them.

[enos_feedler]

I don't understand the point you are trying to make. You lead with a statement that sounds like disappointment, but then build up to the engineering complexity involved. What are you trying to say? That this doesn't add up to a great product? How long have you been using them for?

[birdyrooster]

I think the parent commenter is saying that in order to make a superior product these days, you need an extraordinary amount of investment for R&D which can only be made up by selling it at volumes that someone like Apple can achieve. I think their comment is about bang for your engineering buck.

[kev009]

This seems like a win for everybody. In the past a lot of people spent money on luxury goods which translated to over-paying brand name and status symbol. I would consider products like Beats headphones to be in that category; they were technically inferior to many other headphones but cost as much or more than professional headphones. It is interesting to see Apple engineering maintain broad appeal in product design while adding quite a bit of functionality.

[Wowfunhappy]

It does however mean that it's winner-take-all on the vendor end. That's troubling for the future.

[lukifer]

I think Metcalfe's Law [0] for networked services is a bigger driver for winner-take-all, than needing deep pockets to compete in a mature product category. For consumer products, a small number of large players can own entire market segments between them, but still compete with one another, as we see in other capital-intensive industries like cars or smartphones. (And it's fair to see that as its own problem; but it generally devolves to the question "if markets are universally the most efficient form of exchange, why are firms a thing?" [1].)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm

[mensetmanusman]

Not necessarily, especially in areas like sound where it is essentially ‘solved’

Why should humanity put so many resources towards improvements that no mere mortal can notice? It’s probably better to put the talent on other problems...

[Alex3917]

> I think the parent commenter is saying that in order to make a superior product these days, you need an extraordinary amount of investment for R&D which can only be made up by selling it at volumes that someone like Apple can achieve.

True if you're selling average products for average people. Not true if you have a niche.

[0x1F8B]

I don't know how you read a negative or judgmental tone into that comment... GP is basically saying that consumer technology has advanced to the point where you need large teams doing complicated or deeply technical (and somewhat incremental) improvements on existing technologies.

It's not a judgment on the product. It's just a lament that the days of individuals or small companies innovating in the consumer electronics space are (long?) over.

[enos_feedler]

I didn't see it as a judgement, just didn't understand the point. I guess you have provided a little more clarity. How sad is it to generalize the idea that disruption can no longer occur. That is one of the saddest things I've read all day. There are numerous cases where companies 'advance technology' into a product to the point where someone comes along with something simpler to undercut the existing player. Apple isn't a good example of this because it's very hard to disrupt their products. They have extremely focus on the end user and simplicity.

[0x1F8B]

It's not just the values they place on the end user and simplicity, it's their huge amount of cash they can use to test and deploy technologies (think spatial audio partners) and their tight grip on supply chains (try sourcing some of the same materials an iPhone is made of).

I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, the best chance at making a wave as a consumer product concern is to make waves on some sub-component of the larger product being produced by the majors. You aren't going to compete with Apple, Sony or Bose directly, but you can improve on new technologies or extant processes and hope to get subsumed. That's the truly sad part.

[nappy-doo]

No. Apple needs large teams doing complicated or deeply technical things. That's their market. They're in consumer electronics. If it takes 50 people to ship 100M units, then it takes 50 people.

[0x1F8B]

No what? What are you talking about?

[gmu3]

The first sentence only experiencing diminishing returns can be read negative. Also everything is easier/cheaper/faster than ever for individuals and small companies to enter the hardware space.

[0x1F8B]

I suspect the best path for success that individuals or small companies can take right now is to focus on one piece of the larger product and aim for acquisition or licensing, sort of like the pharmaceutical space.

[mcdevilkiller]

I think GP means that in the near future, significant tech advancements will only be able to be done by the tech giants.

[mempko]

I think he means headphone tech is already complex and they needed to raise complexity a lot, lets say 10x to get something that maybe has 1.2x better sound. At least that's what I understood. In other words, you get diminishing returns.

[auraham]

I understood the comment like you. After reading the thread, I got the idea of the OP.

[krick]

You sound like you are selling these headphones. Yeah, making wireless headphones with active noise cancellation is complicated, what else is new. Same as making a smartphone, or a laptop, or a car. "Significantly better than the competition"? Sure they are if you listen to (or are) Tim Cook or some Apple fanboy, but really buying an iPhone is mostly a matter of preference, not really being "better than the competition". And "preference" is the best case scenario, because quite more often that's a matter of being victim of aggressive marketing.

I mean, AirPods Max may be actually better than the competition (unlike regular AirPods, which are a bestseller anyway). But they were just announced, why the hell would you assume that they are any good at all?

[dvt]

> But they were just announced, why the hell would you assume that they are any good at all?

I'm not an Apple fanboy, but people said the exact same thing about the M1, which basically blew everyone away. So the track record pretty heavily favors Apple here.

[ctvo]

What an odd comment.

Because Apple released a product recently that received excellent reviews, all Apple products are assumed to be good? All Apple products come out of the unit that produces their processors. All Apple products are owned by the teams responsible for their Macbook / Airbook lines. All Apple products can achieve whatever innovations that occurred with the M1 chip.

[dvt]

> all Apple products are assumed to be good

I don't think I said that, just that their recent track record favors them. The M1 and the new iPhone 11 were very warmly received.

[ctvo]

I understood what you're trying to say. I still disagree.

The products and technologies involved are too different to take any goodwill and apply it universally. Even in the same product there are issues with subcomponents: The M1 is great, but the touchbar is still mostly useless and the keyboard only improved recently. How can we possibly say anything across products?

[henryteeare]

The new iPhone is the 12, just fyi.

Even though they were not as recent, I believe your argument would be more compelling if you used Apple's more similar products, e.g. AirPods Pro, or perhaps the latest watch.

[davewritescode]

You could've made the same argument 15 years ago about the original iPod and its scroll wheel.

The difference between a good product and a premium product are the experience. Sometimes that experience is the most expensive part of the product.

[benhurmarcel]

> At least 40 people worked on designing and engineering this new headphone.

You're probably off by an order of magnitude. 40 people is nothing for a largely produced product.

[chris_st]

> and comfortable across many head shapes and sizes

I have what is, evidently, a pretty large head, given the fact that I've only been able to find one hat ever that is large enough to fit me.

And yeah, lots of high-end headphones are painful to wear, because they went for the "standard-size" head.

[georgeecollins]

I like that they are working on spatial audio. The AR applications are interesting.

[suyash]

the smaller AirPods will have the same feature of spatial audio

[bydo]

Just the AirPods Pro, not the regular AirPods.

[rorykoehler]

I balked at the price but if they've solved the wind noise problem I'd think about getting it. I love to walk outside when I have calls but the wind makes it impossible most days.

[jordache]

spatial audio is utterly useless, terrible sound effects.