Bose Sues New Apple Acquisition Beats Over Patent Violations 162
Bose has taken issue with some of the technology embodied in products in Apple's newly acquired Beats line of headphones. As Ars Technica reports, Bose is suing Apple, claiming that the Beats products violate five Bose patents, covering noise cancellation and signal processing
Although Bose never mentions Apple in the 22-page complaint, the acquisition price of the private company may have played a part in spurring Bose to sue. The suit doesn't include a specific damage demand.
Bose has also filed a complaint with the US International Trade Commission against Beats over the same infringement claims. That means the patent lawsuit filed in federal court will be stayed while the ITC case gets resolved first.
Apple bought "Beats by Dre". (Score:1)
Was it smart for Apple to buy Beats by Dre [beatsbydre.com]?
Bose is worried (Score:5, Insightful)
Bose and Beats are both highly brand-focused. Bose targets the more mature quality-seeking crowd, while Beats targets the bass-hungry and fashion-conscious youth. There's some overlap, but generally I'd say their targets kept competition to a minimum, and they've pretty much cornered those targets
Apple has the best of both worlds being viewed both as high quality and a status symbol. If they start using their monster marketing teams to align peoples' view of Beats with that of Apple, Bose stands a chance of being pushed out of the market by a frightening direct competition. They've got good reason to try to stall the acquisition as much as possible
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Bose and Beats are both highly brand-focused. Bose targets the more mature quality-seeking crowd, while Beats targets the bass-hungry and fashion-conscious youth. There's some overlap, but generally I'd say their targets kept competition to a minimum, and they've pretty much cornered those targets
Apple has the best of both worlds being viewed both as high quality and a status symbol. If they start using their monster marketing teams to align peoples' view of Beats with that of Apple, Bose stands a chance of being pushed out of the market by a frightening direct competition. They've got good reason to try to stall the acquisition as much as possible
Bose also targets youth, although they do a terrible job of it and are getting their ass kicked by Beats.
And Beats also targets musicians with their "Pro" headphone which is not bass hungry at all and has higher quality than anything Bose has ever shipped. As far as I can tell, Beats Pro are some of the best studio headphones money can buy at the moment. If they weren't so expensive I would probably own a pair.
Re:Bose is worried (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, Beats Pro are some of the best studio headphones money can buy at the moment. If they weren't so expensive I would probably own a pair.
What are you, 19? Perhaps you should open both your eyes and ears and take a look at some companies who have been making cans for a LOT longer than a gansta rapper marketing to the ignorant.
Companies like Sennheiser, Shure, and Grados Labs have proven that music does not begin and end with bass.
And it doesn't surprise me that you think these sound good in the studio. The "studio" has managed to hyperbass and overprocess (excite) the living shit out of 99% of pop/rap music today, basically ruining it. Music "mastering" today is defined as turn up the bass and slap on some Autotune for this tone-deaf teeny bopper who can't sing for shit.
A perfect home for Beats.
Re:Bose is worried (Score:5, Funny)
As far as I can tell, Beats Pro are some of the best studio headphones money can buy at the moment. If they weren't so expensive I would probably own a pair.
What are you, 19? Perhaps you should open both your eyes and ears and take a look at some companies who have been making cans for a LOT longer than a gansta rapper marketing to the ignorant.
He's walkin' - they be hatin'. The Beebs sounds fucking awesome in Beets Pro. And they are unquestionably the best headphones for listening to autotune.
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They have a lot of work to do to convince people that Beats sound good.
This patent seems to be specifically about noise cancelling, which is the one area Bose is actually good at. Their noise cancelling does seem to be slightly better than the competition, e.g. Sony and Audio Technica. Only slightly though.
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> Bose targets the more mature ignorant quality-seeking crowd,
FTFY.
In what universe does Bose and quality even go together?!?!? They are a complete over-priced under-quality joke by many audiophiles. They are nowhere in the top ten at Hi-Fi http://www.head-fi.org/f/113/h... [head-fi.org]
Senn cans are consistently top rated. I.e. http://www.head-fi.org/product... [head-fi.org]
Maybe if Bose didn't sound like shit and actually listed* their technical specs such THR [wikipedia.org] -- oh wait Bose relies on ignorance and marketing just like Beats.
* A
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> Bose targets the more mature ignorant quality-seeking crowd,
Well. That's the crowd they target. The parent poster didn't say they offer great products, just that that's the group they want to go after. :-)
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brand focused companies are brand focused because they charge too much for mediocre products. It takes effort to maintain smoke and mirrors and it's easy to blow them away with a few facts.
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They're both over-EQ'd POS. Beats are for bass. while "no highs, no lows, must be Bose".
The only thing is, the markets are different - Beats are for the young "trendy" kids who listen to nothing but bass-heavy musi
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So they sell at a 50% discount?
Bose is suing Apple? (Score:5, Funny)
Quick, Slashdotters - tell me who to hate!
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The US Patent Office. [eff.org].
It could be worse for Beats--they could have also violated Bose's highly innovative use of .2 in the model number [stereophile.com].
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Quick, Slashdotters - tell me who to hate!
Right about now, 93 Escort Wagon is pretty high on the list.....
If there's no highs and no lows, gotta be Bose! (Score:5, Informative)
Bose: They have infringed on our patents for crappy sound reproduction!
Beats/Apple: Crap! We got nothin'! We weren't expecting them to play the "blunt honesty" card!
Re:If there's no highs and no lows, gotta be Bose! (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's no highs an lows, it's gotta be Bose...
If there's no mids and tweets, it gotta be Beats!
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Well, it'd be pretty funny to see someone wearing a 25 lb headset attached to an iPhone...
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No, we'd either wind up with cacaphony or pure silence.
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Or no sound. It depends on which features get combined.
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No, you'd be missing the treble. Which is fine I suppose if you're over 40 or 50.
They both don't have highs - "no highs, no lows, must be Bose" and "no mids, no tweets, must be Beats" (a tweeter reproduces high-frequency audio).
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B
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Patent is for use without music? (Score:4, Informative)
The thing that commenters over at Ars haven't picked up on - this patent is only infringed if the customer wears the headphones without playing music. Noise cancellation with added music - OK, there's prior art for that. Turn the music off - it becomes patentable technology.
The claim states that Bose is on the hook because their documentation states that you can use the headphones without music for noise cancellation only, which induces their customers to infringe Bose's patents.
How is that legit? How can not adding music create a patentable technology?
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The thing that commenters over at Ars haven't picked up on - this patent is only infringed if the customer wears the headphones without playing music. Noise cancellation with added music - OK, there's prior art for that. Turn the music off - it becomes patentable technology.
The claim states that Bose is on the hook because their documentation states that you can use the headphones without music for noise cancellation only, which induces their customers to infringe Bose's patents.
How is that legit? How can not adding music create a patentable technology?
As a simple analysis, Bose created and patented the noise-cancelling headphone. They made it and marketed that rather directly as noise-cancelling headphones, initially and specifically designed to do one thing.
Those who have flown commercially anytime in the last fifteen years could not have missed it in airports and skymall, where they marketed the crap out of it.
Then someone comes along and adds bass boost and a headphone jack to that same exact product. While rather weak, I can easily see how this co
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As a simple analysis, Bose created and patented the noise-cancelling headphone. They made it and marketed that rather directly as noise-cancelling headphones, initially and specifically designed to do one thing..
Not really, the concept had been around a while, and pilots had been using them long before the first pair of Bose QCs hit the market. Bose, while he did a lot of research into ANR, popularized them for use outside of the cockpit. IMHO Bose are way overpriced, you can get a set of Audio Technica, or a if you prefer an open ear design, Sennheisers that cancel noise quite well for half the price of the Bose . A Sennheiser BT for about the same price but with BT. Al of them also work as regular headphones wh
Re:Patent is for use without music? (Score:5, Interesting)
That doesn't have anything to do with the lawsuit. Bose's early patents on noise reduction had a fairly wide scope to them, trying to own the entire territory of reducing aircraft noise independently of the signal. They might even have been able to claim some sort of domain over anyone who plays headphones without music; I wasn't following patent silliness back then. But those products have been shipping since 1989, so any really fundamental patent in that area expired years ago.
What Bose did then was either file or acquire a series of patents on the obvious ways to build digital circuits for such noise reduction. You can't build any digital noise reduction system without tripping over at least one of them. In the tech industry, there are all these "on a computer!" patents people like to complain about. In audio, their version of that tactic is to patent some math in the form of a "Digital Signal Processing System". The first one is really blatant in that regard. Basically anyone who builds a digital circuit with things like a FIR [wikipedia.org] filter and applies it to audio noise reduction can expect a patent infringement. And Bose didn't even develop that one; they bought the patent [yahoo.com] specifically for the sort of extortion they're doing here, in the usual way Bose sues companies frivolously [wikipedia.org].
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Extortion? That's bogus, this suit must be legit.. why else would they have waited until just after Apple bought Beats?
bad vs bad (Score:4, Insightful)
Beats (and by extension, apple) is overpriced, overhyped shit. Bose is overpriced, overhyped shit. I sincerely hope they cost each other millions with this.
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So who does sell well priced headphones in your opinion?
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Fully agree. For the kind of money one could spend on a pair of bose or apple/beats headphones, you could own FAR superior ones by Shure, Audio Technica, Sony, Focal, Sennheiser and AKGs.
Re:bad vs bad (Score:4, Funny)
Re:bad vs bad (Score:4, Informative)
Beats (and by extension, apple) is overpriced, overhyped shit. Bose is overpriced, overhyped shit.
I disagree. I have owned both sets of their "high end" noise cancelling headphones. Neither one is shit. Both are definitely over-hyped and overpriced, but they are not shit.
When you claim something is shit, you are claiming that it does not do what it says it will do. Both pairs of headphones reproduce the sounds that were intended in a reliable manner. That is a measure of quality. Both pairs of headphones provide some level of consistent noise cancellation. That is a measure of quality.
The Bose are better than the Beats at noise cancellation. The Beats are better than the Bose at convincing you that you are hearing bass, and slightly better at convincing you that you are hearing treble. Both are 3 times more expensive than a pair of Sennheiser (SP?) headphones that I have that reproduce sounds more like the original sound than the Bose or the Beats. Both pairs (Bose/Beats) sound like... I don't know: Cardboard? The only negative to the Sennheisers is that they do not do noise cancellation and they do not have batteries in them so they eat the battery of my phone. But play a FLAC file through them and OMG, they sound like sex compared to Bose or Beats.
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play a FLAC file through them and OMG, they sound like sex
Your audio collection is... not like mine.
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play a FLAC file through them and OMG, they sound like sex
Your audio collection is... not like mine.
Perhaps he is saying that the headphones being described make everything sound like low moaning with a few high screams? Doesn't sound like they are very good to me. I prefer my music to sound like music.
Two questions (Score:2)
A) Why didn't Bose sue Beats BEFORE Apple bought them? That makes this case sound much more about targeting a cash hoard than anything else.
2) Why didn't Apple buy Bose? Aside from the obvious answer that Apple bought branding instead of technology, Bose surely must have something Apple would want. If not, then the Beats acquisition is only about image which doesn't make much sense given that Apple has been pretty good at creating their own image over the last 10+ years.
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"Why didn't Apple buy Bose?"
The day ain't over yet.
Who Cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
Bose is an over-priced lifestyle product for the middle aged. Beats is an over-priced status symbol for teens. Both groups of people are unaware that products equal specs can be purchased for much less and that superior products can be purchased for the same price.
Audiophiles never agree on anything, except... (Score:1)
The Doctor knows what's up (Score:1)
Re:Typical (Score:5, Insightful)
Only an ignorant troll would imply that Bose doesn't do original research. You're a troll.
Re:Typical (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe, but as a guy who writes DSP software for a living, I took a look at that first patent and there's nothing original or creative about it that could possibly justify a patent -- and Bose must have known that when they filed it. I bet the USPTO clerk didn't have a fucking clue about DSP and was just impressed by fancy words. "Minimizing latency" my ass.
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No ... but since any patent acquired in the 70s has long since elapsed, it's literally impossible to sue over work done then.
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So in your mind research and development takes zero time, then. Got it.
You are absolutely correct with that, when it comes to patent enforcement, all that time spent earlier means, pretty much nothing.
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Maybe, but as a guy who writes DSP software for a living, I took a look at that first patent and there's nothing original or creative about it that could possibly justify a patent -- and Bose must have known that when they filed it. I bet the USPTO clerk didn't have a fucking clue about DSP and was just impressed by fancy words. "Minimizing latency" my ass.
Modern patents are completely different than what people think patents are.
They are not necessarily clever inventions or designs anymore. They are just a way of laying stake to a field or method of doing things.
As an example, people think a better mouse trap would be what you'd file a patent for. No, actually, a company would file a patent for method of eliminating rodents. This would cover all forms of mouse traps that could ever be designed.
A few years ago, I thought I could learn how things are don
Re: Typical (Score:4, Funny)
Spoken as someone rocking a factory "Blose" system in a 2015 Suburban (don't ask...).
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Bose didn't even file that patent--they bought it [yahoo.com], presumably because they realized it was so general they could sue people all kinds of people when they felt like it. Bose: better sound through patent extortion!
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ALso, noise-cancelling technology isn't unique to, or even invented by BOSE. It's, AFAIK, a military patent.. and used in almost every modern headphone and smartphone made.
But what military?
Of interest if a military design was classified and if someone invented
the same thing how could this be litigated. In some cases the disclosure
need only be a public RFP that implies it is possible for another skilled
in the art to go and do it.
Since the secrecy order covers methods and capabilities it could be
that military hardware designs will never be used to show prior art.
FIrst rumor I heard on noise cancellation was for Israel tank communication
systems. Second was old AT&T stuff
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This is bit dated, but still quite relevant, The Bose FAQ [archive.org] from archive.org as latest version seem to have disappeared few years back from net.
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Wow... So what have they created? Really, list anything they have done that either haven't been done before or not being well known.
Sony have created more in the audio business and they aren't the no. 1 inventor by far...
[Adding a lot of DSP effects and playing stuff at loud volumes isn't innovation BTW. Last I was shopping for headphones I thought that a Bose model looked interesting (albeit expensive) so I tried them in a in store test thingy... Which was interesting as even though there were good music p
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Right. So name their innovations except for these things that I for some reason claim aren't innovations.
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Bose does research. They do their work, probably more than "Beats" did. They deserve credit for that. Sure, Bose's products sound like shit up and down the product lines, and the old audiophile refrain was "got no highs, got no lows, must be Bose." Companies change over time, though, maybe in the last five years Bose improved the quality of their speakers, but there were not great in the 80s, 90s, 00s. But hey, at least they're a semi-reputable audio company.
Beats was the headphone partner of Monster Cable
Re: Typical (Score:2)
So - according to you - Beats create and Bose doesn't? What are you doing on slashdot?
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No, that is not according to me. Try again.
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You added a comment "Those who can't create, litigate." to an article about Bose suing Beats. In the context of the article, i read your comment - "Those who can't create (Bose), litigate".
If this is not what you meant, could you explain what it IS that you meant?
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"Those who can't create, litigate" --- who does this remind you of over last 2-3 years? Funny to see Apple whine about plays outta their OWN playbook
A stupid post replying to an equally stupid post.
I thought Google was the patent troll, trying to get four billion dollars from Microsoft for h.264 related software patents and ending up having to pay Microsoft's bills. And there is Samsung threatened with a 13 billion Euro fine if they don't stop patent trolling in Europe.
In this case, Apple just has bought Beats, and has surely not done anything to infringe on Bose's patents. And from the description of these patents, they seem to be rather concrete
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Yeah, because Apple has commented on this somewhere?
You do realize that Apple doesn't even own Beats Audio yet, right? And that this legal action, in no way resembles Bose making an opportunistic money grab now that it looks like Beats will be gaining some very deep pockets in the next few weeks, right?
Why didn't they sue months / years ago when Beats first put noise canceling products on the market?
Re: Typical (Score:1)
Well. Apple did sue Microsoft for imitating their OS way back then.
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"Those who can't create, litigate" --- who does this remind you of over last 2-3 years? Funny to see Apple whine about plays outta their OWN playbook
Apple filed a patent lawsuit against HTC in 2010, and Samsung in 2011. According to Wikipedia, are the only two patent lawsuits Apple has ever filed in the entire history of the company.
You neglect truthiness. Arbiter doesn't like Alpple, and patent trolls, therefore it is only logical, right, and just that Apple is the biggest patent troll that ever existed. Pah! You and your facts!
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Only two? What are you, simple, or just trolling?
Here's another one [insidecounsel.com] just earlier this year:
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hmm.. bose.
hmm.. beats.
but what the fuck are the patents? it's not like beats has any innovation so what the fuck? is the patent on using a too big bass driver in combination with high frequency driver or what that fck? or patent on only using a low end driver?
Re:Typical (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Typical (Score:5, Informative)
Just accross the parking lot is the Bose Research Building, where every design must pass a rigorous Design Assurance Engineering process. They have anechoic chambers, speaker torture (long-term testing) rooms where they do up and down, left and right, circular, and random vibration testing, CAD rooms and all kinds of research tools and methods you can't even imagine (e.g. Salt Fog testing for their Marine products)
In other words, you are about as far off base as a person can be on this one.
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Dr. Bose (an actual Doctor, with an MIT Doctorate and everything!) is an innovator par excellence.
Just accross the parking lot is the Bose Research Building, where every design must pass a rigorous Design Assurance Engineering process. They have anechoic chambers, speaker torture (long-term testing) rooms where they do up and down, left and right, circular, and random vibration testing, CAD rooms and all kinds of research tools and methods you can't even imagine (e.g. Salt Fog testing for their Marine products)
And with all this concentrated wonderfulness, and Doctor Bose's (an actual Doctor) Godlike status, Bose speakers are still marginal - at best.
You canna beat the laws of physics, laddie.
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Re:Typical (Score:5, Interesting)
To be fair, they are a speaker company, and they were started to be a speaker company. The fact that they do a bunch of other stuff doesn't really change that. I've had some of their speakers (601 Series II [bose.com]) and they just didn't sound good enough to justify the space they take up, although they actually could sound pretty good in a crappy room; up close they even sounded really crisp, whether they actually were or not. (The whole point was that they weren't, though.) You have got to be impressed by the way Bose can make a bunch of shitty drivers sound pretty decent for most kinds of music. Not impressed enough to buy them, but I got them for free. On that basis they were pretty fantastic.
My A8 also has Bose sound, and it doesn't exactly bowl me over either. Besides the crackling volume knob and the failed tape deck, it just doesn't really sound that amazing. When you get it nice and loud, it kind of goes to pieces. Since it's an extra-fancy Bose head unit (for 1997, mind you) and the changer uses a unique protocol, the only thing I can really replace it with is the same exact thing. There are kits to do otherwise, but then you really need to get into complete speaker wiring replacement.
Bose might do a lot more than this, and there might be a whole lot of solid engineering behind what they do, but pretty much everyone who doesn't know them for making undersized all-in-one systems with funky design (Bose "Wave", indeed, harrumph) knows them for making really expensive home speakers, or automotive audio systems which are often considerably expensive options which are (in terms of quality) inferior to getting the same sort of thing installed in the aftermarket.
tl;dr: Bose is a speaker company which refuses to publish typical test data even after they collect it, as well as a company which does other things — most of which are closely related to speakers.
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No. To be fair, there is no sense in reading the rest of your post. The very issue this thread is discussing has almost nothing to do with speakers - at least in the traditional sense, so to be fair, you are making a ridiculous claim in a context where any moron should recognize it as such. I read the rest of your post anyway, and you go on to openly admit they make radios, for exampe, so to be fair you don't even believe your own bullshit.
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"To be fair, they are a speaker company"
No. To be fair, there is no sense in reading the rest of your post. [...] I read the rest of your post anyway,
I should probably rest my case here, since you just stuck a fork in yourself. But...
and you go on to openly admit
Out now!
they make radios, for exampe
Well, they also make them for car companies. And sadly, they are not very good, but more to the point here, those radios are designed specifically and explicitly to go with matched sets of their speakers. I should say that they're not very bad, either. I'd rather have a factory Bose than a factory Blaupunkt, for example. Faint praise, however, only serves to illustrate the point.
so to be fair you don't even believe your own bullshit.
If you can point to something I wrote
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No. To be fair, there is no sense in reading the rest of your post. The very issue this thread is discussing has almost nothing to do with speakers - at least in the traditional sense, so to be fair,
In some faraway universe, you might make sense.
Otherwise this thread is exactly about speakers and sound systems.
If somehow some way, Bose makes an awesome mousetrap, or some kind of gastraphagus that makes enemies shit their pants, that's all very nice. But tell me how the other stuff they do is relevent to them suing Apple?
You must have been a blast in debate class. Declaring the topic of the debate off topic.
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Thus sayeth the audiophile. A member of a crowd that says sloppy tubes are better (They "sound" better to many, but ARE they to everyone- and are they factually so?) and the like.
Sorry, your observations are preference observations, not objective ones, and preference can differ from person to person- and you're stating them as facts and in a way that if someone doesn't agree, they're not worthy. Keep it to, "in my opinion," or, "in my not so humble opinion," and you'll be fine. If not, keep it to yours
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Thus sayeth the audiophile.
My PC stereo system is a couple of Yamaha monitors whose model I don't know on a 40W Kenwood whose model I don't know (squinting... KA-305) and my "home theater" system is a Sony STR-DE635. I'm still using the original double-driver powered sub from the kit (it's pretty Bose-esque in its own way, actually) but I got out from under the other kit speakers with an assortment of yard sale scores. I forget who made my cheap center, maybe JBL. I have cambridge metal case in the rears, and the fronts are something
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Hey man, you don't need to be an audiophile to know that much of the rest of the speaker industry is better than Bose. We're not talking sloppy tubes or gold-plated ding-dongs or weird vinyl artifacts. These are observations from pretty much every industry or review magazine, observations that are easily objectively measured. If speakers are on the low end of accurate sound reproduction, there's really not that much preference about it.
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"they even sounded really crisp, whether they actually were or not." Hilarious. The "crispness" of a speaker is defined by how it sounds, unless you were eating it. But even then sound generally plays a role in that determination.
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Yeah. OK Buddy. The funny thing is that you think Bose is a speaker company, thereby showing that you have no idea what Bose is or does.
Oh, awesome, smashing riposte. It's not like we were discussing Bose as related to their speakers as related to Beats, eh? Yeah - OK buddy.
I really don't give a stinky rat's ass about the other things Bose does, I'm just here to talk about the shitty audio of Bose and the equally shitty audio of Beats.
Which makes me think that Bose's best argument in this whole lawsuit is to demonstrate how both sound bad. If you want to have an argument about the other stuff Bose does, submit a story.
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That is correct. It is not like we were discussing Bose as related to their speakers as related to Beats. The suit is about their active noise cancellation. Evidently you don't know what that means. This is, of course, in direct congruence to your cluelessness in everything you have written.
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Just accross the parking lot is the Bose Research Building, where every design must pass a rigorous Design Assurance Engineering process. They have anechoic chambers, speaker torture (long-term testing) rooms where they do up and down, left and right, circular, and random vibration testing, CAD rooms and all kinds of research tools and methods you can't even imagine (e.g. Salt Fog testing for their Marine products)
If you're so impressed by their research building, you should check out their advertising building. They are better funded and have more influence in making their products sound better.
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Dr. Bose did a lot of groundbreaking research back in the day. And, yes, nobody wastes $100M in audio research [wardsauto.com] the way Bose does.
The problem is that none of that is reflected (heh heh) very well by their product line. You can't prove anything from a one-off sample in their office. The real key to home audio isn't cost no object performance; it's bang for the buck in real-world production. And it's there that Bose's products are sketchy, and the way they sue anyone who measures that fact should set off a
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No, bose basically patented something that has been around for decades. They didn't create shit.
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Bose is long know for litigating everything, including valid criticisms of its products. You shouldn't feel sympathy for them. If beats really had violated any patents, it would've been sued ages ago. They're both garbage.
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I'd like to temper the last bit of your post with the following addendum:
It's not surprising that Beats Audio is getting sued for this all of a sudden, now that they are about to have some very deep pockets for a potential settlement.
Oh, and Beats has had noise canceling tech shipping for at least a year, so this seems very much like Bose waiting until they could extract a nice cash settlement rather than actually working to protect a competitive technical advantage.
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You're missing the point.
Bose is over priced crap. You can buy significantly better quality headphones for half the cost.