Note to Audiophiles: Get Over It!

I must have read twenty articles today about Apple’s purported acquisition of Beats. Most of them droning on and on about how Beats headphones and earphones are a far cry from audiophile quality and what a mistake it is for Apple to blow $3.2 billion on the company. To all of them I say, “Enough with all the second-guessing, already!” I’m sure these pundits are loving yet another opportunity to dump on Apple’s business practices and to paint Tim Cook as some sort of buffoon, but in my opinion they are just a bunch of link baiters shooting their mouths off for attention.

When someone tells me that Beats aren’t audiophile quality cans, my first response is, “Duuuuuh!”  When I’m done being a smartass, I would say, “So what?” I would then ask them if anything in Apple’s product lineup (past or present) could be remotely considered “audiophile quality?” Let’s go down the list: 

1.) iPhone? no

2.) iPod? no

3.) EarPods? Hell no!

4.) Any Mac? Maybe. If you add the right hardware, but not out-of-the-box.

In short, Apple has never made any audiophile quality product to my knowledge. Why? Apple doesn’t try to. And they’re not trying to now. So why blow all that dough on Beats? Who knows? Maybe it’s for the cool factor. Beats are the headgear of choice for famous athletes, hollywood types, people who put 1000-watt subwoofers in their car and kids with rich (or naive) parents. Market share? Maybe. Beats does own over 60% of the over $200 headphone market. The new Beats Music service? Again, maybe. iTunes Radio hasn’t exactly set the world afire. The Beats personnel? Maybe. Having Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine as company executives certainly couldn’t hurt Apple's standing in the music business.

The simple answer is, we don’t know, and we’re not likely to know anytime soon. Remember when Apple bought PA Semiconductor? It was almost two years later when we saw the fruits of that purchase when Apple rolled out the first "A series" processor. This will probably be the same kind of thing. It may not take two years, but the Beats purchase surely plays into some long-term plan that only a select few in Cupertino are privy to right now. The only thing we absolutely know for sure: Apple didn’t buy Beats because they mistook them for suppliers of audiophile gear.

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