<story><title>Looks by Dr. Dre</title><url>http://www.subtraction.com/2014/07/09/looks-by-dr-dre/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>InclinedPlane</author><text>My theory on confusion over the Beats purchase is that Apple fanboys have a reluctance to admit that Apple is significantly a fashion company. Not the beacon of technical excellence(asterisk) they set it up to be in their mind.&lt;p&gt;The reality is that Beats is also primarily a fashion company. Also with a strong brand. Also with a product line that sells at a high markup. They go together like pancakes and maple syrup. If Apple puts Beats headphones in their stores they will sell just as much as they do now. Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t Apple want a slice of that profit?&lt;p&gt;And if they make a next generation Beats headphone that can only be used with Apple products? Well, that&amp;#x27;s even more money.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit: asterisk&lt;/i&gt;: which is not to say that Apple lacks technical excellence, but the reason why they are so successful is not their engineering credentials, it&amp;#x27;s because they are able to marry aesthetics and engineering.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The more closely you look at Beats, the more they make sense as a serious asset to a consumer electronics company, and the less plausible the &amp;quot;Apple just needed to get a streaming service off the ground&amp;quot; story is.&lt;p&gt;Two more angles to consider:&lt;p&gt;* Owning Beats puts Apple hardware on the heads of a huge fraction of every mobile user, whether they use iOS or not. Having a Beats brand affinity for those users makes it easier to introduce new products to them.&lt;p&gt;* Owning Beats gives Apple access to Beats sales channels; whatever retail real estate Beats has is now controlled by Apple.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tptacek</author><text>To the extent that you can say the exact same thing about Porsche, I agree; just bear in mind that it takes more than a sense of style to execute on &amp;quot;Porsche&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;But also look how Apple integrates downmarket. To a first approximation nobody&amp;#x27;s first car is a Porsche, but the less expensive iPhones are viable first smartphones. There&amp;#x27;s something powerful about being able, at least in theory, to address the whole market that way. Porsche probably can&amp;#x27;t change the way everyone engages with cars, but Apple can do that with mobile.</text></comment>
<story><title>Looks by Dr. Dre</title><url>http://www.subtraction.com/2014/07/09/looks-by-dr-dre/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>InclinedPlane</author><text>My theory on confusion over the Beats purchase is that Apple fanboys have a reluctance to admit that Apple is significantly a fashion company. Not the beacon of technical excellence(asterisk) they set it up to be in their mind.&lt;p&gt;The reality is that Beats is also primarily a fashion company. Also with a strong brand. Also with a product line that sells at a high markup. They go together like pancakes and maple syrup. If Apple puts Beats headphones in their stores they will sell just as much as they do now. Why wouldn&amp;#x27;t Apple want a slice of that profit?&lt;p&gt;And if they make a next generation Beats headphone that can only be used with Apple products? Well, that&amp;#x27;s even more money.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;Edit: asterisk&lt;/i&gt;: which is not to say that Apple lacks technical excellence, but the reason why they are so successful is not their engineering credentials, it&amp;#x27;s because they are able to marry aesthetics and engineering.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The more closely you look at Beats, the more they make sense as a serious asset to a consumer electronics company, and the less plausible the &amp;quot;Apple just needed to get a streaming service off the ground&amp;quot; story is.&lt;p&gt;Two more angles to consider:&lt;p&gt;* Owning Beats puts Apple hardware on the heads of a huge fraction of every mobile user, whether they use iOS or not. Having a Beats brand affinity for those users makes it easier to introduce new products to them.&lt;p&gt;* Owning Beats gives Apple access to Beats sales channels; whatever retail real estate Beats has is now controlled by Apple.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>threeseed</author><text>&amp;gt;Apple is significantly a fashion company&lt;p&gt;Which fashion companies design their own programming language, design their own CPUs, lead the industry in hardware manufacturing, produce innovative security features like TouchID etc. None. They are a product and services company who care about design. It really isn&amp;#x27;t hard to see that they contribute just as much to the IT industry as Microsoft or Google.</text></comment>