My problem with Apple's AirPods Max and why it does not matter
Another example of a 'higher than should be' priced product that will do just fine because it is an Apple product.
👋 Welcome to the FWIW by David Tvrdon, your weekly tech, media & audio digest.
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In this edition
🎧 Apple’s AirPods Max
💔 FTC seeks to break up Facebook
💬 Other tech, media, gaming, audio & podcasting news
👻 BONUS: My latest column for The Fix is the beginning of a mini-series looking back at the 2020 media industry in different topics, first up, Year 2020 in podcasting.
549 reasons not to buy Apple’s high-end headphones and 1 reason you might buy them
📸 by Apple
Apple does not talk about it but from time to time it regularly reminds us that its products are not for everyone. It’s a point of differentiation, also it’s those sweet sweet margins.
The company introduced the long-rumored over-ear noise-canceling headphones. AirPods Max will cost $549 (yep, those 549 reasons not to buy them) and start shipping on December 15th (forget about them arriving on time for Christmas, Bloomberg reports wait times of 12 to 14 weeks).
Sure, AirPods Max look really nice and come with all the features you would love to have in such headphones, together with a ridiculously looking case that people cannot stop making fun of.
But let’s just think about the market outside the Apple world.
One of the best and most trustworthy review sites out there, the WireCutter, recommends Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 as the overall best noise-canceling headphones. You can get them for $380 on Amazon.
CNET, the technology site that makes the most of its revenue by recommending tech products, picked Sony's WH-1000XM as the best overall noise-canceling headphones out there. And they acknowledged that they only chose them over Bose’s above-mentioned model because being more comfortable. You can get them for $278.
Wired picked Sony’s other model, WH-1000XM4 as best overall. With Bose’s running second. You can get them for $350.
The Verge also picked Sony’s WH-1000XM4 noise-canceling headphones. With the runner up being Bose Noise Canceling Headphones 700.
You get the picture. The best in class come between $300 - $400.
Apple’s only real differentiation here is a simple one, but essentially the one reason you might for the more expensive AirPods Max. It’s embodied in the H1 chip and basically promises seamless connecting to other Apple devices.
It’s true that Bluetooth has become much better when using the 5th generation on both connecting devices. Still, it’s less impressive than Apple’s proprietary hardware-based connection.
Still, there are questions regarding sound quality. I am sure AirPods Max will do fine but do not expect anyone recommending them as the best in class when looking at the closest high-end competition being hundreds of dollars cheaper.
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In other news
TECH
🦾 🇫🇷 🇪🇺 French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe needs “European solutions” to reduce its dependence on U.S. tech giants. “We need European financing, European solutions, European talents, European regulations,” Macron said in a conversation with Niklas Zennstrom, the Swedish billionaire who co-founded Skype. “We need an actual European digital market. Today, a lot of entrepreneurs have to deal with 27 regulations. This is why the different directives arriving in the coming weeks, around mid-December — for digital services and digital markets — are critical,” quoted Macron TechCrunch. [CNBC]
Revolut, Europe’s $5.5 billion digital bank, quietly broke even in November. Founded in 2015, Revolut is one of several so-called neobanks that have emerged in the last decade, taking on larger lenders with travel-friendly mobile checking accounts and linked payment cards. [CNBC]
⚙️ The State of European Tech 2020. [Atomico]
📈 Google’s Year In Search 2020 trend report was released. [Google Trends]
📲 2020 in mobile. App Annie published its year-end forecast. Few trends to take note of: Consumer spending across the two app stores will also grow by 25% year-over-year to reach $112 billion by year end, the firm also predicts. 65 cents of every dollar of consumer spending in apps went to iOS. TikTok overtook Facebook as the most downloaded app globally. [TechCrunch]
🔨 The Federal Trade Commission sued Facebook for a slew of antitrust violations. Mainly the lawsuit looks at the acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. This is a far more robust suit than the one brought up against Google recently. In part, it wasn’t rushed by the Trump administration (explanation: they kind of couldn’t rush this one), and also more than 40 state attorneys general joined, which means broad bipartisan coordination. FTC wants to break up Facebook and make Instagram and WhatsApp into standalone companies. [Big Technology]
🦹♂️ Huawei tested AI software that can detect members of the Uighur Muslim minority and alert Chinese authorities. This is bad for multiple reasons but mostly, if a company is willing to engage in such things it tells a lot about its core principles. [Washington Post]
A document signed by Huawei representatives — discovered by the research organization IPVM and shared exclusively with The Washington Post — shows that the telecommunications firm worked in 2018 with the facial recognition start-up Megvii to test an artificial-intelligence camera system that could scan faces in a crowd and estimate each person’s age, sex and ethnicity.
If the system detected the face of a member of the mostly Muslim minority group, the test report said, it could trigger a “Uighur alarm” — potentially flagging them for police in China, where members of the group have been detained en masse as part of a brutal government crackdown. The document, which was found on Huawei’s website, was removed shortly after The Post and IPVM asked the companies for comment.
😎 A fascinating story: A 21-year-old Trump supporter pretended to be Trump's family. Then Trump fell for it. [The New York Times]
🚗 Why is Elon Musk moving to Texas? First, because of the measures against the pandemic California required Musk to shut down the production, and he was not happy about it. Second, Texas has no state income tax and Musk is the second-richest person in the world. [Axios]
🤑 SoftBank Vision Fund turns $680 million DoorDash investment into $11.5 billion based on Wednesday’s opening price. [CNBC]
MEDIA
🤳 Influencer marketing just got a bit more professional. The Association of National Advertisers introduced what it's calling an Influencer Marketing Advisory Board. And earlier this year, the American Influencer Council was created by influencers for influencers. Clear signs of professionalization of influencer marketing. [Marketing Brew]
🔎 The December 2020 Google Core Update. Once again, news publishers have been negatively affected by an algorithm update in Google search, writes Barry Adams. When he asked Google why traffic to news websites slowed he got a non-answer and came up with this theory: Google’s own engineers don’t really know why their search system does what it does. [SEO for Google News]
🍆 PornHub agreed to make changes to its service, including limiting uploads and eliminating downloads. Visa and Mastercard said over the weekend that they are investigating their business relationship with Pornhub after Nicholas Kristof, an opinion columnist at The New York Times, wrote that the site also carries revenge pornography and other explicit video taken without consent of the participants.
🎬 It’s hard doing changes in Hollywood. This is a good thread on how stars are reacting to Warner Bros. news releasing all movies to HBO Max streaming the same day as blockbuster movies open in theaters.
AUDIO & PODCASTING
🎧 Podcast predictions for 2021 from industry leaders. The Pacific Content asks what’s next for podcasting in the coming year. Many are looking forward that podcast advertising will exceed one billion dollars in 2021. Although, if you take a global view, not just an American-centric one, this is already true for 2020 according to the study I shared in the previous edition of this newsletter. Many also stress that consolidation is coming to the industry, again something we could have seen this year with Spotify buying up companies and Amazon eyeing Wondery. And many more predictions. [Pacific Content]
🎛️ Tips for using Instagram to promote your podcast and grow your audience. [We Edit Podcasts]
⏩ Super Listeners are noticing an increase in the number of commercials and ad breaks. Edison Research has published their study on podcast listeners who listen to five or more hours of podcasts weekly. Thirty-three percent of Super Listeners say they pay more attention to host-read ads than other types of ads in podcasts. In last year’s survey, Super Listeners reported consuming an average of 9.8 hours of podcasts per week, this year the average increased to 10.5 hours per week. [Podnews]
🎙️ Audible launched its Podcast Development Program. The tagline: Get $10,000 to develop your podcast with Audible and reach millions of passionate listeners. Yet another sign Amazon really wants to have own podcast IP. The call is opened globally, your podcast idea needs to be for English audiences, they do not accept other languages at the moment. [Audible]
🎤 Spotify published 2020 Wrapped for Advertisers. Some interesting data below + you can go through all the listener categories and see their specific listening habits. [Spotify]
Globally, we saw a 108% increase of total monthly active users who listened to podcasts in Sept. 2020 compared with Sept 2019.
72% of listeners who listened to more streaming audio during COVID did so for screenless moments caused by screen fatigue—either for themselves or the entire family.
140% increase in listening to News & Politics podcasts
🤗 Good news: Google Podcasts now support private RSS feeds. [The Verge]
GAMING
🕹️ Microsoft confirms Xbox cloud gaming is coming to iOS via web browser in spring 2021. 2021 will be huge for web browser-based cloud gaming. My only question is whether someone at Apple actually realizes that this means they will be losing money. Have tried web browser cloud gaming and it works just fine. [9to5Mac]
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