As nerd-ragey as some people are about the Beats deal, they have some amazing fit and finish with regards to manufacturing. See for instance their paint: most painted plastics experience an undesirable amount of "orange peeling" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_peel_(effect)).
This is caused in part by not getting the temperature of the paint high enough to form a smooth finish. Metal can withstand significantly higher temperatures than plastic. This is usually why car paints look so much better than Krylon's.
By over-molding their plastic tops around a metal base, Beats was able to increase the tolerable temperature range. Next time you roll into a Best Buy, compare the 'shinyness' and 'smoothness' of the overmolded Beats to any other plastic product made by Samsung, HP, or Sony.
We learnt this through Chinese manufacturing forums where if anything, the idea of 'target demographic' does not apply - Beats simply figured out how to put a nicer finish on their product than the competition using innovative manufacturing techniques and increase margin.
That's really interesting, I love learning about these manufacturing hurdles that consumers never hear about.
Consumers don't buy Beats because they're shinier though. They buy them because of the image that comes with them, thanks to a successful marketing and endorsement campaign.
That's why knock-off beats are everywhere in Hong Kong. Manufacturers can add a "b" to any old pair of over-ear headphones and they become much more valuable. Consumers value the "b"
>'Consumers don't buy Beats because they're shinier though. They buy them because of the image that comes with them, thanks to a successful marketing and endorsement campaign.'
Sure, but exceptional shine is exactly the sort of hard to replicate detail that maintains the brand value and sense of exclusivity they spent so much to build in the first place.
If I ask one of our high school age interns how to spot bootleg Beats, Jordans, fitted caps or whatever they'll run off a laundry list of incredible detail - shine, screws, stitching or some tiny seam that isn't quite flush.
They obsess over these things and would probably sooner have nothing than run the risk of being found guilty of the poverty / envy that wearing bootlegs would imply to among their peers.
To counterbalance, I think the Beats products look great and I've been tempted to buy them, but this very "image" around the brand sets me off greatly. That's the problem with endorsements, you end up wrangling your brand image with that of the celebrities endorsing your product.
The sound on Beats is actually good; much better than what most people have with their headphones so most users will experience an improvement by switching to them.
The problem is that the cost:sound ratio is poor; you can find cheaper headphones with the same quality and you can find much better headphones for the same price.
Sound is a very objective measurement so I won't go ahead and say that beats sounds "better" or "worse". However (I can't seem to find the link now) on many audiophile forums Beats have been measured to skew to better frequency response in the low range. Therefore they will sound more thumpy but without warm mids and crisp highs. Beats has engineered their headphones this way for a specific marketing demographic, I just don't know if this is what the majority of Apple customers want and interpret as good performance.
That may be the case, but consider that most consumers are probably currently using the <$15 earbuds that came with their phone. When those users switch to Beats they will get a much better sound experience, even if the frequency response is skewed.
I'll continue to recommend sennheiser over Beats, but I think the primary objection to beats should be their cost, not their quality.
This is a very important thing to remember: people always talk about how 'audiophiles' hate Beats headphones and would recommend a better-sounding, worse-looking and sometimes more expensive option.
The people buying Beats are people upgrading from their free headphones that came bundled with their phone, or the $15 ones they picked up at the supermarket.
Those are $30 headphones and I _love_ them. I use headphones 10 hours a day and it's always the apple ones. So comfortable, just the right amount of noise-canceling so I don't have to remove them to talk to people, and they sound good to me.
Beats are also very comfortable. Not much is said on headphone comfort in reviews and comparisons but it's very important for me.
The skew is exactly what Dr. Dre's fans, and other pop fans, want. They are made by a former gangsta rapper turned pop rapper. Who can listen to Dre without a trio of 12" subs rumbling their car or house or the dancefloor?
I have had Beats for 2.5 years. I like a lot of rap, and rap sounds awesome. Nicer headphones may have a better sound for a more broad range of music - but they don't replicate the 808's and fat basslines on Novation.
This isn't even close to being on topic, but I upvoted you because 'fat basslines on Novation' reminded me of the Wu Tang Clan! Triumph is a great song...
Beats Headphones are fashion items, which is really most of the innovation they provide: making a normally geeky or tacky piece of equipment into something stylish.
What it looks like to you is besides the point, it's how they look to the people around you.
I know that, and I know that's important for some people. But for me, my aesthetic experience is not changed by how headphones I wear look, but just by how they sound and how comfortable they are. I spend most of my time wearing headphones alone, and very little of that in front of a mirror.
And still: any headphones, even the prettiest ones, look kinda lame in comparison to not wearing headphones. This is my personal preference of course; if I was worried about looking good rather than hearing good sound, I'd stick to little in-ear ones.
Apple's new earpods are a huge step up from their old earbuds, and given their price ($30) are well up there in their price range. Most reviews I've seen of them from more audiophile oriented sources have been very positive given their context. No they won't compete with $200 headphones or earphones, but they're supposed to either.
Apple's customers should probably care that they are going to be ripped off on headphones. The issue isn't "audiophiles don't like them". It's that you can pay a lot less money and get much better headphones.
But me, I use the cheapest Panasonic headphones because they look cool and they're durable, and that's good enough for me. Probably for a lot of people. These: http://www.cnet.com/products/panasonic-rp-htx7-white/
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 "Apple just needed to get a streaming service off the ground" story is.
Two more angles to consider:
* 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.
* Owning Beats gives Apple access to Beats sales channels; whatever retail real estate Beats has is now controlled by Apple.
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.
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't Apple want a slice of that profit?
And if they make a next generation Beats headphone that can only be used with Apple products? Well, that's even more money.
Edit: asterisk: which is not to say that Apple lacks technical excellence, but the reason why they are so successful is not their engineering credentials, it's because they are able to marry aesthetics and engineering.
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 "Porsche".
But also look how Apple integrates downmarket. To a first approximation nobody's first car is a Porsche, but the less expensive iPhones are viable first smartphones. There's something powerful about being able, at least in theory, to address the whole market that way. Porsche probably can't change the way everyone engages with cars, but Apple can do that with mobile.
Sure, sure. But that's true of nearly all "fashion" brands, even Beats (though less so compared to Porsche or Armani or omega watches). There's nothing wrong with iPhones or apple products in general, they make some very good products. Pretending that fashion isn't a big reason behind the popularity of Apple products in general is silly.
I would suggest that it's more that an upmarket of mobile phones doesn't really exist right now. Pretty much everyone has the same thing. Who's the Porsche or the Rolls of mobile? To a first approximation, much of the first world can afford a 5S if they really want one. Vertu? Heh.
Yeah, but a Vertu is excessive, just as a Porsche. Normcore is the word. You have to look just better than your peers, not everyone at once. So, even though a lot of people couldn't affort a pricier phone than the 5S, even those who can afford a Vertu stay on the 5S and spend on other accessories.
"have a reluctance to admit that Apple is significantly a fashion company. Not the beacon of technical excellence they set it up to be in their mind."
This is a false dichotomy, the idea that Apple is either a fashion company or a Tech leader. Why can't they be both? Yes they make products that are fashionably designed but, IMO, they are clearly also a leader if not the leader in consumer technical excellence.
I think you're misreading what I'm saying. I'm not saying that Apple is just a fashion company. I'm saying that a lot of folks, especially the silicon valley alpha geek types, who are die hard Apple fans try to rationalize their preferences in a way that excludes the fashion aspect out of a sense of embarrassment or what-have-you.
A lot of people, including myself, like Apple products less so for the design and more for the actual technical qualities. They make the best laptops by far. The operating system marries UNIX with ease of use like nothing before. There is genuine attention to detail in their software that Microsoft or Ubuntu simply doesn't have.
I am sick to death of idiots like you who dismiss my choice as being "fashionable".
No I won't edit it. Painting someone's decision as "fashionable" is a form of condescension. It's hilarious that HN doesn't see this kind of behaviour as a personal attack and downvote accordingly.
I found the comment condescending too, but found a way to reply to it that didn't involve spreading poison on the thread. You didn't. You're going to be happier on HN if you can internalize the idea that direct personal attacks are counterproductive. You did a disservice to your own argument.
It's perfectly possible to become a customer of a company based solely on objective appreciation of the qualities of its products, but that doesn't stop it from being a fashion company. A lot of people, like you apparently, want to pretend that Apple is not a fashion company to even the slightest degree when, of course, fashion has always been a big reason for the company's success.
as a mac user and ubuntu user.. the fact that mac still requires managers like macports/finch/homebrew make me question the "marries UNIX with ease" statement.
If you're a terminal nerd you have to go through a couple extra steps with OS X that you don't with Ubuntu, sure. But if you're the sort of person who gives a flying fig about the kinds of programs homebrew installs for you, are you really going to scream, "WHAT? I have to spend five or six minutes installing Xcode's command line tools and the Homebrew package manager? THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE!" and flip over the table in rage?
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't hard to see that they contribute just as much to the IT industry as Microsoft or Google.
I think the term you might be looking for is product excellence. Apple rarely do technology for the sake of technology, they do it for the improvement of their product from the customer's point of view. They do appredciate good design, but that doesn't make them a fashion company, it makes them a company who scrutinises every aspect of the product, not just the spec sheet and I personally really appreciate that.
Apple's original success does not stem from fashion, but rather from their OS being the most accessible alternative to Windows for non-technical users--driving huge profits selling hardware.
Early iPods did not have a significant leg up over other MP3 players in terms of usability, other MP3 players at the time hearkened back to the Walkman, which nearly all non-technical consumers were perfectly comfortable with and capable of using.
The big gain there was that the iPod had a modern design, not a design dating back to the 80s.
Edit: The clickwheel was an improvement, but it wasn't like consumers were confused or apprehensive about using the alternatives at the time. We were not like the proverbial grandmothers struggling to check their email in Windows XP; they understood the other products just fine.
The click wheel was good, but it wasn't like consumers were confused by the alternatives. With PCs you could make the case that most consumers struggled to use windows at the time, but hand-held media players haven't had that problem since the 80s.
The problem with the alternatives wasn't that they were "confusing". They were just bad.
I remember trying to find a song on my Rio. It took forever. It was pointless. I came to the conclusion my best bet was to build Playlists, on my computer, and use those.
The iPod's interface made finding songs, artists, albums, etc effortless.
Just because an interface isn't confusing doesn't mean it's any good.
You're a smug asshole, aren't you. The reason they are so successful is the technology falls by the wayside; that's how advanced they are. Just because you get off rooting your phone doesn't mean they're not the leaders in technical excellence.
> Owning Beats puts Apple hardware on the heads of a huge fraction of every mobile user
You might be on to something here. What if Apple's plan is to make the headphone itself a network enabled device with access to the app store?
While headphones are currently 'dumb', there's no reason it has to continue to be the case. Network enabled watches. Network enabled headphones. Network enabled glasses. If Apple get's the leading brand in all these categories, then making the leap just suddenly became a lot easier.
Maybe. Generally, though, I'm just saying: you should look at all the elements of the business: the promotion strategy, the user base, the product positioning, the distribution and sales channels, the supply chain (as Khoi Vinh points out), the integration story... and the competitive tensions in all those places. You can't just look at the feature/function/benefit table and make a snap judgement; the feature/function/benefit list of a billion dollar business is rarely the whole story.
high-margin headphones and iPods are complimentary products, integrating an iPod into Beats is essentially making an iPod free - which is a good thing if you own Beats
Maybe it's not watches, but headphones? Siri + speakers you're already wearing. Health-wise, it must be beneficial to be close to the head opposed to the wrist. Maybe.
There's this narrative that Apple's lack of design choice has helped them, by keeping things consistent. White headphones were, for a while, almost exclusively iPod earbuds. If you saw someone rocking a white headphone cable, you knew what was in their pocket. They've branched out a little, with colors for select devices, but for the most part their visual choices are very limited.
Beats seems like they've done an excellent job of offering a wide selection while still keeping brand consistency and recognizability. In this regard, I think the article's speculation makes sense.
I find it hard to believe that apple couldn't make additional colors if they wanted. I don't think it's a lack of technological know how. They could pick that up without acquiring a entire additional company.
Limited colors on the iphone or ipod make sense. For the most part, it's an item that stays in your pocket. I'm sure some people care about additional design choices, but most people solve this by buying a case (which they'd do anyway).
Beats, due to the fact that they are headphones, are worn as head gear. Yes, they could have stuck with a few simple colors, but it's easier to justify lots of options when people will actually see your user wearing the product. This gives your user an incentive to want a more unique design and be willing to pay for it.
I tend to agree. Apple played with a lot of different colors and patterns back on the old iMacs and iBooks. Then they moved to all white, silver, and black. I doubt Apple needs the help here, Tim Cook knows a few things about managing a supply chain, and if Apple had wanted to offer the iPhone 5C in 60 colors they could have. They chose not to.
I have to agree somewhat with this comment. In particular, is handling 60 SKU's really a huge problem with technology and management nowadays?
It's a pity there's so much focus on small details like that and the color selection, because that's really not the main point, which the article does touch on - the two companies understand and heavily influence the consumer market and fashion, so the partnership makes sense. It's that simple.
By the way, Apple was the one who made the single-look product cool, with the iPhone. It's so cool that its own colorful 5C isn't selling very well (by its standards, of course) [1]. Restricting its color choices was not only because of the difficulty in doing so, it was a deliberate design choice. [Edit, based on parent comment: And getting people to buy overpriced cases to customize instead? Genius!]
1. Google "iPhone 5C sales". Observe articles calling it, e.g., "Failure Flop" and "dismal."
Thank you for actually understanding what I said clearly and meant.
Seems to be quite a bit of misunderstanding of my original comment :(
@madeofpalk Your comment seems critical of mine. But I'm not sure what it adds except that it may have strengthened my point that Apple has a way to organize their SKUs. Please read the original article and see what I'm trying to address.
Handling 60 SKUs of similar products is a big problem. Multi-variant stock control and supply chain management is troublesome at best. If one of your stores runs out of green widgets and another one only has red widgets until Tuesday, how do you reliably sell red and green ones to customers who want one without buying so much stock that you are then at risk of a loss when it is end-of-lined?
Too late, the customer has gone to another widget stockist.
(I did a lot of work in supply chain management a few years back).
The water there is kind of muddy w/r/t the 5c because in addition to being available in multiple colors, it's also basically 2012's phone. They took the product that would have otherwise occupied the "value buyer" part of the lineup, with last year's old model, and relaunched it as if it were a new product.
Is it that people prefer the single-look of the 5s, or is it that they are not willing to trade the latest-and-greatest hardware for colors? Do people care more about utility than color?
Personally I like the look of the 5c better, but I wouldn't endure two years of having to enter a lockscreen PIN when I could forego the colors and get a 5s.
The problem with the 5c was the price difference just wasn't very big, compared to the total price of the phone. It was rather a poor prospect if you were in that market at all.
I think you're right for the most part. Apple probably doesn't want tons of variation in their products, for brand recognition. How long does it take to recognize an Apple laptop? They come in only one style that is distinct from most other laptops.
But as the author said briefly, if they are really releasing an iWatch, it would be different. It isn't an item that stays in your pocket, and the style would be one of the primary reasons for wearing it for some people. And those people who buy for style wouldn't all want the exact same watch
As a counterpoint, how long does it take to recognize a Beats headset? My guess is almost instant. The characteristic design is not entirely reliant on the colors of the plastic used.
It is so amazing to watch the attention that people give Apple's business decisions. Seriously, how much their actions get read into is unparalleled.
Any other company, we'd just say "yup, they bought a headphone company, and now they'll be selling some more/different headphones" and then we'd move on. But with Apple, it just must, must represent some form of tidal shift.
Because unlike most other big tech companies Apple doesn't make big purchases like this. They normally acquire small, unknown companies which are focussed on a specific technology Apple needs (mapping for example).
@moskie - it is indeed amazing, and it's part of their engine that makes them truly unique (that it has been this way for so long, and continues to be just as talked about).
@k-mcgrady: true, but if you look at what percentage of their cash they spent on it, it's not as significant as acquisitions from other, similarly sized companies.. but your point remains: it is out of the ordinary for $aapl.
While I don't disagree with anything in the article, I think it, and most commentators, are thinking too small.
When thinking about wearable computing, one big challenge is to take a small, weird-shaped form factor, like sunglasses or watches, and cram enough computer hardware in there to support all the features that people want.
Why not stick a computer in the headphones? Between the earmuffs and the headband, there's a lot more room to stick a computer into a set of Beats than there is in a wristwatch.
I can imagine being able to listen to the Beats music service using just the Beats headphones, and not even needing to connect them to a computer.
Not necessarily BT, but I totally agree with the premise. There's a limit to the number of CPUs, SSDs, and OSs a person wants to carry and manage. By all means, carry displays and HIDs of all sorts and sizes, but please drive them all from my "phone".
I think this concept carries all the way to "laptops" which are nothing more than a few ounces of battery, screen, keyboard, trackpad and a radio. Just a few more generations till Apple can "do it right" and they'll deploy the tech.
I guess the only "problem" is such a laptop wouldn't become obsolete fast enough...
I started travelling a lot and I wanted a bluetooth pair of headphones that had active noise cancelling. Beats was the only option that ticked off all of my needs and didn't blow out the second I tried pumping even minor amounts of bass through them (I'm looking at you, Bose). I was able to even get them in matte black so they are less gaudy.
They aren't for everyone...but most of us age 70 and under would dig the sound quality on them.
This article has a good point, which I never had thought.
Headphones are also a fashion accessory. They are very visible, the most visible piece of technology you are carrying.
Same thing goes with watches. For many people its about brand and fashion, not so much about the features.
Maybe Apple wants to be in the fashion business. If you have watches and headphones, you pretty much cover all the technology people are currently wearing. And it makes very much sense to have both products inside the same company so that you can provide matching pairs.
If the pricing is reasonable, you could even imagine selling multiple sets of products for same customers. This headphone/watch pair for jogging, another one for your business look.
Also the Apple Store chain would fit in the picture quite nicely. One problem could be that Apple is getting lots of people to the stores, but they currently have a limited range of products to sell for them. You don't need that many iPhones or Macs, iPads are a little bit expensive for impulse purchase.
In the end, who knows why they bought them. I do wonder if Beats had design and technological patents a company like Apple would rather buy than fight over in court. I wouldn't be surprised if Apple just bought them so they could sell a premium non-earbud headset with zero legal woes or fears of being called a copycat. I mean Beats look like an Apple product from a bizaro world where Steve Jobs wasn't there to say no to everything that wasn't ultra-minimalistic. Everything else, like their design team, streaming customers, and brand is just gravy.
Apple tries hard not to be a victim of the patent war they're always reigniting. I find it hard to believe IP isn't involved in a very, very significant way here.
Apple already has this figured out. Perhaps it's too easy to forget the iPod, but the iPod, especially the mini, nano, and shuffle all have color as a key part of the value proposition. Apple finally did that with the iPhone 5c.
The most clever thing Apple did was the 5c colors with the different colored covers. Those haven't really taken off in a huge way, but I think that is in part due to the buying cycle of phones.
Apple gets mass personalization in a big way. You can still get your devices engraved by Apple I believe.
The only company that I've seen take a real swing at something similar is Motorola with Moto X. Too bad Google sold them.
I'm not clear why Beats are so popular actually. I find socially it sends the wrong message for me, functionally not as great as Bose or BW, and a bit too big + plastic for my taste.
Might be wrong for you or I, but it's a social signal for many other people. Similar to how people wear t-shirts around with giant logos on them. It says (partly) "I can afford to pay $60 for this t-shirt." Or "I am like you."
When Ralph Lauren introduced those Polo shirts with the 3-4" polo logo on them rather than the usual 1" logo, I thought it was some kind of experiment.
One thing about Beats is that they really are ridiculously popular. They are consumer electronics items which are also fashion accessories. I don't think there's really any other brand like that in the industry, at least not that I can think of. Even Apple's products while stylish I'd hesitate to call them fashion accessories.
Maybe they were worried primarily that Google would buy Beats and suddenly hold more 'cool' appeal than Apple (particularly with youngsters).
I have experience in getting high-end plastic boxes manufactured (some in US, and increasingly in China because of price dynamics). Believe me, it is not a big deal. The variations are all commodity - you may have to get different molds made and finish made, but they will work will all different types of plastics. The plastics are already colored when in the pellet form (i.e., you dont paint on them) so colors variations are trivial to achieve.
I think the author is missing something important: There is greater inventory flexibility with headphone internals than iPhone internals.
Many different and very advanced technologies go into an iPhone. Most recently, the new fingerprint scanner was holding back the 5s. Every wrong assumption about color demand meant that an iPhone sale was delayed. (Assuming that it was even the correct storage size.) It's a world apart from speakers.
I wonder if it's really about penetration into music videos. I remember iPods being all over music videos for a few years back in the day (made my recently purchased iPod go from geeky to cool overnight!) - but then they disappeared - maybe because of Apple's battles with the music industry. Now it's Beats in every music related video, PA, media asset; something Apple needs to tap back in to, I guess.
Not necessarily related to this article, but does anyone know how much money the "Beats Audio" partnerships with things like HP laptops and HTC phones bring in for the Beats brand? Seems like a good hedge in the laptop and smartphone markets where Apple wins regardless of whether consumers buy iPhones or competing devices that are "Powered by Beats" or whatever they call it.
Beats has a track record of producing consumer electronics that are accepted as fashionable. The iPhone already blurs the line between tool and accessory and it spends most of its time in a pocket or purse. A smart watch or head mounted display is more visible and needs to overcome a nerdy bias to appeal to the mass market.
Maybe Tim Cook can just start buying companies and wait for other people to figure out what to do with them. It's certainly interesting to see how many people think that Apple is infallible. They make mistakes just like any other company.
This article lost me at the part suggesting that Dre Beats are premium headphones.
Having listened to a few different sets of these "cool" headphones I can personally think they are overpriced crap, don't think they are worth more than £20-30 tops simply based on audio quality. People are simply buying them as a fashion item!
>This article lost me at the part suggesting that Dre Beats are premium headphones.
Premium is about price, as in "paid a premium". Dictionary.com definition #11: "of higher price or cost".
It also has the meaning of higher quality, but mostly associated with the price and exclusivity (or perceived exclusivity. Premium products, like shoes and clothing, can also be had by millions of people -- it's just that not everybody can afford them easily that makes them "premium").
So being overpriced is not really ar argument against it being "premium". If anything, it's the opposite.
>People are simply buying them as a fashion item!
The Beats are OK-ish sound wise, but not for audiophiles. Newer, more upmarket versions, are a little better sonically however.
Interestingly, they make for useful monitors if you are a musician, in the sense that tons of your listeners will use the same cans, so you get a sense of what the final master will sound for them.
>You are mixing up the definitions of "premium"; it doesn't have to be about price.
I'm not mixing them up -- they are all valid dictionary definitions of the word.
When people say "premium" in reviews they usually mean "on the expensive side", and regarded as more exclusive with regards to brand, constuction etc.
The same way clothes are called "premium", because they belong to some well known expensive brands, despite being made in China and being totally crude and workman-like compared to fine clothing from a tailor etc.
If I never heard someone shit on Dre Beats again it would be too soon. We all get it. Dre Beats are crap. Your tastes are better than the masses.
This has literally nothing to do with the article, and even if it wasn't played out it would be silly semantics. They're priced like premium headphones, so that makes them premium.
As a bit of a Apple fan boy I think it's a terrible match. The quality of all the Apple products I have owned have been brilliant (even if my iPhone screen smashed within a month). I personally hope the acquisition of this brand doesn't result in the gimmicky promotions like on the HP laptop brands etc
Not really sure why you're being downvoted. Apple's design is amazing. They've (almost) single-handedly thrust consumer electronics into a position where fashion and looks are just as important (or more important) than function. Gone are the days where "geeks" are the guys with the expensive, ugly computation devices. Now, when a famous actress waltzes down the street, you're just as likely to see her pull out an iPhone (or WP8 or whatever) as you are to see her wearing an expensive handbag.
The beats acquisition is just Apple shedding the idea that it's a technology company, and adding more prole-luxury fashion items to its lineup. Apple + Nike merger anyone?
This is caused in part by not getting the temperature of the paint high enough to form a smooth finish. Metal can withstand significantly higher temperatures than plastic. This is usually why car paints look so much better than Krylon's.
By over-molding their plastic tops around a metal base, Beats was able to increase the tolerable temperature range. Next time you roll into a Best Buy, compare the 'shinyness' and 'smoothness' of the overmolded Beats to any other plastic product made by Samsung, HP, or Sony.
We learnt this through Chinese manufacturing forums where if anything, the idea of 'target demographic' does not apply - Beats simply figured out how to put a nicer finish on their product than the competition using innovative manufacturing techniques and increase margin.