This story was posted in February 2013. It is a fascinating read, made current by the recent rumors of Apple’s possible acquisition of Beats Electronics.
According to the story, Monster Audio (the folks behind Monster cables and the like) did the original engineering work behind the Beats headphones. They also held the patents. As the story unfolds, you learn how what could have been a lucrative deal for all parties slowly unravelled.
Read it yourself, draw your own conclusions, but wow, that is some story.
I found the comments even more interesting, as always…
Any deal that hurts Monster makes my heart glad, because they’re gigantic ripoff artists.
(Oh, their cables work, mind you. They’re just stupidly overpriced and not a whit better than Monoprice’s order-of-magnitude-cheaper ones.
The article over there says “The truth is, audio cable is a lot like expensive basketball shoes:
There are a couple hundred people in the world who really need the best,
and the rest of us probably can’t tell the difference.“, but honestly – those couple hundred people can’t tell the difference in an ABX test either because there isn’t one.)