We know you’ve been DYING to get your own Dr. Dre headphones ever since you saw them back at CES, so you’ll be happy to know that Apple and Best Buy are willing and able to take your US$349.95 this Friday. The headphones are supposedly imbued with “extreme clarity, deep bass and full power, which had been lacking in conventional headphones.” Yeah, we’ve been asking ourselves for years why conventional headphones had only come with half power, but now we know that it’s because Dr. Dre mandated it. Gangsta. [Business Wire]
Of all the things Monster Cable has sued because their names are too similar, a mini golf company seemed like a line even they wouldn’t cross. We were wrong. Looking back at their history, founder Noel Lee & Co. have sued Disney for Monsters, Inc., Bally Gaming for Monster Slots slot machines, the people who make Monster Energy drinks, and the Chicago Bears, because their nickname is “Monsters of the Midway.” Why stop here, Monster? We’ve got a whole list of people and things you should sue because you think your customers are too stupid to know the difference! Among them: Hillary Clinton, a deity, a baseball wall and a cartoon.
If people ever decide to wake up and stop paying the huge markups for Monster Cable for technology that’s not even here yet, Monster can go into another business: selling balls. They’ve sure got an excess, seeing as they’re following up a suit against another cable company because the connectors are too similar with a suit against a MINI GOLF COMPANY because their NAMES ARE TOO SIMILAR.
Bullshit patent suits are annoying when it’s a do-nothing patent holder trying to extract cash from fat corporate wallets, but even more so when it’s a bigger company trying to muscle over little ones. Like Monster Cable suing Blue Jeans Cable for having connectors that looked like theirs. Blue Jeans’ CEO, a former evil lawyer, has issued a ripping rebuttal, pointing out that “the gross morphology of the RCA plug is pretty well dictated by function” before throwing down, “I would rather spend fifty thousand dollars on defence than give you a dollar of unmerited settlement funds.” Here’s the whole ballsy letter:
It’s really, really tough to like Monster Cable as a company. Everyone knows how they mark up their prices and how a coat hanger may even be as good as their cables under short distances, but their business practices aren’t much better either. They’re following up up their last legal manoeuvre against a clothing company with the unfortunate name of Monster Vintage by serving Blue Jeans Cable and Tartan Cable with a cease and desist because their cable connectors are too similar. Just look at the comparison above. Do they look too similar. Would you be confused if you saw the two? Which one of them has the “Monster” logo on it again? I can’t tell. [Audio Junkies]
Whether or not Monster Cables are worth it is a war that has raged since home theatre immemorial. A poster at Audioholics was put in a room with five fellow audiophiles, and a Martin Logan SL-3 speaker set at 75Db at 1000KHz playing a mix of “smooth, trio, easy listening jazz” that no one had heard before. In one corner, Monster 1000 speaker cables. In the other, four coat hangers twisted and soldered into a speaker cable.
Consumerist found this amazing list of retailer cost for Monster Cable, where many of the cables went for nearly double what they cost. Monster responded with an answer that was thoughtful from their point of view. Many times, in “jewellery, clothing, and furniture, the markup is even greater.” Fine, I don’t know anything about retail. But technically speaking and from a consumer’s point of view, here is what I think:
Dr. Dre, the Chronic King, is making his first foray into consumer electronics, releasing a pair of headphones with none other than Monster. The $US400 headphones will indeed feature “rich deep bass—a Dr. Dre trademark.” Here’s what the Doctor himself has to say: “When I’m making a track I’m trying to capture the sound that makes me go ‘now THAT’s the shit! And I want that reaction from everybody who hears it. I spend a lot of time in the studio listening to my music through headphones…with Beats, people are finally going to hear it the way they should: the way I do.”
[Monster]
