Why doesnt apple make better speakers?

The speakers and headsets meet the needs of a majority of their customers.

When it comes to sound, size does matter. But if you’re super rich, then oodles and doodles of money will do the trick, too.

Unfortunately, we all know how Apple loves to cram as much as they can into small, sleek and sexy devices. And the things are so friggin’ expensive already that pouring more money into speakers would only raise the price further.

But I definitely hear ya. Loud sounds are not Apple’s forte. They like the stuff that looks good (as do I). Plus, PupnTaco has got a good point: the speakers and headsets meet most customers’ needs.

I’m quite glad they don’t make better speakers because as jcs007 said, it’d ramp up the cost. If you want better speakers, go out and get some studio monitors or some bose kit. If you want better headphones, again, there’s better headphones out there.

Maybe it’d be good if they paired up with someone like bose to offer deals to make it cheaper to buy apple kit and some good speakers/headphones.

I do see where you’re coming from, though.. It’s like going out and buying a sports car and finding it has crappy, cheapo tyres which don’t do the car justice at all. You don’t really want to go and spend even more just to get the most out of what you’ve already burnt a hole in your wallet for.

Most of the included speakers Apple supplies in their hardware are “decent” quality, especially in the iMac line. In most cases, the internal speaker is of a quality good enough for beeps, alerts, and voice, but beyond that, music playback is only so-so because audio quality, tone, and loudness are all very subjective aspects of a sound system. The recent iMac line has speakers (stereo), that are good enough for watching DVDs in a small room; we use it for that purpose, and it works great.

Because Apple plays host to many multimedia applications (their forte IMO), most professionals that deal in multimedia go for professional spec speakers, and they do so with varying degrees of quality and preference (and price).

Visual displays, on the OTOH are integral to the experience of the OS for conveying resolution, accurate color, refresh rate, etc. so it is logical to assume that Apple wants that element to be spot-on in terms of consistency, so that is where they focus most of their attention.

the only thing i’ve heard about the imac speakers from my mainstream customers is that they’re suprisingly good, actually, i’ve never had a complaint about them, and the customers who work with professional audio buy macpro’s anyway, i mean, what did you expect from such a small machine anyway ? you should open one up, they’re built so nice and compact, i wouldn’t know where to put the bigger speakers really

the thing on the MacBook Speakers is that they are covered by the display which makes it much harder to hear. Even when I have the speakers at full blast, it is not full blast. I got better sound on my Dell. And the MacBook Pro ones are better then the standard MacBook not so great either.

No, they are placed near the screen to give more reverb to the sound, a higher spread of soundwaves, and I’ve never had any problems with my MBP speakers, they’re just good for a laptop

And if it’s not loud enough consider external speakers instead of compaining that your laptop speakers won’t go as loud as larger speakers…

I am not complaining (or as you said compaining). Anyway, I am just saying since they are towards the back it harder to here. And I have heard and experienced the MP speakers and they are not bad at all. But could be better as stated in the question.

As far as Apple lappies and speakers go, all are sub-par for music except the 17” MBP on second ten and newer. I had a first gen and could hear the difference.

Yes my cousin has a 15 inch MacBook Pro running Tiger and is about 2 years old. So I played next to their Ancient iMac and you could hear a difference. But the old MBP to the new Aluminum iMac they have. What a difference. I couldn’t believe it!!!!!

why would you still run tiger on that MBP though?, but that’s a different matter alltogether, hehehe

The iMac has pretty good speakers actually. the MacBook sucks tho.

Better speakers cost more. Apple is very sensitive to price points, and probably puts the best speakers they can in for the money. People who really need performance audio will buy separate speakers anyway, and for the rest of us the speakers Apple provides are good enough.

Example: the iPod headphones are reasonable $20 headphones. If you want $200 headphones, they’re available in Apple stores too. If Apple shipped $200 headphones with the iPod, even the people who would have been happy with $20 headphones would be forced to pay the extra price.

yeah well tell that to my cousin. But they just love it so much and are so used to it I guess.

it looks like apple found a solution. it costs more, but i think ill get them.

Did you see the new headphones released? only 79 USD, worth a look.

@joey Yeah I saw those