Many people here spent a lot more than $300 on headphones long before AirPods appeared.
replyThose were hobbyists, audiophiles, professionals, artists (recording, performing, etc.).
replyThey are talking about a much larger group of people.
I think OP meant noise-cancelling headphones, which were fairly ubiquitous in tech circles in open offices; before Apple launched AirPods.
replyAirpods Inc. would be very high up SP500 as a standalone business.
replyI had a really nice Sennheiser before that, too. But now you hop on the subway and everybody sports one.
replyBut, it is not all about cost: models like DeepSeek v4 flash (I use the US company Fireworks.ai and also buy tokens directly from DeepSeek) is very fast, very low latency while working.
replyWould you want to use a text editor that updates the screen very slowly? Kind of the same thing for using agentic systems as coding assistants: don’t want a ‘sluggish’ experience.
I have, mostly, long running autonomous tasks, so it doesn't matter how slow inference is. If I optimize for latency it means I'm turning into the limiting factor.
replyThe Sony WH-1000XM series and the Bose QC35 were the standard quality headphones years before AirPods were a thing, and both retailed at $300+.
replyOf course, premium headphones existed before. I have a WH-1000XM4 sitting right next to me.
replyBut your aunt Josie didn't have one. Now Apple is selling 80 million units / year and the ~$300 price tag has become normal. Before that, most people had headphones that were 10 times cheaper.
$300 isn’t what AirPods cost though. You can get a pair of AirPods 4 for $129 on Apple.com, and I presume that is still the most popular model. If you’re paying ~$300, you are buying premium headphones.
replyThe base model where I live (Central Europe) is $194. The Pro is $357. The Max is $779.
replyI just averaged it out.