Comment by vr46
1 day ago
It may have been a customs and taxation issue here, but manufacturers are constantly adding costs of their own onto software before often reversing track.
Examples: Leica (for Fotos) charged a princely sum for various trifles before removing these fees.
Naim: charged £35 for the control app - which I paid - before going free, and now the app is the only way to control whole swathes of their increasingly-execrable hardware.
These two companies’ kit is expensive, luxury, premium, however you want to refer to it, and so they probably felt comfortable wringing their customers a little more. Probably understandable in the case of Leica owners who will pay £250 for a viewfinder dioptre correction lens (puts hand up again) but less so for hifi owners.
It is not that audiophiles haven’t been shown to spent inordinate sums on the dumbest, snakiest, oiliest tat this side of an Oxford Street souvenir shop, but it has to be material and palpable.
It’s somewhat subjective, but I disagree it’s easier to fleece photographers than audiophiles. There are professional art photographers that use Leica cameras because they’re great, and $250 is pocket change for a lot of serious optical equipment. Look at the Canon L lenses and the like. Lots of people that buy that stuff don’t need it, but it’s not expensive solely for the sake of being expensive.
I have yet to find a professional sound engineer, producer, or artist that calls themself an audiophile or uses the insanely overpriced gear marketed to them. Lots of that stuff is demonstrably bullshit and only valuable because it’s expensive.