It's a moat. If you're afraid of losing market share you want your competitors to be busy finding out ways of passing these kind of rules you already figured out how to implement. That's why quality doesn't matter, only compliance does.
Oh, I care about audio quality a lot more than most people, but not into 'magic cable' territory.
There's no reason you can't gather statistics about a representative part of the population. It doesn't make sense to make the entire world pay for better audio because some guy somewhere might be a bit more sensitive and he thinks it ruins everything.
I don't know if such a person exists, but especially in the 'magic' audio territory there's a big amount of bullsh*t going on. There's a reason the James Randi price was never claimed.
There's a huge difference between digital 'distortions' caused by sampling at CD quality and things like tape flutter which most people can actually hear. Even then, some people like the imperfections like vinyl or tape artifacts. Some people even prefer MP3 compressed music.
>Generally all of these "debates" come down to people who think math > circuitry. All real designs are imperfect trade-offs. They all have issues, and arguing as if converters are perfect when they never are, and the imperfections can be benched objectively, is... not very scientific.
There is one purely objective benchmark: a true blind test. You can believe if something is different or not, but if nobody's capably of hearing the difference, does it matter?
Those things have huge drivers and are probably too big for a lot of rooms.
Unless you (and your neighbors) absolutely want to have that thumping sound and you go out of your way to kill unwanted bass reflection you're probably better off with the HS5 or something similar.
Those laptops don't need to go to any landfill. They are much too precious to not recycle the metals and other materials and will be taken care of if you return them to the manufacturer. (by law, at least in the EU)
UEFI or its predecessor ACPI are complicated and support a long list of legacy stuff that has absolutely no value to Apple at all so why should they do the development?
It's like asking Tesla for a fuel tank so it would be easier to install a gasoline engine.
Of course, some instruments require a lot of manual tweaking during fabrication and/or are too niche for manufacturers to invest in proper automation.
Then there's the price of some raw materials (esp. wood and metal) which drives up the price.
Ah, the good old argument from authority fallacy? ;)
Running a music store means you'll want to sell the most expensive stuff with the higher margins so you have every incentive to convince people cheap stuff is crap. Why should I trust you?
There will always be crap sold to people who want a cheap gift or decorative item. But once you shop just a bit above the bottom price there are a surprising amount of decent instruments to be found.
I think musical instruments, especially digital ones like synthesizers or effects but also guitars and other acoustic instruments, have become a lot more affordable the last decade without severely impacting quality. You don't really need the expensive stuff anymore when you can record a quality recording with a second hand iPad and a below $100 microphone.
Rental of expensive stuff will always be expensive too due to insurance, maintenance and fraud. It's not really helping to make stuff more accessible, more a convenience for the pro's that need stuff for a gig.
It would be more efficient for travelers, but not really from a systems point of view.
The Netherlands is densely populated and its railways are amond the busiest in Europe. If twice as many people took the train it would be impossible to have enough trains running.
Also, a money handling system functions as a gatekeeper. With some regularity there are stories in the media of people misbehaving on public transport. If everybody has the right to board it's more difficult to keep those people out.
That's like saying Gavrilo Princip started World war 1. Of course he played a part but the people owning media and influencing the public debate for their own political goals play a much bigger part.