It's easy - and indeed it's fun - to mock.

But it is not easy to do it so well. Congrats.

My problem is that while generally your point is true and in-assailable, and I can say Huzzah with the best of them, specific points in my life indicate that your point isn't essentially or entirely true.

Part of this seems to be that there are certain laws of physics and R&D and productization and distribution that manifest themselves. My first experience with this was while in the industrial pollution control business. A valve, a plate, a corner of a vent will cost x amount for a certain amount of efficiency and life expectancy. You want another 1 percent of efficiency, it may cost 100% more. More platinum, more delicate work, fewer people with the expertise, longer delays and longer projects...on and on and the same for several factors like that and life expectancy...and each additional increment costs substantially higher as the implementation approaches 100%.

Then to the audio world, but in spades...especially as the world of listening, and more power capabilities and desire, and the knowledge of what was happening as sound reproduction went from tubes to transistors to digital components. Psycho acoustics and Total Harmonic Distortion and the relevance of Third Order Harmonics and other this and thats...all unheard of in the earlier age, all very important in understanding how to make the reproduction of sound and experience as close to the original as possible.

Do we need that? Do we need 99.999% efficiency at the smokestack? in the internet service? in the tonality of the speakers?

Not always, but the answer is obviously "Yes". Some part of 'we' needs it.

Do I need the far grooviest sound as I type this? No. Does an engineer or producer who sits in front of the speakers for 12 hours a day need to have less distortion (lest they go made or make wrong decisions that get mis-interpreted later in the reproduction chain? Yes. Do I need a better sounding system than most people, as I have had some training and experience with 'good better best' and don't like to hear some niggles that are distracting?

Yes and no. Needs and wants become the issue at some point.

On and on this goes, and can be translated into politics as well as television, friendships as well as reading matter. (PS - As an Apple affectionado, I am required (need to? want to?) take quite verbacious umbrage at any insinuations implied with your associating Mac products with unrequired hype.)

I don't want to try to justify the magic rocks with antenna like interiors, though I have witnesses things just as odd apparently doing something positive.

I could justify the turntable if need be. I could justify Larry Ellison's incredible yachts and the employment that they bring, the lifting of quality standards world-wide and interesting spin offs from the developments. I could also smear them (as well as my time as a keyboard junkie) for egregious greed in a world that has more people suffering than surviving well, more people merely surviving than creating well.

As that great philosopher Vonegut says so well:

La di dah.

Never underestimate their intelligence, always underestimate their knowledge.

Frank Delaney ~ Ireland