ORLY ?
What is “good enough” is not fixed, it changes over time. If it never changed, most people would still be listening to music on a 1900s era phonograph, CDs never would have gone mainstream, etc.
Pessimist.
I don’t believe that people who think Beats headphones are good also believe there is nothing better. People aren’t stupid, Honda drivers also realize there are nicer cars, McDonald’s eaters realize there are nicer restaurants, etc. They simply can’t afford better and/or don’t care yet. The next version of Beats headphones will sound better, and the one after that will be better than that, etc. The average quality level will increase and people will appreciate it.
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Troy, I don’t think MQA took off as well as some thought it would. One piece of evidence is those who dropped Tidal, and kept Qobuz or another streaming service. I tried it, and didn’t stay on the MQA train. The Blue Light works well for some, not for all.
I like McDonald’s once in a while.
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I think your hope/optimism is clouding reality of how market forces works 
the push towards higher quality works for TV’s etc, but it just doesn’t exist for audio. When Tidal started gaining market share Spotify announced a potential hi rez plan. I haven’t heard a peep about it in years, I suspect because they realized the market just wasn’t there to justify the investment. Similar story with the Apple HomePod. The market has settled on $ 80-100 for home/smart speakers with the Sonos 1 ($150) at the top end. Sound bars - same story… the list is endless.
The reality is, there is a market in home theater for specs improvement (TV’s, subwoofers, multiple speakers etc), but for 2 channel audio it’s just not there. Even at the Beats, Bose and soundbar level (Good enough for most) market forces are driving improvements in convenience, convergence and features - audio fidelity is a by product not a driver
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The market is driven by demand from consumers. Only a marketing person would argue that as everything (audio, video, food, cars, etc) improves in quality, which it clearly has, it is being driven by marketers telling people what to think.
Audio quality has clearly improved, the worst home stereo equipment today is better than the best from the 1950s. The average consumer may not be what you consider an audiophile today, but if you asked someone from the 1950s what they think of today’s Beats headphones they’d be astonished by the quality and they would consider the average Beats owner a true audiophile.
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I am not saying I am convinced about what Apple is offerering. Just as I am not convinced about MQA. At the end both are lossy formats hyped into the world of „hi res“.
I’ll say again, MQA is not lossy in analog terms. There is more loss in a traditional analog hi Fi chain.
There’s a fundamental difference: MQA, Ltd and its supporters (not to say trolls or shills) are indeed flat-out saying that their lossy abortion of a DRM takeover attempt is “HiRes”. Apple is not - they’re “just” using weaselly marketingspeak to imply it to a degree, this, as your reaction shows, is successful in confusing people. It also happens that they’re selling something that’s audibly different (a different master), and that they aren’t lying about their format being lossless.
Thus, it is completely factually incorrect to state as you did that “Apple Music is offering Hi Res in Apple Music.”. As @Seabreeze correctly stated, they do not, do not even offer lossless options as far as I can tell, and have shown no public interest in doing so as of yet.
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Great one! My digital files are more analog then anything you’ve ever seen 
If you care to check you will find the word “Hi Res” on the Apple Music webpage for their offering. I agree its not as aggressively marketed as that MQA junk, but its still there.
Again, I am not saying their product is any good, otherwise I’d be with Apple Music as all the rest of my household is Apple based and that way I would’nt have to deal with all the bugs in Roon and everything would integrate much easier. So if they offer “real” HiRes lossless one day, I’ll might well be there!
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Can you please point us towards that ? Not that it really matters, but I actually did check before launching into you - the only “hi res” I could find was a band. Same with lossless. Then again, guess that counts as Apple Music offering “Hi Res” and “Lossless” 
.
I went from loseless to HiRes and I’m back with Apple Music. As far as I can tell music in AAC 256kbps sound the same to me as loseless and HiRes. So as far as sound goes I am happy with Apple Music (not so much with UI, but that’s a minor issue for me).
Looks like you are correct. It was definitely around till late 2019 when I checked it up. Now everything is replaced by “mastered for iTunes” and similar jargon. They probably had some solid legal advise in this…
So, apologies, I stand corrected.
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Actually “Mastered for iTunes” (now “Apple Digital Masters”) is not a new term and definitely not come from legal advise 
What is Apple’s “Mastered for iTunes” format?
Oh if it but open 
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“Mastered for iTunes” is nothing more than Apple’s guidelines to mixing engineers to get the most out of AAC 256k. It’s been around since before Apple was a streaming company. I’ve not read the spec in a long time and no idea if they have made updates to it over the years. Yes, “Mastered for iTunes” recordings sound pretty OK but also remember most of the recordings being released when Apple started this program was smack in the middle of the loudness wars and most everything “popular” being released sounded terrible anyways and sounded even worse in AAC. Apple helped make lossy sound better and encouraged going away from the loudness war. This was never about “hi-res”.
I have a couple of hundred albums purchased from iTunes over the years including quite a few Mastered for iTunes. I am always pleasantly surprised at just how good they sound in my system (definitely better than MP3), but hi-res they are not. The difference between AAC and 24-bit FLAC or WAV is palpable.
Again, mastering choices are far more important for the listening experience than the differences between AAC 256 and CD or even HiRes. A HiRes terrible mastering doesn’t make for a better listening experience than a great mastering at AAC 256…
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Oh man, I hate that my first post on this forum is going to be sexist, but I can’t let it slide. I had been waiting my entire life for decent television resolution, and HD finally came, and I got backlash against my enthusiasm from SO many women! Mostly it boiled down to resistance to change, technology that was ‘good enough,’ or perhaps they simply felt my enthusiasm deserved opposition for for whatever reason. But when it came to putting a larger better screen in the living room, no female roommate or girlfriend was ever that enthusiastic about it and their primary argument was that you could not really tell the difference.
The Stanford study that showed kids used to crappy earbuds preferred crappy sound to high fidelity was also pretty depressing. So I agree with you, marketing high-quality to great apes is a tricky business.