"My education is in product design and engineering. I designed for Apple in the mid 80s working on a number of projects, and have continued that sort of work for the last nearly 30 years.That said, it seems to me that Prototype Engineer Avery Louie needs to work on his craft a bit more, because what I see are not parts solely for adding weight; no, I see a product designed to be as cost effective as possible thus the plastic, but these hinges can't be plastic or they'd break like any $20 pair of Wal-Mart headphones.I am not justifying the cost of these ridiculous things especially as the presence of scraps of metal in this thing seem like a trick.I don't believe the metal is there to trick you, in fact it's probably the only part of these headphones that had any design thought put into them."