So I'm personally glad they've removed the headphone jack, because it will help push wireless into the mass market (and bring down prices) at a faster rate than it otherwise would have.
Now of course, there's lots of people who don't find it a positive like I do. My point is not that everyone should find the jack removal great, my point is that it's wrong to claim that it's a disadvantage for everyone.
On a separate note, people like to shit on Apple for that "courage" claim, but even if removing the jack was a bad decision, I think it's fair to call it a courageous one, because they knew well that they'd get a lot of shit for making that decision. Look at what gets said every time the headphone jack issue is brought up on HN.
It's not as if you couldn't use wireless headphones before the headphone jack was removed. Now that the jack is removed, you're forced to use a USB-C dongle (which has its disadvantages) or purchase expensive Bluetooth headphones if you want a decent enough quality / battery life.
Ancestor comments of this have explained that.
Removing headphone jack speeds up uptake of wireless headphones, and greater uptake of them makes them cheaper. These are changes that have already happened. This has benefited people who want to use wireless headphones.
1) And by doing this we create even more e-waste!
2) I do _not_ want wireless headphones! I almost exclusively use headphones when I am traveling by bus and train. This happens every 2-4 weeks. At the moment I have a cheap pair of wired headphones in my backpack. They need 0 maintenance. if I need them I just use them. They never needs charging and they never will break. If I have to switch to wireless headphones a) I have to start to take care about charging them and b) they will break after 3 years because the battery dies and can not be replaced.
You could say that about anything new.
> 2) I do _not_ want wireless headphones!
Good for you, no-one is forcing you to use them.
All I have ever done in this comment thread is argue against the idea that removing the headphone jack has zero benefits for anyone. And yet I'm getting piled on by people basically accusing me of trying to force everyone to go wireless.
As if pointing out that some people have different wants from theirs is somehow denying their wants. It's an amazing lack of perspective.
Is it that hard to accept that someone else has a different view from your own, and that them expressing it is not the same as trying to force it upon you?
I think the question remains whether making wired headphones harder to use had zero benefits. That's a different question than whether making wireless headphones easier to use had.
You made an economic argument for the former question - but you can't make that argument and say "no one is forcing you" at the same time.
I know no one was being forced to use wired headphones before. That has nothing at all to do with an argument about the consequences of removing the jack.
Does it really? I haven't noticed any change in price that could be attributed to this and I bought a pair a few weeks ago, so I'm somewhat up to date with the pricing.
What I'm saying is that I don't see any change that could be attributed specifically to the trend of removing headphone jacks from phones.
1) Prices have noticeably come down since they've been removed. This in itself is not proof, but at the same time, what is your proof that these phones have nothing to do with it?
2) Removing the headphone jack has given greater impetus for manufacturers to produce wireless headphones, and to produce lower-end models. More volume, more competition.
3) Removing the headphone jack has given more impetus for people to purchase wireless headphones. There are definitely people that have bought wireless headphones because of this, who wouldn't have bough them if their phones had a builtin headphone jack.
2 and 3 mean more volume, and that means lower prices.
Also, the argument I've been making is not focused just on now. It's also an argument about things going forward.
2) Aliexpress has nearly 100k results for bluetooth headphones there has always been plenty of competition, they are still shit. https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=S...
3) I agree with this more people have spent alot of money on bluetooth headphones that don't work, how is this a benefit to anyone but the corporations that profit from it?
As you said yourself you can get bluetooth headphones for $20, but you wouldn't because they are shit. We don't need lower prices we need better value headphones, removing the headphone jack has done nothing to help this.
There where cheap and shitty, wired and wireless headphones before they removed the headphone jack, there are cheap and shitty wired and wireless headphones after, the market is not better off and the customers are especially not better off.
Edit- AirPods are the first decent bluetooth headphones, they are the competition not the lack of a jack. Look at that aliexpress link its not even a competition they are just copying the style and shoving the same shitty gear inside.
Also the value comes from the fact that manual pairing is still shit - I only do it via NFC because I haven't been to date able to do so alternatively.
Doing something you know will be unpopular is not automatically "courageous". Sometimes it's just stupid. I'm sure you can think of plenty of examples.
Many people mock the idea that removing the headphone jack required any courage.
In this simile, the consumers are the bear, and Apple is the moron punching it.
If you allow only one technology, it will be cheaper irrespective of whether the disallowed technology is better or not.
This makes Apple’s decision worse. It’s an admission that wireless audio is an inferior technology, and that the only way for it to succeed is by removing the alternative, ans/or making it significantly worse.
> in fact, it just shows the truth, in that apple just wants to be able to sell more and more dongles and bluetooth headphones
The idea that this is simply a cheap cash-grab sounds like a conspiracy theory to me.
But even if it's a purely financial decision, so what? Aren't financial considerations behind most things companies do?
If HN is to be believed, most people absolutely hate the fact that the phones don't have headphone jacks. So if people hate it, and won't buy the phones because of it, then how can it also be a cash grab?
no i didn't. i said apple wants to sell more wireless headphones and dongles. removing the audio jack forces users to look at the new shiny airpods, or whatever they're called, and say "i need that". then they need dongles for integration purposes. yet, they didn't need the dongle before and could still buy wireless headphones.
of course it's a cash grab. that is how apple operates. conspiracy theory? the ceo is literally an expert in operations and logistics, probably apple's greatest strength behind their marketing. it can't be any other decision, because like i said, other phone makers are able to integrate it just fine.
If people are going to buy more wireless headphones because of these phones, then they're going to buy them from a range of manufacturers -- in fact mostly other manufacturers because the Apple ones are so pricey.
If people are going to buy more wireless headphones because of these phones then the prices will go down. Do you dispute this? Because this is the point that you originally claimed I didn't make.
> i said apple wants to sell more ... dongles.
Do you know that the phones (up until latest models) come with a dongle so there's not going to be a large number of sales of them?
> of course it's a cash grab. that is how apple operates
It's ridiculous to suggest that everything apple does is just a cheap cash grab.
What's so ridiculous about it? Have you not seen the rate at which Apple are increasing the prices across all their products?
And petty practices like not including the lightening to 3.5mm adapter or fast charger on a $1000+ phone e.t.c.
your argument is that it helps the wireless headphone market. i don’t think it does in a way that actually matters, but even that doesn’t explain why it was removed in the first place. why does apple care about that market outside of their own sales? the real reason why they removed it is to further increase accessory sales and to market themselves as a design leader, which further sells devices. they have created this mystique that they do and others will follow. unfortunately, that is somewhat the case given other dynamics.
the fact of the matter is that there is zero benefit to the consumer of an iphone for having the audio jack removed. there is benefit to apple’s cash flow by removing it. and here we are.
Apple has always removed design features that they don't think are where things should head in the future. That's important to do in the longer term. If you consider any single one of the things they've removed from their computers, it might not seem a big deal, but together they are. Removing things they don't see as part of the future helps them to push technology in the direction they think is best. And removing what they see as unnecessary features can save on costs - costs that might be small per unit but large in terms of the sorts of volumes they are dealing with.
Instead they include wired headphones with a proprietary plug.
If you want high quality headphones with an iphone you have to buy some that license a proprietary Apple protocol or chip or settle for lower sound quality generic Bluetooth audio.
I am aware this is an issue for some people. At the same time it's not an issue for other people.
> doesn’t include wireless headphones or an adapter for 3.5mm in the box.
Their latest models don't include adapters, their earlier ones without headphone jacks did.
> If you want high quality headphones with an iphone you have to buy some that license a proprietary Apple protocol or chip or settle for lower sound quality generic Bluetooth audio.
The issue with Bluetooth isn't Apple's fault, though.
But if you want high quality headphones then, yes, you have that choice to make. But we need to acknowledge that not everyone has those requirements.
Conspiracy theories are sometimes true.
In this case, vendor lock-in is Apple's bread and butter, and it doesn't take any mental gymnastics at all to recognize that removing a standard and universal port without any actually good reason fits that pattern remarkably well.
2) Bluetooth is a standard, and Apple isn't the only company that makes Bluetooth headphones.
Apple don’t support high quality Bluetooth audio standards except with the license of their own proprietary technology.
This same point applies to the criticisms of a lack of a headphone jack, too: the things those people are concerned about, such as sound quality, aren't an issue for everybody, either.
Did the existence of cars destroy the existence of horses? Is Apple stopping all companies from using headphone jacks?
They are already in the mass market the problem is they suck.
I have tried a bunch of cheap Chinese bluetooth headphones that cost from $20-$60 they all sound like $5 wired headphones have about 2 hours battery life and break after a month.
I have tried bluetooth head phones that where $200 beats by drea they worked as well as the Chinese headphones they just cost 10 times the price.
Removing the headphone jack has forced people to spend a lot of money on shitty headphones, thats what your glad of.
...and the headphone jack was removed several years ago, so what's your point?
What I'm saying is that it's makes the prices go down. That means better quality ones will get cheaper.
The bluetooth headphones I use are fine. I've heard most people say that AirPods are great.
> Removing the headphone jack has forced people to spend a lot of money
How is it forcing anything on anyone? One, you don't have to buy the phone, and two, you can use the supplied lightning-adapter headphones, or use an adaptor.
I think the issue is that BT has always been a catastrophy in terms of ergonomy, today things are better but still a bit hazardous. Maybe a super simple wireless protocol for managing audio streams (and handling multiple sinks) would change that
And no, it's not courageous to do something dumb and getting skewered for being dumb is not evidence of courage.
You can call it dumb all you like, but whether something is dumb or not is completely separate from whether it is courageous or not.
I'm amazed by people hating something so much that therefore, in their minds, makes it impossible to have other qualities that might have a positive connotation.
A wireless headset requires charging, requires pairing, is more expensive, is more likely to break. It's not a superior technology, it's an alternative technology. You don't eliminate options just because alternatives exist.
In the case of headphones, their primary function is to connect to a device and deliver sound to your ears. Wireless headphones do not do this better than wired headphones. At all. They have a specific use case advantage related to the connection format, but that isn't universally better because it carries drawbacks as well.
every time I have had to use wired earphones since have been worse than if I had my AirPods on me
Mine is. The statement is false.
The obvious reason is a decrease in BOM which corresponds directly with an increase (however so slightly per unit) in margin. Apple made it "ok" to whack this functionality, so why wouldn't every manufacturer join in?
Eh, you could have said the same thing when they removed serial ports, 3.5" floppy drives, CD drives, etc. etc. etc.
Yes, the world is moving forward. Yes, it's a little inconvenient.
And yes, this was apparently Steve Job's idea, as he felt that fans were "too noisy and inelegant". I imagine that he felt that fans were holding humanity back, and smugly told people who disagreed that they were clinging to obsolete technology.
It got so bad, that Apple actually advised their customers to physically lift and drop their Apple IIIs to re-seat the chips that had popped out from the excessive heat.[2]
Of course, if today Apple decided that fans were obsolete again, and the latest Macbooks were twice as heavy and still overheated, then it would become the new normal, and it would be hard to find computers that had fans anymore, and we would long for the days when we could just use computers for as long as we wanted without worrying about them overheating. And on the internet, commenters would say that it wasn't a big deal at all, and if you were some sort of power user that wanted to use your laptop for more than a few hours at a time, you should buy a $250 cooling pad for it.
[1]: http://lowendmac.com/2015/apple-iii-chaos-apples-first-failu...
If? Apple's recent laptops have been notoriously undercooled, and the processors can only run near full speed for a brief moment.
The only difference is that they throttle instead of self-damaging.
It still has a fan though.
The use-case for the 3.5mm headphone jack is still well and truly within the mainstream, and will probably stay there for some time as per the comment in the blog:
the right pair of headphones was the pair of headphones in front of you, or in your pocket, or mangled at the bottom of your bag. It didn’t matter.
There's a lot of legacy-weight hanging around in people's houses, bags, and workplaces.
Your point, however, isn't completely lost on me. I still miss CD drives occasionally, having to retrieve an older laptop in order to grab data from a disc I haven't yet bothered to archive to an ISO file. However, removing a CD drive from a laptop feels like a much higher percentage space saver than losing the 3.5mm jack from a smartphone.
The world didn't care about wireless headphones until their wired option was taken away. It's a solution to a problem of their own making.
CTIA or OMTP?
I would have hated if the XS was thicker, or if it still had bezels.
But.. can't they just make a waterproof headphone jack??
Bluetooth?
But around once every 8 times I get into my car, I need to turn off/on Bluetooth on my car, my phone, or both to get it to connect. More rarely, I have to reboot my phone. I haven't used a Bluetooth headset with my phone in several years, but I had the same problem then.
So I don't think Bluetooth is that reliable "works every time" standard.
As much as I prefer headphone jacks, I'll readily admit that my $15 BT headphones from Amazon connect every time I turn them on.
Car BT implementations are actually an interesting world in of themselves, I've seen car BTs wreck havok with other BT peripherals attached to a phone. The level of "how?" was truly amazing.
Bluetooth pairing always seems a bit unclear. Do I start the scan on my phone or the device? Cars seem to be particularly bad in making this clear or otherwise don't work reliably per instructions.
If you want a really bad Bluetooth experience, see Acura. Calls can require active "transfer" to Bluetooth devices when you're streaming, and there is otherwise clunkiness and competition for the car's audio system, for instance if you try to use car nav.
And, woe be unto you if you have multiple in-range devices. There's a pretty good chance it'll vomit and you'll end up with mixed pairing profiles that essentially require you to restart the car and/or disable Bluetooth on one device.
Not sure how they managed to get Bluetooth so wrong, but it's a solid contributor to an overall poor infotainment center design.
Source: Previously worked on head unit FW.
> And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack.
The Airbud designers could have designed the same product even if the iPhone still had a headphone jack, so it's hard to say definitively that their life is measurably better now.
It would have been more effective if the author didn't cherry-pick only the facts which support his argument.
Apple's own 3.5mm -> lighting dongle is surprising resistant to water (I've spilled coffee on mine and it still works), but I can't find any information of whether the dongle itself is waterproof. I've looked.
Also, Samsung made a phone with a waterproof 3.5mm female port. They weren't the first.
https://www.gore.com/products/categories/venting?view=portab...
I agree that it's also really easy to make 3.5 mm jack sockets waterproof.
Good old shortsightedness at play here. No one looks past this year or years to come when faced with changes. Here's what I think, based on history, is happening here:
# Wires are more bad than good for average consumer:
a. Neglected security based on assumption that since it's not wireless, it's immune to eavesdropping (think side-channel attacks). Wireless puts security upfront and center.
b. Cables get lost, break, are not long enough, are not compatible, damage the connectors, bad cables damage the device, cost extra, etc. Wireless doesn't.
c. Cables are cumbersome. They get tangled, you need to remember to carry them, have backups, etc.
d. Cables have short range.
Apple evidently cares quite a bit about user experience. Wires hurt user experience so they want to get rid of them, one by one. You can't push towards superfast, low power and generally more advanced mobile devices and accessories, if the industry has no reason to do so (because everything works and has for the past 50 years).
It's tiring reading every day how someone is upset because their favorite feature is gone because they can't see past their front door.
a. because wireless is less secure than wired.
b. loss and breakage isn't a wired-exclusive problem
c. backups? so long as you bring backup wireless things as well, no worries
d. Fair enough, but long cables are possible, and in regards to a smart phone, most people carry it on their person so it's not generally a problem - although the freedom to roam about the house with your phone on the counter while you're vacuuming is advantageous in those particular scenarios. Pending wireless range.
Sounds like your list is a desperate one too.
And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse.
The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS:
"if only there was one universal audio port they both could use"
Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible peripherals, but I don't know why any of the Android manufacturers would follow suit. The ugliness of the impracticality of fashion.