Wireless things suck, I've never considered bluetooth for anything and I really, really hate my bluetooth keyboards. They have nice keys and petite builds, but I haven't used any of them for years now (one Apple, another also with great build). Can't be bothered for batteries, can't be bothered with bluetooth for different linux distros, desktop environments etc. Habits with technology are easily broken even when we don't want to. Give me wired or I'll go without. Also, Wi-Fi internet at home just sucks (IoT/SmartHome I won't even go into, much less that joke called SmartTV [give me regular TVs back please that don't look after me in goody two shoe or shady ways]). Whoever thought Wi-Fi everywhere was a good idea? Reach sucks, gives everyone on the block cancer. Let's stop spamming waves around people. They're not not noise, even if not perceived (microwaves for instance make me want to leap out of the room, it's like a screeching feeling.) I wish ethernet cables were still something people regularly setup, really wish.
I used not to hate technology, really did. Then the executives overdid it and the Wozniaks were put out on the side.
Well, it could be simpler, and more of a free market, if you could choose your OS across different brands instead of also having to change that, or if you didn't lose access to everything you have already bought for one OS's app marketplace.
There are plenty of things being done by the vendors in this space specifically to combat the effectiveness of the free market, because the free market is good for consumers and bad for short term company profits. Captive consumers are all the rage in the 2000's.
Fact of the matter is, while nearly every single obnoxious facet of the tech world can be worked around, half the people in my family can't figure out how to turn their phone's wifi on and off, let alone something as complex as replacing the entire OS and figuring out solutions to the various bugs this might introduce.
For an absolutely enormous majority of the population, your choices are something that doesn't care about UX anymore and comes in three flavors of "really expensive" or something that harvests your personal data all day long.
Actually, I pick old Palm. I'll buy a new Palm Treo like I did 10 years ago and it was glorious old tech. Maybe no whatsapp is a plus and I'll just use from the laptop, tell people to call/sms me during the day.
As a counterpoint, I think wires suck. They get in the way, they get tangled, I have to transport them, they break all too often, I trip over them, they knock things over when I move with them, they blow around in the wind, they present a fire risk and a safety risk, they have some kind of physical connection which keeps changing.
Downsides of wireless: remembering to charge, and configuration (a bit annoying if you have multiple devices).
advantages of jacks + wires: reliable, 140 year old industry standard, plug-and-play, universal, cheap, easy to repair, doesn't require battery, doesn't require configuration, doesn't get out of sync, cannot be hacked by a third party.
downsides: sometimes all those wires tend to mix and make knots.
upsides: my very old thingamajig with a broken display doesn't support anything else
My JLab Audio Diego earbuds have lasted for the past two years, and I don't treat them well—they stay in my back pocket, and have experienced several trips through the washing machine.
And if they ever do break, the cost of a replacement is $15. That's barely more than the cost of the headphone jack to lightning adapter that I would need if I upgraded from my 6S.
And they have a flat cord that very rarely gets tangled.
I don't want to second-guess you, but that sounds more like a high-frequency sound from the microwave mechanism than anything directly caused by microwave radiation. Can you hear the "mosquito sound"? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKl_sTh0oHE
Carry my phone in my backpack now, and moved my bed.
Now I just have that smart meter... that one soaks the entire house in a steady whine.
The house electrical system emits radio waves, and so do most screens, many lightbulbs, any device with an electric motor (e.g. hairdryers)..
And of course, your house is bathed by radio and TV station broadcasts, cellphone towers, CB radios, and of course, millions of space objects. Like the Sun.
Ah that would be the flyback transformer. Plainly audible to us these days now that most TVs don't have them any more. (I think GP is talking about something else btw)
It's really good; as I was reading it I would stop and check the date it was authored. It holds up very well.
It took a new local library opening up, and a holiday, for me to finally get to Snow Crash. I suspect I might be reading a few more of his works very soon.
I don't think I've read any of the others, though I may have started Seveneves at some point, but I did read "The rise and fall of D.O.D.O." (just before Snow Crash in fact!) which I highly highly recommend as well.
However, I also really love my bluetooth headphones, and that's what I use when I'm not at my desk at home. They also work as wired headphones, but I acknowledge they are not affordable to most people. A charge lasts a really long time, and they have some nice features as well. I don't expect them to last 15 years, however.
I bought a specific pair of wired earbuds with a mic to use for conference calls using my phone (Android). Now that my phone is failing and I'm forced to upgrade, I'm a bit concerned that the USB-to-3.5mm dongle for the Pixel 3 may not be compatible w/ the mic in my earbuds. In pictures it looks like it has a proper tip-ring-sleeve configuration so it might work, but at this point I'm just crossing my fingers until I can test.
To get lower volume overall with Equalizer APO: install, reboot and change the Preamp line in EqualizerAPO/config/config.txt to -20 dB or whatever suits you. It should work as soon as you save.
Not sure, but it appears that the bypass around the amplifier (which requires power) is just not designed right.
I looked into this, and the Bluetooth audio codecs just aren't that good. From heated discussions I have learned that the AirPod ones are in fact lossless because they use a grade of codec that isn't commonly available and thus never actually have to decode/reencode or anything like that. It's digital all the way to your ears.
So maybe bluetooth is "as good as" line quality when you've all the pieces lined up; but line quality can be obtained "for free" at all times with commodity hardware. Just a thought.
You mean to say "lossless all the way". Also, it cannot be digital all the way except if you were linking up your aural nerves to the airpod directly. ;)
It's digital all the way to your ears in that you don't need to decode and then reencode, thus eliminating that intermediate "lossy" analogue transition phase. So yeah digital all the way, and by implication "lossless" because of that.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0757WVSN8/ref=oh_aui_de...
I honestly don't care if I have a "headphone jack": I totally agree with Apple that it was a shitty jack. It was a fragile hole that made it impossible to waterproof the damned phone. How about they just give me two lightning ports? Or a lightning port and a USB-C port, to make my dreams finally come true of only having to carry around one (USB-C) cable while still getting to be compatible with all of the stuff Apple already sold for these devices?
Yeah, it's petty. But literally no one benefits from the absence of jack (or at least no user), so why inflict even a petty annoyance on some users with nothing gained for it?
Except people often use same headphone with both - phone and pc, so you will have to remove the adapter anyway.
My wife also brought Lightning headphones, which didn't work with anything except her phone, leading to her using the cheap airline ear buds for the in flight entertainment system.
For example, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E5AHZYA
The real annoyance for me isn’t the lack of the jack, it’s that they haven’t also replaced the jack on the MacBook line yet.
I’m typing this out on my iPhone 6 (which I will keep until it disintegrates because of its headphone jack) and it is plenty thin. I think only Apple themselves are obsessed with thin devices.
Neither seems insurmountable, but if you want to try and remove as many obstacles as possible in the search of those two things then the headphone jack is apparently one of the simpler ones.
Speakers, camera lens, physical buttons, charging, and data transfer are the remaining ones I can think of, and many of those have already been replaced in some models.
I think the headphone jack is a very practical component of the phone, and miss it regularly, but removing it does remove a few limitations on the designer.
At some point, in perhaps the not too distant future, I wouldn't be surprised if phones had been reduced down to look like not much more than a piece of glass. Maybe even a piece of flexible glass!
That's definitely been the trend for a while now, and things like edge to edge screens and wireless charging move us further in that direction. Thankfully neither of those seem to have necessitated the removal of some other function. There have been other casualties other on this path to simplification, such as the removal of the physical home button, but I don't think any which leave as big a gap as the headphone jack.
In my home office, I have it wired to my simple mixer and amp with which two other computers also connect to. And from that split into my speakers and a pair of headset.
All non-digital and no USB involved with other things that can go wrong. I am no Hi-Fi buff, I just like one volume and power button when I need to silence or amp things.
Whilst commuting on the train I also use the headphone jack, even though I also have a Bluetooth headset, but it is limited to two sources which are already used up by my iPad and phone.
I don't want to yet again swear internally whilst standing on a busy tube with 1000 other people with Bluetooth devices, and having to reset the pairing on my iPad/iPhone.
Ps. I have an old phone with a 3.5mm jack, but I never use it. I use audio on my phone only when commuting or walking and then use Bluetooth. But my old iPad and MBP are stationary so I only use 3.5mm devices with them.
I’ve been using a pair of beats for over a year now, and have never run out of batteries with them, even on multi-leg long haul flights. I use them constantly, and almost exclusively charge them when I have to go to a meeting, which doesn’t usually happen more than once a day. I used AirPods before then and their battery life was even better.
Not anymore
https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17827970/no-more-free-iph...
To paraphrase some marketing slogans from the days of yore:
IBM said "Think" [2]
Apple said "Think different" [3]
I say "Think wisely"
[1] https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/whyred
No, no, no. Can we please get rid of this adapter hell? It's awful and just way too much overhead. In every situation. No matter if phone or laptop
No need for a phone that requires an adapter. There are great phones that drive all audio gear nicely.
Those phones will win in the market too.
Cost / benefit ratio is more favorable. Has been, will continue to be, and that will be true because digital audio does nothing new.
Video does! We have great reasons for DV.
Those do not apply to audio. Ears are not like eyes.
Why do you say they'll win?
Again? Samsung "dropped" the headphone jack once already and then decided to reintroduce it in their current line of phones. At least that is my understanding of their products with the S7/S8 having removed the headphone jack and the S9 once again featuring a headphone jack.
With video, there's a lot of those. And today in the market we have a mix of analog and digital, mostly digital, and it mostly makes sense.
That isn't really true of audio. And it's not true because audio works very differently.
No pressure.
I said it in my comment(s) above.
Video, for example, works differently than audio does. Digital video brings advantages that generally outweigh costs in the majority of use cases. Analog video, like audio, does take fewer resources and can still be indicated for projects, depending.
For ordinary consumers, DV is a general win. They will move willingly and their older gear will age out and become not so useful.
DA is not a general win. Their gear will not age out, will not become less useful, etc... Unless that is artificial!
And that is exactly why "no headphone jack" is so contentious right now! Most forced migrations make sense. This one really doesn't, and it's due to the nature of audio, existing gear investments, and the fact that going digital really doesn't get a person anything new.
Above that we've got some real spiffy bits. No wires is probably the best of the lot. That's a win, but the cost of it, when one is forced to adopt only a digital path is much higher than it needs to be and everyone knows it.
Should the entire electronics industry abandon analog audio, there will be startups who embrace it. 70's era gear remains entirely relevant. And it will, again, unless forced artificially.
70's era video is marginally relevant. NTSC / PAL at SD resolutions, and on analog gear, have a few sweet spots left, but for almost everyone, using that gear does not make too much sense today.
This is absolutely HUGE.
Put another way, the winners from "no headphone jack" are largely the people not wanting to include a headphone jack. Ordinary people can get all the spiffy stuff and abandon analog as they see fit without ever being required to do or spend on things having basically no value.
I don't get anything new, and my personal cost and risk exposure related to audio goes up! And this is true for very large numbers of people.
That's a losing proposition.
I just happened to think of a great parallel: HD Radio. It's got some nice advantages, but basically does nothing new, and it does so at a very significant cost to everyone.
Said that one would fail, and it basically has. Nobody needs digital radio, and what they failed to understand was that (due to commercials and other annoyances already impacting radio), and how people use radios, and the value of the installed base of radios out there now.
Right now, if you get one of those expensive radios, there are literally give away stations, no commercials! That's how poorly the dynamics surrounding radio are understood by the bigger players. They can't give it away!
I know I would not take a free phone, sans the jack. It's way too much of a hassle to be outside a production proven, time tested, high value, audio ecosystem.
These are all reasons why people who don't really get how their customers do things are going to lose in the marketplace.
Heck, I have not even read a single reason why it has to be done!
Big content wants it, because piracy. (laughable at this point, and that's no joke)
Apple wants it, Google probably wants it, because friendly to big content, also up selling, accessory replacement selling.
Samsung shows us it's entirely possible to make an awesome phone with the jack in it. I own one, and it is actually an awesome phone. Apple has nothing on my Note 8. (But I do love Apple's approach to user data security / privacy.)
There just isn't any value added here. Worse, the cost "savings" from removing the jack is what? $50 bucks tops?
How much do adapters, new earbuds, and related bits cost over the life of the phone? What about a person's time, existing knowledge, investments in gear?
Losing proposition across the board. Again, that's why I do not see a win on this.
If I were a company, I doubt I’d change course immediately unless the larger data set said something significantly in the other direction. As developers are still, even with our more frequent “upgrade” cycle, not the largest piece of the pie.
Anecdotally, the headphone jack loss negatively impacted 100% of the non-developerd I've talked to about it. Now, I recognize the particular skew to that experience that biases it to a negative impact—most of the people I've talked to about it happened to be ballroom dance instructors or students in a ballroom teacher training program at a studio where the routine was to plug your device in to the sound system via 1/8” plug (neither keeping the adapter permanently on the phone or on the studio sound system was a viable solution for any of them, so it was one more thing to forget, misplace, etc.)
But I suspect your 100% is also skewed. Anecdotal experience usually is.
How does removing the headphone benefit users? Also how does being a developer affect how one would listen to music on a phone?
The only thing that being developer hints at here is often that group is often more techie and either would be on wireless or have very strong opinions about their listening setup. But the same is likely true for audiophiles (likely skewing toward the 3.5mm).
For what it’s worth, I’m not arguing for the jack to be gone - just sharing the reception I’ve seen in my network.
The headphone jack issue just seems like a solution in search of a problem. No one was complaining about headphone jacks before, so in a very best case scenario there is no positive impact (you already have bluetooth headphones, you don't mind dongles, etc), but in a worst case scenario they made life measurably worse for users (you don't own bluetooth headphones, you don't want to have to deal with dongles, EarPods are super expensive for headphones; all of these are issues which disproportionately affect the less well-off of people who can't afford the headphone upgrades, which techies tend to not be).
Agreed, removing it doesn't seem like it really gained anything. It was neutral at best and likely negative on the average, perhaps my smaller network that has discussed it just isn't negative and decided to not say anything at all.
I guess I can’t charge my phone and use headphones at the same time, but I really couldn’t before either considering the length of the charging cable.
But I guess you must always be charging your phone since the usbport is occupied?
I also have broken or lost over 3 adaptors now. This wasn’t broken and was pretty transparently done to increase the adoption rate of airpods IMO, so it is pretty frustrating. If I hadn’t had mind-blowing-ly bad experiences with samsung phones I would have jumped ship over this.
Thankfully I have a sensible phone, but what's the benefit to me in having a phone that can have sound output or charging but not both?
The only place this really makes sense is on a long haul flight when you want to make sure you have fully charged phone and listen to music while falling asleep.
Outside some niche uses, digital video really does make general sense. I hear and often agree with analog arguments. I keep analog gear, and in my own hardware projects will stay analog, perhaps also having digital, depending.
But, overall? People largely benefit more from digital video, and with the loss of the CRT, adoption makes sense. Digital only gear makes sense. I have no concerns and can easily use an analog adapter in a pinch.
With audio, it is inverted! A few niche uses benefit, most do not. They are equal or very modest gain at best.
Video gear seems to age out more quickly too. Increases in resolution drive all that, and analog limits do too. Above HDTV 1920x1080, analog has real issues.
Analog audio does not have those dynamics. There is no analog cliff to drive digital gear. Great stuff from the 70's remains entirely relevant. It always will. Ears are just not like eyes.
I will never, ever buy something that only delivers audio digitally.
I think you are right about the DRM.
It will prove to be a waste of time. Audio is too easy. Seriously.
Heck, I can make something to just write the stream to a file, and doing that is not hard. Costs less than a CD.
Not so easy if the analog signal only emerges at the earpiece ...
This analog hole is a ridiculously easy hack job with a soldering iron.
"Ridiculously Easy"? - I wouldn't go that far, but very much within the realms of possibility for a determined attacker I'd say.
But down the line .. as actual physical countermeasures become more sophisticated maybe not so.
That's pretty much a policy. If I pay for it, fine. But I have it in generally useful form. No lock-in. Or I don't buy it.
And I don't mind hacking to get it in general useful form. Easy peasy.
To me, a bit of work, perhaps gain a new skill?
Not only easy, but fun, cheap, all that.
What is hard is having to spend or do work just because of a business model. I really dislike all of that. It is visceral.
Then the fiction we all read about illegal implants will be reality.
I went online to get some help with what was revealed to be the infamous touch-ic issues, and I was told off in so many ways ("that's an old model, you should really get the new one", "if you get flexion based damage, you are using your phone wrong", "wow, another bend-gater. Stop bending your damn phone!").
This was after internal apple documents showed that they were aware of flexion damage before the phone was released to market.
I can see why someone who's never used wired earbuds wouldn't care one way or another, but I really don't understand this sort of attachment.
This, at least, doesn't hold at all. My last flip-phone [0] was water-resistant and still had a headphone jack - it just had a rubber cover you had to pull up to reveal it. The charging port was also protected by the same cover.
[0] https://www.cnet.com/reviews/samsung-rugby-sgh-a837-review/
Works great.
This works great, until...
You leave the pair of headphones with the dongle behind by mistake and spend the rest of the day frustrated because you have access to a perfectly good pair of headphones but no the dongle.
Or you stick to one primary pair of headphones and are frequently taking the dongle on and off making it even easier to misplace or leave behind.
This is all such an unnecessary problem.
It's frustrating to have to come up with solutions, however effective, to problems that should never have existed in the first place.
I'm willing to make that trade, especially given how uncommon DVD's were even by the time the MBA launched. (Although I'll note that my desktop has a BluRay drive and I wouldn't have it any other way.)
What benefit am I getting in exchange for the loss of a headphone jack? An extra couple millimeters of screen real estate?
I have 2 really nice pairs of bluetooth headphones, and almost NEVER use them. Guess what pair gets used almost daily? my 15 year old beyerdynamic DT770s. 3.5mm or ¼" plug, closed back. Not really the most accurate, but a nice bass heavy rich sound and plenty loud. they work with gear that is 50 years old and brand new(so long as they include a headphone jack). I have vintage analog synthesizers 80s and 90s samplers to <2 year old digital synths. All work with these headphones.
Apple really really really really really really screwed up here. reverse course immediately.