Fitting a sufficiently large battery in the first place?
Apple have developed a chronic problem in recent years - stripping out engineering margins in the interests of aesthetics. Fraying MagSafe cables due to inadequate strain relief. "You're holding it wrong". Touch disease and bendgate. Stuck keys because of wafer-thin tolerances on the butterfly keyboard. Macbook CPU throttling due to a marginal thermal solution. Pitifully poor battery durability on EarPods. Display flex cable failures on the MBP.
The minimalist aesthetic has long been a key part of Apple's brand, but they are crossing the line from "minimalist" to "inadequate" with increasing frequency. It's working, for now, but it's eroding their reputation for quality. I've been recommending Macbooks to non-technical users since 2006; I can no longer do so in good conscience, because of the very high price of an entry-level machine and the high probability of a major failure.
Your second sentence contradicts your first.
Apple know that battery performance degrades over time. They knew that the batteries they were fitting to iPhones would be unable to supply sufficient current within the normal working life of the phone. They either didn't care about longevity, or chose to prioritise aesthetics. For a company that likes to brag about their environmental credentials and the quality of their devices, that's not a good look.
It's not voltage, it's discharge rate, which is directly proportional to capacity. All else being equal, bigger batteries can supply more current. It hasn't cropped up in the Android camp because Android phones use bigger batteries.
https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/what_is_the_c_ra...
Samsung was fined for exactly the same thing Apple was doing.
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-samsung-5-million-fine...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/24/apple_samsung_fined...
Thinking back, I remember how I basically had Stockholm syndrome with my phone. The performance was incredibly terrible. Swiping on the screen took two or three attempts, opening any app took 2 or 3 touches for it to register. Scrolling was stuttered in any app. I remember my partner deemed my phone unusable (it was 3+ years old, so I certainly expected some sluggishness). I had just built in muscle memory to use my phone, swipe swipe, press press press to open an app.
Sigh, and I'm still with Apple.
They were pretty clear that the battery throttling on phones with old batteries was to prevent the phone from shutting down under high load.
I'd argue that 95% (maybe higher?) of the public and the press don't understand this and still believe Apple was throttling the phone speed to force them to buy a new device. You even see this on HN a lot where people should know better. Bringing attention to it may just have caused the bad media response earlier.
They weren't clear that they were battery throttling on phones to prevent shut down.
Only to the fully rational. Many people would rather have their phone crash faster.
Also, any modern phone with bluetooth is just as capable off running airpods or any other wireless headphones whether or not it also has a 3.5mm jack.
Lastly, eliminating the 3.5mm jack has nothing to do with making the phone thinner either. My jackless iPhone 7 is actually a few mil thicker than my older yet nearly identical iPhone 6 which has a 3.5mm jack.
Why do you behave like those things are exclusive?!
I don't mind the cord, I don't see why $200 shitty earpods that I have to charge every 5 hours and battery runs out after 1.5 years is better.
It is incredibly reassuring to hear somebody else find these symptoms - it took me weeks to narrow down the cause to the dodgy adapter, and then I ended up buying a $80 bluetooth adapter for my wired headphones, because I couldn't find an "ignore the stupid commands that the broken lightning adapter is sending" option...
What's the point of a headphone if you're listening to MP3/AAC → A2DP transcoded music?
Or if someone wants the headphone form factor, then 80 bucks is more than enough for an ok pair of Bluetooth headphones that won’t sound worse than the A2DP transcoded stream already is.
Also the cost differential that you seem to suggest exists between them is not apparent - I have seen examples of both form factors of bluetooth headphones as cheap as GBP 10.00 (or less) at a minimum, and you could spend way over GBP 500.00 on either kind if you so desired - you get what you pay for, though...!
I already have a pair of super-comfortable noise-cancelling headphones that I carry everywhere, and getting an adapter is more convenient than carrying wired headphones in one pocket and wireless headphones in another pocket :P
Can you elaborate on this? Because it seems like it obviously would. 3.5mm jacks have got to go somewhere.
1) 7/8 series have a home button that doesn't actually push. The Taptic Engine mimics the feel of a button push.
2) It allows for different types of vibration, e.g. when hitting the corner of the screen while dragging or for more subtle notifications. (https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2018-and-android-phones-s...)
The iPhone 6 battery is 1810mAh, whereas the 8 is 1821mAh. So they didn't increase the battery size; they added the Taptic Engine instead, and got rid of the mechanical home button.
Articles gush about the Taptic Engine, but I'd still rather have my headphone jack back. And I liked the clicky home buttons.
> They put the Taptic Engine there instead.
It sounds like it created the room for the Taptic Engine.
The problem was so bad that it became an Asian cultural thing to turn on the accessibility feature that gave you an on-screen home button control and to use that exclusively, literally never touching your real home button, because you needed the real home button to remain intact for when you wanted to sell your phone later.
Really? I enjoy the fake home buttons much more. In fact, the only iPhone part I've had fail on me was the old style home button. Happened twice.
I agree discovery of 3D interactions is terrible -- essentially nonexistent -- which does justify the epithet "useless" to some degree.
Good luck.
Personally, pushing on the flashlight or camera buttons with 3D touch actually feels really satisfying, because it really does feel like I'm clicking a button even though I'm just pushing on my screen.
I've had iPhones for work for years and I'm just learning about this functionality today from reading this thread.
Asia wishes to disagree with you.
There are literally millions of people here who turn on AssistiveTouch on a brand new phone for no other reason than to not use the physical home button because they believe it will wear out/break.
But does it actually? Because if it's just a belief, nothing prevents the same belief from occurring with the 3D Touch home button. I guess it's going to be a feedback loop because obviously there wouldn't be reports of failures if nobody uses the physical button, but assuming normal usage, does the button fail frequently enough to be a concern? I think the west is a clear proof that this is not the case (unless something in Asia is breaking the buttons - climate maybe?).
Also I'm sure those people wouldn't actually use the phone at all if they had an equivalent way to achieve the same tasks that doesn't involve risking breaking a phone.
Finally let's put it that way - if you use AssistiveTouch right away you lose the home button. If it breaks after X months/years of use you also lose the home button. Wouldn't it still be better to get value out of the button while it's still working rather than falling back to AT right away?
It may be a cost/value issue. Better to protect a perceived fragile part so it’s not damaged when they want to sell it for a newer model.
Yes, that was parent's "some may argue..." part. That doesn't mean Asia are right. Some in that same part of the world would argue that running a fan can kill me, so something something urban legends.
Apple needs to face it: They have an arrogance problem. ("Courage") This applies to a lot of SV: An over-willingness to dismiss the voices of the many.
EDIT: Apple under Steve Jobs didn't succeed by simply going against the grain. Apple at its best knows when it made sense to go against the grain, and when it made sense to cater to the masses. It hasn't been at its best in recent years.
Well I was told that Apple viewed the removal of the headphone jack as a necessary step to a sealed, water proof phone. The two key reasons for phone failure are drops and water damage. Water damage will eventually be handled by a sealed device. So it’s not about “more room” AFAIK.
Don't forget replaceable batteries, up-gradable storage, and an IR blaster.
You just have to pay for the headphone dongle replacements for as long as you own the phone, or the licensing fees and brand-based price differentials for every pair of headphones you buy--the "Apple tax" in action.
As long as someone gets more than $3/month in personal benefit from owning an iPhone instead of the next-best alternative, they will suck it up and buy the $9 audio dongle every 3 months. If they didn't realize that much benefit, they wouldn't have bought the iPhone in the first place.
Anecdote time. I told my family long ago that if they bought Apple products, I would not support those products in any way. If there is ever a problem, take it to the Apple store instead of telling me about it. Two of them chose iPhone anyway--one within the last year. And lo, surprising no-one, or at least not me, those earbuds with the lightning connector broke after ( N < 12 ) months. A conductor is loose between lightning connector and left earbud, the break occurring near the lightning connector. Because that part of the cable has zero strain relief. A flexible cable coming off of a rigid bit of plastic--of course it's going to break there. It's either that, or wearing out the insulation on the cable within 15cm of the connector.
So, this happens: "Hey, logfromblammo, please come with me to the Apple store and hold my hand while I try to get a warranty replacement for these headphones that are otherwise $29 to replace?" "No. I told you 'no' years ago, and I have not changed my mind since; if the problem has an Apple logo on it, it is entirely your problem." And this somehow makes me a jerk. I knew this would happen--I tried to stop it by telling people "don't buy anything with an Apple connector (except MagSafe)". This is why, when Apple first made the announcement that they were removing the TRRS barrel jack from their phones, I raged for days, despite not owning an iPhone, because people around me own iPhones, and knew I would have to hear their pleas and complaints. It has happened over and over and over again. Apple makes a shit sandwich, puts it in a white box with a silver logo on it, and people just... eat it? Why do they eat the sandwich? That guy just got seconds! It even says "poop sandwich" on the box! Why are they doing this?!
The engineering solution may be technically elegant, but it is an answer to a problem that Apple created for itself--a problem that never needed to exist.
You know why people buy them all the time, though? Because, frankly, it's a terrible design. It's tiny, easy to lose or forget, and they break easily. That's why it has such terrible reviews in the Apple store site--it's not a good product for what it is.
I deal with Apple products on the daily, and the removal of the headphone jack is still one of the things that irritates me most about Apple.
The others would be: the whole battery scandal where Apple slowed down older phones without explaining that the battery, a replaceable component, was the issue. And the 2016-2018 MacBook keyboards, which are an absolute travesty.
The headphone to Lightning adapter may be a "marvel of engineering", but it was a completely unnecessary one. It doesn't create more room inside the phone, and Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. It's basically designed to force you on to more expensive wireless headphones.