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Pursuit of Slenderness May Mean No More Headphone Jack In iPhone 7 (pcmag.com)
An intriguing rumor reported by PC Mag (and initially reported in this Japanese blog) holds that Apple may drop the standard headphone jack from the next revision of the iPhone, in favor of Bluetooth and Lightning connectors. From PC Mag's article:
The big question is just how such a move might affect all the other headphones one can buy, as well as the other devices Apple makes. While we can envision some manufacturers making iPhone-exclusive variants of their headphones, we doubt that Apple's potential decision to chop out the headphone jack is going to suddenly make for a market full of Lightning-only headphones and earbuds. There are, after all, plenty of non-iPhone devices that still use the 3.5mm connection. And, of course, you could just pair any ol' pair of Bluetooth headphones or earbuds with the iPhone 7.
As with virtually any apple device, there will be a $75 piece manufactured for 85 cents that will be a lightning to headphone jack connection.
As with the other lightning connectors, if you plug it into your mac it will crash when it wakes on sleep.
Really excellent headphones use the standard jacks, and will not be converting over. Grado, Audiotechnica, and many others simply do not have a funny little iphone connector, and likely never will. While I'm sure there will be some dumb converter you can buy, who wants to keep that crap in their pocket, or attached to their headphones (which you will have to track carefully when plugged into a normal outlet).
It's true that mostly I listen on little crappy remote earbuds, but that's absolutely not the case that this is ALL I want to listen to.
Moving to this will remove my ability to use real headphones on Apple phones. That's totally shit.
We need more battery life!
I miss the good 'ol days of 2004-5 when smartphone innovation was huge. Nowadays what's left to innovate? There isn't much room left for Apple to do anything nifty besides up the memory and processor speed. Smartphones are so boring these days. The last phone I was excited for was the Droid 4 and iPhone 4 and the marginal software updates for each applicable platform. What is a mobile hardware geek to do?
I'd love it if some phone manufacturer made a device that was truly secure and could detect when it was being connected to a StingRay device used by law enforcement. Now that's an exciting innovation!
Brb, checking out the Blackberry Priv.
The original goal of the fashion industry and catwalk models was simply to promote slim women - women who were a healthy weight. This was fair enough, and a decent goal - the happy medium. But the fashion industry didn't stop there. They became psychotic about thinness until the point where they now fetishize anorexic women who are very far from attractive and need to see a fucking doctor.
This seems to be what is happening with smartphones. The first iPhone was somewhat slim and just about right. The boasts about how slim it was were *in relation to* other thicker models at the time; not just about slimness *per se*. It was still a happy medium between slender attractiveness/lack of bulkiness, and utility. But the smartphone industry, led by Apple, is going the way of the fashion industry. It is now led by UX designers with a psychotic obsession with thinness because "that's attractive". Well if some iPhone user comes up to me with a credit card-width phone I'm going to say that my LG G3 is better. Not just because I have a proper headphone jack, replacable SIM card, SD card slot, and replacable battery. But also because the thing actually feels substantial when I hold it. I don't WANT it to be thinner. I don't WANT it to be the anorexic of smartphones.
All I can say is I hope some smartphone manufacturers break rank and start advertising that they are NOT trying to make their phones thinner than 1cm. If Apple want to do that, it's their funeral. I want a decent thickness phone with a good number of features and a decent battery life.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
They will probably offer an adapter cable. They seem to love adapters these days, because the device can be smaller and they get to sell you an accessory.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Yeah, right. This has nothing to do with selling overpriced accessories.
If the 3.5mm jack is restricting you from making the device thinner, then use the "unnecessary" space for high battery capacity.
Hell, just make the device a tiny bit thicker and increase the battery life anyway.
Just because Jony Ive is a twat that craves how things look over how they function, a substantial part of your user base (and potential user base), actually give a shit about having a device that can be used consistently without dying in under 24 hours, and might even last more than a day without charging.
To an extent we will trade battery life for increased functionality, but an even thinner device isn't more functional. We want more battery life.
Meh. Keep the 3.5mm connector, shrink the rest of the phone down,and fill the remaining space with extra battery. Seriously, how much thinner do phones need to be? I'd prefer some extra battery life, thanks.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
"After all, why can't they just redesign the audio socket so it's a couple of millimeters thinner?"
They probably can but then, what would you call an object 1.5mm width and ending on a point? That's a connector no more but a needle. And a needle has two problems: it's fragile and it can hurt. Not such a wise decision for a connector.
I hate to say it, but they already have a "Made for iPhone" program where there are special chips the iDevices are looking for, and if they don't find it they will complain the accessory may not work properly:
http://www.iphonehacks.com/201...
Last I heard it never went past fear mongering but was still annoying. I can't remember if there was a way to disable it or not but I'm sure if so it was on by default.
That's nothing new. It's been around for a long time. I had a 2nd gen ipod touch. Apple wanted like $50 for their composite A/V cable (with the red/white/yellow connectors) so you could play video back on an old analog TV. Instead I went onto ebay and bought one for $3.50 that worked perfectly. Or at least it did work perfectly, until IOS 4.0 (I think that was the version, but maybe it was 3.0) was released. Then whenever the cable was connected, it would pop up that error message. You could still use the audio out on the cable, but the video portion was useless (I don't remember if it completely stopped working or was just useless because it showed the error message on your TV). The only way to get video out was to buy a new ridiculously priced official cable that had their DRM chip inside.