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Taking the Headphone Jack Off Phones Is User-Hostile and Stupid (theverge.com)
A WSJ report on Tuesday claimed that the next iPhone won't have the 3.5mm headphone port. A handful of smartphones such as LeEco's Le 2, Le 2 Pro, and Le Max 2 that have launched this year already don't have a headphone jack. The Verge's Nilay Patel has an opinion piece in which he argues that smartphone companies shouldn't ditch headphone ports as it helps no consumer. He lists six reasons:
1. Digital audio means DRM audio :Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and recording devices anyway.2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact accessibility.:The headphone jack might be less good on some metrics than Lightning or USB-C audio, but it is spectacularly better than anything else in the world at being accessible, enabling, open, and democratizing. A change that will cost every iPhone user at least $29 extra for a dongle (or more for new headphones) is not a change designed to benefit everyone.5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is incredibly arrogant and stupid.
6. No one is asking for this.
1. Digital audio means DRM audio :Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and recording devices anyway.2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact accessibility.:The headphone jack might be less good on some metrics than Lightning or USB-C audio, but it is spectacularly better than anything else in the world at being accessible, enabling, open, and democratizing. A change that will cost every iPhone user at least $29 extra for a dongle (or more for new headphones) is not a change designed to benefit everyone.5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is incredibly arrogant and stupid.
6. No one is asking for this.
He said "jack off" ! tee hee
and they save a whole whopping nickel off each unit. move a few million units and it's easily 100k+.
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
Fuck Apple.
Never stopped Apple before.
The reason they're ditching the headphone jack is because the thickness of the jack assembly is getting in the way of their desire to make the phone thinner. I think they're ultimately shooting for having future phones as thin as credit cards.
So, just don't buy a phone without a headphone jack...how's that for democratizing?
This is what passes for innovation when you run out of actual innovation.
Sure, the engineering is perhaps more elegant and you get rid of a few creaky parts like an amplifier and a jack, but what's the payback for that? If we're lucky a few extra mm^3 of battery? A device even thinner or smaller in some way, features most people don't want?
But this is what passes for innovation when you don't have ideas, and somebody made the fucking spreadsheet work, indicating it would be some tiny percentage cheaper to build and there would be a short-term bonus in terms of selling dongles and new headphones.
So really the only actual innovation is *financial* innovation -- squeezing a few more bucks out of end users and creating some licensing deals for "made for iPhone headphones" but not any innovation that anyone seriously thinks improves anything.
And you can bet that the dongles will be ass-ugly lumps sticking out the bottom of the phone, just asking to break the jack. Maybe somebody 2 years from now will finally get the green light to produce an Apple-approved adapter that makes the phone slightly longer but has a separate lightning and headphone jacks. But you can bet it will be a long delay before they approve it so they can capture every damn dollar of dongle spending.
...since it alone ensures I will never buy an iPhone.
the market will decide whether apple is right or not
No it won't, the average consumer will have no clue until it's too late, in the meantime the rest of us will suffer or be forced to build our own phones / listening devices for music I already paid for, and still own the CD.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
No one will care in a year.
Yeah, it will. These phones represent a [large] minority of the marketplace. You really can buy a different phone. And you can buy a CD player.
I am sure there will be plenty of manufacturers that will be glad to take up the slack.
"The reason they're ditching the headphone jack is because the thickness of the jack assembly is getting in the way of their desire to make the phone thinner. I think they're ultimately shooting for having future phones as thin as credit cards."
I hope you get modded up -- too bad you are AC.. You are right.
I dont think I would want a phone without a jack -- at least not right now -- but maybe 2 or 3 generations from now a "phone" will be a little card with no real display or speakers -- which will display on some third party hardware or heads up display -- sound, too.
So, the headphone jack is apparently the argument that finally brought forth the "No one is asking for this" argument?
Hey consumers, where the fuck were you 172 pointless "upgrades" and $500 MSRP dollars ago?
Don't even bother bitching about design changes now. The monopolies aren't listening anymore. Consumers lost the ability to provide feedback that would result in action long ago.
[sarcasm] Don't they understand this will cause almost every Apple customer to purchase newer and more expensive headphones? [/sarcasm]
That would be a loss...
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Second the motion, it's the same reason they moved to the Lightning jack too.
I also don't want to go without a jack, but it looks like that's how it will be.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
I need my iPhone to have a headphone jack. I love making DJ mixes on my phone. I use an app called dJay, which allows me to mix using my itunes library. I've gotten quite good, to the point where I will occasionally sit on the bus or at a bar making a mix, and I don't need a monitor, as I can tell where to start the mix using the waveforms of the song.
Anyway, this only works if the sound and screen animation of the song beats are perfectly in sync; if theres ANY delay, I can't mix. I have tried doing this by using a bluetooth speaker instead of headphones, and it never works. It's always off by some delayed amount.
If Apple actually does this, this is the one thing that will make me never want to upgrade. I know they would make dongles, but that adds other issues, such as what if I need to mix while having the phone plugged in because I'm running out of battery power? Anyway, don't do it, apple.
And if anyone wants to hear my mixes made on an iPhone with no monitor and just a pair of headphones, here ya go: https://www.mixcloud.com/xevio...
Why does he think that this will be DRM'd? My music is already DRM-free.
Of course, the thinness doesn't do much for you when if you want to protect the phone from breaking, you've got to wrap it in a case. And the thinner they get, the more likely you *need* that case to protect the thin and therefore increasingly fragile phone.
Yup, just like Microsoft didn't listen to the market and didn't bring back some semblance of the Start Menu in windows.
they moved to lightning to more cables and adapters, not because the internals may be smaller or thinner than ordinary micro usb... just like the 'dock' connector of previous generations was also not usb but proprietary. to sell more shit, make more money. in the end, that's all it is about... making more money.. fucking over the customer is just 'acceptable collateral damage'. apple has enough people brainwashed into buying whatever they're selling, so they will get away with it.. regardless of how stupid it is.
Back in 2007 I bought my first touchscreen Smartphone, the AT&T Tilt. With all that was wrong with it, it also didn't have a headphone jack and expected you to use a usb to stereo adapter that came with it. Fine, I have to carry an extra adapter. The issue came with wanting to listen to music and charging the phone at the same time (battery life was horrible even compared to today's standards). I had to shell out extra cash for a special 3rd party converter that allowed me to charge and listen to music at the same time. It was a pain.
/2cents
Even though I use bluetooth headphones when I workout I don't want to have to remember to carry an adapter if for some reason my headphones die and decide to switch over to wired headphones. So yeah, i'd never buy a phone without a dedicated headphone jack
the thickness of the jack assembly is getting in the way of their desire to make the phone thinner.
Quite possibly. But when you ask people, what they say they want isn't a thinner phone, it's more battery life, which you get by making the phone thicker.
When even "iVerge" criticises Apple's attitude this harshly, you know it's some real shitty attitude.
Circumcision is child abuse.
I remember the exact same comments when apple did away with floppy drives and dvd drives. "Oh, dear me, how will I live without XXXX ? No one will ever buy another apple product, this is the obvious death knell of apple "
It's rather pitiful to comment on speculation about a product that won't come out for three months. You can't have a valid opinion without seeing the compromises in play.
Which, by the way, according to the speculation, are that the phone will be thinner and much more waterproof. Are you still arguing "no one asks for this"?
I realize that Slashdot is just as childishly anti-Apple as it has always been - but as Apple cements its position as the most important company in America and in technology, what does that mean for Slashdot?
Let's be adults! I know we can!
But bending iPhones were so popular when they came out. Now they can make them even bendier! And when it breaks, they'll be happy to sell you another one at full price.
...and they save a whole whopping nickel off each unit.
That's not the reason they are doing this. The 3.5mm jack is an open standard which anyone can easily use for free and just about any earphones will work with any phone. If each manufacturer can get away with replacing this with their own proprietary connector then now users will have to either purchase a dongle or a specially designed earphone where the phone manufacturer gets a cut because it uses their connector.
So this is not about saving a 3p/5c per phone this is about making ten times as much, or more, per dongle or earphone purchased. Better yet if these are like Apple's lightning connector the lifespan of the connector is a lot less than that of the phone so they can sell multiple connectors per phone and make even more money. Call me cynical but I have yet to see any real benefit mentioned to the customer from ditching the standard 3.5mm jack, and certainly nothing like enough to offset the pain involved in carrying around multiple dongles so your earphones can work with your tablet, phone an laptop.
This is sort of a side issue, but if you are still using wired headphones you are really missing the boat. Bluetooth headphones are as cheap as $20 for good enough models. I can't imagine going back to wired headphones.
I have only two headsets/earbuds I really use anyway, so if I just leave an adaptor on those what is even the issue?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Controversial opinion:
Switch to the 2.5mm jack, instead of 3.5mm? - The one used on the older blackberry? It's significantly smaller, despite it only being 1mm smaller.
That's an admirable goal... but being as thin as a credit card means that it is equally likely to get broken. If your credit card cracks they will send you a replacement for free if you ask for one. Will Apple do likewise?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Did you own the original iPhone? The jack was such that not all headphones fit in it. Of course Jobs added it to the phone. There weren't any good alternatives then and adding it was 100% necessary at the time.
Yup, just like Microsoft didn't listen to the market and didn't bring back some semblance of the Start Menu in windows.
That's a decent example since what MS did was to ignore and avoid the issue for just enough iterations so that when they did "bring back" something that was a huge compromise, people took it as good enough and thanked them for it. Two steps forward, one step back... it's a great way to move the herd along.
The same thing happened in 1998. Geeks everywhere told Apple to screw themselves for coming out with a 'proprietary' connector USB that no one else used. Forcing everyone to buy new mice and keyboards and ... oh the humanity.
Not buying an Apple product? Why the hell do you care?
Since everyone's hating on replacing 3.5mm jacks, I'm going to play devil's advocate.
6 reasons that 3.5mm jacks will go the way of the 3.5" floppy drive:
1) Analog audio cables need shielding from outside interference. Cheaper cabling is inadequately shielded. Digital signals are more resistant to minor interference.
2) 3.5mm jacks are finicky. I've owned many extension cables with 3.5mm plugs that need fiddling with. If I don't rotate it just so, and plug it in at just the right depth, I get abnormally low volume, one of the channels won't work, or certain frequency ranges won't play.
3) 3.5mm plugs aren't universal. There are ones with 1, 2, or even 3 rings, and the above problems are more prevalent if a plug is connected to a receptacle/adapter engineered to expect a different number of rings.
4) Data sent through the 3.5mm jack is an unencrypted analog signal. This means it's vulnerable to side-channel attacks and surveillance. Someone could surveil/inject data going through the microphone channel (assuming the phone uses an analog microphone), or the headphone channel. A simple 'not' inserted into or removed from a sentence could cause substantial disruption to a target. Of course phone networks and smartphones are often surveillable in multiple ways, but not by everyone; also, phones are sometimes used as personal audio recorders, which may not be surveillable. An encrypted digital signal, with a handshake protocol but no master key (i.e. backdoor), could prevent these attacks.
5) Phones tend to come with noisy/cheap amplifiers/DACs. This means that even if you plug in your $500 headphones you're going to get noise, and there's nothing you can do about it. Moving these components into the headphones means that phones can accommodate top-end audio. For some reason, smartphones have their cameras heavily scrutinized, yet their audio components are glossed over by reviewers and consumers. Go figure.
6) 3.5mm jacks add cost and thickness to smartphones. This is the real reason (of course) why they're being ditched. Just like laptop makers are aiming for the thinnest laptops, phone makers want to make the thinnest smartphones. USB type C (which Thunderbolt 3 uses) has a height of ~2.6mm, meaning a full millimeter can be shaved off the device thickness. They could add a bump around the 3.5mm jack like they do for rear cameras, but I suspect that's considered ugly. there are 2mm audio jacks, but all the above problems remain, and people would still need an adapter or new headphones.
The DRM issue is orthogonal to the encrypted digital signal issue. If an unencrypted MP3 file is sent over an encrypted interface, then who cares? The 'protected content being stolen via the analog hole' is the potential bogeyman, but it's not going to be an issue. Music is sold DRM-free today, and people are unlikely to start buying DRM-ed music in the future; it won't matter unless CDs go away, anyways. In the unlikely event the encryption protocol isn't cracked, it will only matter for content that is only available via streaming, which will probably be a minority of audio that people would care to preserve. Furthermore, just as you can buy (outside America) HDCP-compliant devices that decode the signal and then happily pass it on unencrypted, you'll be able to get the same for audio, if there's demand for it.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
No one will care in a year.
DVDs were replaced by online downloads and streaming. The 3.5mm jack is going to be replaced by multiple competing standards so you are going to be carrying dongles around with you so your earphones work with all your devices. This is more like the MacBook where they replaced multiple standard ports with just USB-C and made all the users buy dongles to get the ports they needed. People were not happy.
I think they're ultimately shooting for having future phones as thin as credit cards.
And that's a very dumb goal. No one complains, "I wish my phone was thinner." People do complain, "I wish my phone had better battery life" and "I wish my phone's screen wouldn't break so easily."
Circumcision is child abuse.
Hey! It ain't my fault someone hacked your IPv4 address and all you get through your headset is this ditty.
I'd argue that Bluetooth is not great, and despite having shitty amps inside phones, the analog audio is still significantly higher quality than that Bluetooth audio. Not to mention that Bluetooth is noticeably laggy for anything interactive.
Also dont forget that Bluetooth needs a powered receiver and I dont want to have to charge another farking device every few hours.
Sure, Bluetooth has it's place, but I would be disappointed if it was the only option.
No one asked for systemd either, but look what happened.
Speaking more broadly, I honestly can't tell if this is because most of the major problems have been solved, people are too ignorant of the thought processes that went into the original tech, people don't know their history, people have too much faith in overly-complex technology that couldn't possible fail, people honestly, think they're just that much smarter than the installed base of users and want to increase "Quality of Life" (as one notable Borg put it), people want to make their own mark, or people are disingenuously trying to achieve lock-in on their newfangled contraption. No doubt, it's a mixture of all of the above.
Speaking as someone who's only been around in the industry for 15 years or so, I've already seen this pattern repeat way too frequently. I can only imagine what people who've been writing COBOL for the past 40 years think of it all...
Please, for the love of God, stop breaking sh*t that works fine.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
It'll be a STYLISH dongle!
For which frothing fanbois feign to forego fornication and fork over funds in fullsome and fearsome figures! Feel me?
And we won't even need a guy in a stupid Guy Fawkes mask for it!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
then whats the problem? oh you want to plug it in to a computers audio input? i am sure somebody will make a bluetooth dongle to fill that niche,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
"6. No one is asking for this."
This! +1, no +100. Nobody fscking cares about a few mm less width, on the contrary, please use the "surplus" millimeters that you want to cut down, to include a bit higher battery capacity while retaining the previous models' width.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
FWIW...
4. Like samsung ditching sd card slots? Like pretty much all computer manufacturers ditching rs232 ports, floppy drives, parallel ports, and likely soon vga ports?
They brought it back in the next revision (galaxy s7).
At least a CC company will mail you a replacement card if yours gets damaged.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I am all for hermetically sealed case with wireless charging and bluetooth/WiFi/NFC for connectivity. Ports invariably loosen, act flaky and fill up with dust even during regular use. Forget about swimming in salt water for an hour and then throwing the phone on sandy beach blanket. Throw in capacitive buttons with no moving parts and we have major improvements in reliability.
Like samsung ditching sd card slots?
Ah, yes, the Galaxy S6 - such a flop that Samsung backpedaled and re-added the microSD to the S7.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Does anyone remember that they own the beats headphones? One way to get people to buy more of their over priced junk is to offer exclusive companion over priced junk.
Wireless is everywhere and corded is going away. It isn't just the headphone jack and it isn't just the smartphone.
ALL audio on smart phones is digital. They could DRM the headphone jack fairly trivially if they wanted to.
No, they couldn't. It's an analog signal at the jack, and a DRMed digital or scrambled analog signal would sound like noise through any traditional set of headphones.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
"6. No one is asking for this
Raise your hand if the thing you wanted most from your next phone was either fewer ports or more dongles.
I didn’t think so. You wanted better battery life, didn’t you? Everyone just wants better battery life."
As the article says, what everyone really wants is more battery life in their phone. Is the best way to increase battery life something other than just making the battery bigger?
As a percentage of the size of the battery, I'd imagine all the empty space taken up by the 3.5 mm jack is quite a lot. Seriously, is there any better way to increase the size of the battery? I'll trade a dongle on my headphones for 15% more battery.
1. Shielding - Never had any problems in any phone I've ever owned.
You've NEVER had headphones on, got near some large electrical device, and had any interference at all? No buzzing or clicks? Really??????
5. Cheap DAC - This may be true, but my wired headsets are unequivocally better audio quality than any of my bluetooth headsets.
But are they better than wired headphones with an end to end audio channel? No.
People who still use wired headsets (I do also) are the people who will benefit MOST from our digital audio output.
6. Thickness - I don't need a thinner phone.
Yes you do. You just do not realize the value yet because none exist.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Quite possibly. But when you ask people, what they say they want isn't a thinner phone, it's more battery life, which you get by making the phone thicker.
If some customers want more battery life, a good approach would be to remove a component wasting a lot of internal volume, which also allows you to eliminate various large-ish components from the logic board. The saved space could be used to expand the battery. Every cubic mm in the iPhone is used for something ...
Another approach might be to sell a case with a battery to those customers.
The last approach you would logically take is forcing everyone to buy a bulkier phone.
Slashdot is jam-packed with luddites who refuse to join the 21st century and buy decent Bluetooth headphones.
I bought a decent pair for my son at Walmart for $10 at the cash register "impulse buy" shelf. They've been working great and sound a hell of a lot better than ear buds.
Once Windows Phone finally dies and I am forced to decide between Apple or Android, if the only new phones available from the former do not have a 3.5mm jack, I will definitely go with the latter. From using the headphones I already have, to plugging into my home or car stereo, to plugging into most other headphones/speakers I have encountered, 3.5mm was always the method used. (Never used a bluetooth headset or speakers.)
Controversial opinion:
Switch to the 2.5mm jack, instead of 3.5mm? - The one used on the older blackberry? It's significantly smaller, despite it only being 1mm smaller.
And how many people own 2.5mm headphones?
I would expect that Apple could design a way to hold a headphone jack next to contacts on a phone using a magnet. Then they could make the phones water proof to the point where they can be submerged.
Who cares?
Perhaps the industry can move forward with a new cabled standard. No DRM issues, smaller profile, adapters easily available, no need to be wireless, no charging?
Initial transition won't be fun, however neither was Mini USB to Micro. At least this way most of the issues are alleviated and an adapter can work in the meantime.
I've been waiting for a jack off phone to come around for years, it's about time the sex toy industry capitalized on the market for mobile devices, but if it has no headphones that's a deal-breaker, I can't have everyone in the house hearing what I'm doing; and if it's user-hostile and stupid to boot, I mean, who the hell thought those would make good features?
I'm surprised this kind of bomb is coming from Apple of all people, makers of the famous iBrator.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
there are very specific reasons they want an iPhone. For one, they're a Veblen good. E.g. something you buy because you can. There are very real social advantages to Veblen goods. iMessage is practically a social network, which is another advantage. iTunes is highly desirable and iMusic is $5/mo if you're in college and mostly just works. Apple has an entire ecosystem that powers a social network. I resent buying my kid an iPhone every 2 1/2 years (they last about that long before they're falling apart). But I'm smart enough to recognize that, like it or not, it is a very real social advantage. That's fucked up. But with the amount of fucked up shit in this world it's one of the more minor instances...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Additionally, when ifixit did their tear-down of the iPhone 6s and 6s+, they found a significant amount of resistance had been added. The case seals shut with a rubber gasket and the cable connectors on the logic board are waterproofed. Apple has not advertised, or to my knowledge mentioned, this. So the 6s and 6s+ are not likely fully waterproof, nor even certified water resistant. But it's there.
Eliminating the 3.5" port may also be another step towards eliminating entry points for water, possibly pointing towards an actual waterproof iPhone in the future.
Imagine all the people...
Apple is Surface-mount SOLDERING the RAM on new Imacs and Mac Minis.
If your ram stick goes bad, then it's Replace the whole logic board, Because Apple-authorized repair centers are essentially prohibited from doing component-level replacements.
Also, upgrading is almost impossible now..... And if you do it, according to Apple your computer is now a PC, and you voided the license to run MacOS on it.
"User-Hostile and Stupid" describes both Apple and Google, along with so many other companies. They get away with stuff like this because people not only keep coming back for more abuse, but keep paying for the 'privilege' of being abused. I've often said that some of us get the governments that our neighbours deserve, and the same idea applies to products and services. If the majority keeps being suckers, then there's not much left other than sucker-bait for the rest of us.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
It doesn't allow you to eliminate anything from the logic board. Basically the entire set of audio circuitry for the phone is still required for driving the normal speaker and the speakerphone speaker. The only thing that removing the headphone jack does is cut out a jack that is already really, really small.
So now consider the amount of space used by that headphone jack. I think the headphone jack is about a quarter inch by half an inch by the thickness of the interior of the phone (smaller than the 3.5mm plug, in fact, both in length and in thickness, IIRC). The battery in an iPhone 6S is a whopping 120mm x 48mm x 3mm (approx.). Removing the headphone jack, then, would give about a 1–2% boost in battery capacity. If you instead made the iPhone just 1mm thicker, the battery would increase from 3.3mm to 4.3mm in thickness, yielding at least a 30% increase in battery life (and really, more than that, because you aren't making the battery's packaging proportionally thicker). An extra 2mm would almost double the battery life.
The best part about using the thickness approach is that you could even give users a choice (audible gasps). Make several versions of the back case that allow for different thicknesses of batteries (by having various side wall heights), but are otherwise identical in construction. The extra R&D cost is basically zero for doing that, and the tooling costs should be minimal. Then, let the market decide whether users want more battery life or thinner phones. I'd be willing to bet that most users would choose the thicker phone with the longer battery life (unless they made the cost difference so ridiculous that it artificially skewed the market, which knowing Apple, they might just do).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
It is reflected in sales charts, just not Apple's. Take a look at the sales figures for battery cases.
The only way it would be reflected in Apple's sales charts would be if you could buy two different iPhone models, one with better battery life and one that's thinner. As long as Apple doesn't give consumers the option, the only other option is to reject the entire platform and switch to Android. That would take something much bigger than a few percent difference in battery life.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I've probably used about 3 different wireless bluetooth audio devices and had varying levels of quality, some of them approach the analog audio out but none have been better:
- Bluetooth hands-free headset about 7 years ago. Phone calls were OK, PC audio was a shockingly bad.
- Bluetooth sports headphones, before A2DP. Noticable compression and distortion
- UE Boom bluetooth speaker. Uses A2DP I assume, quality is OK but hard to tell on such a limited speaker. Fine for ambience.
- JVC Bluetooth car head unit. Uses A2DP, and since the speakers/amp are better i can hear some of the compression. Like a low end MP3 I guess, noticeably worse than the high bitrate MP3's stored on the phone. It's a reasonable compromise for convenience though.
So yes, things are improving, but it's not great yet.
Yes it is, just like selling a phone without a removable battery or card slot.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You forgot "increasingly droppable". When you're holding a phone with a screen, you pretty much have to hold it by the edges, or else you're getting fingerprints all over the screen and reducing visibility. The thinner the phone, the less friction, and the more likely you are to drop the phone.
The iPhone 6S is just plain unholdable, IMO.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Quite possibly. But when you ask people, what they say they want isn't a thinner phone, it's more battery life, which you get by making the phone thicker.
They make cases that thicken your iPhone and give it more battery-life. They do not make cases that make your phone thinner.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Why would you sell a phone with a long-lasting battery when you could sell a phone AND an external battery? Or, better still, licence a 3rd party to make the external battery! Free money!
sustainable living
Wait. Are you saying Apple is the Devil, if you're the devil's advocate?
Then allow me to be the devil's prosecutor:
1) All wire cables need shielding. You're assuming a digital signal will fail less often than analog due to strong RF interference. But since digital cables use wires too, they too will fail if the field is intense enough, probably at about the same point as analog does (just as digital TV tuners do). And I've *never* experienced interference from my analog cables.
2) You bought cables with crap connectors. Any decent analog cable has connectors that don't crackle or quit when the line is bent. (BTW, all earbuds are fine examples of such crap.)
3) Phones come with 1 or 2 rings, usually 2. If this leaves in deeply dismayed and contemplating suicide, switch to bluetooth now. Problem solved.
4) What's the point of encryption on headphones? The audio bleeding through your earpads is audible to anyone within 5 feet anyway. If this made sense, it'd be available via bluetooth now.
5) Digital connectors won't bypass the internal DAC. The market for external mobile DACs is so small, mobile DACs will remain internal and in-line... inescapably, alas.
6) Again, nobody wants an ultra thin phone, except Apple -- so they can sell more replacement phones after you break yours for the fourth time in a month.
And remember, a digital output signal will require active headphones with batteries to drive an external amp and noise cancelling DSP. Thus *all* mobile phones just got a lot more fragile and expensive, in ways that do NOT serve anyone but Wall Street analysts. It's they who are afraid that too small an excess of useless features will cause Apple's stock valuation to slip, thereby driving the entire board to jerk their knees in perfect synchrony with "Yankee Doodle Dandy" while waving incense and sprinkling rose water.
Your complete cluelessness is funny. I'm actually 53, clean shaven and English.
...phone with no ports or openings at all. I think physical connectors are already obsolete, except perhaps for a power connector. Phones are too delicate.
That and the fact that if you hold your credit card-like iPhone just the right way, it would just vibrate and use your skull as a speaker.
Competition.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
May I be the first one to point out that if you don't like it, don't buy it? There are plenty of alternative smart phones out there. If Apple can't sell their jack-less phone, they will get the message in a hurry. If they can, well; then just maybe it is not such a big deal.
"I wish my phone's screen wouldn't break so easily."
My girlfriend's mom got an iPhone 6, within 2 months, the screen had cracked under "gentler" circumstances than she treated her previous iPhone. Apple did replace it. By then, a new screen protector was available - made of the same type of glass. She got one of those, thus making her slimmer iPhone 6 as thick as her previous iPhone.
Seems the business getting the better part of the deal was the protector vendor. And Apple wants to go even thinner?
Don't try to out wierd me, three-eyes. I get stranger things than you, free with my breakfast cereal. --Zaphod Beeblebr
Actually, the iPod Touch and Nano are much thinner than the iPhone 6, and both have headphone jacks. If you want more battery life, you can increase the volume of the battery without making the phone thicker, by removing the jack and using the previously wasted depth.
USB, FireWire (on some devices), stereo audio input and output, 3.3V power output (for accessories), serial (for accessories), composite and S-Video output (on iPod Photo only). And the USB contacts could be used in either device mode or host mode (on hardware that supported it). In fact, IIRC, many iOS devices could actually drive standards-compliant USB audio interfaces through the dock connector, so with a small amount of effort, it was possible to provide digital audio through that connector as well, albeit slightly indirectly, and with less than 100% compatibility.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Sorry, slight correction: Those are the dimensions of the battery in the iPhone 6s Plus. :-) That would basically be the entire interior of a 6s....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
They make cases that thicken your iPhone dramatically and give it a little bit more battery life. The problem with using external cases is that a battery requires a hard wall around it to protect it. This adds considerable volume. And an external battery, because it cannot share the phone's charge circuit, has to include all of that redundant circuitry as well. So you could double an iPhone's battery life internally by adding about 2mm of thickness, but a case that doubles the battery life adds about 8mm of thickness. That's fine if you were planning to use a case anyway, but if you weren't, then that's a lot of wasted space.
To make matters worse, because of Apple's Lightning port licensing rules, unless you buy Apple's hunchback of Notre Dame case, AAFAIK, all of those external battery cases make your phone incompatible with lightning accessories. So if Apple ditches the headphone jack, those third-party battery case users won't have any way to connect their phones to any kind of wired audio output without removing the phones from their cases (thus eliminating the extra power boost, along with any protection that the cases might provide). That's a terrible user experience if ever I heard of one.
Incidentally, that's yet another reason why removing the headphone jack is such a very bad idea.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Never interrupt Apple when it is busy making a mistake.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
1. Digital audio means DRM audio :
.....
That has already happened, You aren't really digitising a headphone jack signal, right?
2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
Don't use them, use a dongle.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles.
If you don't like dongles, use lightning or wireless.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact accessibility.:
Let's keep hanging on standards, that is always really helpful. I can see the innovation in moving HQ DAC to the headphones. Now customers can choose if they care about audio.
5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is incredibly arrogant and stupid.
6. No one is asking for this.
No one was asking for an iPhone.
Adapters for 3.5 to 2.5 are cheap and small. It's the same electronics.
Apple's solution is complex and expensive. Shock, horror.
Unfortunately most of same people go out and buy the thinner glossier shit phone they find while bitching all over about how bad plastic phones are.
6. No one is asking for this.
Really? I refer to the first argument:
1. Digital audio means DRM audio
Sure, no users are asking for this, but do you make a phone for the users or to make money?
If the reason was waterproofing then there are analog options too. There is no reason whatsoever a Lightning connector could not transfer analog signals.
I'm sure a user-friendly smartphone could find quite a few customers.
This is all apart of Apple's long term strategy of making sure they get a piece of everything sold that runs on or connects to their devices. This started with forcing all apps to be installed and bought through their market place, no side loading allowed without rooting. Then it continued when they moved to a proprietary connector so that they got a cut of the pie from all of the manufacturers who made accessories/devices that connected to their bottom port. Now you'll have to buy a lightning to 3.5mm adapter or headphones that connect to their lightning port if you want wired headphones. Either way Apple makes money. In a couple of years they'll phase out audio over Bluetooth for a new proprietary standard that'll improve audio quality, use less battery, blah, blah, blah. So that Apple will get a cut of that pie as well. Wouldn't surprise me then after that, they'll phase out Bluetooth all together because their new proprietary standard is just so awesome.
Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great.
What?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I want a thicker battery AND a card slot. There's no reason to make them thinner anymore. It's just going to either make the phones more fragile or cause more damage to you when it's in your pants pocket and you bend over (only to hear the ghost of Steve Jobs tell you "you're bending over wrong").
If that's so, people won't like the new "feature" and won't buy un-jacked phones. If they buy them, then it's not such a big problem. As long as there is competition, natural selection should take care of the problem, if there is a problem. I, for myself, welcome our... I mean I'll add the "having a 3.5mm jack" to the list of things my phones must have.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2014/06/05/apple-to-abandon-headphone-jack-suddenly-beats-deal-makes-sense/#66bb3a3e6433 - and even back then they at first claimed this was a done deal.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
There's a 2,5 mm four jack that is quite standard, and actlually used on Nokia cellphones and in some two-way radios. Ready made adapters were sold by almost every electronics store, and of course Nokia made earpiece with the smaller connector.
The one in your pocket.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
USB, FireWire (on some devices), stereo audio input and output, 3.3V power output (for accessories), serial (for accessories), composite and S-Video output (on iPod Photo only). And the USB contacts could be used in either device mode or host mode (on hardware that supported it). In fact, IIRC, many iOS devices could actually drive standards-compliant USB audio interfaces through the dock connector, so with a small amount of effort, it was possible to provide digital audio through that connector as well, albeit slightly indirectly, and with less than 100% compatibility.
Thanks for that list!
I know a lot of iOS Device engineers at Apple were actually not too happy with the video capabilities they lost when Apple moved from the 30 pin connector to Lightning. But the Dock connector was beginning to show its age, and I don't miss having to play the " which way does it plug in?" Game with the 30 pin charging cable.
Adapters for 3.5 to 2.5 are cheap and small. It's the same electronics.
Apple's solution is complex and expensive. Shock, horror.
So, one adapter Good, but another adapter Bad.
And has anyone ever seen a FOUR conductor 2.5 mm plug? Because that is needed for headsets with a microphone.
This is apple we are talking about, they are use to buying additional dongles.. After all most already own the 19.95 USB to lightning dongle, what is another dongle hanging off their phones?
By the way, ALL of this is FUD. No one outside of 1 Infinite Loop REALLY knows what, if anything, Apple is planning to do with the 3.5 mm jack.
I love how you guys have ZERO clue as to who the customer is to phone makers.
It's not you. It's the phone companies and they want that jack gone. That way they can DRM the hell out of everything and force you to buy their Bluetooth headphones at 40% more profit.
Yet all you will still happily buy the crap because you all have to have the latest shiny.... oohh shiny must have shiny!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There have been 3.5mm jacks sockets in waterproof phones for over two years now. Heck the Sony Z5 has a waterproof microUSB socket as well and it's only 7.3mm thick.
If you don't like the change, then don't buy the next iPhone.
How hard is that?
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
Yes, here is a nice decent quality one with solder connectors
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-5m...
Apple are doing this because it is a scandalous outrage that people can just go buy any old pair of headphones, from anyone, and plug them into the iPhone. Now people will be using the lightning connector Applecans and getting that sweet DRM anti-piracy action. Maybe using unapproved headphones will invalidate your warranty..? I'm sure there's a few other ways to wring some blood from this stone.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
But they would surely not be compatible with the old 2,5 mm connector, would they?
Lint from my pocket inevitably finds it way into the jack. The headphone jack then doesn't fit in properly. I need a needle to pull out the lint. Sometimes this causes my iphone speaker phone to be silenced because the software thinks a headphone jack is plugged in. I hate my 3.5mm jack https://discussions.apple.com/... I'm not suggesting that this is the reason that they are eliminating the jack, but it's an added benefit for me. Apple could provide a software option to override the sensor telling the OS that a headphone is plugged in when it really isn't. I don't know why they don't do that.
...which drives up future sales, AppleCare service plans, and/or repair profits. Plus add in all the additional sales for lightning-to-headphone adapters and lightning-based headphones and you now have additional revenue streams.
All wire cables need shielding.
Allow me to introduce you to twisted pair.
Digital connectors won't bypass the internal DAC. The market for external mobile DACs is so small, mobile DACs will remain internal and in-line... inescapably, alas.
What? They most certainly do bypass the internal DAC. You have no idea what we are talking about, not even slightly.
a digital output signal will require active headphones with batteries
Oh yeah? Just like USB headsets have to have batteries? Hint, they don't.
to drive an external amp and noise cancelling DSP.
So don't have a DSP. Just the amp.
There are real problems with this approach, most notably that charging and listening to headphones at the same time requires a special splitter cable which nobody wants to carry, and that nobody wants to have to replace the headphones they already paid for and few people will want to dick around with an additional headphone amplifier to make normal headphones work with the new system. Don't invent fake reasons because you're imagining things or just not paying attention to the conversation.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I hope the backlash takes a notch or two out of Apple's arrogance. Making some other thinner analog connector for which very cheap analog adapters could exist might be defensible in the name of thickness or water resistance, but eliminating a wired analog headphone port is flat out insulting to customers.
Goes in the same category as refusing to enable FM Radio on phones. Well established standard that provides value to the consumer, and helps people on low budget plans and phones who don't want to spend more. In the case of headphones, they'll argue wireless headphones are the better technology and one people will adopt, but some people don't have the money to spend on new headphones. In the case of Radio, they'll argue everything is shifting to the internet, but people who can't afford more data on their plan can save and still get information and music off conventional radio.
Ultimately I would like something like that. But the devil is in the details. The battery life could be addressed maybe by not having a screen. So if there is a personal computer that I could put in my wallet like a credit card, and then provide ad hoc (and secure) interfaces to various proximity device like displays, keyboards, voice, etc. I would be interested in that. But you are right it's dumb to want an "all in one" device much smaller than what we have now. I already have to avoid the tiny USB drives that are around, they are too easy to lose. I just end up putting a bulky lanyard or something on them so i can find them.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Why not change from 3.5 mm to 2.5 mm headphone jacks then? It is still a standard and dongles will be trivial, cheap and available everywhere.
If you're really so much of a douchebag hipster that you have some fancy-schmancy headphones with a round jack
lol, the hipster in the equation is the guy with the regular ol' headphone jack that we've had forever?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I think they're ultimately shooting for having future phones as thin as credit cards.
And that's a very dumb goal. No one complains, "I wish my phone was thinner." People do complain, "I wish my phone had better battery life" and "I wish my phone's screen wouldn't break so easily."
It's an interesting strategy really, you make phones impressively thin which only bolsters the idea that they're fragile, which makes people buy cases for them.
You're basically outsourcing the structural integrity of the device and providing customisation options in one hit.
Are you the same people complaining now that complained then?
Apple is no longer going to have a PC with the A drive? *gasp* How dare they? They are going to increase the cost to the consumer. Why do they hate the consumer? We still use A drives!!!
Now look.
You are the same people complaining now that complained then.
www.slightlycrewed.com - Because aren't we all?
3 1/4 floppy
I'd say a good percent of decisions that Apple makes are stupid and hostile and are simply done to find ways to skim more money off of their users. Their devices are overpriced and overrated as it is.
Even worse,the "early adopters" will rush out and give an early sales bump that makes it look popular, and the "cool kids" will insist that it's BETTER.
Right because the headphone jack is sooo big....
As thin as a credit card but as large as a book!?!? Yeah ok Potsy.
That's not the only reason, though, that's just their ostensible reason. The recording and movie industries have been trying to close the 'analog hole' for years now, and that's also what this is about. Removing any baseband audio output from devices means you can' t just plug it straight into another computer or digital recorder and record music in analog format, then re-digitize it. Of course they're creating a huge inconvenience for the average, non-pirating end-user, whereas all you need is a USB DAC dongle to 're-open' the so-called 'analog hole'; at some point audio must be analog again, otherwise human ears will never hear it, therefore there's always a way to gain the connectivity necessary to record baseband audio. Of course I'm not saying that Apple's claim that it's doing this to make phones thinner isn't valid, either, but it's not the only reason. Oh and by the way expect to see analog headphone jacks disappearing from lots of things for the above mentioned reason.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Extending battery life immensely.
It's a UW patent, actually.
Other than that, I have no feedback, they dropped me from the alpha test.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
the 3.5mm jack is older than that, you insensitive clod!
I remember those at least going as far as the 1980's
remember the Sony walkman
I would think that the power of the purse should show whether the consumer will accept this or not. I, for one, would never purchase one without a headphone. I live in a remote area and download things to listen to when I'm traveling and unfortunately my state doesn't have a lot of data connectivity in many parts of our state, and I use my vehicles aux port to play what is on my phone.
Yes, I remember Macrovision, and it's designed to futz with the automatic gain control of an average VCR recorder. Screwing with a VCR is substantially easier than screwing with off-the-shelf audio recorders because an audio recorder doesn't require any kind of synchronization signals.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
In 2008 I bought my second iPod after the first one broke. I plugged in my video cable to export a show to my TV, just like I'd done with my first iPod, but an error message told me I needed Apple branded cables. I learned that despite being physically compatible, Apple had made a software change which made my cables useless.
I looked up the cables. On that day, the cables I owned were selling for (not a typo) six cents (I had paid several dollars when I bought them), and Apple's cables were selling for $49.99.
It was the last purchase I ever made from Apple and was the day I swore never to buy anything with proprietary cables ever again. I have kept that promise to myself and I do miss the Mac OS but not nearly enough to go back. In my life, genericness is the top priority when buying equipment.
This sounds like a shitty change to the iPhone. I have a dozen pairs of headphones and all of them have 3.5mm jacks. I wouldn't buy any audio product without the compatible jack and neither should anyone else.
the way it is, not the way I want it to be. Not to sound offputting but I think you're projecting your own neuroticism onto others. My kid, and most people, never give it two thoughts. She's never going to go to /. and post about it. The iPhone is a means to an end for her. It helps her fit in, helps her connect with people and gives her common ground with people in the upper strata. Those people can easily afford an iPhone. It's a trinket the them. And it's worth while engaging with them. They're successful. And while it's true associating with successful people doesn't guarantee success the opposite (associating with failures) most definitely guarantees failure.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Quite possibly. But when you ask people, what they say they want isn't a thinner phone, it's more battery life, which you get by making the phone thicker.
Actually, it's by making the phone heavier - which they don't want.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
The receptacle is much larger then what gets shoved into it. You should know.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
To be honest, I think this has little to do with either waterproofing or making phones thinner. This has to do with selling more stuff to users for more profit, and further locking in what consumer base they already have because all their gear will only work with your product. This has been the Apple mantra since the iPhone came out. Considering how much money they have made, it has been working.
As far as "waterproofing" anything getting rid of a "port" is kinda pointless unless you get rid of all ports. Which might actually be possible now that you can do wireless charging and have wireless speakers (and wireless networking and communication). Heck if it wasn't for the touch screen, you could probably totally encase it in a solid block of plastic making it more less totally waterproof... Of course then you couldn't have removable battery or storage, but it isn't like apple does any of those things. As far as the SIM card goes I am sure there is probably a better way than having a physical chip you have to plug into your device anyway.
The iphone headphone jack is also the external microphone port. Eliminating the jack would make it impossible to insert a "dummy" plug to disable the microphone. This may matter to some of the more paranoid users.