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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.
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.
[sarcasm] Don't they understand this will cause almost every Apple customer to purchase newer and more expensive headphones? [/sarcasm]
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...
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.
...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.
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'
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.
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.
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,
Single usb-c port computers will lead to exponential sales of docking dongles - combined powerbank, usb hub, card reader, displayport/vga/hdmi out.
For several years expect to be fleeced $50-100, until the Chinese flood the market at $20.
What monopolies? There's like a hundred different phones you can buy, for anything from $50 to $700. You've got more choice in quality smartphones than ever.
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
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.
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
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
DRM in the form of something like HDCP. If the phone only allows an authorized (read as licensed) set of headphones to connect, and the link is encrypted, they've just plugged the analog hole that the media companies have been wanting to get rid of since, well, forever.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
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'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/
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.
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.
I don't think you realize just how much of the inside of an iPhone is used by the battery....
Headphone jacks are tiny. IIRC, they are slightly shorter than the plug itself (the plug sticks out through a hole at the end), and they're in the neighborhood of a quarter inch wide, or maybe a third of an inch. So that's something like 1/8th to 1/4 of a square inch, as viewed from above, give or take. The battery in an iPhone 6s Plus is 4.7" x 1.9", or about 9 square inches. Thus, the empty space taken up by the 3.5mm jack is only about one or two percent of the space taken up by the battery. So you'd gain an extra 15 minutes of talk time, give or take, on a device that currently provides 24 hours of talk time.
By contrast, making the phone thicker by 1mm would allow you to increase the battery capacity by about 30–40% (and would also mean that the lens wouldn't awkwardly stick out). Making it 2mm thicker (still 2mm thinner than the original iPhone) would almost double its battery capacity—and that's without shifting components around on top of one another to give you even more room for a bigger battery.
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.
Yes, here is a nice decent quality one with solder connectors
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2-5m...
I would think like, that, but actually my Bluetooth headphone is now another gadget that I have to make sure I plug into the charger often enough for it to have battery power when I want to use it. It's a headphone that can no longer just be taken for granted it will always work.
And you tossed out the term "wireless" like a fad word.