Steve Wozniak Says Apple Must Fix iPhone 7 Bluetooth Or Revive Its Headphone Jack (afr.com)

We've talked extensively about the missing headphone jack on the upcoming iPhone. While some say that the move will ruin user experience -- something that has already started to seem that way in the real world -- a few argue that someone needs to push the needle to move the technology forward. Now Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has something to say about the missing legacy audio jack as well. He is asking Apple to fix the Bluetooth first if the company intends to give users to move to wireless headphones. From a Financial Review report: Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has warned Apple is going to frustrate a lot of customers if it removes the headphone jack from the upcoming iPhone 7. [...] Customers wanting to use their existing, wired earbuds and headphones might have to buy an adaptor that attaches to the iPhone's Lightning port, or to whatever port does remain on the phone. "If it's missing the 3.5mm earphone jack, that's going to tick off a lot of people," Mr Wozniak told The Australian Financial Review. "I would not use Bluetooth ... I don't like wireless. I have cars where you can plug in the music, or go through Bluetooth, and Bluetooth just sounds so flat for the same music." Mr Wozniak said he would probably use the adaptor to connect his existing earphones to his next iPhone, and said that, like many other users he is attached to the accessories that he uses alongside the phone. "Mine have custom ear implants, they fit in so comfortably, I can sleep on them and everything. And they only come out with one kind of jack, so ''ll have to go through the adaptor," he said. "If there's a Bluetooth 2 that has higher bandwidth and better quality, that sounds like real music, I would use it. But we'll see. Apple is good at moving towards the future, and I like to follow that."

Comments

Here's the problem with stereo Bluetooth:

[kheldan]

Bluetooth has it's own compression it uses. Very often it clashes with the compression that many audio files use. I found this out the hard way by buying a Bluetooth to stereo device to plug into my home theatre receiver, to play music from my phone over house speakers. If the file was even high-rate MP3, I could hear artifacts of the two compression algorithms fighting with each other; it actually set my teeth on edge. Using AAC instead of MP3 helped, but I'm sure the guys with really sensitive ears will still hear some artifacts to set their teeth on edge, even with something 'lossless' like FLAC or Apple's lossless compression, or maybe even with an uncompressed audio file.

Re:Here's the problem with stereo Bluetooth:

[AncalagonTotof]

To add details to your answer : first point, look at your source : is it FLAC or MP3 (or any equivalent). If the source is bad, it cannot be better at the other end.

AFAIK, Bluetooth uses an A2DP pipe and this pipe allows the transmission of data using 4 codecs :
- SBC : the first historically, the worst in quality
- AAC
- MP3
- aptX

SBC, AAC and MP3 are lossy codecs. I never saw a product that accept AAC or MP3. There must be a license to pay to use MP3; may be also for AAC.
aptX is both lossy and lossless. And most source devices (smartphones, computers ...) are aptX ready.

So, the technology already here to allow a much better quality than what we know (as long as one can force the use of the lossless variant of aptX, which is ... well, you know ... Obfuscated to say the least).

Then what ?
Then CSR : the dominating Bluetooth chips manufacturer. More than 70% of the chips last time I heard.
CSR has patents on aptX.
And patents are meant to make money (yes; were you told otherwise ?).

So, the sink devices (BT speakers, car audio systems, ...) are aptX ready only if the manufacturer paid CSR. I'm not sure, may be $1 per product. That's a lot compared to the rest of the BOM. A BT speaker you pay $150 cost less than half when leaving the Chinese factory.

And guess what : manufacturers like profit, so they don't pay CSR for aptX and stick to SBC.
The hardware is always ready, the firmware may contain the aptX codec, but if the license key, linked to the BT MAC address of the chip, is not present in the firmware, aptX won't be negotiated as an available codec with the source device. Only SBC will be used, even if your source device can do aptX.

By the way, if you like your music, listen to it on real speakers in your living room !

Re:This is the same guy

[David_Hart]

Doesn't mean he isn't right.

Maybe, but he should do some research on Bluetooth before making recommendations. It appears that Bluetooth 5.0 may provide support for higher quality audio.

From Wiki: Bluetooth 5 was announced in June 2016. It will quadruple the range, double the speed, and an eight-fold increase in data broadcasting capacity of low energy Bluetooth connections, in addition to adding functionality for connection-less services like location-relevant information and navigation

Re: i'd like a water proof phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Sony has made numerous waterproof phones with exposed headphone Jacks. Removing it is not a requirement.

Re:Woz knows best

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone 5 was the very first Bluetooth 4/BLE phone on the market...

Re:This is the same guy

[Yvan256]

Did you know that MP3 is nearly 25 years old?

And Apple never sold MP3 music files. They started with 128kbps AAC and they've upgraded to 256kbps AAC a few years ago.

iTunes also allows you to rip your own CDs in even higher bitrates and in Apple Lossless (Apple's equivalent of FLAC).

So no, bitching about the quality of Bluetooth audio is not pointless.

Re:i'd like a water proof phone

[Anonymous Coward]

Samsung S7: IP68 with metal construction, no port covers and includes a headphone jack. It's not that hard, Apple just doesn't care to make one.

There is a better Bluetooth audio option now: AptX

[LynnwoodRooster]

And it's supported by all the high end phones. Except Apple - they want their own standard (interestingly, just the iOS devices; the Macbooks have AptX compatibility). It consistently rates higher than any other Bluetooth audio experience, and it's low-latency variant is very nice too. And yes, I develop Bluetooth headphones for a living.

Re: This is the same guy

[topologist]

Apple hasn't even released a mac book with a skylake processor yet

Review of 12-inch Skylake macbook from April

Why bother posting easily falsifiable lies?

Re:This is the same guy

[VAXcat]

You're right, except you got it backwards. Without Wozniak, Jobs would have wound up selling insurance, or used cars, or some self aggrandizing personal improvement scam.

Isn't the aux already analog? Also, levels vs DAC

[raymorris]

> The internal DAC on the prius seems like it works well for CDs and BT, but not on it's auxillary inputs. Thoughts?

  The AUX as in the 3.5mm jack that connects to your (analog) headphone jack? THIS headphone jack?:

> It doesn't seem to have that great of a headphone DAC as it sounds mediocre on everything I plug it into.

If you're plugging from a regular headphone jack, the DAC in the car shouldn't be involved - it is already analog.

As for the "bad DAC", trying turning the volume down considerably on the source and compensating by turning it up on the amp. Any modern DAC should have distortion below the threshold humans can detect in music. HOWEVER, the tiny amp for the headphones or the input it is plugged into could very well be overdriven. Turning down the volume on the source may very well fix your problem.

Here's what happens, when things are right and when they're wrong. When levels are right:
DAC sends 0.14 volts to headphone amp.
Volume is set at 5, so:
Headphone amp multiplies by 5 and sends 0.7V to car input.
(Car input sees near maximum loudness, line-level car input maxes out at 0.77 volts).
Car amp multiplies by 20 and sends 14 volts to speakers.

How things go wrong:

DAC sends 0.14 volts to headphone amp.
Volume is set at 10, so:
Headphone amp multiplies by 10 and tries to send 1.4 to car input.
Headphone amp can only manage 1volt, so the tops of the waves get cut off.
Car input gets 1V, but sinces it maxes out at 0.77V, it chops even more off the top of the wave.
Car amp multiplies by 20 and sends 15 volts to speakers, but not as a smooth wave, the tops are chopped of square.
Speakers try to move in smooth motion, not chopped, distorting the sound even more.

Having the level TOO low on the source creates a different problem.
Suppose there is 0.05V of noise in the source and the wire.
Source outputs 0.2V of music.
Car set to amplify by 40 (to compensate for low source level) also amplifies the noise by 40X.
2V of noise goes to speakers, along with 8V of music.

Re:This is the same guy

[perpenso]

Other than being a first class engineer and proven visionary?

You are a massive retard if you think he has any vision. Jobs had the vision.

Vision exists in design, in the user experience, AND in the design and implementation of hardware and software. Woz's vision is in the later areas, Jobs' in the former.

This moron was still pushing the Apple II well after it was obsolete.

The Mac under Jobs was not successful, its eventual success only came under the stewardship of others. At the time of Jobs' ouster from Apple in 1985 the Apple // was generating over 80% of Apple's income. The Apple // generated most of Apple revenue for many years after Jobs' departure. It wasn't until the early 1990s that Mac became the primary source of revenue.

And in the early 1980s it was Jobs that prematurely downplayed the Apple II in order to focus in the Apple III, which was a major failure and helped create an opening for IBM. So Woz and the Apple // saved Jobs with the Apple III and save Jobs again with the early Mac.

Every venture this guy has been in after he left Apple has been a massive failure.

Jobs had many failures with the Apple III, the Apple Lisa, the Apple Macintosh under his original tenure (others turned it around after his ouster), the NeXT computer, etc. The eventual partial success of NeXTSTEP as Mac OS X was a fluke of history, of Apple's two internal classic Mac OS replacement projects failing. When NeXTSTEP was standing on its own two feet it was never very popular outside of computer science labs. It was Apple's adoption, something independent of Jobs' vision, and the grafting of a Mac OS user interfaces for NeXTSTEP that made it partially successful (its core, not its original UI). Jobs' vision also failed with respect to larger screen iPhones. His vision failed with the 6th generation iPod Nano that was developed under his tenure.

Plus Jobs v2.0, the person who revitalized the Mac and pivoted from computers to phones, was a very very different person than the Jobs v1.0 that founded Apple and developed the original Mac. He spent many years learning from old and new mistakes to get from v1.0 to v2.0. Woz in contrast took off a lot of time to teach, literally, in public schools. Its silly to compare Woz and Jobs, in v1.0 days they were trying similar things, but in v2.0 days they were not and hence the comparison fails. The fact remains that in those v1.0 days is was Woz and the Apple // saving Jobs over and over as Job's post Apple // vision failed repeatedly.