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Apple Replaced the Headphone Jack On the iPhone 7 With a Fake Speaker Grill (businessinsider.com)
Not long ago, Apple CEO Tim Cook explained why the company felt a need to remove the headphone jack from the new iPhones -- the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus. He said, "that jack takes up a lot of space in the phone, a lot of space. And there's a lot of more important things we can provide for the consumer than that jack." His colleague Phil Schiller cited "courage" for the same. As people learn to live in a world where they have to use a dongle to use their existing pair of headphones, gadget repair community iFixit found today that Apple isn't really using that "extra space" it got after getting rid of the headphone jack. BusinessInsider reports: "In place of the headphone jack, we find a component that seems to channel sound from outside the phone into the microphone... or from the Taptic Engine out," they write. Yep -- in the place where the headphone jack used to be there's a piece of molded plastic. "No fancy electronics here, just some well-designed acoustics and molded plastic," iFixit writes.iFixit adds, "Closer inspection shows a new, second lower speaker grille that leads ... nowhere? Interesting." Update: 09/16 21:21 GMT by M : Apple says it's a "barometric vent." The Verge reports: Apparently adding all the waterproofing to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus meant that it was more of a sealed box, and so to be able to have an accurate and working barometer, Apple used that space. The barometer is the thing that allows a phone to measure altitude, and Apple points out that on the iPhone 7 it can measure even minor changes like climbing a flight of stairs.
You absolutely need to know how high you are.
Having a barometer built into a phone is more useful than you would think, especially when measuring elevation changes.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
A more perfect barometer was needed to accomplish what exactly? The device can now tell that I've ascended stairs more accurately. This will lead to what? And this change was as valuable as the headphone jack, how? Sure, more waterproof will probably help some people but overall? It just seems like a dick move.
Can't you people read, they replaced it with a barometer.
Stupid headlines are stupid.
"they replaced it was a barometer" can you people write?
It's not just a phone, it's a GPS, a computer, notepad, music player. Barometers, Bluetooth and wifi are used to give more accurate location info. It can also be used as a health tracker, a pedometer, collecting more accurate local weather information to feed into forecast models. There's apps for all that stuff.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Why on Odin's green earth would a telephone need a barometer? Does it also have a temperature probe, and wind and rain gauges? A telephone should have an earpiece and a mouthpiece and precious little else.
A barometer is typically used as an altimeter. I assume they plan to use it to supplement GPS.
However, despite Apple's claims, no barometer can tell if you are climbing a flight of stairs. This is because there are too many environmental noise factors that could produce the same effect. For example, turning on the vent hood in your kitchen could trick the sensor into thinking you increased your altitude by over 100 feet.
I've worked with barometers in embedded devices in the past. I once had a device in central Ohio think it was above 2500 ft in altitude due to the remaining tropical depression from Hurricane Sandy.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Somehow Android phone manufacturers have managed this for years (with even more sensors) with LARGER batteries, and maintaining water resistance all while not eliminating the headphone jack.
This is all about generating new earbud+headphone sales.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
It won't work, silly.
No sig today...
Between a standard headphone jack and a barometric sensor, I know which I'd find WAY more useful in day-to-day life.
Never seen a weather station? Any idea what hey are measuring?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But weather is not the only thing that can cause significant differences in barometric pressure. Ever walk into a building and get blasted by a gust of wind? What drove that wind? Buildings often have different barometric pressure inside as a side effect of modern HVAC systems.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
So what happens when you are in an airplane and the cabin is pressurized?
the battery catches fire
Is that Apple-speak for "hot air"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Fortunately, now there's a sensor that can measure whether the phone has gone up or down.
Oh, so no headphone jack then.
However, despite Apple's claims, no barometer can tell if you are climbing a flight of stairs
You are mistaken, modern barometers are phenomenally good. They've got a noise level below 10 cm. Take for example the LPS25H. I've got no affiliation with STM, but I like their chips and find their accelerometers good quality, reliable and easy to use.
The hurricane depression thing is slow moving, climbing stairs takes only minutes, so it can tell.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
You know what's even more retarded? Not using barometer data to measure slight changes in elevation when combined with an initial GPS pull.
I agree 100%! I can't even begin to count the number of times I have been climbing a flight of stairs and thinking to myself "I wish my phone had a barometer so I could effectively measure how far I am moving along the Z axis".
You know what Steve Jobs thinks of the Barometer in his new iPhone7? He's pissed off because the only useful thing it can tell him is that he's 6 feet under... Steve Jobs was an exceptional visionary, Tim cook is a no talent hack who's going to run that company into the ground Balmer style.
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
So now Samsung can sue Apple for violating their design patents!
Except the phone still COMES with headphones that work just fine.
Until you try to plug them into an airplane's entertainment system. Or the headphone jack on the side of your desktop computer speakers. Or a transistor radio. Or anything else outside of the newest Appleverse. Then they don't work just fine.
Should read: Apple Replaced the Headphone Jack On the iPhone 7 With a Huge Taptic Engine
Just look at the pictures:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardow...
(Look at Step 6)
It's obvious that the huge Taptic Engine is right in the line of fire for where the plug would go.
That said: I do this it's a bit BS to put a "speaker grill" there. It might be aesthetically pleasing (balance) but it's a bit underhanded. I'm not really buying their "it's for the barometer!" schtick either...
Barometers, Bluetooth and wifi are used to give more accurate location info.
And there we likely have the insight. The better Apple/Google/Microsoft/everyone can track your location, the better it is for them.
It can also be used as a health tracker, a pedometer, collecting more accurate local weather information to feed into forecast models. There's apps for all that stuff.
Yes, I'm sure that it's the missing spice in the recipe that will allow smartphones to finally stave off the tectonic-plate slide into obesity that is happening. I'm sure that "fitness tracking" applications are used entirely differently from home treadmills, stationary bikes, and weight sets. Surely people won't just buy them, try them, then lose discipline and abandon them. People just needed electronics to convince them that sweaty, tiring exercise is how they want to spend their time. Yup, unlike New Year's resolutions to eat properly, Apple's new barometer is the element that will get people to be fit.
Note: this is not intended to be critical of people who are not fit. I am speaking as someone that is at the very upper edge of their "healthy" weight-to-age-and-height measurements, and is happily sedentary. Instead, this is critical of the suggestion that a barometer is actually going to be useful to more people than a standards-compliant earphone jack. Because yeah, more people need to know their altitude so they can get thin than those who just like to listen to music.
"Oh no... he found the
So they had to remove the headphone jack so they could make the phone vibrate? The barometer sounded like a better idea!
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Casio G'zOne. I had one 5 years ago. The latest model comes with software to undistort images taken under water. How's that?
"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"
I know there old Slashdot stereotype is old men in a basement eating cheetos, but you've honestly never been on a hike? You know, rapidly gaining elevation when climbing a hill...
Yeah, I can see how that would be useful.
"Hey guys, we're at 1,872 feet now."
"Thanks Kendall."
"Hey guys, we're at 1,886 feet now."
"Thanks Kendall."
"Hey guys, we're at 1,904 feet now."
"Thanks Kendall."
Maybe put the phone down and enjoy the hike. If you really need to know your exact position at some point on the hike, that's the entire point of GPS. You don't need a barometer that's going to give you a different altitude reading based on whether or not there's a storm coming.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Just imagine how much space Apple could use if they made the phone thicker. They could have a bigger battery, headphone jack, barometer... there are all kinds of possibilities.
Even a slight breeze will throw altitude, as inferred through a barometer, off by a huge amount.
We can admit that the articles were pretty much always crap. The difference is that, back in the day, someone in the comments section would have pointed out that removing the headphone jack is about ApplePay competing with Square and, in the future, other payment competitors like Bitcoin. If it weren't for a lot of your supposedly highly-intelligent peers deciding to jump into yet another walled garden, maybe /. wouldn't have changed quite as much over the years.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"You know what Steve Jobs thinks of the Barometer in his new iPhone7?"
He would be so happy because being 6 feet under, he can't get GPS!
Sure, if you're climbing a set of stairs that leads you through the front door of an over-pressurized building it might lead to some inaccuracies. But the phone could correlate the pressure readings with GPS to determine that one or the other is giving a bogus reading. It's certainly better than relying on GPS alone, which is what a lot of current fitness apps do.
A few years ago I put together a tiny altimeter using a temperature/pressure sensor following a plan on "Instructables". You had to set the base altitude for it to work and there were some other calibration that could be done. It could easily measure changes while I was climbing stairs. I'm tempted to turn on the bathroom fan right next to the stairs to see how much of an effect it has. I bet almost none.
Because OF COURSE a millimeter-thick grill has the same volume as an entire headphone socket. WHO WRITES THIS SHIT?
http://www.firstpr.com.au/rwi/...
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Sheesh. Just because they didn't use the case facade real estate, doesn't mean they didn't use the circuit board and internal space for other things. Maybe you non-technical people think of the jack's case footprint as all there is, but jacks are actually quite large for simply a contact point and take a lot of board and internal space as well. And here I thought Slashdot was a sophisticated tech publication, but you facile analysis reminds me of superficial fashionista leftist rag the Huff Poo more than the technical Ars Technica.
Is nothing but a slab of plastic. But, it's an iPhone...the iDrones and iFanboys will line up willing to overpay for "a phone".
Hot off the press: iPhone 8 will come with a rooster weather vane permanently attached to the top.
Decisions, decisions...a standard universal headphone jack that literally millions of devices will plug into, or a barometer.
Gee, which one would I use more? It's such a puzzle.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Over the years, I've submitted some stories Some on popular stuff, and some on tech stuff.
As Slasddot jumps feetfirst into the world of What this Pennsylvania Housewife Found out that is Driving Dermatologists Crazy, I can fully understand exactly why they were rejected.
tl;dr version. Apple removed the headphone jack, and replaced it with something.
Now I'll take the discretion to post in less obviously stupid stories. Peace out.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Square already supports a bluetooth-paired card reader, one that accepts regular chip cards and NFC (both Apple/Android/Plastic). That's not news.
Any merchant using the old magstripe-to-headphone jack is liable for fraud under the new rules anyway, so that's a non-starter.
Apple is just trolling their customers at this point. Might be some sort of social experiment to see how long they can convince people to buy this nonsense. The next iPhone probably won't have a screen.
Look ... The headphone jack is gone on the iPhone 7 series because Apple wants it gone. It's as easy as that. If a 1/8" stereo headphone jack is THAT big of a deal to you? You obviously need to start considering other smartphone products. I'd say chances are real close to 0% that Apple will decide to bring it back again in a future iPhone.
Despite the uproar, the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus phones achieved record sales. T-Mobile said they sold more of them the first day than they've ever sold of ANY phone in their company's history. So there you have it.... Despite all the Internet rage, the truth of the matter is -- people still think the new iPhone is worth buying.
I pre-ordered one myself, in fact. I've been using the iPhone since the very first version was released, other than a couple of brief stints on Android devices. I'm most comfortable with the iOS menu system and like the iPhone overall. I think each new iteration has brought enough value to make it a worthy upgrade from older models I've owned and the 7 series is no different. When I look at how I *really* use my phone, I see that I almost never plug anything into the headphone jack anyway. Sure, I had a Square reader that used it. But I already upgraded that to the new bluetooth model that can read chip cards and do Apple Pay. In the car, my stereo uses a USB to lightning cable to attach it. I have an LG bluetooth stereo headset I use with it, so no need for a headphone jack for it either. And the Mophie and other battery cases I've owned already required dongles to plug something into the headphone jack since their design made it impossible for a regular jack to plug far enough into make good contact with the phone. So yeah ... this really isn't going to be a lost feature I care too much about.
If you're one of those purists who just HAS to use your iPhone as the audio source for your flawless music listening experiences? Apple has added a few proprietary things on to the bluetooth specification so the wireless EarPods and other headphones they make for it will use those enhancements to make wireless listening better than what you usually get with bluetooth. (Probably fixes some of the glitchiness where audio skips occasionally, etc.) And the free adapter they include still lets you plug in your 1/8" headphone jack anyway ...
Had a barometer 5 years ago. It'll report altitude changes as little as 1M.
More technophobes, who can't even understand the phone might be in a pack but recording accurate tracking data...
Sigh, what a bunch of technically ignorant losers come to Slashdot these day!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
After just 1 hour, the accuracy is +-200m, or the height of a 30 story building give or take, so basically useless unless you are constantly calibrating it.
It's almost like you didn't know phones can use GPS more than once an hour.
Detecting how far *below* sea level you are going, as that pressure is usually quite reliable.
The phones seem about as accurate in Death Valley as anywhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They removed the jack to save a few million Renminbi. That's all. Not enough people used the jack, so it was dropped to lower the production costs. I have never used a cell phone jack and looking around me, it is obvious that there are lots of people that don't like to plug schtuff into their ears - the plugged ins are a small minority.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Speaking of radio, does it support FM radio yet? The headphone cable usually doubles as an antenna.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Does all this waterproofing mean warranty will now cover water damage as well?
No worse than the people who wrote the original article. At least my excuse is not being a native English speaker who was trying to get a first post too.
What about the poor poor editors and submitter? Don't they have a right to share their piece of wisdom on this hot apple topic before every body realizes there is no story?
OK, OK, you have Steve Jobs' cock implanted personally in your asshole, we get it. But we don't really give a fuck if you're offended.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Are you sure it wasn't John alone that wanted it gone?
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Virtually all quadcopters use gyros and accelerometers and don't give a shit about altitude unless they're ALSO using GPS.
You're an idiot, and you responded to my post with bullshit TWICE! Amazing, even for drinkypoo!
Barometers measure pressure. You can whisper sweet nothings at one and have it spaz out.
On the 3.5 mm port:
It is a lot more than just a TRS stereo jack. There are about 4 configurations of contacts and switches in the one Apple used going back to the iPod days. To make that sucker robust enough to work over the life of the phone, it used a lot of internal space, and it also was susceptible to damage from foreign objects getting into it. So future phones might get slimmer without the 3.5mm port. And yes apple wants to sell licensed dongles, and probably has a deal with the **AA asshats to close the analog loophole.
Breakage of the lightning port is much easier to avoid. It was designed so that the connector on the peripheral will shear off, rather than damage the socket. Removing pocket lint and other contamination from the lighting port is much easier than removing it from a 3.5mm port. Adding more conductors to the lightening port is a fairly simple design change. Adding more conductors to a 3.5mm jack is a fucking nightmare. There is a lot of win with the lightening port design.
On the barometer:
If Apple added the barometer in isolation of the other sensors on the device it would be useless. However there are a lot of other sensors on the phone that in concert with a barometer become more useful. It has a 3 axis accelerometer, 3 axis gyro, 3 axis compass, GPS, a mic array, two or three cameras, several temp sensors, and now a barometer. By using all of these sensors together, the phone can tell a huge amount about the environment it is in and correlate that with mapping, and weather data. Adding a barometer made all of the other sensors FAR more useful and makes the entire suite of sensors more reliable and accurate. All of the other sensors make a barometer much easier to calibrate and interpret.
The fanboi/hater circle jerk has grown to so dominate the discussion here that almost no one here has any legitimate geek credibility. Turn in your geek card? GTFO... Most of you never had one.
my old motorola phone, the last one i had before smartphones came along, had no earphone jack, and used the (proprietary) power/data connector to connect to the phones as well. slightly annoying for anyone who might want a different phones, or to feed the audio out into an amp or something. before too long, of course, adapters appeared on the market to provide a jack, but there never was any way to power the thing and use the phones simultaneously. i still have the stupid dedicated earbuds for the thing.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I don't need a phone that can tell me when I've climbed a flight of stairs, I'm well of aware of that - especially now I can't use my noise cancelling headphones.
However, despite Apple's claims, no barometer can tell if you are climbing a flight of stairs
You are mistaken, modern barometers are phenomenally good. They've got a noise level below 10 cm. Take for example the LPS25H. I've got no affiliation with STM, but I like their chips and find their accelerometers good quality, reliable and easy to use.
The hurricane depression thing is slow moving, climbing stairs takes only minutes, so it can tell.
I'm sure the hardware accuracy is very good. However, my concern is with environmental noise factors that could trick the hardware. Tropical depressions aren't the only thing that can trick it.
Basically the are only useful if they are combined with some very good algorithms to account for inaccuracies caused by the environment.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
depends what you mean by "any good".
The noise statistics of barometric altimeters is interesting. You've got the standard high frequency measurement noise, then low frequency noise caused by the weather, but no zero frequency noise: the low frequency noise varies very slowly around a well defined mean.
The noise statistics of GPS are also interesting, especially in altitude. It's much much less accurate in Z than x,y. And the noise is low frequency, but much higher than the noise in air pressure.
To a first approximation, barometers give you the fast changes in height, GPS corrects the weather dependent term of the barometer.
When it comes to climbing a flight of stairs, that's of order about a minute, which is far far faster than most environmental effects. Unless you have one hell of an HVAC unit changing state during that minute or you're in some sort of wind trap, climbing stairs is precisely the kind of timescale on which pressure altimeters work.
But yes, they certainly can be fooled, but they're surprisingly good.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Right, people who think it's stupid that you blindly stick up for anything that Apple pinches out are people who are afraid of technology.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Its not a barometer in that space. Of course we all know this because we rtfaritcle. Its a barometric vent (with some cool spring type mechanics.) So .. they didn't make room for a barometer.. (its always had that... ) they made room for a vent.
For the barometer.
And benjamindees so aptly put. Its forced progress with the goal of domination: If the corporation
can drive progress, and successfully pull its users along, it is impossible for competitors to edge in on you.
If you have a userbase who will follow you down any road, then you can do things like remove the headphone jack
get at the head of the new headphone selling line, and eat your cake, and the headphone cake too.
Do you know notice the regular update schedule? This is to move users away from the idea of the phone as a
platform (steady, stable, buildable upon..) to phone a service - always moving, always changing, - and others
are welcome to board that boat - if they pay the Apple Tax first ( or M$ tax, or google tax).
Its the same phone. The same phone. The same phone.
5 and 5s ---- 6 and 6s ------
-----------
This is the same company that took years to introduce a new color - white
and sold the color WHITE as an innovative new feature.
The headphone jack - is only a symbol of the shift.. They have all shifted..
The platform is closed. They are the keepers of the gate. They charge to play
and decide what you have and what you don't have.
Here's the cool part.. They can give it to you today
and take it away from you tomorrow, and there's not a thing you can do about it..
Anyone remember the split iPad keyboard? iPhoto? iMovie? --
Its one thing to stop development and support..
its quite another - to proactively remove things from folks device, and they
are so there.
Enjoy the ride. // Full disclosure - typing this on a Macbook, beside my iPhone6
https://www.physics.umn.edu/ou...
Perhaps you need to relearn some basic physics? Yes, moving air has a lower pressure than still air.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?