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Rejoice: Samsung's Next Flagship Smartphone Looks To Keep the Headphone Jack Alive (theverge.com)
Notorious smartphone leaker Evan Blass has leaked a couple press images of the Galaxy S9, giving us the first indication that it will still have a headphone jack. "The full information spill today is actually focused on a new Samsung DeX Pad, which appears to be an evolution of last year's DeX dock for the Galaxy S8," reports The Verge. From the report: Samsung, LG, and a couple of other companies like OnePlus have remained resolute in their inclusion of a headphone jack, but that was far from a certainty for the next Galaxy S iteration. This is a phone that will compete against the iPhone X, Huawei Mate 10 Pro, and more niche rivals like Google's Pixel 2: all of them surviving sans a headphone jack. So Samsung could have dumped the analog audio output, but it seems to have opted against it, and that's worthy of commendation. USB-C earphones are all still either bad or expensive -- or both -- and phones that retain compatibility with 3.5mm connectors remain profoundly useful to consumers that aren't yet convinced by Bluetooth.
I'll be switching to you when I next upgrade.
...will they fuck it up and have the headphone jack interpret minor electrical faults with the cable or plug as instructions to pause music, or even to search Google?
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm glad Headphone Jack will live longer. He's an old friend.
They're afraid to get rid of a user friendly restore to try to squeeze even more cash out of consumers? Instead they opted to allow us to use our existing headphone, and provide high quality AKGs in the box too, which are excellent with Skype for Business for meetings on the go. Or I could piss around with expensive Bluetooth earbuds, hoping they're charged and I didn't lose one.
Idiot.
Yes, well I'm betting that post-Jobs their magic touch disappears.
Job wouldn't have got rid of the headphone jack, because there is currently nothing better to take its place.
Apple were flexing their muscles, and they got it wrong.
Some people forget, that not everyone has a cushy job. This targets the market where bluetooth headphones/ear-buds are expensive to replace.
Ear buds on a jack are 15-20 bones compared to 40-70 for a decent bluetooth headphones. There's also the matter of bluetooth interference for audiophiles where a line-jack will be preferred (pending environment).
I don't read AC
[ sarcasm ] And HDMI? Yeah, that's a useless, antiquated standard. Don't bother with that anymore. [ /sarcasm ]
On a more immediate note, those of us who value high quality audio can now turn to Samsung to support our high quality headphones and earbuds, and not have all the disadvantages of Bluetooth batteries, charging, the higher price, that ambient microwave radiation degrades the signal, etc..
And, I've got a pair of earbuds I really like and they're probably gonna last a good few years more. There's no way I'm gonna buy a phone that doesn't let me plug them in.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
You first. Perhaps you don't understand the context
I am fairly certain the AC was being facetious.
We already have TRRS 2.5mm connectors why not start using those on phones? 1mm saved right there and the adaptors are cheap as. Not as space saving as no connector at all but a reasonable compromise.
Yes. My $400 Shures are not getting replaced on the back of Apple's decision to kill the headphone jack.
Apple are forgetting how the iPod made them into an incrediblly profitable company. Later, millions of people bought iPhones as a DIRECT replacement for their iPods.
If you valued high quality audio you would not be listening to music on a smartphone.
Enough with the racism already.
Would someone PLEASE tell me when S(c)amsung is going to make the batteries replaceable again? My son broke his Galaxy phone twice by placing it in his back pocket and sitting down. They removed the plastic cover and replaced it with a glass one. First time, we thought it was a fluke. Second time, we got it fixed, sold the phone on ebay, and bought him an older HTC instead.
Lots of adult toys have headphone jacks to receive audio input ... especially the most expensive units which rely on very nice analog knobs and quality niche electronics that Apple would/could never put into their offerings.
They've locked their platform out of a whole ton of cool ecosystems by dropping the jack.
t. us
Web 1.0 rebuttal: but, mp3 players exist.
Apple computers never, ever had parallel ports. their RS-232 ports were not, because they used a different connector. The Apple Desktop Bus was their proprietary kludge.
And the acronym is pronounced 'what you see is all you get' because there is no room for variance. What the Apple designer contrived is all you will get.
Would you add optical disc drives to that list? Seems to me that the market might, though I personally miss them and use external units..
Approximately never. That ship has sailed, the horse is out of the barn, the milk is all over the floor.
Embrace the USB cable. 5V forever!
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If you valued high quality audio you would not be listening to music on a smartphone.
You might be surprised. I don't know how good the Samsung phones sound, but I know there are a lot of audiophiles who have good things to say about the Apple products. The iPods in particular were well liked, especially the older models with the Wolfson DAC chip.
The iPods were never popular with people who cared about sound quality. They became popular because Apple had a successful marketing campaign and packaged it with an easy to use music store that had a corner on most music that people would want.
But, the iPods themselves came with crap earbuds that left many users hard of hearing or deaf as a result of the volumes necessary to hear the music over the surrounding sounds.
I love my old MBP because it does everything I need; in the last 24 hours I've used the USB ports, magsafe power, SD card reader, HDMI and headphone jack. Sadly it's behind the times, so I've "upgraded" to a 2018 MBP.
The damn thing needs dongles for everything except headphones, and I'd guess Apple will find the "courage" to force everyone to buy crappy bluetooth ones soon. It got dinged a couple of weeks in because the stupid USB-C power cable got caught on someone's coat and pulled it off the desk (thankfully only cosmetic damage); now I treat it with kid gloves, and keep it in it's bag with it's army of dongles unless I need the extra processing power. I'm typing this on my old machine.
I'm in the market for a new phone; Samsung just made top of my list to check out. My next laptop won't be a mac unless they solve the ports problem; you don't pay a premium for an inferior product twice.
People 'see they were right' because the technology they move to proliferates. Meaning, they move too soon to be in the best interest of the customers, who are forced to use a dongle until technology catches up. In this case they have done one worse and eliminated a technology that there is a partial replacement for but whether a person decides to use a lighting port headphone or dongle and not be able to charge their phone at that time or shell out for or five times more for a bluetooth headphone which is more expensive to break or lose, the customer is definitely losing here. People who wanted to use bluetooth headphones always could.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I have a pair of Beats wireless and they aren't that great anyway. The fit isn't the best, the sound isn't the best, and you have to charge them. There are some instances I prefer them, namely when on a treadmill and I don't want a cord flaying around, but otherwise I prefer regular headphone-jack encumbered earphones. One instance where I was specifically disappointed with the bluetooth headphones is I went for a walk with them and 10 minutes later the battery died. Too far to turn back, I walked the rest of the way with no music. Lame.
So it's wrong to want the best sound quality you can get out of your phone when you can't be around a full sound system?
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Why? None of my computers have one, if I need an optical disc drive for any reason, I've got a couple USB drives that I can plug in when I need to. In practice, it's only rarely plugged in as there are better ways of getting files on and off of computers these days.
This is sort of like floppy drives, I've got a USB floppy drive kicking around here somewhere, but I haven't plugged that in any time recently. I think it's probably been a number of years, but it's USB, so I keep it just in case.
"Apple has a history of dropping old well established standards about 2 to 3 years before people can see they were right."
No. Apple has a history of dropping standards people are actively using, often before the new stuff has matured enough to even be usable.
everyone thought these moves were crazy at the time"
Almost everyone still had devices that that used those ports and had to buy adapters or all new devices. I had $500 serial US Robotics modems, and $300 ADB barcode scanners, for example. That all had to be replaced or adapted. (And adapting them was a PITA because Apple has always been extremely stingy with USB ports too.)
The PC carried these legacy ports for years before getting dropped, the result was that a lot of us had computers with a floppy drive that never got used. This was a much better situation to be in, than not having a floppy drive and needing one - a situation a lot of people found themselves in.
Apple wasn't right. They were irritating. Everyone could have told you USB was better than ADB and parallel ports, or that USB flash drives and networking would kill floppies, and on the PC side everyone was switching to USB as fast as they could. You didn't have have much foresight to see the writing on the wall for the legacy ports.
But it was greatly fucking appreciated by PC users that you didn't have to throw out all your peripherals and buy new ones, because old ones were generally supported until most people were finished using them.
I have a $100,000 lathe at a site, still using ISA controller boards with Windows 98. The computer died last year, and I had no trouble buying a replacement.
Meanwhile Apple frequently won't support interfaces from peripherals from 2 years ago. I recall having the original imac from 1999 and Power Mac 7600 from 1998 in the same office and having no way to get files from one to the other. No floppy on the imac, no writeable CD support on either, and no usb on the powermac. I could network them, but since that office didn't otherwise have or need a LAN and the computers weren't sitting next to eachother... Fuck you very much apple.
by requiring that any device plugged in met some higher level of service expectation they could write software that took advantage of that requirement sooner than their competition who had to have legacy support. I give you the WYSIWYG revolution as exhibit A.
That argument really doesn't have a comparable example for any of the other ports you mentioned.
Wait ... will it really run OS/2?
I guess you haven't heard the LG V20?
The Lisa had a parallel port.
I really really wish that some manufacturer would bring back HDMI support. Almost all phones used to have it through MHL just a couple of years ago, but as they transition to USB C they've all decided to drop support for HDMI (and it's a simple choice, not a requirement as USB-C easily supports HDMI output)
To all those who say "just cast to the TV", Some of us prefer a solution that is cheap, simple, and actually works with ALL apps, ALL TVs, ALL the time. I find casting works with some TVs, some apps, some of the time, hardly a replacement. Not to mention the latency issues that absolutely kill it as a possibility for many applications.
Approximately never. That ship has sailed, the horse is out of the barn, the milk is all over the floor.
Embrace the USB cable. 5V forever!
Sometimes people realize their mistakes and choose to correct them. Your parents for example probably regretted having bred you. I'm sure they haven't had any more kids since for fear of replicating their mistake.
Apple has a history of dropping old well established standards about 2 to 3 years before people can see they were right. It's actually a bit uncanny how good they have been done guessing correctly.
a few example:
floppy drives
I feel they were way too early with dropping floppy support. The iMac in 1998 was the first one to ship without a floppy. They did not ship with a CD Writer, and USB flash drives had yet to be invented. Apple said they were obsolete because Internet, yet online "cloud storage" wasn't really a thing, and even "emailing files to yourself" was difficult because most email providers at the time had ridiculously small mailbox sizes. Plus although high speed residential internet was growing in popularity, it was by no means widespread.
On the positive side, between USB floppy drives, and replacements for the abomination of the "hockey puck mouse", helped to drive the market for USB peripherals, which helped support on the PC side.
My 4 year old phone had:
- HDMI output (MHL)
- IR transmitter
- User replaceable battery
- a wider screen than anything available on a smartphone today.
- a headphone jack
- SD card slot
- a textured back that looked gorgeous, and meant no case was needed because the phone wasn't so slippery it would fly out of your hand every time you tried to hold it.
Now the SD card slot and headphone jack are still available on some phones these days (though only a small handful), but basically all of the others are simply impossible to get now.
So I'm supposed to "upgrade" to what exactly? the only advantage the newer devices have is a small amount of speed. None of the new phones have any features that that one didn't have, there hasn't been a new feature added in at least 4 years. The only thing they do is increase the speed slightly while removing actual features and capabilities.
Idiot.
you're a fucking idiot, SCSI got replaced because it was superseded with something that had more utility. the 3.5mm jack got replaced because Apple could charge an extra $5/ headphone. Nothing about the 3.5mm jack is obsolete.
And I am certain there were parallel port cards for the Apple 2.
I would bet decent money you can run OS/2 through some form of emulator. DOSBOX runs well on Android, and probably bochs could be ported.
Why would anybody buy an LG? I'm on my 5th LG V10 because they keep dying. And this one is probably going to get replaced with another one because T-Mobile isn't willing to replace it with something that isn't going to just die after 6 months.
It's a great phone, if you don't mind having to have the insurance on it and don't mind having to go in repeatedly to get the thing replaced though.
Well, we're almost at the three year mark now, and the majority of the industry is still saying that it was stupid, which probably is a good indication that you're wrong.
The reason you're wrong is that the way Apple did this is ridiculously un-Apple-like. Normally, when they drop something:
Quite frankly, the way Apple has done this actually encourages people to switch to Android, and that will continue to be true even if all the Android makers follow suit and drop the headphone jack. Why? Because I can use the same USB-C headphones with my Mac and my Android phone. They've actually made the Android-Mac experience better than the iPhone-Mac experience!
No, Apple screwed up badly. Maybe only a small percentage of users care—and obviously that's true, or else they'd be out of business right now—but for the users who do care, Apple needs to drop Lightning for USB-C sooner rather than later. Our iPhone 6s devices are starting to look seriously dated.
That's complete and utter crap. We had WYSIWYG on the Apple IIgs, and it printed to the ImageWriter II just fine, complete with WYSIWYG, and that printer was still supported up through... what, Mac OS 9? (And if you really want to be horrified, there's a third-party macOS driver available for the ImageWriter II that *still* works, AFAIK.)
And there has always been support for a wide range of other non-Postscript printers. Brother uses PCL for some of their laser printers, Canon and HP do their own thing for their inkjets, etc. So at what point did Apple drop support for non-Postscript printers?
ASCII-only printers, sure, but those were only ever really directly supported in any meaningful way on the Apple II series, and nobody was even still building daisy-wheel printers by the time the Apple II line fully went away in 1993. (The last ones were designed in the mid to late 1980s.) Also, I can still print to one from a MacBook Pro today with the right adapters. Nobody would do so, though, because they stopped making those printers for a good reason. Apple didn't ever really drop support; WYSIWYG software never supported them in the first place, and non-WYSIWYG software still does.
Also, the very first Apple products that actually shipped with built-in ports used serial ports. Parallel ports were only available as an add-on card. So talking about Apple dropping that (back in what, the early 1980s?) is kind of a stretch, because it was never a core part of their product line.
And AFAIK, nobody thought that dropping ADB was a bad idea. They grumbled at having to replace their devices, but moving to an industry standard was generally seen as a good thing. Also, you could buy cheap adapters to use your existing ADB devices if you really wanted to.
Finally, with the exception of the floppy drive, none of those other ports/features were used while mobile. And Apple continued to provide the internal hardware needed for third parties (VST) to provide floppy drives inside their laptops until well after USB flash drives were firmly entrenched as a replacement. That makes this the first port designed for mobile use that Apple has ever dropped without a broadly available replacement th
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Betting big on USB was correct though. USB came out in 1996, and when the iMac came out in 1998 they were one of the first.
So you are correct there wasnâ(TM)t a mature USB peripheral market for a couple more years. Dongles were used for awhile in the handful of computers that dropped old ports in the first year or two. You should also note the pain of users who bought new computers. The ones that kept those old ports nosedived in quality/compatibility(e.g. serial/parallel ports running at weird voltage for logic, parallel ports only supporting a small of modes(EPP, SPP, ECP, etc) rendering them randomly incompatible(at least this quickened the death or parallel).
Android phones already have a weird matrix of quality/compatibility with headphones(e.g. OMTP vs AHJ vs regular 3-part)
The Lisa could have a parallel port card installed. It did not come with one (unless they had an option for getting the card preinstalled or something).
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Bochs is probably the only possibility as OS/2 used x86 features that aren't in most emulators. Be interesting to test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Youâ(TM)ve got a headphone jack, now what will you replace that shitty OS with?
I'm on the S7 and normally only upgrade when I fell there is a real reason to do so (S3 was my previous one). If the S9 has a jack, then I will make it a point to get one outside of my normal update interval. It's the only meaningful way to show a company that having a jack is a feature that really matters.
My mono Bluetooth headset gets about 6 hours (claims 7). Most stereo ones I've seen are 4 or 5. I don't mind plugging my phone into a power brick but I've yet to see a headset that looks wearable plugged into one.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Haha, Amazing! iPod earphones left many people deaf. A completely true fact!
It's not a "small" amount of speed -- the S8 is the first android phone I've used that felt really responsive. Everything prior to that always felt a little sluggish. Unfortunately between its weight and its smooth polish, it's also the first android phone I've used that has really felt like it wanted to take a dive every time I pick it up. That works well for Samsung, I suppose, if you're having to replace your phone due to shattered screens every year (Or every few months.) It feels like kind of a shame to put that beautiful hardware in a clunky case, but I may end up having to.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Mac Pros, same thing. The trashcan is... well, trash.
But I could get a good 12/24 core Mac Pro with proper slots and storage facilities and so on on EBay. So that's what I did.
Still waiting to see if all that hot air about "we made a mistake" with the trashcan design is going to turn into anything worthwhile.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
It's also a form of self-defense in case they blow the audio (it's not just "headphone") jack off with the s10; after all, Samsung often does follow Apple into the valley of stupid: ridiculous and inconvenient levels of thin, non-replaceable batteries, flat icons, dropped IR, etc.
I'm planning the same move: s7 to s9 if there's a proper jack and there isn't some kind of other major screwup.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I have similar feelings about my current MacBook Pro. It's 7 years old and better than anything Apple has to offer today.
-- Cheers!
Thing is, speed is expected. We all know that devices get more powerful and faster every year. I can't congratulate a company for doing that because it's pretty much the baseline expectation.
On the other hand, there's no expectation that every year hardware features should vanish and that the phones should be able to do less with every release. Companies often lament that they have trouble differentiating themselves from their competitors, but then they make sure to do their best to make sure all phones have exactly the same features, and as close as possible to the same look. If you want to differentiate yourself, add a feature nobody else has, and then advertise it. I'll give some suggestions:
- user replaceable battery
- a back made of any material other than glass or polished metal (plastic can look fabulous if you texture it right, or go premium and do leather, or put a texture on your metal, or ANYTHING that allows someone to actually hold your phone!
- HDMI output (over USB-C is fine if you're concerned about space)
- IR transmitter
- an actual large screen instead of one that's just marketed that way (today's 6+ inch displays are actually smaller than the previous 5.7" displays because they're all super tall and narrow, fewer square inches, smaller full screen videos (with black bars on the side!)
- some new feature we haven't seen yet. Innovation was all the rage as recently as about 3 or 4 years ago, manufacturers would try new things and add new features. Stop trying to make your phone as boring a slab as possible, and start coming up with new and innovative things.
On offer.
I still don't understand why a site with "News for Nerds" doesn't provide an Edit button and Unicode support.
-- Cheers!
Sounds like some kind of shill turd burglar
I know there are a lot of audiophiles who have good things to say about the Apple products.
Do they use a green marker on the edge of their iPhone too? Or tape Brilliant Pebbles to the headphone jack? What about the Blackbody? Just curious.
If you valued high quality audio you would not be listening to music on a smartphone.
Or earbuds. Over the ear headphones are the only way to go if you care about portable high quality audio.
Android.
Got one today. Came with a USB-C to 3.5mm adapter and a USB-C to ordinary USB adapter for connecting sticks in the box. Not seeing what the problem is here ?
It has nothing to do with being "convinced". There are tons of situations where bluetooth headphones are simply a non-option - for one, on many airplanes worldwide, Bluetooth headphones are still banned and likely will be for years and years. Secondly, if you're on an 7 or 8 hour flight and want to listen to continuous music, good luck doing that on your bluetooth earbuds.
USB-C and Lightning earphones don't make this much easier because these situations usually cause you to want your phone to be plugged in, which means silly hubs/dongles if you want to change your phone and listen to music at once.
Furthermore, if you happen to decide to want to use the in-flight entertainment - GOOD LUCK if you don't have wired headphones with a 1/8 jack! So what now - looks like you need to bring more dongles!
I swear the people who cooked up these ideas have seemingly never flown on a plane in their lives.
Honestly, I'm a Samsung fan but good god are they copying sheep. I'm very very surprised they didn't do what everyone else is and pull it, because it's the new cool thing!!!! (groan)
I am still extremely disappointed about the mandatory curved displays on all models, quite disappointed about the lack of a home button.
Sadly, no sale. Curved displays can't have protectors put on them properly, they break easier, they look bad.
No.
Still, good move on the headphone jack.
On the other hand, there's no expectation that every year hardware features should vanish and that the phones should be able to do less with every release.
It's really weird. Seems likely to be one of two things: not enough customers care about those features, or there aren't enough competitors in the market and they're colluding, either explicitly or implicitly, to remove features (thus reducing costs) but not drop prices accordingly. I say that since the flagship phones are - if I'm not mistaken - more expensive in real dollars than they have been in the recent past, which is weird for electronics.
(plastic can look fabulous if you texture it right, or go premium and do leather, or put a texture on your metal, or ANYTHING that allows someone to actually hold your phone!
Ceramic! Someone made a video of trying to scratch the ceramic case of a phone and failing, using everything up to and including a power drill. I don't know how slippery it is though.
How about an FM receiver? Didn't someone put one of those in a phone recently?
I think HDMI started disappearing well before USB-C got popular.
If by Apple computers you mean the Mac well, yes, they DID have a parallel port... It just happened to be a somewhat intelligent parallel port called SCSI. Printers and modems were attached to RS422 serial ports. Keyboard and mouse used the "Apple Desktop Bus"
Lordy. I'm getting pilloried in the comments here. Look, I never said anything about Apple earbuds being good; they're obviously crap. I was talking about the DAC and the pre-amp, which, when paired with a good set of headphones, sounds rather decent. Not as decent as a proper high-end setup, of course. But surprisingly good for a sub-$1000 device that you carry around in your pocket.
I'm too lazy to look up any references, but at least two audiophile magazines (I think Stereo Review was one) have done blind comparisons of Apple products with a variety of outboard DAC's. Both of them commented on how much better Apple performed than they would have expected. Don't trust the audiophile magazines? That's OK, I don't trust them entirely either, because they are so clearly biased towards their high-end advertising clients (including out-and-out charlatans like Monster)... but the thing is, Apple doesn't advertise in these kinds of magazines. Unless Apple slipped them an outright bribe, their opinion about these products ought to be pretty objective.
The fact is, anyway, that if you are a manufacturer who is willing to spend $75-100 on a good audio chip, you can get something very decent-sounding, especially these days. Which brings me back to the topic of the article. One of the many, many problems with losing the headphone jack is that the phone manufacturer no longer has to provide these things. You're now at the mercy of whatever device sits at the other end of your lightning cable. Or you can use that stupid lightning-to-1/8" dongle (I've already lost mine). The dongle contains both DAC and preamp, and I somehow doubt that it does a good job, due to both cost issues and miniaturization issues.
Truthfully, the sound would suck even if they were wired because they're Beats. Beats makes shitty headphones and then sells them as though they're high quality by putting them in that price range. Read any review of them, they're always last or close to it and never recommended.
We're almost at the three year mark since what? The headphone jack was removed less than 18 months ago.
who believe adaptors are a pain: you're wrong
Ah. My bad. Off-by-one.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
This is the reason Apple bought them. They fit perfectly together
Sometimes people realize their mistakes and choose to correct them.
This is true. A few years ago, some brand management brainiac at Post thought it would be a good idea to hop on the added-protein bandwagon, and added isolated soy protein to the hundred-year-old Grape Nuts cereal formula. Having compromised Grape Nuts' basic value proposition and the interests of the die-hards who stick with this niche product, Post rebuffed complaints for a year before fixing their mistake ("Now without soy!"). Idiots.
Read more here and here.
Pretty much no one was using USB-anything before the first iMac made USB popular with accessory manufacturers. I wasn't an Apple user at the time, but I do have a working memory -- Apple made USB popular. Sure, it would have replaced many other protocols and port eventually, but it happened when it did because of Apple.
Let's hope this iteration supports greater than 1080p. I used the Dex dock a while back with a Note 9(?) and did some basic stuffing around - email, browsing blah all fine even with a few windows open. Log into a virtual desktop and I had everything else I could want - except support for my 4k screen. Oh well.
It was and is for 30-something years, the only way to connect your headphones. All non-wireless headphones worldwide have this connector or it's bigger sibling. It's the only connector for headphones we know. Dropping it is stupid.
Your examples are good because:
Parallel port - Dropped by Apple both after USB printers were popular on the market and USB>Parallel port adaptors* were easy to buy.
RS-232 - Something that became useless for Apple users long before it was dropped as a standard. Outside of labs, servers, and consoles this was an antique when apple dropped it and no one complained.
Printers - Apple has always had a captured market with printer drivers and Postscript support was baked into software people used to author content on Apples even before this was dropped.
Floppy Drives - Dropped long after they ceased to be relevant. The only thing they were useful for at the time on the PC was BIOS updates which Apple didn't need a floppy drive to do. No one was sad to see that go.
ADB - A closed Apple standard. No one cared.
No my friend. Apple definitely did not have a history of dropping standards years before everyone could see they were right. Apple had a history of dropping standards after people were already scratching their heads as to why the damn legacy things still exist.
Type-C USB cable is up to 20V. Many smartphones usually support 9V and 12V
So you are one of those who would buy gold plated cables and vacum tubes and stuff....
You may want to google that shit. There seems to be a lot of hardware mods and use of external DACS. They see the capacity as convenience, not quality.
But that's not what the quoted article says. They said: "teardown [of the new iPhone] reveals what's in place of the headphone jack that Apple removed. In short: nothing complicated. Just some plastic. No speaker, and no electronics."
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Please?!
about their phones?
[ sarcasm ] And HDMI? Yeah, that's a useless, antiquated standard. Don't bother with that anymore. [ /sarcasm ]
I'd wap HDMI for VGA but your point stands. I bought a 2017 laptop that still had one because there's no benefit to removing it (plus it means I can have two screens on my laptop). Just because it's old does not mean it's useless, likewise, just because it's new does not mean it's better.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Apple wasn't right. They were irritating.
This.
USB was created by a large consortium of companies as a replacement for a myriad of ports, long before Apple picked it up. It was just an accident that they used it first. Even though it's largely supplanted a large number of ports, most motherboards you buy still have a LPT, PS2 and RS232 port or at least the provision of one. I remember for years having to use a very unreliable USB to serial connector for switches and routers for years in the early 00's.
People also forget the mistakes Apple made, supporting Firewire over USB, ZIP disks, the "puck" mouse and not embracing the right click. I'm certain the removal of the headphone jack will be remembered in the same light.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
You may want to google that shit. There seems to be a lot of hardware mods and use of external DACS. They see the capacity as convenience, not quality.
Well, sure, I could carry around an external DAC to use with my phone (actually I already own one-- the Apogee ONE-- which I use with my Mac for music recording/playback, and which can be connected to my iPhone if I want to do that). Or I could void my warranty by implementing some kind of DIY hardware mod. The point is, I don't want to do either! I have enough trouble not losing my phone as it is, I don't want to carry around a bunch of extra stuff!
Sorry for the double post-- I hit "submit" too early. I did in fact google this shit, about three years ago when Apple was still making iPods and I wanted to buy one for my daughter. Yes, there were some folks on the forums who preferred to use outboard DACs and the like-- but there were a lot more who were simply interested in getting the best product for off-the-shelf use. That's how I ended up buying a slightly used 5th gen iPod, instead of the then-current 6th gen. It was widely believed that the 5th gen sounded better.
"Pretty much no one was using USB-anything before the first iMac made USB popular with accessory manufacturers".
for fucks sake, usb 1.0 had just landed in 1996; and it was pretty flakey for the first few years. Existing versions of Windows 95 "Windows 95 "A") didn't even support it, and nobody was going to buy a whole new computer just for a USB port; so you need to expect that its going to take an upgrade cycle of 2-3 years before it really takes off.
Apple committing to it 1999 was pretty much right when it was going to take off anyway.
USB 1.0 was flakey, and it wasn't much good until USB until 1.1 was released midway through 1998, by which time Windows 95 "B" had arrived with USB support, and Windows 98 has USB support built in.
To give Apple credit for the success of USB by releasing a PC in 1999 that exclusively supported it is just stupid.
USB1.1 was just arriving, but really it wasn't much use for anything but printers, scanners, and modems at that point. And modems were mostly built in or on PCI cards. So the first wave of USB devices was mostly printers and multi-function all-in-ones. USB2.0 arrived in 2000 and opened the speed up enough for other applications.
Digital cameras, mp3 players, external hard drives, chargers... those markets themselves were all in their infancy; and they all went with USB, of course they did, and they would have done so whether the imac had ever existed or not.
USB would have been popular with or without Apple. And I don't even think Apple really sped it along much; perhaps we can credit apple for getting us into USB keyboards and mice a bit faster; and for creating a sudden unnessary market for USB floppy drives and USB to ADB adapters. But that's about it.
that ambient microwave radiation degrades the signal, etc..
That ranks up there with audiophile HDMI cables giving a clearer picture, or saying webpages are getting corrupted because you're using WiFi.
Bluetooth has issues, but microwaves aren't among them. Jamming Bluetooth isn't easy; it's a modern spread spectrum signal designed to handle interference. Until the signal is effectively jammed (no audio at all), other microwave sources don't affect Bluetooth.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I was surprised by getting those AKG earbuds when recently bought a S8. I probably won't use them since I don't find earbuds comfortable.
If you've ever turned on a microwave oven in the next room while you're listening to music via Bluetooth, you'll know that the interference is no audiophile thing. It stutters and pretty much stops working. The emissions from a microwave in the next room aren't all that strong. In practical terms, the more WiFi routers and Bluetooth devices you have running nearby, the higher the ambient radiation and the greater the packet loss (this is why the range of WiFi is much shorter in high density housing, like apartment buildings because everyone's routers are closer together). In moderate conditions, it simply shortens the effective range of WiFi and Bluetooth, with stronger radiation it stops working for things like streaming media altogether.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
BTW, I teach online and during webinars students often complain of dropouts, weak signals, etc.. When they buy a cheap LAN cable and plug it into their laptops, in almost all cases, the problems go away.
Debate is a form of harassment. Do not question my truth.
My office building alone has 300-400 people within 30m of me, and over 1300 within 100m. All are using WiFi, and all actively using Bluetooth headsets (They stuck engineering smack in the middle of a multi-floor call center. Somebody has to fill the parts of the building where there are no windows...). A simple Bluetooth scan shows hundreds (maybe thousands) of devices.
All of those people eat luch, so the company supplies about 40 microwaves, all of which get heavy use.
I’ve never been able to get Bluetooth to disconnect from less than 10 meters, nor have there been audio artifacts.
I’m not discounting any of the things you’ve said, but I’ve not found interference in the 2.4 GHz ISM band to be a serious problem.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
I find it humorous how many people apparently want the jack for high end headphones. Phone DAC/amps suck! If you don’t have your own external DAC/amp you don’t get to complain about sound quality.