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Apple Discontinues iPhone X, No Longer Sells iPhones With Headphone Jacks (theverge.com)
Apple just killed the iPhone's headphone jack for good. Not only is the company no longer selling iPhones with headphone jacks, as they've removed the iPhone SE and 6s from their website, but they're no longer including a Lightning to 3.5mm headphone jack adapter with the purchase of a new 2018 iPhone. The Verge also reports that the company is discontinuing the iPhone X with the introduction of its three new iPhones today. From the report: With the iPhone XS starting at a price of $999, and the addition of the cheaper $749 iPhone XR announced today, the iPhone X has become redundant. [...] There's no longer a good reason to shell out for the more expensive iPhone X, except maybe the exclusivity of owning a phone that was ushered in with the 10th anniversary of the original iPhone. It was the first to introduce the now-ubiquitous notch that's influenced the entire mobile industry with a wave of copycat designs, and the first iPhone with Face ID. It introduced intuitive gesture controls and with the phone came wireless charging, plus AirPods.
"It was the first to introduce the now-ubiquitous notch that's influenced the entire mobile industry"
No, the first phone with a notch was the Sharp Aquos S2, followed by the Essential phone. Both before Apple.
Not that introducing that butt-ugly "feature" is worth any sort of bragging rights.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I was just commenting recently about poor choices Apple's making in design.
The lack of headphone jack has me seriously considering going back to Android for my next phone. I use 'em far too often.
Can I gripe about the AppleTV's absolutely awful remote? It looks slick. The idea of a touch pad is a good one--the implementation just botches it bigtime. The remote is too small, shaped wrong, not ergonomic, made of materials such that it slips easily into sofa cushion cracks, nooks, crannies, and vanishes far too easily.
And please, I DO NOT LIKE devices I have to PLUG IN to charge periodically in my living room. That's why my media PC has a wireless keyboard with user-replaceable batteries. Sure, a long-life lithium-ion battery can be useful--but when it does need a charge, I don't want to go tether a keyboard or a remote to a cord. Give me user-swappable AAA or AA batteries. I can change them in a blink and be using my device again with zero cable clutter, not even having to think about a wireless charging station's cord clutter.
The Apple remote activates with a touch when I'm just reaching for or gripping it, not intending to actually navigate or click on anything. Yuck! And the touchpad is so awkward to use with the non-ergonomic remote's shape and feel.
My Samsung TV's super-simple remote outclasses the Apple TV remote by a million times! It's easy to use, fits my hand very well, is small, but harder to lose, has great feel, and navigation with it is a dream! Well done, Samsung! I use it to control my Apple TV much of the time--with the few exceptions where some menu item, button, or function is unreachable except by using the Apple TV remote.
Don't get me started on the GUI gaffe's where Apple TV makes doing something 12 times more difficult than it should be. When I want to move to the next episode in a series from a particular screen, when I think it should take 1 to 2 clicks, Apple TV requires a bazillion. Ick! Do the designers actually USE the thing they're designing interfaces for???
I love my 2013-era retina-display Macbook Pro. I hope it doesn't die soon, because I don't like my replacement choices from Apple. I love MagSafe. I don't want to use USB-C for power, thanks. Return to MagSafe. And keyboard-wise, less-travel isn't preferred, and sensitivity to dust and dirt is a deal-breaker. The strip instead of function keys? I'm mostly okay with that as I only use the ESCape key. THAT one key, however, I NEED and I prefer not to have to remap CAPS LOCK to ESC and re-learn keyboard habits.
Apple's removal of the 1/8" headphone jack isn't about headphone jacks, nor is it about updating to new technology. It's about control and is just one small front in the war to erode the user controlling their own data. Headphone jacks are completely audio, analog, and offer no form of DRM. They are something Apple can't control once the signal is on the jack. You can do anything with it. Re-digitize it (this isn't the 80's where duping a cassette tape lead to rapid quality degradation), or pipe it to any device. The sound was yours once it got to that jack. Apple really doesn't like that, and they are basically tossing an invite to the entire industry to follow along and start down a more restrictive path. Follow us and you can get in on the action too. Erode what you can do with your audio one tiny tenth of a step at a time.
If anyone thinks that it's about device jack real estate, upgrading with the times, or innovation, they are hopelessly naive.
2x Best phone
The less expensive XR will be selling a lot, I think. Has the FaceID which many people find cool, a good enough screen, and similar processor power as the flagship models.
Weird. My Wife's headphone-jack-less iPhone came with an analog dongle. It can also still connect to the Bluetooth to analog adapter on our stereo. Why would they allow this?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
an iPhone for his college age kid I'd like to personally thank Apple for making the X so undesirable and thereby saving me $200-$300 dollars. I hope to see more of these cost saving measures. Maybe a partnership with Microsoft?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Competitors would have been more self-interested if they had the power to get away with it. They will now gladly take advantage of the Stockholm beachhead.
They were never offering attractively out of good will. Being attractive is at best a secondary objective, obligated to us consumers plebs only because it correlates to their true one.
New meta. You can't stop it. I can't stop it. Everyone already thinks 5 grams of chocolate is normal. Grab the least shitty choice and try to make peace with the blight.
So I have to spend an extra $9 on top of my $800 phone? OK, if I want an analog output I'll do that.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
I used to own an iPhone and I know some elements of being in the Apple ecosystem is good. I also believe them, when they claim they focus on security more than others. They (appear) to care about backdooring devices.
What I am sick of is _die_hard_ classic Apple fans, utterly stuck in the little Apple box, incapable of logical and rational thought. I thought these zealots had died out, alas I was wrong.
You can't bring up the headphone jack thing without some idiot shouting at you how archaic it is, or how it's not needed "progress" "courage" "backwards tech" and other such things. For what may be, one of the most ubiquitous connections on the entire planet.
On the same note, I try to bring up, time and time again, how I can sit at my PC (Linux/Windows/Whatever) open up a web page and I can remotely "deploy" apps to my phone, if it's charging in the bedroom, if I forgot it at work, or even I can do it to my dads phone if I have his credentials, saving me talking him through the play store.
You think Apple fans like this idea? Almost every time I bring it up, some idiot defends the App stores inability to be navigated via the web. Often citing "security issues" (yet you can log in and PURCHASE a $1000 phone on their site, with the same credentials)
Why, in 2018 can we STILL not remotely install an App on iphones or tablets from the app store?
I'm on holiday, there's a fan-damn-tastic deal for an ipad game or app, I see it on twitter, but my ipad is back home or in the hotel. Think I can grab that app quick, while it's cheap?
Nope.
Been able to with Android since at least 2010. Ridiculous.
Extreme Apple fans (and the prices, but more the fans) are what make me stay away from them.
"Apple did it, it must be right!"
Their design decisions aren't all gold- they just have a massive army of overly-moneyed sycophants who ooh and ahh at everything they do since Apple had the first legitimately good idea for a touchscreen cellphone interface. The notch is dumb. Ditching the 3.5mm jack is dumb. All of the proprietary connectors were dumb. The walled garden is dumb. Glass backs are dumb. No expandable storage is dumb. Smart Watches are in fact, dumb. Bluetooth headphones suck. 3D Touch was stupid. Apple's UI aesthetics have been awful for like 5+ versions of the OS.
But Android manufacturers follow right along because
1. They don't hire anyone who can design UIs or human-usable tech
and
2. Apple makes a shitzillion dollars, and they don't understand that Apple has so much goodwill they can continue flogging really increasingly fucking bad phones for probably another half a decade before even their diehards start to give up.
No one has that kind of faith in Samsung or Motorola or . Hire the right people and make your stuff good on its own merits. You'll never outdo Apple even if your stuff ends up better in the end because you're forever seen as a follower of THEIR trends.
This was something that was originally intended for HDMI and SPDIF, the ability to have it so they would only output signals to "blessed" hardware that was guaranteed not to record.
Sorry but SPDIF signal (as well as TOS-Link, AES3, etc.) is purely uni-directionnal.
There is no back-and-forth and therefor there's no way to negociate an encryption.
SPDIF's only form of protection is bit in the header telling if the source is original or a copy and if the material is allowed unrestricted copies or not.
That's it.
The rest of the audio is raw un-encrypted PCM (or optionnally AC3 or DTS bitstreams).
It's entirely up to the emitting program to emit the correct bits. You could as well control your PC (or a simple ardunio) to emit a copiable stream ("original", "copy as much as you want").
It's entriely up to the receiving program to honor what the bits imply. You could as well fetch the stream with a PC (or a simple arduino) and record it, even if says ("copy" and "please do not copy")
HDMI is the one actually having a cryptographic handshake to lock out non-complying software.
With the arduino approach (well it would take a very high Ghz micro-controller, but you got the idea), you only see encrypted garbage on the line.
You'd need to have a valid signature, to do the handshake, so you get the decryption key.
Only certified drivers, running in a "secure" (from the point of view of content maker, not end-users) environment like Windows, come with the necessary key to negociate an encrypted link.
The same could be done with future lighning port & bluetooth speakers : only those come with the necessary signature to negociate an encrypted link.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
They sold enough of them for Apple to go from loosing $800 million in 1997 to making $400 million in 1998.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
You know, there are LOTS of reasons that bezels, physical buttons and a headphone jack provide actual BENEFIT to the user.
Leave it to Apple to brainwash their idiotic rabid fanbase and turning features in to dirty words, so that they can trick them into wanting something that is counter to their own best interests (and wallet).
I was going to replace my daughter's 6S with either another 6S or an SE, but this will jump the price. Crap.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
It would be interesting to see if this market change will force consumers to go with apple specific hardware or purchase after-market adapters to use 3.5mm devices.
So much moaning and complaining about the notch to begin with....
Then a bunch of wanna-be notch copycats.
Strange.
I agree. I am not certain why people get so emotional about phone choices.
It is fine if you love android phones. It is fine if you love apple phones.
Heck... it is ok to love old school flip phones.
Just don't understand all of the rancor.
Let's remove the jack for my powerless wired headphones and replace them with a wireless headset that needs charged every few hours and has additional components like batteries to add to our trash... great decision. No, don't worry its advancement, not spoiled people.
He's not an idiot. He's a supply-chain/logistics wizard.
Now, when they switch to being more of a vendor of model railroad components, his outlook on product design will be awesome and valuable.