Slashdot Mirror
'Two Years Later, I Still Miss the Headphone Port' (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader shares a column: I've been trying to figure out why the removal of the headphone port bugs me more than other ports that have been unceremoniously killed off, and I think it's because the headphone port almost always only made me happy. Using the headphone port meant listening to my favorite album, or using a free minute to catch the latest episode of a show, or passing an earbud to a friend to share some new tune. It enabled happy moments and never got in the way.
Now every time I want to use my headphones, I just find myself annoyed. Bluetooth? Whoops, forgot to charge them. Or whoops, they're trying to pair with my laptop even though my laptop is turned off and in my backpack. Dongle? Whoops, left it on my other pair of headphones at work. Or whoops, it fell off somewhere, and now I've got to go buy another one. I'll just buy a bunch of dongles, and put them on all my headphones! I'll keep extras in my bag for when I need to borrow a pair of headphones. That's just like five dongles at this point, problem solved! Oh, wait: now I want to listen to music while I fall asleep, but also charge my phone so it's not dead in the morning. That's a different, more expensive splitter dongle (many of which, I've found, are poorly made garbage).
Now every time I want to use my headphones, I just find myself annoyed. Bluetooth? Whoops, forgot to charge them. Or whoops, they're trying to pair with my laptop even though my laptop is turned off and in my backpack. Dongle? Whoops, left it on my other pair of headphones at work. Or whoops, it fell off somewhere, and now I've got to go buy another one. I'll just buy a bunch of dongles, and put them on all my headphones! I'll keep extras in my bag for when I need to borrow a pair of headphones. That's just like five dongles at this point, problem solved! Oh, wait: now I want to listen to music while I fall asleep, but also charge my phone so it's not dead in the morning. That's a different, more expensive splitter dongle (many of which, I've found, are poorly made garbage).
Because I don't buy phones that don't have one.
Genius, isn't it?
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I know I'm being unrealistic, but I wish free-market economics worked the way they theorize it should: that very few people would buy a product that doesn't have a 3.5mm port, and the demand would be filled by other manufacturers (unless you're Apple-addicted, then you're at their mercy). It bugs me to no end when the market bends and adapts to the supplier.
I have an iPhone 5s with a stereo jack and it works great. Your problem was spending more money on newer tech that's not as good. Don't be an asshat.
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
removing the headphone port is the most annoying "feature" ever. im ready to pay off my iphone 8 so i can sell it to get a cheap android phone with the headphone port. it's ridiculous. 3rd party dongles are cheap and not built to spec so they burn out and/or have terrible audio. apple charges too much for dongles. i cant charge and listen at the same time on road trips now. dumb. i should have never "upgraded". i am learning an expensive lesson.
360 degree reversable insertion
Power delivery
Analog and digital
We need more of it.
USB sticks are superior in every way to a floppy disk; therefore invalid comparison.
Touch-tone phone ares superior in every way to a rotary phone; therefore invalid comparison.
Verdict: Point missed.
Because removing the headphone jack was a cynical move by phone manufacturers to upsell you a pair of bluetooth headphones. There is virtually no benefit to the consumer of such a move.
I've been using various BT headphones for years and years, way before it started being removed.
Being tethered with a cable from your pocket to your head is so damned uncomfortable and clunky. Far worse then having to *gasp* charge your device once in a while.
You might as well keep clamoring for floppy disks and CD burners for all they're worth too.
Good luck with that.
This is a complete and utter idiot. Unplug from your phone, meaning turn the fucking thing off. You'll live longer, and actually enjoy yourself.
Same way the free checked bags will come back. Aviation kerosene prices are set to plunge in five years. It will remove all the nickel and diming from the air lines, 35$ for exit row seats, 25$ for guaranteed aisle seat...
But the 40$ late fee for credit cards will stay. The banksters are cruel jerks and they got poor people by their balls. They are not going to stop squeezing anytime soon.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm not sure that it's serious so much as a troll post. Anyone who felt that strongly about a headphone port wouldn't have purchased a phone without one. Judging by the amount of shit it's already stirring up, I'd say it's a pretty successful troll at that.
Vote with your feet, move on to a manufacturer that actually cares what YOU, the customer, wants.
In the beginning, USB keys were crazy expensive. Obviously not so much anymore. But I could imagine a day when I would've preferred a floppy.
Add to the list - any long customer phone calls (like to any customer service, for example)
Before getting on a call I do 2 things:
1. plug in a set of headphones
2. plug the phone into power
3.5mm connector is not optional. As of now I own iPhone SE and expect to continue in foreseeable future (might buy another SE spare just in case). Eventually either:
Eventually I will have to decide between imessage/facetime (that's the primary reason I stick with IOS, though not being Google product is a close second) and the need to use 3.5mm connector. TBH I suspect that it would be easier to replace imessage/facetime (though since the entire family is on IOS it might take a while).
> Bluetooth? Whoops, forgot to charge them.
Do you really have anyone other than yourself to blame if you forgot to charge your Bluetooth headset? Are refrigerators useless just because you forgot to go buy groceries?
Maybe it's a me-too fad that will die off as people gradually realize they miss it and stop buying lame phones.
Table-ized A.I.
Like many aspects of Apple's newer business philosophies it is a blatant money grab. If they want to fix slumping sales then go back to putting the product before profits again. That's how they got to their position in the market today. Companies are constantly ripping us off. I used to look forward to Apple releases but now I just worry about what they're going to take away so that I have to buy more stuff (and I buy nothing new from Apple anymore).
How is it rational for me not to buy a device that, in total, is better than my current one. Sure, the lack of a headphone jack is a negative, and worse than the same phone with a headphone jack, but all in all, the new features may still make it a better phone.
It's not irrationality, it's coarseness of decisions. It's not like Apple offered two versions and let the market choose.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The two ports:
1.) Analog mini jack for audio out and in
2.) Ethernet RJ 45
Mess with either and your business growth if used will suffer for sure.
Me it tops out iPhone 6s and forget the 7 and nice Xr Max OLED screen or even switch to Note a port be gone is a mistake for customer demand
Same goes for ports on network gear or even make it different for edge gear, security forces through App instead of at least a hard link to physical device, what?
USB-C is really just Ethernet flattened out looks like an interesting compressed compromised to be determined if it has staying power with a truce between Apple lightning/thunderbolt types with mainstreamed other makers gear.
However, under the hood all of us know it is still Ethernet with mangled frame identifiers and interconnection stack.
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
USB sticks are superior in every way to a floppy disk; therefore invalid comparison.
You can't put a USB stick in an envelope ant mail it like you can with a floppy. You can't use a USB stick to maintain a vintage computer like you can with a floppy. There are most certainly cases in which a floppy is superior.
Touch-tone phone ares superior in every way to a rotary phone; therefore invalid comparison.
Verdict: Point missed.
A Rotary telephone will function fine with degraded service on damaged wires (welcome to the USA) that is too noisy for touch tones
it would be invalid to compare you to an intelligent person
I don't miss it on my iPhone 7. The adapter that Apple shipped with the phone lives in the little pouch that came with my IEM ear buds, and everything else connects via Bluetooth, USB (Car), or wifi (home stereo).
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I'm not sure that it's serious so much as a troll post. Anyone who felt that strongly about a headphone port wouldn't have purchased a phone without one. Judging by the amount of shit it's already stirring up, I'd say it's a pretty successful troll at that.
Every purchase is a tradeoff, you rarely get everything you want.
A headphone jack could very well be important to some people, but not as important as other features.
Even though my iPhone 6s actually has one, I stopped using those way before Apple ever removed one because the port never worked right and was always full of pocket lint.
There was a guy on youtube that lives in China that was able to source the parts, and free up enough room inside his iPhone to readd a 3.5mm jack. He used one of those lightning to 3.5mm passthrough dongles and stripped it down to the bare minimum. So if some guy in his bedroom could do it, apple could have done it.
USB sticks are superior in every way to a floppy disk; therefore invalid comparison.
Three words: Write Protect Tab.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
There was a somewhat uncomfortable period for anyone who wanted to sneakernet files to other people; floppies were cheap enough to give to someone who might not bring them back, flash drives not even close; but for personal storage the price difference wasn't so bad(helped by the fact that floppies had tepid reliability and were individually quite small, so the fact that you could buy a 100 pack and have 140mb of space for way less than a 128mb flash drive was less helpful in practice). CD-Rs also helped soften the blow: much more capacious and acceptably cheap for situations where you were not expecting them to return.
A high density floppy drive held 1.44MB. You could get a 128MB USB drive for $0.25/MB in 2003 with a whopping $33 investment.
https://www.jcmit.net/flashpri...
A floppy drive was popular because there were no alternatives. Zip drives proved that.
Even with my carrier's very limited set of choices for phones (mainly apple product) , I had no trouble finding a perfectly good smart phone with a headphone jack and at about a 1/3rd the price of the lowest end Apple product.
So if you wanted the feature and don't have it, don't blame markets for not working blame yourself for not making them work. They aren't magic after all, they represent the summation of all the participants decisions.
... the lack of it was the first "fail" to me (it's a reason why I still keep my S5 [it shines with http://lineageos.org/ ] :P)
Lol. What. You can mail a USB stick if you wanted in a normal envelope without anything happening to it.
As long as your envelope isn't tissue paper that is.
This isn't an appropriately Luddite response for Slashdot, but I don't miss the headphone jack. Why? Because I don't miss one-half of my audio disappearing when I bumped the cable or, worse, the headphone jack just stop working for one ear because the contacts got messed up in the jack itself. I don't miss the cable flapping around. I don't miss bending/breaking the plugs that for some mind-numbing reason rarely were the 90-degree angle that would keep them from getting bent/broken.
Yeah, charging headphones is a bit of a pain. But so is charging my phone, my notebook and my tablet. I've learned to deal with that. If ditching the headphone jack truly was a trade-off to allow more room for a battery, I'm fine with it, I'd rather have the battery life. Perhaps if I was also a blogger for Tech Crunch or similar publication, I would have enough devices that the Bluetooth pairing issue described would be annoying, but I don't. For me, and my small universe of devices, Bluetooth headphones work well enough, even the cheap Ankers I use 90% of the time.
I don't see this as a freedom (or "bravery") topic or even a big deal. It's an area where for reasons of efficiency (or more likely, cost) the market moved away from something. For the audiophiles with $400 cans, they were complaining about the digitized music in the first place. For the people who miss getting cheap $10 headphones at Ross or Marshall's that they could lose or throw away without feeling bad, there are almost as-cheap Bluetooth alternatives. It sort of reminds me when physical keyboards went away. We adapted, and we're fine.
...I'm the complete opposite. I see a headphone jack and feel as if I'm stuck in a time warp. I have managed to eliminate several patch-cords from my life, thanks to Bluetooth and other tech, but whenever some outdated device with an analogue plug on it shows up on my desk and I need to dig through a box of yesterday's tech to find a converter that was probably built and/or designed a decade (or more) ago.
No, I don't miss that silly headphone jack at all. Charging my headphones is a very minimal amount of hassle compared to having a freakin' tether attaching me to a device.
The pursuit of absolute tolerance leads to the most rigorous and ludicrous intolerance. - REX MURPHY
It's a hell of a lot better than the shit I use to put up with fragmented Android on a wireless service that may or may not send you the right update in a timely fashion.
Just another hit piece on Apple brought to you by msmash. Getting the bitches' panties in a bunch is now a business model around Slashshit. This brings nothing new, just another chance for the same people to piss and moan like they did years ago. Don't you people ever get sick of crying about the same thing all the time? Who gives a fuck if it has a headphone jack if you don't want it anyway? I don't cry like a bitch because some people like sunroofs in their car, I just buy a car without a sunroof and get on with my life.
You people are fucking sheep.
I just walked through the electronics section of a general merchandise store and there are no fewer than 30 different phone models available within 10 feet of me right now. At least 27 of those have headphone jacks. Most of them are available at a much lower price than the iPhone. Rationally, people with different needs and desires would choose different phones. This LG on my left is probably the best choice for 3% of buyers, the more expensive LG two feet away is probably the rational choice for 2% of buyers, the iPhone is probably the best for 2% of people, etc. The difference between the 2% of people who *should* buy iPhones and the number who *actually* buy iPhones is the number of irrational iPhone purchases.
Parent said about USB keys:
"You can't put a USB stick in an envelope ant [sic] mail it like you can with a floppy."
Sure you can! They survive the mail better than a floppy disk. I am sure what you meant was USB keys are not as cheap as a disk, with which I will agree, but they are not that expensive if you buy a no-name key.
And that's a fact
Did you stupidly pay Assple (st)Inc., to remove your headphone jack?
I sure as fuck didnâ(TM)t. The iPhone SE is the last Assple phone Iâ(TM)m going to buy until they put the goddamned motherfucking headphone jack back.
If you buy a defective-by-design piece of shit phone that has no headphone jack, which speaking only for myself, I consider absofuckinglutly fucking MANDATORY, you are PAYING Assple to take functionality AWAY from you, so unless youâ(TM)re prepared to boycott their D-b-D bullshit, (as I do,) all youâ(TM)re doing is bitching and whining, then knuckling under and paying them to treat you like dog shit.
What, really, does that say about YOU?
I've forgotten to charge my BT headphones, or just plain forgot my BT headset, or forgotten my dongle so many times that I just bought a couple of old iPods, converted them to flash, and carry them around with me.
I could care less about waterproofing. I dropped or placed my iPhone in water like 0 times in the last 11 years.
After evaluating my iPhone usage, I'll be moving back to an iPhone SE this year. I'll miss the camera, but I have a real camera that I can carry around now.
If you don't like Bluetooth, use USB-C or Lightning headphones.
Problem solved.
Hi all,
The need for that little plug comes from the entertainment indrusty professionals, who have a strange attachment to Apple hardware.
There are numerous soundchecks done right now with iPhones, iPads and MacBooks all around the globe.
Personally I hate Apple stuff, but the removal of the 3,5mm jack is just frustrating.
You can connect your device to the professional equipment with one cable. Except the newer iPhones etc that need a dongle (that somebody forgot at the last gig)
And somebody forgot to tell this (intro, couple of background tracks and the outro coming from the device) to any of the tech crew.
You can always get a 3,5mm cable from somewhere, but an Apple adapter...
I have a headphone port and it is immensely useful while still being crappy in some respects. My phone is an LG V20. The audio system is excellent: it adaptively supports low and high impedance IEMs and headphones. It offers bit perfect decoding and playback of all the music I own (ranges from 16-bit 44100 kHz to 24-bit 88200 kHz derived from SACD as well as purchased 24-bit 96 and 192 kHz tracks. But the port/jack itself is a thowback, and especially bad on a portable device that is exposed to the elements, pocket lint etc.
Surely the ideal solution is not to force the decoding and amplification into a low power and inadequate chip, but to update the very simple physical interface from a crude jack into to one of pins with reliable connection and the capacity to be adapted and enhanced? It would also make converters very simple and cheap and universal. ....oh shit, I forgot....it's not about quality or customer satisfaction, it's about squeezing more money out of us cattle.
I don't buy phones that don't have one.
Tell that to someone who resolved not to buy phones that lack a QWERTY keyboard.
Slashdot. Home of the 3 nerds who are fuming about the lack of a 100 year old analog port on their pocket supercomputers with advanced neural network based image recognition and augmented reality capabilities that would have required several 19" racks of computers 20 years ago.
Up until I read this article, I literally forgot that my iphone doesn't have a headphone jack. Because I never use headphones. Seriously guys. Get a life. You you can buy a 56 GFLOPS super computer for $1000 and IT FITS IN YOUR FUCKING POCKET. An iPhone XS is almost as fast as the fastest computer on the planet in 1992. Quit worrying about dumb ass stuff like headphone jacks and work on the tech of the future.
... a really long time if the only new alternative is a phone without a headphone jack. Use the H out of it, and am NOT going to buy a new set of bluetooth headphones or some cockeyed adapter. That's just the way it is. That is all...
I charge my BT headphones when I am done using them and pair them only with my phone. Took me almost no time or effort to solve your problems. I think this article is just complaining for the sake of it.
Why does everyone who defends the move to kill the headphone jack conveniently forget that BT can still be used on a phone with a jack? I use BT on a stereo at home and in my car, but almost everywhere else I'm plugging in a pair of wired headphones, especially when I'm at work.
Leaving the jack in gives you a lot more options, and unless something massively changes in the future I will not be buying a phone w/o a jack
The vast majority of FM radio is ads 24/7. Even the music is ads for the albums the songs are on.
Why is this whiny bullshit on the front page. Boo hoo, charge your fucking headphones and just get over it.
https://www.amazon.com/iPazzPort-Wireless-Handheld-Raspberry-KP-810-19S/dp/B01CE70TZC/ref=pd_sbs_147_6/142-7673154-9324127
One word: tape.
Okay, two more words: file permissions.
Except the 5 whiners on slashdot
USB sticks are superior in every way to a floppy disk; therefore invalid comparison.
Three words: Write Protect Tab.
I have USB sticks with a write protect switch. So ???
Write protect tabs didn't provide absolute protection. I have seen programs write to a supposedly write-protected disk.
...i still miss the notification LED which seems to have been killed by every premium android phone maker. let's see what samsung does with the S10.
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
That's why I did not buy a new iPhone, and I just tweeted it this morning, too: https://twitter.com/renebln/st... guess my next phone will by a Samsung Galaxy or so –can even run my desktop Linux on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Here's a suggestion - Have tried NOT being a whiny little bitch? I find that works for me.
I tell ya what, I'll send you my spare dongle (I, unlike you, manage to keep my bluetooth headphones charged) and you can stop post annoying stories. Deal?
I have a moto x4 and it's got a headphone jack. It's never had anything but dust in it.
That write protect switch on your USB stick doesn't physically inhibit the drive from writing, like the write protect tabs on floppies do. This in turn points out a big problem with technology today - the vast majority of consumers don't actually understand enough about how things actually work, and because of that, can't make fully-informed decisions.
A lot of VoIP ATA devices don't support pulse dialling, so DTMF phones have an advantage there.
Those who have ditched copper lines can't rely on the regulation that pots lines needs to support pulse dialling.
I've had several home landline answering machines with wireless handsets with 2.5 mm jacks and headsets to go with them. Why did cellphone manufacturers not consider this option to make their phones thinner?
Oh for christs sake are we still here beating that old horse about the bloody headphone jack?
Only Apple had the balls to take it outside and shoot it like the toothless old animal that it was.
Having to listen to people winge about how stupid apple ear buds look without wires was beyond believable.
You look stupid with them in this day and age. Luddites.
Move on and stop your belly aching.
Apple will ditch the lightning socket soon and replace it with USBC like the iPad Pro.
You'll need a whole new set of dongles and cables.
I bet they'll screw around with it too so it only works with half the 3rd party chargers like they with the new macbooks
It's not the phone jack what you're missing, but in fact good engineering.
Ever since I got quality bluetooth headphones, I haven't missed the headphone jack much. Because I rarely use it. Of course I do appreciate its presence when I do use it, and I'm wholly against removing it.
But from what you describe, what you're missing is good engineering. It should be possible and easy to use the phone and charge it. It should be seamlessly interoperable with legacy or third-party equipment (read: analogue headphones, or from other manufacturers). It should just work, but doesn't, because it was badly engineered. And what you actually miss is a time-tested, well engineered inteface.
They could have optimized the experience for bluetooth headphones without sacrificing wired functionality. Many phones from other companies do. They didn't have to build a crappy product. They just did.
So... you should just stop buying crappy products. Brand loyalty is a thing, up to a point. When your favourite brand screws/disappoints you, you should be looking into other brands. Not doing so is just silly. And there are lots of very viable alternatives that don't sacrifice anything in the music-listening experience if that's what you favor.
The only time I use the headphone port is when bluetooth won't sync for hangouts and I have to hear the audio for a meeting. I still have to plug in wired ear pods when that happens -- just in the past, I had some 1/8" earpods packed away for that, now they have a lightning connector instead.
isn't life strange?
> It's amazing that you know more about their needs than they do. Or, the alternative, that their preferences are different from what you would expect to prefer.
Quite the opposite. I'm assuming (knowing) that different people have different needs and preferences. People prefer different screen sizes, battery life, value price differently, etc. "Everyone should get an iPhone" would assume everyone is exactly the same.
> agree with you about the lack of iPhone merits are voting you up
Actually my numbers have the iPhone being best for 37.5 times as many people as the average phone model.
I'm assuming that iPhones are 37X "better" than the average smartphone.
OpenSignal reports that their app has been installed on 24,000 different models of smartphone. About 20 of those are iPhones.
*All other things being equal* (they're not), each phone model would be the best match for 0.00416667% of people. Multiplied by 20 iPhone models, 0.083333% of people would be best matched by an iPhone.
Since some phones aren't the best for *anyone*, some photos are objectively better, we can reasonably (but debateably) assert that iPhone models are much, much better than average. Instead of being the best match for only 0.08% of people, as the arithmetic suggests, if we multiply the iPhones desirability by 37.5 times, we get 3% of people who would be best served by an iPhone.
£35 or whatever $. Far better than the original DAC in iCrap. Buy one and stop whinging.
Just because you donâ(TM)t doesnâ(TM)t mean others donâ(TM)t. I only donâ(TM)t because I have never bought a smartphone without a headphone jack. Far as Iâ(TM)m concerned it is required equipment. I would never (and will never) buy one without it. When my existing collection of iPhone SEs dies, then I will either buy a different brand of smartphone, a dumbphone, or a no-phone-at-all.
I will NOT REWARD Apple for trying to rip me off and force me to buy their crappy headphones.
My phone uses wired headphones and they JUST WORK. The headphones never have problems connecting, and have yet to run out of power before the phone does.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
The true hipster buys a product and then complains bitterly (years later even) about a missing feature that it obviously didn't have at purchase time.
The people complaining about USB had a great point: all the existing computers relied on floppies. It was obvious to EVERYONE that USB was the future, and that floppies were legacy. They were complaining about losing legacy support too early, and as a result, some didn't buy the Mac with that, and Apple sold a ton of external floppy drives along with that Mac. It was actually a bad call for Apple, and the only thing that worked about it is that they got free tech coverage as a result.
By contrast, analog headphones are the best. They are better than digital ones in every possible way. They are less complex, and less likely to break. You can improve performance by buying a good DAC, the same headphones that are poor on a phone can be top notch on your stereo. Add a ghetto DAC to them and they always suck, if you can even plug them into actual audio devices. The 3.5mm headphone jack is not the floppy drive here, it's the power cable. If anything, the variety of random connectors Apple pushes, and the still-evolving bluetooth things that fail to work and have security vulnerabilities and are banned in some workplaces, are the floppy drive of all this. The 3.5mm jack will still be used in 50 years, tell me you believe the same thing about Apple's proprietary phone port (that they are on their third version of I think already).
I quit using wired headphones at least four or five years ago, maybe more. Wireless is better. Other people obviously have different preferences, but I don't get why. I have two sets of Bluetooth headphones, one on my head and one charging. If I were less scatterbrained I could get by with only one, because the ones I use have 8+ hours of battery life and charge in an hour or so, so if I just plugged them in when I took them off I'd be fine. But I don't, so I spend an extra $8 for a second pair, so that when the ones I'm wearing die, the others are always fully charged. Actually I own three pairs; I splurged and blew $8 on the third pair just so I'd have a backup if one of the first two pairs dies.
This is much less hassle than dealing with wires that get caught on stuff and rip the headphones out of my ears. Or have to be threaded somehow through my ski jacket to keep my phone safe inside while letting me listen. Or worse, that get caught in spinning machinery when I'm working in my shop or mowing the lawn or something, and get ripped out of my ears and wrapped around the piece of equipment. Or worse yet, pull my phone out of my pocket and throw it onto the ground -- or into a table saw blade (yes, that happened).
Nope, wires suck. I put my phone safely away in a pocket, or over on a shelf near my work area but safely out of the danger zone.
I don't mind having a headphone jack, mind you. It ends up packed full of pocket lint couldn't easily be used even if I wanted to, but it doesn't bother me. But I'll never actually use the thing.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
but for personal storage the price difference wasn't so bad(helped by the fact that floppies had tepid reliability and were individually quite small
Flash drives today have crappy reliability. I'd trust the average floppy over the average flash drive any day. And if you're using a flash drive for personal storage longer than a couple months, you're asking for trouble.
So when was the last time that you used a keyboard with a PS/2 connector?
The analogy between the PS/2 to USB transition and the 3.5 mm to Lightning transition is imperfect. First, the governing body for USB (USB Implementers Forum) isn't nearly as dominated by one company as the governing body for Lightning (only Apple). Second, the vast majority of laptops with USB ports still have a barrel connector for power; only Apple is pushing laptops that have only one port to connect both peripherals and the charger.
My backup, cheapo corded phone that I get out in power failures, has a switch to use pulse. Used to be quite common though I haven't looked in years
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
1) When I hike. Plug my earbuds into my phone and I'm good for hours, long as the phone is charged. No headphone jack means $100-200 for new earbuds that sound as good as what I have now
2) At home. Plug my wireless headphones into my phone and I'm good till I have to take out the trash, or whatever. No headphone jack means I spend $100-$300 for new wireless headphones. Yeah this sounds stupid. Thing is, my wireless headphones sound better than my current sound system, and I wear them for 2-3 hours a day
In other words, take away my headphone jack and you can add a few hundred $$$ to the price of your phone for me to get back to normal.
OTOH:
1) My hikes could be from the basement to Mom's fridge. I never really said.
2) It's a basement, mom's drunk. watevs
That's a gimmick. If you want to protect your data from loss, you maintain a backup plan.
WTF? The write protect tab on a 3.5" floppy is a hardware feature. Software cannot override it. Damn Anonymous Cowards.
If your file is smaller than 1.25 MB, $33 is a lot of money to spend to sneakernet one copy of a file to one person. It was also bigger than many email providers' attachment limit prior to wide availability of Gmail.
It depends on what you call "not that expensive". Even a no-name USB flash drive is more expensive than a blank floppy or CD for the purposes of distributing physical copies of data to the public. This includes, for example, distributing source code "on a medium customarily used for software interchange" pursuant to the GNU General Public License, GNU Lesser General Public License, or another copyleft license.
Correct me if I'm wrong though, with a link to a reliable source of bulk USB flash drives.
Once no phones have analog headphone jacks, they can lock down the audio with DRM. Just as they did when they put HDCP on HDMI. You are being quietly herded into a world with no analog audio out, and then the DRM will come. Your existing bluetooth devices and audio dongles will be dropped, in favor of only DRM approved headphones.
How can none of you see this coming? Listen to us tin-foil hat types, we keep turning out to be right about this stuff.
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One of the reasons why I purchased a dedicated music player. I don't have to upgrade it every 3 years, has both 3.5mm and 2.5mm jacks, can play any music format, batter life is amazing, and storage is upgradable with micro-sd cards. Yes it is an extra item to carry, but its fairly small, weighs almost nothing, and I carry my laptop bag around with me everywhere anyway so I always have it. (and when I don't have my laptop it because I'm doing something that I wouldn't carry around the music player with me anyway. )
I got a phone that has no headphone jack a few months ago. I didn't notice the difference. I was already using bluetooth headphones on the previous phone anyhow.
I work with tech and I see a lot of phones. There are many issues, like phone calls drop when enabling wi-fi sharing, or the screen turning black when enabling wi-fi sharing, etcetera, but the biggest problem I see with all phones? Cracked screens. Screw the water-resistant, high-def blue tooth, AI enabled smart voicemail crap. Make a more durable screen. The more edge-to-edge screens I see, the more they shatter. What's the point of getting a slim phone if you put a giant Otterbox around it?
Anyone have any ideas of an iPhone dongle that is lightning and can charge and still do in-line mic??? All the ones I've seen so far have been great for charging and listen to music but not charging and listening on the phone.........
ntr
Walk into many audio shops, retail shops, dept stores, cheap stores, where they have dozens of headphones, ALL ARE 3.5s
No one at all stocks USB native headphones, or rarely at massive high prices.
Adapters? well... still rare to find, or 10x EBAY prices at retail stores.
Apple+Google+Others = Your are dicks, moron managers, who never listen to music, who ignore their engineers, and I bet even their own kids prefer a old style socket. So you might be rich ass fuckers, but your dumbass fuckers.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
I won't buy a phone without the 3.5mm Jack, but to be honest, I prefer Bluetooth. For one, easier in the car, just get in the car are listen.
Second, I'm sick of yanking the cord out. Bluetooth allows for little or no cord (I prefer a connecting cord between the left and right earbuds
I do agree that Bluetooth batteries run out of juice, which is why bought several paper for $3 each on eBay.
I sure hope the vocal minority doesn't get their way. I wouldn't even care, but they exaggerate. What next, bring back the physical keyboard?
I just checked and Bose QuietComfort Headphones have a jack so you can connect to a device via audio connector. The only BT headphones that don't have the port are inexpensive noname ones, or brands like Soundbot. ( around $!5-$20 ).
As for devices i would never get one without an audio port.Most of the time I don't miss it, but there are a few times when i need it. Usualy when I need it I really need it.
Biggest problem is latency. Bluetooth adds around 200 milliseconds. Tolerable if you're listening to music. Horrible if playing a game or using a video player without audio delay adjustments.
Especially since it places the entire blame, even for other company's phones dropping the headset jack, on Apple.
Right. So how would you describe the âoemusicâ stored on my phone?
Just because you donâ(TM)t doesnâ(TM)t mean others donâ(TM)t. I only donâ(TM)t because I have never bought a smartphone without a headphone jack. Far as Iâ(TM)m concerned.....I will NOT REWARD Apple for trying to rip me off
We are all now 100% convinced that you don't use any apple products, and have not been ripped off by them. And will most certainly never reward them for it.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
I used wired headphones with an adapter on a phone with no headphone port because I don't want to bother with charging BT devices. I don't notice the adapter in daily use, it's just there.
I have wireless phone chargers so don't need splitter adapter but generally I only need to charge when I sleep anyway.
So I really don't notice a problem in daily life and it's not that I'm a fanboi, I detest loyalty of this sort and I've had both Android and iPhones and enjoyed both.
Just offering the view that there's differing opinions and they're all valid because of different usecases. I'm happy there's still choice and hope it'll remain for those to whom it matters.
What's with all the dongle switching? I have a mixture of Apple laptop, Win/Linux desktop, Android phone and all the devices have headphone jacks and bluetooth in them. The only dongle I have is for my Logitech trackball, I can't use a mouse as it gives me minor RSI so I have to use trackballs instead.
Here's a tip, don't rush out and buy the very latest kit all the time because bleeding edge consumers are always guinea pigs for new ideas. Apple know they can entice new buyers, so they try out the idea of removing the jack socket and they sell millions so class removing the socket as a success and they will market it as such even though their argument is specious. I tend to buy tech gadgets I like, if I buy them new or second hand I don't care. My laptop is 3 years old, my phone was new, I buy the gadgets I like because of the features they offer. A jack socket is useful on my phone for pushing through my portable guitar amp unit but I could live without it, I'll simply find a BT-to-socket adapter off Amazon or eBay. I don't need all my gadgets in perfect harmony from the same manufacturer. I build my own PCs 'cos my desktop never goes anywhere so it can look as ugly as sin so long as it has the features I want. Mix and match bits in your life for the features you need to make your life easier, take advantage of consumer choice.
Just stop looking for ( first world? ) problems to moan about, look for solutions even if that means a compromise sometimes.
Two years later I still have a headphone jack on my phone... still have only used it a handful of times in those two years. Occasionally nice to have as a fallback but otherwise who cares. All my Bluetooth stuff works great.
Apple does what they think people want. Android makers will just do what people buy. Honestly most people (including me) could care less at this point about the headphone jack. I'm sure there will always be Android phones will headphone jacks for the ./'er crowd who reminisces about the "good old" analog days.
(this is offended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
USB sticks are superior in every way to a floppy disk; therefore invalid comparison.
Three words: Write Protect Tab.
I have a USB stick with a write protect switch on my desk right in front of me as I type this.
Seriously, bluetooth is part of this problem.
Most bluetooth headphones that can pair with multiple devices have a clunky and non-standard method of switching between paired devices, often that depends with switching off bluetooth on one of them. Many can't pair with more than one device at all. Devices suck too, often not willing to output to more than one device (bluetooth or otherwise) at once.
So this means invariably unless you dedicate headphones to specific devices, your bluetooth configuration will most likely be wrong or require a bunch of intervention to get working.
I don't quite get why bluetooth (with some kind of protocol changes, most likely) couldn't be much smoother with multiple devices, allowing multi-device pairing (multicasting if you will) so your headphones could get audio from your pc, your phone, and whatever else all at the same time. And the fucking other devices should be willing to send so that all the paired receivers can receive audio.
The headphone jack problem would be a lot less bad if bluetooth worked right.
You're looking at it backwards. From the designer's point of view, the beauty of breaking the phone is that someone gets to sell you a new one. If everyone jumps on the bandwagon, even changing vendors won't help. And you'll note that even Samsung and Google are beginning to suck down this particular mug of koolaid. Either you go without a phone (which most people won't do) or there's a brand new cause of planned obsolescence, plus they get to sell you more dongles, batteries, chargers, etc.
Follow the money. Pretty much always works. Also keep in mind that companies are like people: the people they are like are sociopaths and psychopaths.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Shit yourself to death, geek.
Low quality, hackable from 1.6 miles away due to a total lack of security, SOP is to disable Bluetooth on any device you care about. The only relationship to the Vikings is tgat it makes you easy to plunder.
But from a headphone stamdpoint, it's the quality that suffers the most.
I buy high end heafphones. If I can't use them on a device, I don't use that device for audio or won't buy the device at all.
*mutter mutter* off *mutter mutter* lawn.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
#MeToo
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
In the Apple eco system you don't have to pair your headphones again and again. You just choose the headphones at the device you are using, iCloud syncing has managed it for you. As I think about it, it actually is more convenient in that regard than a plug.
It works when an informed public acts rationally
Never happens. Because people - individuals - very very rarely act rationally and it takes quite a bit of thought for us bald apes to act rationally. But to have everyone who participates in a market act rationally? Never.
See Daniel Kahneman's and other behavioral economists' research.
Rational (human) markets are a fairy tale.
And a flat screen too!
Beast processor also
Going to try and get 5 full years a out of it, until this stupid curved screen and headphone jack far has circled back around.
>> 'Two Years Later, I Still Miss the Headphone Port'
That's a hell of a wrong headline, it should read :
"Two Years Later, I Still Buy The Wrong Phone For My Use Case And Lament"
aaaaaaa
I have some really good sounding headphones that work great in my iPhone. Yeah I bought some equally expensive Bluetooth ones that sound absolutely horrible. Plenty of connection problems, and so I keep my iPhone SE for that great little jack. When Apple bought Beats the writing was on the wall. Apple could sell more expensive Beats wireless headphones then wired. The technology is rather inexpensive but they double the price for wireless over wired headphones.
I'm an iphone user, and i won't buy a newer phone because of the headphone jack idiocy. If my current phone breaks i will buy a used one that has an headphone jack.
It's an essential feature i just demand from my phone. I could live without a camera, but not without a headphone jack.
Apple Watch + , No HP -. Apple could offer a variant option and charge for it but they are challenging my patience especially with a lame marketing byte of courage.
Thankfully the LG V40 (and previous V35, V30, V20) get it right. They not only have a headphone jack but are built with the users music experience as a priority.
They have quality amps to run your headphones and the electronics (DACs - digital to analog converters) are audiophile quality. It's also an amazing phone with all of the features that matter.
And you can charge it while you listen to music through your headphones. Yes, at the same time. That's what we used to be able to do before Apple was "brave" enough to take that option away.
Literally no reason to buy a phone without a 3.5mm
If you miss it sell your phone and get another one you moron.
All you're doing is pushing the market towards no headphone jack by being complacent. What exactly are you thinking?
Apple is running a deal until the end of the year for battery replacement service. My 6S just got new life and will keep my earphone jack going strong for years to come, until perhaps Apple figures out a way to brick the jack like they did cell data service with iOS.
Class Action Lawsuit - A good start!
The problem with bluetooth headphones is that you do not know what you are getting. Demo them at a shop all you want, but there is no way to tell how long a battery will be able to charge at full capacity or whether it will completely give up 1.1 years into the life of the device. Then you're shopping for headphones again. Wires are just far simpler, and I find you generally get what you pay for. Yes there are some cheap buds that break after a week, but buy anything over $20 and you will generally have them for awhile.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Reading the comments, there are clearly a large group of people who loved their headphone jacks. I was never one of them. I always got the cords tangled, and I found the whole process of plugging and unplugging and managing the wad of cord in my pocket annoying. I'd bought some Bluetooth headphones long before the headphone jack left the iPhone line. I got some over-ear ones from Amazon for using in bed at night. I bought some Anker BT earbuds for the gym also. I liked them for the most part, but keeping them charged was annoying.
Recently though my wife bought me some AirPods. Honestly, they're what wireless headphones should be. The case charges them, they automatically pair and activate when you stick them in your ears, and they deactivate when you take them out. It even pauses the music/podcast when you remove them. I know it's cool to base Apple these days but this is a great product that shows you how it could be better than what came before.
I think the big issue is most people, like me, thought all Bluetooth headphones were basically the same thing. They aren't.
- Vincit qui patitur.
I use the headphones that came with the phone. If I was a true audiophile Iâ(TM)d buy some bluetooth ones.
Just like some folks miss the floppy disk and the rotary-dial phone...
Oh really? You can find someone like that?
Are you on drugs?
From videotape format war:
By the mid-1980s every sentient consumer on the planet (with less than a PhD in navel lint) knew that consumer gadgets—like marriage—are a package deal. And like marriage, "caveat emptor" is the word of the day, as every now-unplayable Betamax fairly tale soundly advises.
That pretty much sums up the iPhone right there: reeked of true love (at first sight), but ultimately just another chiselled, gracile cad right from the splendid skirt-lift of the inaugural staged event.
I've had an iPhone 6s since they first arrived, and two sets of headphones, one bluetooth, one wired (Bose noise cancelling earbuds). I've used the Bose for noisy places like airplanes and I love them, but my bluetooth headset works great for places like the gym, and has 8 hr charge capacity. I'm very happy with the music playback quality on both. So, now that I picked up an iPhone XS, the only reason I'll miss the port is because of the Bose...gotta pick up a dongle cuz I won't replace the Bose until they break...they were expensive but worth it IMO.
Just another day in Paradise
You deserve what you get. Don't support scam marketing like that. It's an obvious move to sell more adapters. It has absolutely nothing to do with the engineering to fit them in the phones. I've seen many phones, apple and android alike without a 3.5mm that had plenty of room for one. Bluetooth headphones flat out suck. The audio quality is nothing near hardwire. They never stay synced. They never stay charged. They always fall off your person bc they're not attached to anything. Don't buy bullshit hardware. If you buy apple products in general, you're probably a lost cause but the rest of the people who bought those idiotic devices should be ashamed of their stupidity and have no room to complain about the state of their dumbassery.
Biggest problem is latency. Bluetooth adds around 200 milliseconds. Tolerable if you're listening to music. Horrible if playing a game or using a video player without audio delay adjustments.
I don't notice any latency when watching video or playing games, and I'm pretty sensitive to latency. I think you must have gotten really unlucky with your choice of headphones; I've used at least a couple dozen (mine and other peoples') over the years and never once seen that.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
$$$$$$$ They want you to purchase overpriced BT headsets. They want to make them more "water proof" They want to use the room for larger batteries LOL They want to reduce the cost by eliminating the jack. LOL It's pretty simple, they take something away, call it a "feature" then jack up the price. Personally, I haven't used the headphone jack on my phone ever, so I don't miss it. I'm older, almost 60, and grew up without an ipod, walkman or anything shoved into my ears all the time.
Yeah, they took out something very useful to the consumer to keep the price and size down. Blue tooth is not as good as a wire, and likely won't be for a decade, at minimum.
A floppy drive was popular because there were no alternatives. Zip drives proved that.
Um, Zip drives were an alternative, and that didn't even dent the popularity of floppies.
I don't disagree with your statement, but that's a weird choice of example.
This is why my iPhone stays in my car while I use my iPod Touch for just about everything, including music and Square payments.
I have yet to find an earbud or such thing that does not fall out of my ear.
Perhaps I am in the minority but I HATE sticking stuff in my ear. The volume control
of all of them stink.
Bluetooth is fragile (better than it was). Smart watches are dumb for the same reason
They need to be charged and they have 7x24 applications sleep tracking, walking, working...
Flipping out... that reminds me "time to charge my flip phone"
There are actually thumb drives with a write protect switch, not many but they do exist. And in literally every other way thumb drives are vastly better than floppies
In the Apple eco system
If you're OK with limiting yourself to the Apple systems, maybe... but if you try, for example, to pair those Apple earbuds to an Android device, you have to go through the whole routine.
Forget that, I'll take plug-n-play any day.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
When I look for phones, I always use the filters and I exclude phones that don't have the 3.5 jack. You can follow like a lemmings if you want but headphone jacks haven't disappeared for people who won't buy a phone without one. I don't even see phones that don't have one so as far as I'm concerned, they all still have them.
Peace, K1
Or... (s)he purchased the no-jack phone to, then, realize how important it is to hum (her).
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Yes, but does that USB drive make that unforgettable tick-tick-tick sound when you use it?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Oh you always have one file per drive?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Oh you always have one file per drive?
By "file" I meant a file or a related set of files.
It's still beside my point though. If you're giving a person a copy of one file or a related set of files, and it is small enough to fit on a cheap medium such as a floppy or a CD, and you don't expect to see the medium returned to you afterward, a more expensive medium is a waste of money.
Why persist in buying phones without the plug?
As with the climate, either you're doing something about it or you are part of the problem.
And whining isn't 'doing something'.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
Also the nice feature that a floppy disk doesn't have a microcontroller on it which can compromise your computer just from being plugged in. It's just a dumb bit of curiously magnetized material.
I know they aren't common, but they do exist. https://www.newegg.com/Product...
Not protection from data loss, but protection from infection.
The old saw: "Practice safe computing... always wear a write protect tab".
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
About 5 years ago I switched from corded headphones to bluetooth when in the first week of a gym membership I destroyed 2 headphone cords by getting them caught on equipment.
I would never look back now. BT is by far a better solution.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Yeah. That I miss as well. ;)
Early USB sticks did have a write protect switch though. It was probably removed so users would not get confused