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).
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.
It's actually counterintuitive: "The Most Intolerant Wins: The Dictatorship of the Small Minority" https://medium.com/incerto/the...
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
"Or it could be that it IS working as it is supposed to,"
OK, if it's working as it should, what's the reason for removing the jack? It's not any of the bullshit ones the marketing department came up with: cost ($800 phone and you need a $40 accessory to replace all the lost functionality), size/space (plenty of phones to compare, a dongle is bigger, and they charge more for larger phones, anyway), water resistance (a jack can be just as water resistant as a USB port). I suspect the reason Apple did it was strictly aesthetics - one less hole in their device. That's not unexpected, they make a lot of form over function design decisions ("you're holding it wrong"). But please, what's the legitimate, real, user benefit of removing the jack?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
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.
... water resistance (a jack can be just as water resistant as a USB port) ...
Case in point. My Kyocera Hydro Vibe (that I bought in 2015) has a headphone jack and is "Certified waterproof for IPX5, and IPX7. Immersible for up to 30 minutes in up to 3.28 feet (1 meter)." Also comes with a user-replaceable battery and FM receiver that works with NextRadio. Sure, it only runs Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) but it does what I need it to using Ting
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Wish I could upmod you. Brilliant insight. Thank you, and for that link. Awesome article; dovetails with much of my observation and thinking.
I've only dabbled in economics (college minor) and it's obvious that the major assumptions are false, and / or are based in illogic. I still say that something's wrong when there's much demand for 3.5mm jacks and suppliers are willing to risk the loss in sales, especially when newer phones don't really have gigantic offsetting advantages. I think the world needs much better and updated economics classes.