Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives | Hacker News Reader

Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives

daringfireball.net

32 pointsshawndumas73 comments

There's a major difference between the two. Floppy drives were of seriously limited utility by 1998 and it was only getting worse. 1.44MB was starting to be a pretty painful limit. Software was starting to come on CDs instead of floppies. Documents were starting to need Zip disks, USB drives, CD-Rs, or networks.

Can you imagine using floppies today? You wouldn't be able to fit anything on them. A single smartphone photo would already be too big. They were already doomed, Apple just happened to be the first one to stop shipping them.

Contrast this to the ubiquitous headphone jack. It still works great. It does exactly what we need it to. It does its job as well in 2016 as it did when it was created in 1964.

With floppies, Apple saw the writing on the wall and moved faster than other companies were willing to. If they kill the headphone jack, they will be trying to force a switch that otherwise wouldn't happen. Data keeps on growing seemingly without limit, but audio hasn't changed in decades.

Apple get away with so much stuff that I truly believe they will be able to get away with it too.

When Apple does this kind of stuff people praise them so hard that it's difficult to think Apple can do any wrong.

The bias level is unbelievable. Gruber and others push this so hard, that Apple is almost perfect, Google is the Devil (usually) that is hard to believe that they are not receiving any benefits out of it.

I agree with you. The comparison is not the same and I believe this move is Apple, maybe, trying to innovate due to external pressure from the market.

Ok, but apple didn't just get rid of the floppy disk. At a time when everyone was getting ready to go from DVDs to either Blu-ray or HD-DVD Apple got rid of optical disks entirely in all of their machines and everyone gave them shit for it the same way. But in the end they were right. The battle between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray was won by downloads and streaming, and optical disks have gone the way of the floppy disk even though they worked perfectly fine.

Analog audio jacks are going in the same direction. Bluetooth audio works perfectly fine, and it's how I play music on my headphones, in my car and at home. The analog jack is a convenient fallback but it will definitely go away at some point.

Sure, it feels like it's a bit premature, but that's how it always feels when Apple does something like get rid of optical drives, or get rid of removable batteries, etc. Eventually everyone follows them. Someone needs to blaze the trail and Apple is one of the few major companies that is not afraid to do it even if it pisses off some people along the way.

When Apple dropped the optical drive, the internet was eating everything. The internet is a massive, global infrastructure project that was clearly not going to slow down. People were already downloading software, movies and music, and loved the ease of that experience. The writing was on the wall, they just jumped earlier.

So what's the up and coming thing that's just about to take over audio transmission, the "internet" that ate physical disk distribution? Is it Bluetooth?

> Bluetooth audio works perfectly fine, and it's how I play music on my headphones...

sample size of one. I can match that. I never use bluetooth and actively avoid it due to it's poor quality, connection fragility, and the time it takes to set up (repeatedly). Basically, the UX of bluetooth is terrible. The UX of a simple, universal, cheap, dependable, quick, robust and high fidelity cable and connector is great.

Whatever tech that will eventually replace the 3.5mm jack isn't here yet.

Yes, in hindsight both of the changes were inevitable. But plenty of people still complained about it. I see the dropping of the analog headphone jack the same way. The move to wireless is inevitable even if a few people still have problems with it it today. The adoption of Bluetooth music streaming in vehicles shows that Bluetooth audio can work perfectly fine. If you had connection and quality issues at some point, I urge you to try again with newer hardware.

Exactly. Add me, a UX driven person, to your list of 1 who avoids Bluetooth (using latest hardware). I don't want another device to have to charge either.

That's the thing, it doesn't feel premature, it just feels ridiculous.

When Apple ditched optical discs, it was because networks did it better. Maybe people were upset because not everything was covered yet, but that was clearly where it was going.

What's the equivalent for the headphone jack? There's no better place where things are heading. It's not obsolete or even moving towards eventually becoming obsolete.

The replacement is Bluetooth audio. This is definitely where things are heading even if not everyone sees it yet. And it's definitely a better place. If you can stream audio from the Internet to your phone there is no reason you can't stream audio from your phone to a speaker or headset.

> The replacement is Bluetooth audio.

You're assuming that the only source of audio is your smartphone

And not taking into account the quality of the audio and the fact that you need another device that must be charged

If the rumor was that Apple plans to remove the headphone jack in favor of Bluetooth, then I might buy this.

But that's not the rumor. Everybody is saying that Apple plans to remove the headphone jack and replace it with audio through the Lightning port. If the long-term goal is to make everything wireless, why would they do this?

Even with Bluetooth as the replacement, the advantages are pretty small. Again, both floppy disks and optical discs were starting to become severely limited when Apple replaced them, and the trend was clearly that they would become more so. A floppy drive today would be almost completely useless even if media were plentiful and every computer could be counted on to have one, because it can't store enough. Optical discs are better but still heading that way. The headphone jack is as useful as it ever was and will be just as useful in 20 years as it is today.

the analogy is baloney. floppy drives didn't get removed from hardware just because they were "old" or "made the computer fat," ... floppy drives were removed from computers because their entire raison d'etre was becoming more rare - the Floppy Disk. It was actively being replaced by CDs because it wasn't sufficient as a storage medium any more.

So for the analogy to make sense, 3.5mm plugs would have to be dying, actively and ubiquitously being replaced by ... whatever. Lightning? USB-C? But they're not. The 3.5mm jack and headphones in particular are probably more common now than ever before.

I personally would love to see the headphone jack become more useful in lots of different ways. Square managed to make a CC reader that plugged into the 3.5mm jack. Impressive, using it as a data port for simple data. Can we do more of that? What if a 3.5mm cable was a way for your phone to connect to various IoT devices to pass the basic setup data like your wifi SSID and password instead of this goofy process of broadcasting it's own wifi network that you have to connect to. Any app can push signals out the headphone port, and it works the same across iOS and Android. Maybe I'm an idiot and that'd never work but the point is: 3.5mm isn't dead. It's very much alive and kicking.

Drifting off topic a bit, but Electric Imp has an interesting approach to the configuration problem. Their devices have a light sensor, and the phone app sends the SSID/password by flashing the screen. You hold the phone to the sensor for a few seconds and then it's all programmed.

> What if a 3.5mm cable was a way for your phone to connect to various IoT devices to pass the basic setup data like your wifi SSID and password instead of this goofy process of broadcasting it's own wifi network that you have to connect to.

For what it's worth, the latest Canary (https://canary.is/) is configured via a 3.5mm cable connected to your phone, and the configuration process is relatively smooth compared to the goofy ad-hoc WiFi network approach.

Well hey, I guess I'm not crazy after all. :)

I have less of an issue with the analog headphone port being gone and more with it being replaced by a proprietary/closed format that nobody else but Apple uses.

Maybe they will come to their senses and replace the lightning port with USB-C

I'm waiting for Bluetooth headphones to become more commonplace and affordable. I break so many headsets through accidents so much I rather just go to the dollar store and buy a couple of headphones for $1 and use those whenever I just need to hear something privately, otherwise I could care less for headphones.

I've got a cheap Nokia Bluetooth headset with a 3.5mm port and my own earphones. Works great. Used to have the Sony Ericsson MW600 (RIP).

Apple's intention is to go all wireless, audio included. The lightning connector earbud is a stop gap between now and the future when wireless audio is decent. John Gruber actually mentions that.

one more damn thing to charge

Where? The only mention of "wireless" is a brief acknowledgement that wireless audio sucks and Apple will ship wired headphones.

"Wireless sucks" - That's the hint. And once the 3.5mm jack is removed, you think Apple would reintroduce it again?

How does any of that imply that lightning earbuds are just a stopgap?

The answer is only a google search away - I follow quite a few Apple news sites. All these news tidbits in the past few months are increasingly clear once you connect all the dots. So no, I don't have a quote for you if you that's what you are looking for. The statement was my original idea crystalized from all the sources.

PS: you were the one who down voted me right?

You said that Gruber mentioned it. If this is your own conclusion based on other materials then fine, but that's a different thing.

As for downvoting, no, I only downvote people who are blatantly awful (insulting, sexist, whatever), and in any case HN doesn't let you downvote replies to your own comments.

Ok good to know! The "mentioned" was really referring to the "Wireless audio currently sucks" sentiment. But it will get better.

All the better for Apple to make $30 from + licensing others to do so. As noted above the Floppy disk was removed from Macs because no one was using them and they were dying. It was simpler to just not have them and little was missed. Removing the 3.5mm jack is purely to offset their declining sales...

A false analogy - we weren't using floppies with multiple different kinds of devices. If non-standard headphone connections were clearly better, we'd already have lots of them in the wild, and you could neglect that old-fashioned 3.5mm hole in your smartphone. But consumers aren't clamoring for that, as they'd like to be able to use the headphones they already have with their phones, laptops, and other audio devices.

> A false analogy - we weren't using floppies with multiple different kinds of devices.

General purpose computers, digital cameras, electronic (musical) keyboards and other instruments, ...

Fair, though most of "us" weren't, honestly.

3.5mm headphone jacks are the old USB flash drives

Nonstandard headset connectors were prevalent 15 years ago on feature phones and the Game Boy Advance SP, but no one liked them back then either. I just threw out a drawer full of old proprietary cables and accessories from back then, in fact. One of the reasons I bought an iPhone in 2009 was that Apple wasn't actively trying to be hostile to anyone who might want to use it to listen to music like the HTC and LG phones of the time.

Coincidentally, the headphone jack on my Lenovo laptop just broke last week, and it's been a huge pain. I didn't realize how much I depended on it. I wear ear buds to listen to music during work. I have bluetooth earbuds, but they are bulky and it's a pain to have to re-pair them, re-charge them, etc., and bluetooth even stopped working on my laptop once until I rebooted. I have a USB headset I usually just use for videoconferencing or recording videos, but it's even bulkier and awkward to wear for a long time.

So I got a USB to stereo adapter for a few bucks, but I find that the audio levels are not as smooth as with the regular headphone jack. The sound goes from a little too loud to virtually silent with just one tick of the volume control.

I've already been researching new laptops even though I wasn't expecting to get a new one until later this year, all because of a simple little headphone jack breaking. The only other alternative I guess is to use my phone for listening to music instead.

If you want a good quality but cheap USB soundcard, with very smooth audio levels, try this. I've been using one for almost two years now.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00SUUVCXQ/

Is this a post about the merits of the 3.5 mm audio jack and the pitfalls of a digital audio jack or vice versa? It kind of seems like you're saying "technology sucks when it breaks and nothing works perfectly" (bluetooth failed, USB audio is choppy, 3.5 mm jack is susceptible to breaking and there is only the 1 on your laptop.)

So now audio will be controlled by a company or copyrighted/patented protocol. This is really what they are after. If they could charge for the light streaming from your screen, they would. I can see Apple offering a dongle to let you plug in a normal headset and charging $30 for it. More crap to carry, more refuse in the landfills. If Apple really cared about the environment they would keep the audio jack in place. It's allows something with an earphone with 3 wires to plug in that gives awesome sound quality out (usually). How can you get more simple and elegant than that?

Practically no one will buy such a dongle out of belief that the audio quality of Lightning port earbuds is so vastly superior. Such is the Apple loyalist (once upon a time I was one of them). ;-)

Do Apple fans actually believe that Apple earbuds are high quality? I recall even a top Apple exec once admitted at a public event that the best thing they could say about their earbuds was that they were the highest quality ones in the iPhone box.

No, you are correct, I think it's accepted in general that earbuds are a compromise. Still, IMHO, customers will assume the audio quality from the lightning port is superior to the old analog jack.

I see, and I totally agree with that. I'm sure that "better audio quality" will be a selling point if they do this, and most people will believe it. It might even be true, to a small extent, although the connector is clearly not the limiting factor for Apple earbud quality.

Bluetooth headsets?

What annoys me about this is that now one won't be able to have headphones AND a portable battery plugged in. With a macbook and USB-C you might carry a small USB hub with you, but you won't use a USB hub on a phone so you have have headphones and a battery. Unless the headphone battery has two genders and lets you daisy chain...

Sure you can, just buy a new Apple-specific adapter for $30!

Isn't USB-C daisy-chainable? Seems like the onus is on the portable battery to have a USB-C port itself for this.

In theory, all USB is daisy-chainable. The practice is where the theory crashes.

Floppies lost to USB flash for the same reasons core memory lost to hard drives, new better, widely adopted, denser storage. No such relationship exists between current head phones and Lightning head phones. In fact, Lightning is not an industry standard, but analog cabling is. Lightning cables are less durable and not repairable. Analog cables do come in varying quality but can be repaired easily. One is patent encumbered and the other is not.

Why would I buy expensive Lightning noise cancelling headphone when I can only use it with one manufactures equipment? It really makes zero sense.

"Should the analog headphone jack remain on our devices forever? If you think so, you can stop reading."

Better remove our legacy analog hearing while we're at it...

It's a bit hard to have a reasonable discussion about this without knowing the features of what it's being replaced with. Lightning connector, sure, but what does that get me? Until we get an answer to that I don't really know what to be upset about.

For the sake of argument, maybe assume the best case scenario of analog output through a very simple Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter.

That would be annoying, but maybe not the dealbreaker it could be if Lightning is only capable of digital output.

Right now, Lightning is only capable of digital audio

If Apple felt there was utility in keeping the DAC in the phone, they could easily add analog capability to Lightning and say that their new headphones require iPhone 7. They might go digital for other reasons, of course.

What? The DAC can't be pulled of from the phone. It is needed for the speaker

Good point, although it could become a lower-quality mono DAC in a Brave New Digital Headphones World.

My new laptop has, for no good reason other than thinness, decided to be without an Ethernet port. To compensate it came with a USB Type C Ethernet adapter, about the size of a zippo lighter.

In what world does it make sense to shave a millimeter off the device itself, but then require me to be dragging half a dozen adapters around?

I'm already packing AC adapter, HDMI->VGA adapter, USB hub and this new Ethernet adapter everywhere I go. I bet these are approachng the same volume as the laptop itself.

A world in which less than 1% of users will ever use that ethernet dongle. If you needed all of those ports, you bought the wrong laptop.

Well, it's a 15" Dell Precision. It's supposed to be a "mobile workstation". If it was a Macbook Air or something, I wouldn't be complaining.

In an ideal world, Apple would come up with a replacement analog jack that's not as deep (less depth translates to more battery space without necessarily making the phone thicker or heavier). The jack is ~50 years old, and there are issues with it, so there's space for improvement. Going all digital sounds like a crappy idea, though. The phones have good DACs, and you generally don't get enough crosstalk inside a phone to justify moving the DAC outside the hardware with a dongle/box.

I've recently switched to bluetooth in ears (Jaybird Freedom) and it significantly improves my "user-experience" of listening to music on the go.

I don't have to carry my phone with me when I go jogging (smartwatch) and even if I did I could put it in any pocket without having to make sure that the cable is long enough.

Pulling the phone out and using it is also more pleasant without a cable. Another example is me being in the kitchen and listening to music with the phone lying around somewhere 5m away from me.

I know it is currently expensive (the Jaybird Freedom cost $200) but I believe that the general direction Apple is taking here is the right one. Prices for such headphones will go down and battery life will improve. (although battery life is already sufficient for me)

Once you can get something comparable for $50 I believe most people will switch.

I had a similar experience for a while, until I put my $100+ Bluetooth headset through the wash. I'll stick with cheap wired earbuds from now on, although I'm sure not everybody is sufficiently absent minded for that to be a risk.

I just realized that if I have lightning-port headphones plugged in I can't be charging my iPhone at the same time. That's actually a very common use case for me, as I always plug it in to stay charged if I'm listening at my desk or in bed.

Well, duh, we replaced the floppy drive because there was a many measurable magnitudes better in every dimension new invention.

It's hilarious how he writes this whole page and misses this crucial bit. He must not have been born when floppy was a thing.

In the meantime, the whole consumer audio space is just so totally and utterly solved. 16 bit, 44kHz (lossless if you must, but frankly MP3 is sufficient) analogue audio is just the ultimate in "good enough" solutions. People peddling 24 bit or 96kHz should be imprisoned for fraud.

> It's hilarious how he writes this whole page and misses this crucial bit.

Oh, no, he didn't miss that, but it is a fact that goes against his reasoning

Shocking, Gruber trying to defend what Apple does.

Since a headphone needs a DAC to transform the digital audio to analog there is no reason to move that DAC from the one already present in the smartphone to the headphone.

And the floppy analogy doesn't hold water, there is no better alternative to the jack

How could the creator of markdown be so... unreasonable!? ;_;

Read the rest of his blog, you'll be even more disappointed.

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