Hacker News Reader

Comment by SCdF | Hacker News Reader

Come on. There are plenty of phones with two speakers and a headphone jack. This is the cry of people who desperately want to love a company unconditionally, even when they screw up.

View on HN

I find it interesting how hard people are trying to find some reason for Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack, aside from the very obvious one: they're going to make a shitload of money by forcing everyone to buy new headphones.

Apple gets royalties from the production of Lightning connectors, which they certainly don't from standard 1/8th-inch TRS jacks. So therefore, they have a very obvious and vested interest in killing off standardized connectors and pushing everything to proprietary connectors, for which they receive royalties, whenever possible.

This is how I see it. There's no mention of Airpods using bluetooth, I'm betting that W1 chip is using a proprietary wireless protocol that keeps other manufacturers from easily/cheaply creating wireless headphones or using these wireless headphones on other devices.

Exactly. And then at some point they'll have the "courage" to drop bluetooth as well.

From the Apple webpage: http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEF2AM/A/airpods

Connections

AirPods: Bluetooth

Apple says they are bluetooth here:

http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MMEF2AM/A/airpods

> aside from the very obvious one: they're going to make a shitload of money by forcing everyone to buy new headphones

You obviously have no idea how Apple works. Apple would never in a million years make a user-hostile decision like this simply to collect royalties. They hold user experience to be sacred, and the fact that they're making this move now means they think that, at least in the long term, this will provide for a better overall user experience, despite the pain of the transition.

Everybody complained when Apple ditched the 30pin connector for Lightning too, basically all of the same arguments here (e.g. "Apple just wants everybody to buy new accessories"), but it turned out to be the right move. Making this argument again over the headphone port just means you don't know Apple and you don't know history.

"You obviously have no idea how Apple works."

I have no comment on how Apple actually works or doesn't work but I admire the marketing acumen of a company when a random internet user can argue so passionately about eternal goodness of the company. Especially a company that's about as secretive in it's actual operations as nation-state level intelligence agencies.

> eternal goodness of the company

Who's talking about goodness? I'm talking about the values that Apple has, and how your claim is a gross violation of those values. I didn't say Apple was "good", however you want to define that. User experience is but one facet of the whole, though it's an important one. And if you're trying to dismiss my arguments on the ground that I'm a "random internet user", then you have to dismiss literally every single comment made in this thread, or any HN thread, including yours.

In fairness, Apple mostly has an image of being "the company random cranky internet commenters accuse of horrible things, which later turns out not to have done the horrible things the cranky internet commenters accused them of".

This is a repetitive cycle. See it happening right in this thread with the "Apple invented a proprietary wireless protocol to DRM all the music, close the analog hole and make you license their tech" stuff. When... it's just Bluetooth. Same thing happened when they put the microphone and volume controls in the iPhone earbuds; people said it was a way to insert a secret "DRM chip" and force only Apple-approved headphones to be able to listen to music.

So if nothing else, the weight of history is against your "just did this to charge people money" argument. Plus, y'know, the adapter's literally included in the box.

weight of history is against your "just did this to charge people money" argument

I had no comment on any of that. In fact I started my comment with "I have no comment on how Apple actually works or doesn't work"

I genuinely thought this comment was sarcastic at first. I completely agree that Apple is highly focused on user experience and keeping you as a customer long term rather than making a quick buck, but I have to say, I hope I don't come across as this fanatical when talking about Apple with my friends. :p

> Apple would never in a million years make a user-hostile decision like this simply to collect royalties

Why doesn't they Macbook ship with the dongle to connect it to HDMI screens and regular USB then? Why does that dongle cost almost $100?

Tim Cook's Apple is VERY MUCH in the business of lopping things off to just sell you an addon later.

No, the MacBook did not switch to a single USB-C port simply to sell dongles. That really makes no sense at all. Dongles are not a major revenue source for Apple. And Apple's never shipped HDMI adaptors with their products, or DVI adaptors, or anything like that. Most people don't need them. And the new USB-C Macbook isn't the first computer that would need an HDMI dongle; I think the Mac Mini is the only computer Apple has shipped with an HDMI port in a long time. It seems kind of absurd here that you're claiming the move to USB-C is somehow Tim Cook being greedy, even though one of the most common complaints about Apple is how they're using Lightning instead of USB-C. Either USB-C is a good idea or it's a bad one, you can't have it both ways. And if they didn't remove ports from the MacBook, it would still have Mini DisplayPort rather than HDMI.

Also, FWIW, I just checked Monoprice and the HDMI dongle costs $35. And Apple's own dongle (which is $79) includes more than just HDMI (it has a USB port as well, and a USB-C charging port).

> I think the Mac Mini is the only computer Apple has shipped with an HDMI port in a long time.

The Macbook Pro ships with one…

Oh shit, you're right. I never look at that side of my MBP, I totally thought they'd moved to Thunderbolt-only. I'm actually really surprised it still has HDMI.

Still, I think the last non-USB-C Macbook didn't have HDMI either.

So including the $9 adapter in the box is just a token gesture so they can pretend to care about legacy things?

I dunno - if they were really in this for making you buy new headphones, they'd not bundle the adapter, like they did in the past when they switched from 30-pin to lightening.

They included that adapter this year but is it going to be there next year? Is the next phone going to have the Lightning wired headphone, too? Apple's like the empire. They _will_ be altering the deal.

And rewrite history to suit their own narrative along the way

I really don't see it. People can still buy Bluetooth headphones from any company and there's no Apple tax on those. I realize a lot of people here have different experiences, but among my friends, virtually everyone has switched to Bluetooth anyway except for listening at home or in the office. Not having a cord is just so freeing.

Not to mention the point made elsewhere in this thread that they bundle the adapter for people who still prefer wired.

I think there's some sample bias going on, because I basically don't know anyone who uses wireless headphones, except for Bluetooth earpieces that are increasingly socially unacceptable for use anywhere other than in a car. Gym? Cheap wired headphones. Work? Good wired headphones (or headset). Etc.

I even own a pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones (nice onces, Sony's) but it's a pain in the ass to keep them charged and deal with pairing/unpairing them to various devices, or connecting to the wrong device when I want to use them with something else, or get them to work with various laptops' shitty Bluetooth drivers, when I can just use a pair of decent wired headphones and stick them into the ubiquitous 1/8" jack and move on with my life.

The latter set of annoyances are of course what Apple are intending to solve with the W1/AirPods -- intelligent switching between all iCloud devices without re-pairing.

I personally favor Bluetooth headphones even with all the annoyance because as bad as it is, cords are even worse.

For those who feel differently, I suspect they'll either use the bundled earpods or just leave the lightning adapter attached to their best pair of headphones and move on with their lives. Maybe I'm wrong and everyone except me is rotating five pairs of headphones between six different devices on a regular basis, but it seems like just another case of piling on to resist change.

They moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone for a reason (I'm not sure offhand what the specific reason was, but there was one). They can't just move it back to the top.

> This is the cry of people who desperately want to love a company unconditionally

Insulting people is not how you win arguments.

Edit: Seriously guys, what's with the downvotes? I feel like I'm being brigaded at this point.

> They moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone for a reason

I seem to recall hearing that was because people most often carry their phones upside-down in their pockets, in order more quickly to bring them up to viewing position when retrieving them. (Think about it: Your hand goes fingers-down into your pocket, but viewing position has the top of the phone alongside your fingertips, so if you pocket your phone upside-down, you don't have to rotate it around the Z axis to get it into position before you can use it.)

No idea whether that's actually the case, or whether instead it was something to do with easier component placement or the like. But as far as just-so stories go, it's not a bad one.

A lot of early android phones had this, it was much nicer. If your holding the phone in your hand you just put your arm down and slide it in your pocket. With the headphone jack on top you have to turn the phone around every time you put it in/take it out.

Of course apple and their legion will claim it as an innovation.

It is much nicer. That may be why Apple copied it, which is something I've observed them to do on a fairly regular basis. I really appreciate the efforts of Android users in vetting stuff like that; it's a lot nicer as an iPhone owner not to have to worry quite so much about new ideas turning out bad, because a lot of the time they've been well put through their paces before Apple takes a look at them.

Do we really need that last sentence? Is this perhaps not already divisive enough a subject for anyone?

They moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone because most people put their phone in their pocket upside down, so it's a more natural place to put it.

I never heard of people putting their phones in their pockets upside down until a few weeks ago. I have always put it right side up and it is more naturally of a movement to pull it out of my pocket that way.

I knew one person who carried his phone in his pocket right-side up. When the switch happened, he was surprised to learn everyone else stores it upside down.

Then he realized why they do it, and now I know zero people who store it right-side up.

> it is more naturally of a movement to pull it out of my pocket that way.

How is that more natural than simply landing your hand on the phone in the position that it will be holding it? I'm having trouble seeing this as a matter of opinion.

1.) Start with the phone in your left pocket with the screen facing outwards.

2.) Reach into your pocket with your left hand.

3.) Grab the phone by edges near the top between your thumb and middle finger.

4.) Lift upward while rotating your wrist counter-clockwise. The phone should swivel between your two fingers while coming to rest right side up in the palm of your hand.

It is an entirely fluid motion that does not require flipping the phone over since pulling it out upside down results in the screen facing away into the palm of your hand.

Carrying your phone in your pocket with the screen facing outwards seems like asking for a broken screen. I, and I suspect a great number of others, pocket my phone with the screen in towards my leg and the phone upside down. As soon as I put my hand in my pocket, the phone is in my hand in the same orientation as if I were holding and using it.

> They can't just move it back to the top.

Why not? They did just moved it to the bottom just as frivolously.

Frivolously? Just because you don't know why they made a change doesn't make it frivolous. Other people have said it's because people tend to store their phones in their pocket upside-down (I know I do) and so it's nicer that way. This may be the reason, or they may have wanted to put other stuff at the top of the phone and the headphone jack was in the way. If it was just because of the phone being upside-down in your pocket, they've still put other stuff where the jack was (there's no empty space in the phone), and whatever they put there may or may not be able to be relocated (for example, it's possible that the extra space there is used for camera-related hardware).

My point was you acted like moving it down there was easy but moving it back was impossible.

They're both the same level of difficulty.

Only if nothing's changed in the meantime, which certainly isn't the case.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com