Courage

The last sentence summed it up.

"It’s not a conspiracy theory, it’s a business plan."

Apple has a habit of killing tech they can't control.

Headphone jack is eliminated so they can license and control what talks to the phone.

Safari is intentionally the worst browser for HTML5 so that people don't go around the app store.

Flash is banned from browsers because then you have to go thru the app store and give them your 30%.

You have to have a Mac to write apps for iOS or Macs, why because it increases their sales.

So drink the cool aid if you must, but recognize it as great business plan that encourages you to buy only apple licensed products

I'll agree the courage statement was a bit silly and me laugh when I watched it go down. I for one am totally ok with the headphone jack going away. I have wireless headphones and I have wired headphones I'll make it work. More often than not the wired headphones become the hassle, whether it's tangled cords or just keeping them out of the way. I'm sure there are plenty of people who use wired headphones every day but there are also plenty of people who just have this unused hole in their phone. The earpods look great but are a bit steep for me. The way they pair looks great. It's definitely an Apple product, looks nice and is convenient (and perhaps a bit pricey but not ludicrously so). Also the battery life is great (when compared to similar independent wireless earbuds) and that case is an awesome way to charge/not lose them.

Apple it obviously trying to go to wireless everything and removing cables. Now they need to make wireless charging happen. If I could set my phone down on my desk and charge it and never again have to plug something in again, that would be great.

The thing is, had Apple announced the exact same thing but replaced the Lightning-connector with USB Type C, everything would have been sort-of-okay. Yeah, losing legacy support sucks but there's at least a decent argument to be made for the advantages of going digital audio only [1]. More importantly, USB is also an open, well-known standard that everyone can develop for, whilst the Type C connector covers all technical and functional requirements Apple has for the connection [2]. Would it have been "courageous" to take this step, cutting out legacy and receiving all the criticism for cutting out our favourite audio connection? I guess you could call it that, it's a big step to take.

But Apple didn't. They announced it with their own propietary standard that you have to pay them money for, and doesn't work on any other manufacturer. They are creating their own little bubble of peripherals because they have the market power to do so. It's pure douchebaggery, and them calling that courage is supreme arrogance.

[1]: That is in fact the Apple tried to make to distort the discussion. This post is not about this argument though. [2]: Or could even support Apple's additional requirements on the same connector with protocol extensions.

(I made this point in the other iPhone thread too, sorry for reiterating it.)

The problem with the disappearing 3.5mm jack is, as usual, a problem that only a few geeks like us care about.

Taking myself as an example: I can't use the Apple earbuds, they immediately fall out of my ears. Which is why I use either large over-ear headphones (MDR7506), large over-ear noise-cancelling headphones (BOSE) for work in noisy places, or in-ear headphones that stay put even when running (Sol Republic Relays). And I want to have the flexibility of using any of those.

Every wireless option I've ever tried sucked badly. Some really badly. In various interesting ways.

But "most people" (I love that phrase) won't care. It seems the included apple earbuds are good enough for almost everyone.

It was courageous to make a leap of faith and all that but not so courageous when it is at 160$. It's just ridiculous. Waiting for Xiaomi to show their courage at 20$

That moment was absolutely the ultimate in Apple Reality Distortion Field in recent years, but this article is also over the top hyperbole.

The reality is the audio jack did take a significant amount of internal volume on the phone, and there are advantages to using wireless headphones. In a few years I won't be surprised if most Android phones also forego the audio jack.

If you really think it was a huge mistake for Apple to do this, short Apple stock. The market will reflect it. Otherwise, it may be annoying but it was probably the right thing to do in the long term and you're just repeating the same silliness of the people who cried about the lack of floppy drive on the iMac or the lack of ethernet port on the MacBook Air.

I don't get this quote

"They’re able to do this because no one can do anything about it. "

You can not buy a phone without a headphone port. I don't see what a big deal this is. Is there another situation besides two that I'm missing?

1. Apple is right. There is a big advantage (or at least no/inconsequential downasides) to replacing the 3.5mm audio jack. In a year or two everyone has forgotten about this and people are wondering when 3.5mm is going to finally die.

2. Apple is wrong. The 3.5mm jack shows back up on iphone 8,9,10 or however long it takes them to realize they were wrong. In the meantime they lose market share over this and even after the hoopla has died down people are still speaking with the wallets by not buying an iphone.

I'm amazed at the rage around this, a good friend of mine is about as anti Apple as the come and back in July he asked what I, a Mac and iPhone user, thought of them removing the headphone socket in the then rumoured 7. I said I was, and still am, largely indifferent.

He on the other hand was full of praise for Apple, he said he can't remember the last time he or his wife plugged head phones in to their phones and with bluetooth headphones being so cheap now (he as some of the MPow £20 ones) there is no reason to keep a piece of legacy equipment around for nostalgia purposes.

I was amazed given his usually anti Apple stance, but then I remembered that while he is anti Apple he is very pro progress, any kind of progress and technology change. Try something, see if it works and then move forward or try something else.

The phone market has become relatively stale, this is at least a company attempting (along with Motorola let's not forget) something radical. I didn't think it was radical but based on the online eruption it clearly is, people seem to have forgotten that there's a lot that's not great about 3.5 headphones that, I think, equally balances out the issues with wireless only.

If you don't like it that much then just don't buy the phone, if enough people do that then Apple will respond to market forces and backtrack. No one is forcing you to buy an iPhone.

i think it was more like convenience. there was another article where schiller talks about having to remove the jack so that they could get the components to fit or something, specifically the haptic engine and also maintain water resistance.

i don't want to be making comparisons to steve jobs (okay, i actually am haha), but i feel like he would never let this fly and just tell them to figure out how to get all the components to fit or don't do it at all.

i feel like it was a lazy engineering decision to do it this way. one where the solution is based on convenience of design rather than what is best for the users.

Is Bluetooth less open to innovate on than the 3.5mm jack? I agree that it's important to be able to create hardware add-ons "without Apple's permission", but wouldn't most of those use cases just use Bluetooth today?

Losing a 3.5mm jack is not just an audio issue - this port is also the simplest way to make phone talk to external hardware add-ons.

This jack-off move by Apple could perhaps be justified as courage by Apple if they were moving to a newer standard - like USB C.

Instead they moved to a proprietary port that they only partially support. It'll be great to be denied the option of using the same non-wireless headphones on my iPhone as on my Macbook (unless they also implement Lightning ports on the Macbooks, which would be horribly confusing).

Thanks Apple!

Can you spot the mistaken assumption?

It's right here: "Data doesn’t need to go to the headphones, nor do the headphones need to send data back. Digital-to-analog conversion has to be done eventually, because speakers don’t produce sound waves with 1s and 0s."

True for speakers, but headphones are often more than dumb speakers at this point. They're active noise cancelling devices. They're a component of immersive video (why do people buy 5.1 surround systems when they could just wear headphones?).

Or even if you have the standard earphones from the box: do you ever pause the sound, skip a track, or answer a call using the buttons on the cable? If so, you're sending data back to the phone. Surprise!

What other forms of interactivity could we open up if we broke the "one-way, stereo audio only" assumption explicitly?

Don't get me wrong - my preferred earphone vendor doesn't even have Bluetooth support yet and I don't really want to buy another pair of custom Etymotics. But despite that, I recognize there are real experience-driven reasons to do this.

Wasn't one reason for losing the headphone jack to help further waterproof the iPhone? That said, for even the best current bluetooth headphones, the sound quality isn't that great. Does the bluetooth standard need an update in that department, because there's a large difference in sound between bluetooth mode and being plugged in for these headphones?

I think there is some truth to the "we needed to make space for the other changes we wanted to make" argument, but I think that applies even more so to the next iPhone (8?). I think Apple made the 7 as good as they could, but in some sense it's the sacrificial lamb for what they want to do next.

I'm surprised at how in the minority I seem to be, but I felt that this was generally a step in the right direction. I couldn't help but think back about the hundreds of memes we've seen about "tangled earphone cords" over the past several years, or how many times I myself struggled with wires of my headphones. When it comes to using the "headphone jack" for what it was initially intended to do, I can't help but think it is pretty clear that the right way to go about this is wireless.

Some of the comments against it seem to mirror the comments about the removal of a physical keyboard when the initial iPhone came out -- undeniably true, but really missing what the future will inevitably look like.

Just think about the prototypical Apple-system user, with his Macbook, iPhone, and Apple Watch. With bluetooth earbuds, he could, at least in theory, seamlessly transition from listening to any of his devices, without having to "plug" anything in anywhere. That's an advantage. That's what you'd expect "the future" to be like. We're getting rid of cords everywhere, I just don't understand why the "headphone" is now somehow special!

There is the other argument, which I find a lot stronger but still ultimately not really compelling, and that is that by getting rid of the 3.5mm jack Apple removes the ability for people to plug into their phone without the licensing fee for their technology. But is there anything specific to the 3.5mm that makes some tech possible and others not? I don't think so. Is it pretty convenient? Undoubtedly. But, again, I can't think of how Bluetooth couldn't just as easily transfer that kind of data. And, with the added bonus that now you aren't limited to ONE such device. Will it be more inconvenient for 3rd party manufacturers at first? For sure. But I don't see how this move inherently PREVENTS equipment from being used on the phone. It certainly does so in its present iteration, but in the long term, why couldn't manufacturers adapt to using wireless communication?

Make no mistake, Apple is pushing the boat out on this. But they single-handedly have the market power to do this kind of thing. When they got rid of the keyboard, everyone also came out and said it'd be terrible for the enterprise. But, by being lights-out better than the competition and anticipating a trend, they set the tone for what smartphones would look like ever since. Haven't heard an argument cogently explaining why we shouldn't simply expect the exact same thing this time around.

It was necessary to remove the jack to be sure to sell the new headset. I wonder if it will be available just one, as spare :-)

It's all about removing connection ports, on the iphone and on the mac to be sure that you will be using just something that they can control.

Does anyone know how Lightning headphones work? Is there an analogue line in there (I think I read somewhere that pins can switch modes?) so they're just traditional passive headphones with a different plug?

Or is there a DAC in the wired headphones?

I've been using bluetooth enabled hearing aids since the beginning of the year and it has been a great experience being able to play music straight into my ears without having to take earphones out my pocket and disentangle them.

The difference is normal people won't keep them on when they're not listening to music, but that's what Apple wants. This is an opportunity to place their hardware in the next step for computer interaction which is going to be conversational assistants (voice and audio). This would give them the opportunity to be always listening and collecting more information about what surrounds you.

I don't have a problem with them removing the headphone jack. I do think some aspects of Apple's messaging is tone deaf. Their "affordable" JBL bluetooth headphones they mentioned during the presentation? $200. That's real money for a huge portion of their customer base.

But I do think they removed it to allow the iPhone 8 to have space for dual cameras, and wireless charging (they said they see the future as wireless) and I'm fine with that.

Phones are already so thin, it's getting crazy. Soon we'll be talking about phone-cuts (like a paper cut) and phone-cut-gate will be the story. Seriously, I'd be fine with a phone that is almost 2cm thick for great battery life.

I don't understand why they didn't simply say that it's about better sound quality than analog can provide. They could have chosen a better word to focus on: Fidelity. "Apple customers deserve better than the same analog headphones they've been listening to since the beginning of music".

They could have at least swayed the Apple loyal with that position - the thought would have been that they're getting something better than everyone else has. At the very least there wouldn't be justifiable headlines mocking what they said.

Yeah sure. money does not come into the equation at all

How long, do we suppose, before the government steps in and orders that all phones support the 3.5mm jack? I don't think it'll be long... Well, because government

It comes down to two words: Horse manure. Color me a coward.

Can we just take a moment and be happy about the fact that we're on the edge of an era where every smartphone charger will work with every phone?

Edit: Google is leading me to believe this might not actually be the case? Are they just rebranding USB-C as "Lightning", or is Apple seriously going with another proprietary standard?