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Comment by rosser | Hacker News Reader

This kind of apologist attitude, just like everyone throwing money at them when they unilaterally took away the headphone jack, tells Apple they can disappoint and dictate to their customers as much as they want, and will still make money hand over fist for it.

Is that really what you want?

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> tells Apple they can disappoint and dictate to their customers

More correctly, tells Apple that they can disappoint and dictate to some of their customers.

Whether it's a problem for Apple is, of course, dependent on whether it disappoints enough customers sufficiently.

My sense is that they will continue to appeal to a large number of people who want highly attractive, easy to use, reasonably capable, reasonably portable kit. They will also continue to attract those who wish to service said people.

What they'll fail to do is continue to service the more niche clientele who traditionally swore by Apple e.g. non-Apple ecosystem devs and heavy duty media makers.

I'm not hugely happy about this trend as I'm sort of in one of these niches. I'd quite like to have access to a big, expandable chunk of kit that has Apple's traditional build quality.

But I'm still likely to upgrade to a 7 when my contract renews as I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones. I mean, I use my phone for appy things and music when I'm travelling. In that regard I'm really not niche at all.

I use my phone as my primary music player, too — both at home and when traveling. I have a nice (Mass Fidelity Core) Bluetooth speaker for home, but for travel, I dropped a couple bills on a nice pair of wired noise-isolating earbuds (B&W C5 S2), and having that purchase unilaterally obviated remains a sore spot for me.

Yes, I could drop another $40 to get that functionality back, but then I sacrifice simultaneous charging. It's hard not to see this as being pushed around by a bully who's after your lunch money (for arbitrarily large values of "lunch money") sometimes.

I'll stick with a 6S for as long as I can, and hopefully this situation will be resolved somehow before then. Maybe they'll release another SE-like device that has a physical headphone jack again, but I'm not holding my breath.

It seems so. Apple gets away with stuff other companies would never be able to.

Why not introducing USB-C on the iPhone 7 and makes it easy for the new MBP crowd? It seems the 2 teams didn't talk. Samsung could pull off the same stunt.

All I see is people attacking the MBP to defend Microsoft outdated (28nm GPU, old ports) garbage

Then you aren't looking very hard. Yes, maybe that's a (small) part of it (though your "28nm gpu" hyperbole really does detract from your point), but it's nowhere near all of it.

It is, don't try to hide it. Apple haters.

Dude, I'm typing this on my fifth Apple computer, am currently on my ... sixth, I think, iPhone, and second iPad. Don't make assumptions.

Criticism isn't hate. Blind loyalty isn't love.

Same old story, your actions speak louder.

What actions? Voicing my displeasure at the actions of a company to which I've given as much money as I have?

Please, be specific.

What I want is a company willing to piss off a few users by going with the times.

Ever since my first computer 35 years ago, I've dreamed of the day when we could get rid of all these individual ports and finally have the One True Connector.

Yeah, the transition period sucks. Yeah, you'll have to buy $25 dongles. So what? There's a usb-c dongle that has HDMI, SD card reader, and 4 usb 3 type A ports on it for $30. Done. Problem solved. Stop bitching.

I still have old style keyboard to ps/2 adapters, ps/2 to usb adapters, composite to VGA adapters, VGA to DVI adapters, DVI to HDMI adapters, HDMI to thunderbolt adapters, serial and parallel to USB adapters, IDE to SATA adapters, SATA to USB adapters... And now I'm glad to see that era is finally at an end.

And in a few years when there are no more peripherals using outdated ports, nobody will even remember this time, or your griping.

I'm not bitching about USB-C. I'm actually kinda with you on that one, so please try not to put words in my mouth.

But the headphone jack? No, that one is Apple pushing people around. It's not to make the phone "thinner" because that fugly lens protrusion is hideous, and the 7 is exactly as thick as the 6S, anyway. It's not to make the phone "waterproof"; $.00000002/phone worth of silicone around the jack could have done that. As Schiller himself said, it "comes down to one word — courage."

It's purely about seeing if they can dictate to their customers, and people are lining up, all, "Shut up and take my money!"

EDIT: vulgarity.

There have been usb audio adapters on the market for over a decade now. They're available dirt cheap on Amazon, with the newer ones plugging into usb-c. And soon, we'll start seeing headphones that plug directly into the usb port.

Once again, problem solved.

You're talking about the MBP, which still has a 3.5mm audio jack. I'm talking about the iPhone 7, and pretty unambiguously have been all along (if, granted, by no other measure than the sheer fact that the computer still has the port in question).

Can we please at least have the same conversation? Or are you more interested in down-shouting anyone who has this objection with "quit your bitching" and "problem solved"?

I'm talking about ALL electronic devices. Phones, tablets, computers, smoke detectors, you name it.

One connector. Not one connector except for this one I particularly like.

And that's why I say I like a company with the balls to bring in the future, even if it pisses off the minority that clings tenaciously to its old tech.

Headphones are analog devices. Analog devices need an analog input.

Most of the best headphone companies are not experts in digital-analog conversion. Nor should they need to be, because having a separate usb audio interface built into every set of headphones is a stupid idea.

It's fine if all you want to use is the absolute crap Apple earbuds, but for people like me who have spent a lot of money on nice headphones, it's ridiculous. If you want to use quality headphones or IEMs, they don't come with USB connectors, and I pray they never need to because that's a stupid idea.

I don't care either way because I hate Apple's business practices and would never purchase their products, but I think Apple will have to backflip on their "courage" on this one.

Even people drinking the Apple kool-aid seem to be angry about this headscratcher. Maybe the base of people who care about what headphones they use won't be large enough to change their "courageous" minds though. Apple doesn't care about professionals and they don't care about audiophiles. I think especially antagonizing the professional market will hurt them in the medium term.

You don't think USB-C will too, one day be obsolete? Because trust me, it's going to be, and we'll all be having this argument x years down the line again. Manufacturers are going to want to make everyone buy new hardware to use new ports.

Oh, this is an "ideological purity" argument, not a practical one.

Nevermind. Sorry for the noise.

It's very practical: Until usb-c headsets become more mainstream, use a dongle.

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