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Comment by bayindirh | Hacker News Reader

I'm asking this as a thought experiment, nothing personal.

What if, fixing things the way you like breaks these features for someone else?

That's why it's great if these thugs come with an [ON|OFF] switch. Let everyone decide what they use but start with secure as default.

What would having headphone jack break?

Two things:

1. There's really no space for it, if you look at teardowns. So something took its place.

2. It does give better water resistance. Google the water resistance tests between iPhones and others. The difference is night and day in real world performance.

1. No. Teardowns have shown nothing of that sort. It's a marketing decision to push people to buy $170 airpods. In fact, there's a very popular tech blogger's video where he successfully adds in a headphone jack[1] to his iPhone 8.

2. No. Samsung phones are far more water resistant than iPhones are with a jack on it. I would love to see your links to said research.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA

Re: water resistance – Sony is pretty good there too, but last time I plunged my phone, the headphone jack itself was acting up until it had dried out. I guess there's no way around that.

Edit: Oh, and when I broke my older model with saltwater, they replaced it. Twice.

> It's a marketing decision to push people to buy $170 airpods.

Earbuds that work with the iPhone come in the box (and prior to the just announced models even an adapter was included). I'm not sure how lack of a jack pushes someone to buy AirPods. Maybe it makes them think about buying bluetooth headphones over wired if they were already thinking about third party headphones? Maybe.

Also while you may disagree about the 'barometric vent', it was put in the space that the headphone jack would have taken.

As pictured above, you can see a piece of plastic sits behind the ingress protection (waterproofing!), right where the headphone jack would have been. And (update!) according to Apple it's a "barometric vent." Apparently adding all the waterproofing to the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus meant that it was more of a sealed box, and so to be able to have an accurate and working barometer, Apple used that space. The barometer is the thing that allows a phone to measure altitude, and Apple points out that on the iPhone 7 it can measure even minor changes like climbing a flight of stairs.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/9/16/12941040/iphone-7-teardow...

I would rather have a headphone jack than a barometer.

You may disagree how the space was used, but I wanted to point out that it was in fact used. The poster I responded to said tear downs showed it not used. Even the video given as evidence showed the guy taking out the vent as the first step.

Wires are so last century. Bluetooth headphones have been available for at least 20 years. (I had a pair for my SonyEricsson m600c, and I'm not an early adopter.)

Knowing my altitude is something I need on at least a weekly basis. I'm OK with losing a port I haven't used in a couple of decades.

I don't want to have to charge my headphones or have them run out of battery.

And that's fine, but if you do anything active while wearing headphones, wireless is so much better. Even my cheap bluetooth headphones last 10 hours on a short charge (and tell me when they need to be recharged). I couldn't imagine going back to wires at the gym or while doing yard work. I do use a wired pair at my desk, but then why would I plug into my phone?

And AirPods? If you keep them in the case between uses they should always be charged.

Nice, and I'm not OK with that :) I have no intention of having another thing that requires recharging, I've already got my phone. Glad to see different people needing different features from a phone, though.

Out of curiosity, why do you frequently need to know your altitude? I don't think I've ever known my altitude except when driving past those "Welcome to Springdalevale, pop. 781. alt. 2,003 ft" signs you see when driving through small towns in mountainous areas.

> It's a marketing decision to push people to buy $170 airpods

FWIW, my lack of headphone jack had nothing to do with me buying $170 airpods. The product sells itself. It literally felt like something out of the future when it launched. Opening and closing the lid makes me happy on a daily basis. I can't think of a better use for that $170. It's a product that is pure joy to use, and completely eliminates one of the biggest annoyance factor in my daily life: tangled headphones, and worse, that feeling on your ears when you accidentally tug earbuds that are in your ear. So frustrating!

They cost $160, but you can use the included headphones without buying anything.

No. Teardowns have shown nothing of that sort. It's a marketing decision to push people to buy $170 airpods. In fact, there's a very popular tech blogger's video where he successfully adds in a headphone jack[1] to his iPhone 8.

How are people being "pushed" to buy Airpods when they can use any Bluetooth headphone, the headphones that come bundled with the phone, or use their own headphones with a $9.99 adapter that they have included up until yesterday?

Simple. There are multiple codecs in Bluetooth headphones, the most used one is proprietary aptX from Qualcomm. Apple has no problems licensing it for Macbooks and iMacs, but for iPhones they chose to reject Qualcomm, do their thing, and use AAC codec, which is supported only by small fraction of wireless headphones. https://darko.audio/2017/12/how-to-enable-aptx-hd-bluetooth-...

So, if your headphones don't support AAC, they will (most likely) fallback to SBC encoding with a subpar sound quality. Don't want a subpar sound quality? Buy Airpods. Or Beats. Or some other overpriced thing that understands AAC. There was some 100 year-old industry standard regarding sound transmission, but apparently it's "obsolete" now, because Apple said so. And bundled headphones don't sound too good.

The removal of headphone jack was purely a political decision to spite Qualcomm and screwing over Apple's customers.

So now it’s a bad thing that Apple chose to support an industry standard (AAC) instead of a proprietary Qualcomm only protocol?

But if you aren’t satisfied with the Apple wired headphones, up until the 12th Apple bundle an adapter, you could choose any wired headphones you wanted. After the 12” it would be $9.99. It’s still not forcing you to buy AirPods.

As far as Bluetooth, there are other non Apple/Beats Bluetooth AAC headphones. Nothing forcing anyone to buy them from Apple.

>> 1. There's really no space for it, if you look at teardowns. So something took its place.

This guy was able to add the headphone jack back into an iPhone (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA). The argument that there is really no space just isn't true.

…by ruining the Taptic Engine, if I recall correctly, or by spending thousands of dollars on getting this to work. It's not like Apple just left a hole in that spot out of spite.

People who have some kind of weird hate for Apple always assume that everything Apple does is out of spite.

Apple very rarely does things out of spite. And usually when that happens, it's a mistake rather than a conscious, malicious decision.

By breaking the seals that make the phone waterproof, removing a housing component, and breaking the Taptic Engine. He did nothing of the sort.

The S9 has a higher waterproof rating than the iPhone X.

It’s most often not features I want change but features I want to have in the first place: Proper PWAs, NFC, wireless charging (things Android has for an while now). Self signed apps.

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