Was ditching the headphone jack a good idea?
soundguys.com
soundguys.com
I get that wires are better for serious musicians. I doubt that the number of people depending on their iPhones for low latency audio work is dwarfed by the number of people doing latency insensitive things like listening to podcasts or iTunes. iPhones are primarily consumer products, so catering to consumer and not professional needs first makes sense.
Heck, the stuff you mentioned appears to be purpose built audio equipment. How would that be affected by the iPhone ditching the headphone jack?
OK, I'll call BS. iPhones and iPads are barely used for live performances. On the Macbook side, other than USB-A, what have they gotten rid of that DJs truly need for performances? We were using USB MIDI interfaces and USB audio interfaces long before the optical audio out went away.
Meanwhile I know a few musicians who haven't touched a Microsoft OS in over 10 years (!). Yeah, Microsoft finally introduced an Audio API in Vista to take on CoreAudio, but that isn't new. Does anybody like Windows 10 given the choice? If anything, I'd expect Microsoft's infamous Update strategy to make anything Windows 10 a non-option for live gigs. About the only argument I can think of is that musicians with less budget might lean more towards a Windows-based DAW.
I’ll repeat since you seem to have reading issues: how many serious musicians were depending on iPhones for live production instead of laptops or purpose built hardware?
We eventually ban accounts that won't stop doing this, and I don't want to ban you, so would appreciate it if you'd post thoughtfully from now on.
I personally think that pulling out a strawman is probably more uncivil than calling it out, but whatever you say.
Please keep the online calling-out/shaming culture well away from this site as well. That's a euphemism for people attacking each other, and we don't want that here.
These aren’t mainstream problems, but are problems nonetheless.
I don’t mind using a dongle, as long as it works. In my case, there is no solution. That Why I still use my old Samsung on the gimbal.
But around the same time iPhones lost their headphone jack, the laptops lost their optical port: https://appleinsider.com/articles/16/11/02/new-macbook-pro-d.... I'm sure it's ultimately because Tim doesn't care as much as Steve about this stuff, but it does feel like something is being lost.
Now it’s more of a status symbol, I’ve got an apple rather than a crappy generic android or think pad.
Both companies stocks soared under each, largely because of their cost cutting / monetization of every aspect of product. However, in both cases, such maneuvers wound up alienating their core supporters and causing strategic brand identity issues.
Eventually the board will have to replace TC (and most of the stagnant C-levels) and hopefully, like Microsoft, this will lead to a revitalization of Apple.
The "XS Max"...really? Sounds like they've outsourced more than just manufacturing to China.
Jobs certainly wasn't afraid of change but he also seemed to have an appreciation for things that just work, and 1/8" audio jacks & cables have a lot of virtues here. Seems likely that's why they stuck around through his tenure even though he could have put them on the chopping block in favor of wireless as easily as he did floppies and serial ports.
And the optical interface... there's a better argument it's recently become obsolete than there is about 1/8" audio, but far from being "just silly" it's a very concrete illustration of integrating a premium feature with niche utility neatly into the overall package. It's one thing that communicated that Apple was interested in using its margins to make sure the product wasn't just an experience, it was a tool that had the right affordances, the right blade on the swiss army knife for one stripe of professional/enthusiast.
Maybe a more common denominator approach will serve Apple equally well. Or maybe things like touch bars ultimately won't as meaningfully differentiate Apple products. Time will tell.
Yes, but for instance NFC, which made pairing within the Apple ecosystem much more attractive, is considerably more recent, as is the processing and charging technology in e.g. the AirPods.
> Jobs certainly wasn't afraid of change but he also seemed to have an appreciation for things that just work
Like 3.5" floppy drives, or CD-ROM drives?
As for the rest of the airpod tech... inductive charging is old, resonant coupling is roughly contemporary with A2DP, and even Qi-branded resonant coupling is 2010ish. Amenable NFC tech or other means of easy pairing are older. If these were somehow a crucial key to The Future™ that Steve Jobs himself had seen in a vision, there's little reason those couldn't have been out sooner (with Apple's resources, possibly before his death). And all this assumes that for some reason the form headphones take with the airpod is for some reason the primary line for marking the obsolescence of 1/8", which isn't a solid assumption because (a) plenty of people are happy for their application with other devices and (b) for some applications, the prevailing bluetooth profiles are still inadequate even assuming universally adopted airpod tech in all bluetooth audio devices and (c) how far away are we from universally adopted airpod tech? and (d) 1/8" would still be closer to just works.
I don't know if you lived through them but they were very unreliable. Floppy drives can suddenly become unusuable for whatever reason, CDs become scratched. Not to mention their limited storage space.
USB was miles better. It was the right call. It's the same with the headphone jack.
It. just. works.
Jobs was CEO when Apple rewrote Final Cut Pro, which was hugely controversial among filmmakers when it was released. He was CEO when they dropped Shake. He was CEO when they decided to drop DVD drives, and decided to forego Blu-Ray drives.
There are a lot of reasons to dislike Apple's decision to drop the headphone jack, but invoking Jobs' dedication to what creators want doesn't pass the laugh test IMO. Apple under Jobs had no problem pissing off creators when Apple thought they were right about a technology change.
So I suppose Apple would just want you to buy an iPad as well! for your music production.
Individual smartphone manufacturers can implement full audio class specifications on top of Android’s default and many do. In fact, Google supports all three of the USB Audio Classes with the Pixel 2. However, this leads consumers not knowing what to expect from their handsets. You can find forums full of users struggling to understand why products don’t work with their specific smartphone, along with headache-inducing workarounds requiring specific apps and USB OTG cables.
https://www.soundguys.com/android-usb-audio-class-3-0-18494/
I do know that from the entire collection of screen sizes and hardware configuration options I'd like to choose my mode of creation, but Apple seems to think that telling me "iPhone is not a creation device" is Just Fine®.
Or maybe ... none of the above? Content creators are probably a tiny fraction of Apple's user base at this point. I think they just don't care.
Just to remind, the original iPhone did not allow user-installable apps at all.
Anecdotally, I know a lot of iPhone owners, and of them only one person uses their phone for music content creation. And my hunch is that one friendship may just be a statistical anomaly compared to the greater population of all iPhone owners.
Power users are the worst customers, I'm surprised more companies don't try to drive them away on purpose.
Apple has an eco system, and gets margin on all of it. Others do not.
No need for 2k pricing.
The problem with catering directly to mass consumers is that the minute some other brand becomes more fashionable, they will jump to it. And if at that point creatives have been sufficiently fed up with the non-utility of Apple products, they might have already abandoned ship, and Apple will not have a code demographic to fall back to (or to keep it fashionable in the first place).
2) Even if that weren't the case, I'm not arguing power- of course a full-fledged computer has more power. It's about convenience. When does inspiration strike? Often when all I have is my phone; I can't walk around with my laptop at the ready.
Obviously I can plan around this, but it’s gone from something I don’t have to think about to something I have to think about.
https://wccftech.com/the-iphone-xs-and-iphone-xs-max-both-ha...
You lose some speed, you gain some convenience.
Check this provider out. No connection to me just a customer.
https://www.brandmotion.com/freedom-charge/wireless-charging...
But I figured I should google first. Does anybody have any firsthand experience with Belkin's adapter that lets you do both simultaneously? Asking since my wife's work phone just got "upgraded" and we found ourselves unable to listen to a podcast on our last road trip.
https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/5/18/17369236/a...
If you're on Android the answer is no, there's no way to do it.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07FCZY1ZB/
I bought this for my essential phone two weeks ago and it does actually work, like reviews state. It's been wonderful to get that jack back.
Bluetooth, as cool as it is, has never been 100% reliable for me. Getting random choppy audio and charging headphone batteries is something I don't want to deal with anymore when I am sitting in bed. I tried it for nine months, and the experience sucked big time.
Bluetooth still works fine in my car, though. So I'll keep using it there.
Whelp, good thing those Android phone makers ensured this existed before pulling the plug ... oh, wait ...
The usb-c connectors with adapters on my macbook are terrible. On lots of adapters a slight push to the side will cause them to lose connection. They work only in stationary use, and some adapters didn't even work there reliably.
It’s about DRM and vendor lock-in, nothing more and nothing less.
https://www.belkin.com/resources/img/overview/f8j198/belkin-...
...but once I got my first pair of Bluetooth headphones and realized I never need to deal with tangled/frayed/broken/caught wires again, I'm never looking back. Charging turned out to be, surprisingly, a non-issue.
I'm totally convinced Bluetooth headphones are the way forwards, and it's silly to have a jack for old tech. And for the small x% of the time or x% of the users where things like latency or line-out are needed... there's a dongle, it works perfectly, and it's fine. And if you need to charge at the same time, get a dongle that charges at the same time.
That's the whole point of dongles -- a smaller/simpler device for 90-99% of people, at the cost of a tiny bit more expensive/complex solution for the remaining 1-10%.
Feels like the right tradeoff to me.
My point is - bluetooth getting better and more accessible - there is a place for compact and cheap headphones that do not require charging. And getting rid od headphone jack takes that away.
Why? You can use your wired headphones just fine...
That being said, there's nothing stopping Apple from making earbuds with a Lightning connector that are USB Audio compatible as well. There's nothing about the "Lightning protocol" that makes this impossible. They just... didn't, with their current Lightning earbuds. Maybe the number of people it would benefit didn't outweigh the cost-savings of eliminating USB signalling components, or added too much audio-latency, or something.
FWIW I've got a USB DAC (an older Dragonfly) which works just fine on MacOS and FreeBSD without any custom drivers.
I do a fair bit of work with Logic and Ableton and consider myself reasonably advanced when it comes to audio production. When I am doing recording or mixing on my Mac, the built-in headphone jack is never used: it’s always a fairly high end audio interface. Since AirPods, I can’t remember the last time I actually plugged into the Mac’s headphone jack: it’s either using “pro” headphones via the audio interface or AirPods.
While I can appreciate the headphone-jack vitriol on iPhone, I can’t help but drawing parallels with the ditching of the DVD drive. At the time that happened, people were losing their minds for a variety of similar reasons. I used to own mixers that only took 1/4inch plugs and remember to have a 1/8inch adaptor was a real pain, however it just became commonplace. My point is that having a lightning to 1/8th adaptor is no bigger of a deal than having a 1/8->1/4 inch adaptor.
I wish they made in ear phones like the shure style ear phones - even Apple’s old design was better for me.
Indeed. Because if your ears aren’t the same shape as the prototypical Apple ears, and you look back, or anywhere else, the earphones fall out.
And remember - other wireless headphone manufacturers are available, Beats do over ear ones that use the same W1 chip (super simple pairing with mac devices).
The AirPods (and Apple's regular earbuds) might not fit every ear, but at least, for the ears they do fit, they fit without a sensation of having something jammed in your ear.
Ideally, Apple (or someone) would just make such non-intrusive earbuds in a few different form-factors, for the three or four most common ear shapes, rather than one-size-fits-all. As it is, though, Apple seems to be the only company making non-intrusive earbuds at all.
Some of us have different considerations and we're sick of being run over by these convenience freaks
To all the downvoters, these are some reasons:
* Low latency applications
* Existing high-end hardware one may own (old Sennheisers mop the floor with a pair of "high end" Beats)
* same port in use everywhere for past 50 years, there are a ridiculous amount of products for it
* Ability to connect a non-USB headphone amp
* Everybody understands it
* No need to charge your headphones(!)
* No stupidly expensive tech to license to make something as simple and dumb as headphones
* No stupidly complicated tech to master to make something as simple and dumb as headphones
* WHY would you put logic and circuitry in a simple mechanical device?? Do manufacturers just LOVE skyrocketing costs?
* Do any of these guys value simplicity in design any more? Or is tech charging full-steam into unnecessary complexity?
And on the subject of wireless standards:
* Other 2.4ghz wireless standards have way better range. (I used to work in a large factory-type building with literally thousands of consumer printers all turned and broadcasting their individualized ad-hoc 802.11 signals. We would have chronic issues with the Wi-Fi (on account of thousands of networks) and I could be on the other side of the building with my headphones and still get clear audio. (Oftentimes it would cut out depending on location but the range I saw was a good 3x what I could get with bluetooth)
* * *
C'mon this is like 100-year-old tech that everyone understands and loves, EXCEPT for the cable. Way for the technology makers to throw out the baby with the bathwater, so that they can sell you their crap all over again.
Download the Bluetooth specification and try to read it.
How is that not "overly complicated" compared to three copper wires?
To give another example, GSM is also a very complicated standard (or more precisely, set of standards) but no one would really advocate for all landlines in buildings to be replaced with non-mobile GSM phones attached to the wall.
VoIP-over-ISDN solutions are far easier to wire a large building for (it's just the existing ethernet drops, coming from the same switches the building already has, now carrying an additional VLAN); it removes many potential sources of interference; it increases voice quality; and it's just plain easier to deliver.
All that despite being, in pretty much every way, "more complicated."
On a more personal note, I have to keep a mental map of which bluetooth devices will work with which bluetooth receivers... the tech is not NEARLY as universal as people like to think it is. Generally speaking, devices of the same vintage (or make) will talk to each other, but it is a crapshoot as to whether my a v2 headset will talk to a v4 USB receiver, or be seen by a new laptop/ipad/whatever.
Also, especially in consumer hi-fi systems, those "three copper wires" found on phono connectors can create ground loops, which is why the favoured standard for audio for most of the reproduction chain isn't the plain-jane analog audio path, but rather either digital, or analog-over-optical, or just analog with opto-isolation (and thus separate reference domains, requiring separately-powered active components); and why the audio production chain uses balanced analog. (And nobody has ever stuck a mini-XLR connector onto a smartphone, so they're not what we're talking about by "losing the audio jack" here. That'd be cool, though.)
To put all that another way: the classical analog-audio model, where you have a single current running all the way from a high-impedance microphone through an amp to a loudspeaker, is just not how modern audio chains look. There's a lot more active components, a lot more digital logic, a lot more circuitry. It's complex, just like Bluetooth is. (Which is not to say Bluetooth is good or better somehow; just that your smartphone's headphone connector doesn't win when measured on the axis of "simplicity of implementing the signalling standard interoperably with all devices the user would expect to plug it into." There are a lot of active components in a smartphone's headphone-jack audio path—just as many as in its Bluetooth audio path!)
Also, regardless of Bluetooth, headphones themselves have been gaining features requiring active components, like noise-cancelling, for years now. For such headphones, making them into wireless Bluetooth headphones comes at a cost of just one additional radio chip, connected to what was already a pretty complex on-board microcontroller. (Hell, many modern headphones have firmware. Wireless or not.)
The favoured standard for professional digital audio these days is some variant of Thunderbolt or USB, with Firewire for the old timers.
At the high end you'll see Audio-over-Ethernet (e.g. Dante), although it's not used much for low-end amateur or semi-pro production because it's not a cheap technology, and it only starts to make sense when you have tens or hundreds of channels going from one place to another - e.g. from a stage box to a front-of-house mixer.
https://www.audinate.com/node/128
Analog copper wire between microphones, guitars, synthesizers, FX pedals, and digital interfaces is still absolutely standard equipment in studios at every level.
Hum is avoided by using balanced three-wire balanced connections, which are almost as old a technology as mini-jacks.
Analog has zero latency compared to digital, it's at least as reliable, and it "just works".
Bluetooth is simply not a professional audio technology. It's not enough of a standard, and not reliable enough even when it's implemented correctly.
No, but they're a problem for consumer hi-fi systems, which use the same 1/8-inch RCA connectors.
> And SPDIF over optical (presumably you mean ADAT) is considered vintage now.
Yes, but it still exists, and you still have to consider its existence in the design of a modern component that could be hooked up as part of an audio reproduction chain, especially a component of a consumer hi-fi system.
My point was that the signalling standard which modern devices connected via a headphone jack have to obey if they want to be able to talk to "anything else that has a headphone jack", is complex, in the same way that e.g. USB-C is complex. Everything "needs" active circuitry just in case the other side isn't playing/expecting plain analog audio over the jack. ("Needs" in quotes because you wouldn't expect a $10 pair of headphones to work if you plug them into your CD player's SPDIF-out port, but you generally would expect the same of a pair of Bluetooth headphones that have their own internal DAC.)
> Bluetooth is simply not a professional audio technology. It's not enough of a standard, and not reliable enough even when it's implemented correctly.
Sorry, didn't mean to imply that Bluetooth was good, or that it was suitable for professional usage.
What I meant to assert, specifically, was that when comparing the signalling standard of the Bluetooth audio profile, to the de-facto signalling standard required on e.g. a smartphone's audio connector, the Bluetooth standard requires around the same number of active components at the [antenna] connector terminal, as the headphone-jack de-facto standard requires at its physical connector terminal, to achieve the same level of user-expected interoperability. (And something like Audio-over-Ethernet is even more complex in terms of the number of active components required!)
So, while Bluetooth might not be good, I wouldn't describe the thing being mourned here (the de-facto signalling standard backing the 1/8 inch headphone jack) as being very good either. It's also complex, it's also "not enough of a standard" (because it is extended with things like SPDIF and TRRRS connectors), and it's also frail—and comes with a host of problems of its own, like signal degradation over short distances and wire frailty, when implemented at the wire gauges consumers [rather than professionals] gravitate toward.
Do they make mixers now with channel strips of SPDIF connectors? I don't pay that much attention to audio hardware these days but I don't recall ever seeing a bank of optical connectors on the back of anything
Profesional applications usually use the same logical data stream over RS-422 differential pairs (with cat5 for fixed installations and plain balanced mic cables otherwise being usually used).
For consumer use there also is third variant with TTL signal over notionally 50R coaxial cable (ie. the cable that should be used for line-level audio with RCA connectors) that seems to be common on cheap whitebox AV tech and almost unheard of on anything brand-name.
Another thing at play is that most proffesional audio users outside of the broadcasting industry have exactly zero use case for standardized digital audio interface. In typical PA application you will either find some semi-proprietary "digital snake" or no external digital interfaces at all (with particulary hilarious example being Pioneers DJ mixers and players that use gigabit ethernet for file sharing and automation and then pass the audio on two RCA jacks, not even as balanced XLR). In modern recording studio you just record almost directly into computer and do everything in software.
Funny you mention Pioneer, I always found their use of RJ45 for comms to be kinda funny/ingenious. (Note that using RJ45 for other purposes seems to be a pretty common thing in the embedded world, from my own observations.) If you're talking CDJs they're usually hooked straight into a DJ-style mixer before the signal touches anything else; I thought balanced/unbalanced was a consideration more for microphones and guitar amps?
nah, in live situation it's 99% FM radio used for transmission
Also (at least for Sennheiser) the non-bluetooth (2.4ghz) wireless headphones are pretty stellar. Personally I prefer that approach over Bluetooth
I still use an iPhone 6S, but I’m not going back to wired headphones.
(I am aware that audio quality has gotten better over time but you still rely on the specs of the Bluetooth chip on both sides which, in practice, usually means that you're still far away from lossless transmission.)
Also, as the other comment alludes to, many people have large libraries of FLAC (or other lossless format) music, and we've invested in the hardware required to play these files back faithfully
Not to mention all those old dinosaurs with CD and vinyl collections ;)
It sucks, but people with huge FLAC libraries are the outliers, not the mainstream, and it's only sensible that Apple concentrate their resources on their largest market.
There's the YouTube video of adding a headphone jack back into the phone, and it didn't look fun with the compromises made.
In fact it was less-featured than the older product, nothing was improved.
Will continue.
As for me, I’ve had the earphone jacks in two if my iPhones go wonky on me. I fully realise few other people have this problem and it’s almost certainly down to me being a bit careless inserting and remove the jack, but still it happens. So I just got a set of lighting earbuds. Never had a problem since. It seems to be a much more robust and reliable connector. So on two of my phones with headphone sockets, I ended up not using them anyway.
Could be congestion - the makeup of your house, the wireless chip in the express going bad.
The end result is - don't like it? Don't buy it. It's not coming back, no amount of wailing or gnashing of teeth is going to change that, if it's a massive inconvenience for your particular use case, the iPhone isn't the phone for you.
The proliferation of AirPods and other wireless headphones points to most people just embracing the new normal, which in some ways is superior (I really don't miss wires at all).
So many batteries...
I must be an outlier here, but I have zero issues with bluetooth. My iPhone syncs straight away with my car (a 4 year old UK Ford Focus), unsyncs straight away when I leave the car, and the AirPods "just work"
I feel like you’re kinda grumpy here for no reason? You clearly care about sound and want the best experience so why would you attach a non-usb amp to a crappy aux port on commodity hardware? You’d actually want a usb dac/amp in that situation. (Which you claim is a negative)
“Sick of being run over by convenience freaks” sorry to say it bud... but you’re the “freak” here (in the sense that you are the extreme of the extreme, don’t mean that in a derogatory way)
You can’t get grumpy about mainstream devices following the mainstream. You are not mainstream.
I use sennheiser headphones with my smart phone on a regular basis.
> You clearly care about sound and want the best experience so why would you attach a non-usb amp to a crappy aux port on commodity hardware?
Because that's what is there, convenience trumps quality in many situations.
> You can’t get grumpy about mainstream devices following the mainstream. You are not mainstream.
On what do you base this? The article itself shows that the majority of headphone purchases are not bluetooth. It seems like the 'mainstream' uses headphone jacks.
Well, the cool thing about flexibility is that I can do that if I want to, and it will still work if I don't. Yes the amps in phone headphone ports are crap but as long as you're aren't trying to walk around with $500+ cans with crazy high resistance everything still works fine.
And as for the mainstream, you really have to step back and think about all the people in this world with audio players... first world and third, high and low tech, city slickers and country folk, blah blah blah. What port do the majority of those devices have?
The convenience of not having to untangle headphones, not accidentally yanking them out of a device when walking away, or being able to exercise with a device sitting somewhere else in the room is a welcome innovation IMO.
Yes, apple forced people's hand with removing the port (They aren't making these products for fun) to make money, but when has a business made bold moves if it didn't mean making money in the long run? When apple started removing ports, I bought stock, which payed for my new headphones.
This reads as: "What's your problem? I have lots of money, so I can afford this."
When people talk about classism and privilege in the tech industry, this is the sort of thing they mean. Nobody claimed that bluetooth headsets aren't better in some situations—but their benefits are not necessarily in areas that interest everyone. "Forcing people's hand" to buy the more expensive but unneeded thing is precisely what the OP is complaining about, and your post does not address that argument even a little bit.
But what I meant was, apple is selling products, and trying to maximize it's profits. If you don't like the feeling of manipulation, you don't need to buy into it. Marketting, social pressure, device ecosystems, they are all strategies that get you to buy, and keep buying.
And I implicitly did address the OP's comment, in that I agree. They are forcing people's hands, it sucks. But if you are going to buy into it, you might also recognize that other's will buy into it and try to make profit for yourself by owning a portion of the company.
I was in no way implying that I'm rich. I was implying that you can play the game too if you want. What do you think will happen as AI continues to develop? Either you sit idly complaining about robots taking your jobs, or you start trying to gain part ownership of the companies that will build those robots. You have to be proactive because companies don't give a sh*t about your wellbeing, they have no incentive to do so.
> Then buy a budget phone that is cheap and still has the jack.
You see the problem with your argument?
Not everyone has extra money to spare.
Nobody is being forced to buy expensive new headphones, or new phones.
The seemingly blind fascination with novelty and "design" (extra emphasis on the finger quotes) within the tech community will be its downfall. There was nothing wrong with including both options (NOT a dongle); it is these legacy-type features which enable the rich interconnectivity that we have enjoyed up until very recently. So many seem so happy to steamroll the sometimes billions of people who are happy with what they have, just to sell them a bunch of new crap under the guise of 'innovation'
I don't know about you but the last few years I have begun to seriously question some of the fundamental values of tech, such as this obsession with disruptive innovation.
If existing wireless tech were truly innovative then it would be as seamless and interconnectible as past tech, which includes interoperability with existing tech without forcing the user to make sacrifices (like charging). This, and this trend towards software complexity and proprietary solutions (like lightning/thunderbolt vs usb) is the very thing that compromises that interconnectivity that so many of us enjoy and rely upon today.
Knocking off ports is not design, and it is not innovation. It's corporate conquest at the cost of existing communities.
edit: and the above doesn't even begin to factor in the decline in quality in nearly all areas of manufacturing over the past 30 years or so. Yes your Apple stock might have paid for a new pair of headphones but I can almost guarantee you that they were not made to nearly the same standards in materials and durability that they would have, had they been made in the past. You would have to pay considerably higher sum (not just from inflation adjustment) of money to get the same quality parts.
Meanwhile (and for example), Sennheiser still makes the HD280's, they're still awesome, and now they're going for like a hundred bucks (probably because of "no bluetooth", but also economies of scale and mfring optimizations), and they knock the socks off Beats' entire product line.
Good point - that's not how it's framed for the Mac Pro: "Hey, man, forget about these old rectangular computers. New computers are round! That's just the way it is; go with the flow. Round is new, so it's better!!1!!1"
Some phones use a pass-through system so USB-C headphones connect directly to the phone's amplifier / DAC (digital-to-analog converter); other cables might contain a DAC / amp themselves, while the last small percentage just transfer a digital signal.
Phones with speakers already have a dedicated DAC and amp. The headphone jack was just a way to interface with the amplifier. Manufacturers turned a small size issue into a giant consistency problem that didn't need to exist.
I had the same exact problem. Turned out to be a crappy bluetooth chip on the PC side, despite being a Bluetooth Class 1 device, rated for 100m range.
With a new bluetooth USB dongle, it even sometimes works between floors without drop outs (!).
Of course it might also be a manufacturing error in your headphones, extremely radio noisy environment, but never forget to check it's not simply faulty hardware.
Plus, I don't feel like the cable is all that inconvenient anyway. I got high-end headphones (And low-end earphones for when working out) and the cable has never been an issue to me.
Yes, maybe the wires tangle on the earphones, and then you untangle them.
Plus, for high-end gear I find that I don't move about with it a lot, so the wires are pretty much always in a similar position on my desk and don't create any problems either.
Bluetooth headphones come with a headache, but mine haven’t broken in a month. I call it a clear improvement.
How much should I expect to pay for quality headphones with the jack that last?
Despite thorough personal grooming and only having them at a studio desk, the part of the cable that wraps around the top of the ear will still get eaten through to the copper by the oil on my ears after about two years.
Shitty or not, headphones—at least the ones that see thorough use—are consumables.
I like your completely made up numbers. Basing of the sales numbers from the article, this is the argument you are making:
A smaller/simpler device for 17% of people and a solution that is up to 2x more expensive and far less convenient and functional for the remaining 83%.
Vendors seem to claim that the problem is the low bandwidth available. I suspect the real reason is that they don't want to standardize on more modern (complicated) codecs for this purpose as it would make the headset more complicated and increase cost.
[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/354321/why-bluetooth-headsets-are-...
I’m a musician and have thousands of voice memos from writing tapes over the years. Those effing dongles disappear on me. I actually prefer the dongle + old iPod headphones to newer Lightning headphones, because I can plug them into EVERYTHING ELSE. Bluetooth headphones don’t play voice memos (built-in iOS application) back at a normal (acceptable) nitrate. It’s been that way for years and Apple refuses to fix it.
I’m sure there are plenty of other arguments for including headphone jack. I mean, I have probably 10 sets of nice headphones in my studio that all use a standard connector. It’s real frustrating to have to consider going Android just to get a headphone jack on my device.
This is exactly my complaint.
The device is just the same with zero improvements to show for this change.
The proportions are also closer to 60-40 than 90-10.
Apple has got proximity-based pairing nailed so well, it's easier than plugging a jack in. I can connect to other iPhones as easily as mine. Macs logged in to my iCloud don't need pairing at all. It works like it should, not like a typical Bluetooth crap.
The charging case is more convenient to carry than a bundle of wires. And of course I can walk around, zip my jacket, etc. without minding the wire.
It's more expensive, proprietary, it doesn't work well for some people. But I can definitely see why having AirPods Apple thought wired headphones are the next floppy drive.
I don't recommend the PowerBeats though. No matter what sort of tips you use, they mute almost nothing. Also, the slightest breeze causes tons of wind noise.
This is a large part of why doctors are starting to warn of an epidemic of hearing loss. Headphones with poor noise isolation tend to encourage people to crank the volume way too high.
b) Sometimes it's good to be aware of your surroundings! When I'm listening to music, noise is usually sufficiently blocked by the sheer volume of the track, and during podcasts and audiobooks I'm also not bothered by the sounds of the streets.
If anything, it's good to hear a siren, or the ramblings of a nearby crazy person in order to avoid them.
The only time I find noise cancellation useful is on airplanes.
Battery life is rarely a concern for me, and I wear my AirPods almost constantly. I even sometimes sleep with them.
He he, I won't call that a long time, I would be OK with them if you don't need to recharge them for a week.
I charge my case about once a week.
Apple decided rightly or not that they don't care about me. So be it.
If you’re view is that every product should cater to the needs of everyone, then yep, Apple shouldn’t care about you as you are being unrealistic.
You get wired headphones and a dongle in the box, you can buy Beats headphones with the same chip as the Airpods with longer battery life for about the same price, or you can use a vast ocean of other wired or Bluetooth headphones. It’s not like you are forced to use something that doesn’t work for your needs.
Beats do an over ear set that has 40 hours of battery life ... I don't think you'll be running into issues with that.
The pairing isn’t great IMO. So many calls take a minute to figure out AirPod connectivity issues. It’s frustrating switching airpods between a Mac and iPhone. Much of the time only left or right pair, and the only way to fix it is to put them back in the case and re-pair them. Sadly it doesn’t “just work”
Another common problem is the mics tend to rust out after about a year of usage, eventually breaking down. This happens if you use them for any exercise (which apple advertises them for) with sweat rusting the mesh on the bottom.
Eventually I switched back to a manual headphone cable with a mic built in. It always works...
Rhe sweat problem is interesting! I haven’t experienced this degradation, but I think my head’s sweat mostly runs off my nose. Is it because of how your hair is styled?
I would recommend buying cheap exercise headphones instead of using airpods.
I also sometimes prefer having the over ear headphones for some sound cancelation. You can buy reasonable headphones plus a mic-in cable for less than $50.
However, AirPods don't require the removal of the headphone jack! The removal of the headphone jack is still so consumer hostile: it serves zero benefit to anyone apart from bluetooth accessory makers. If Apple really was serious about advancing bluetooth headphones, they would at least license the W1 for the pairing magic to other manufacturers.
Good Bluetooth headphones AND headphone jacks can exist at the same time! Anyone arguing for the removal of headphone jacks aren't grounded in any sort of reality tbh.
Apples user might have become accustomed to the dongle life but it is unbearable. Also, my non-standard dongle have started to glitch and buying a new one costs about 100x more than it is worth. Go figure.
It might have felt better if there was a reason for it. But no, there is absolutely no sane reason to ditch it other than forcing people to buy wireless peripherals. And that is just unacceptable. Too bad alternatives are running out.
This is all also under the assumption that bluetooth is good enough. It isn't.
This is also under the assumption that bluetooth is secure. It isn't.
I don't think that's true. I don't think there's an inherit quality problem with Bluetooth, but it's just that bluetooth is an added cost, so manufacturers cost save on the audio components, or the headphones become expensive.
And even still, you will get something that won't outlast the inbuilt batteries - which makes it absurd to spend money on them. I still use, on a daily basis, my $300 headphones that are a decade old. I can't find any bluetooth headphones fort $3-400 with NC that matches them. And they won't last a decade for sure (whereas my wired ones probably will last several).
The problem is that there isn’t really a good argument to keep the headphone jack. It’s a redundant port because lightning/usbC and Bluetooth both handle audio. You would need a strong justification to keep it when you could use that space for other stuff in the phone.
What disadvantages come from the removal of a ubiquitous headphone interconnect that's been on our devices for years? iPhone's have gotten thicker since the removal of the headphone jack. Apple's made iPods much thinner than any of the iPhones, and they all had headphone jacks.
There's no problem. It's not redundant if you want to charge your phone and listen to audio at the same time - I have those Bose headphones noice cancelling headphones that everyone travels with. To use them, I need to carry around an adapter which is a pain. When I fly, I have to choose whether to charge my phone or listen to audio.
Look, I love my iPhone X, but I've gotten absolutely nothing out of losing the headphone jack. It's only come at costs.
Whats the evidence? Scotty from strange parts actually managed to add a working headphone jack back to the iPhone, in the exact spot where it had been removed!
Maybe wired headphones are going the way of the DVD drive. But at this point, the change has felt very user-hostile. If they cared about their customers, iPhones would support USB-C and wired headphones.
That’s easily answerable by heading over to iFixIt. You’ll see the Plus models are near identical to the non-Plus in available space, just the Plus has a bigger battery and even more circuitry (do to the dual camera). Apple doesn’t waste any space inside their devices typically.
This is key. When they removed the disc drive in the macbooks there was a decent argument to be made about more space for other ports (or reduced thickness). But the 3.5 mm headphone jack is literally... 3.5 mm, right? Another commentor even pointed out that the new iphones are thicker than the 6 line. I just dont ubderstand the argument here.
And my S8 also has 3.5mm jack for when my 2 hour calls exhaust the airpods battery or when I want to push a drum track from my phone synth to a speaker :-)
they also cut out quite often probably because I live in a crowded downtown area.
when they work I mostly like them but sadly for me they don't always work.
However, airpods are uncomfortable, always feel like they're going to fall out. I've already had to replace one of them because they're easily lost. The sound quality is so-so. I have to crank the volume way up because there isn't any kind of noise isolation, much less noise cancellation.
All around they're a very very average product offering.
I believe Apple made the right move, many other manufacturers are already following, bluetooth headphones are getting cheaper and quality is getting better.
Someone just had to be the first to introduce it to the mainstream, I’m fairly certain that it will be widely accepted in a few years.
I doubt it. Headphone jack was a nice reliable piece of hardware. Thank goodness some other brands are rooted in reality.
What number of AirPods users would there have to be on a 787 for the interference to become a problem?
Ethernet is more reliable than WiFi. Power is more reliable than batteries. But the world doesn't want wires so Apple has to listen.
B) No one was calling for the elimination of the headphone jack. Every poll shows broad support for it. Apple themselves said it took ‘courage’ which is not the adjective you’d use to describe an action that the world agrees with.
Common sense suggests that if the world wanted a thicker phone then one of the hundreds of OEMs would have made one and been successful at it. But yet that has never happened.
What I'd like is a mophie with a 3.5mm jack in that connects to a modern iphone.
Also, why are you responding to the question about limited RF spectrum? It's like you have an agenda in this thread.
It's very clear consumers aren't clamouring for losing the jack. There are a lot more dollars selling wireless and they have an inherent limited life thanks to battery lifespan.
The SE, with a headphone jack, is roughly the same thickness as the new XS without. They both have bluetooth for those who might like wireless.
That's not Apple or whoever listening, that's them imposing.
But did the poll ask them which they want: Thinner iPhone/No Headphone or Thicker iPhone/Headphone
Were the new generation of phones thinner than the jack I'd have to concede you may have a point, but that is not what we're getting.
If the question becomes "would you like 0.2% more battery or a headphone jack?" I doubt many would vote to remove.
The iPhone X battery is rated for 2716 mAh.
So if you could use 100% of that volume efficiently for increasing battery volume, I think battery capacity increases approximately 6%.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/oneplus-ignores-its-...
But anyway who are we kidding? It’s not about making space in the device in the end. Perhaps that’s the straw that broke the camels back, but not what set Apple off in this direction to begin with.
Yet Samsung did fit a 4000 mAh battery, a headphone jack, wireless charging, expendable storage, fingerprint sensor, 512Gb of storage AND a PEN in their IP68 Note 9.
I get audio drop outs with airpods everytime I pass through one of the above stations.
Funny how they really should have worried about this but apparently haven't.
But you can still use the lightning earphones that come together (or buy a dongle, since the newer model phones are dropping the adapter). 3rd party dongles are cheaper and some allow you to charge and listen to music at the same time.
I fly regularly and have yet to be on a EU flight where Bluetooth is allowed.
And even for wlan only since one year we started to get planes where it is allowed at cruise altitude.
I am yet to hear that I can turn Bluetooth on after the security debriefing and even though I fly regularly, so far just boarded like two flights where there was on-flight wlan available.
> You can use your Bluetooth headphones during the entire flight without restriction – even during take-off and landing, unless the crew instruct otherwise.
britishairways.com:
> Bluetooth devices, e.g. wireless keyboards or headphones, can be used during the flight but must be switched off for taxi, take-off and landing.
I believe that Bluetooth was prohibited on Lufthansa as recently as 2017, so it might be worth to check for each airline you're using.
Really? Am I missing something? I've never been pulled up on using bluetooth headphones on a plane in the EU. The flight attendants have never said anything, and I've been in full view of them before...
EDIT: researching it that could be just a "be safe" catch all though, and regulation might actually mean just cellular in some cases. No idea how a normal person is supposed to figure out what exactly applies to the current flight then.
I worked at an airline two years ago on the rollout of inflight wifi and they advise customers to enable airplane mode and reenable wifi (if it's disabled). These days within aviation, "airplane mode" refers to disabling just of the cellular radios.
Apple, not everyone lives in the suburbs and uses their phones primarily at home or in personal vehicles.
Or do they already have something like this?
I want to vote with my dollars, but at the moment the options for phones with headphone jacks and no crapware preinstalled are exceedingly limited.
A thousand times this. The current market for phones is absolute crap. We need more competition. (And we also need at least some of that competition to quit playing "follow the leader" when the "leader" is an imagined title, and the "leader" is clearly blind and thrashing...)
Blackberry KEY2 / KEY2 LE
Both have headphone jack, dual SIM (or SIM + micro SD) and monthly updates.
BB even has a keyboard!
LG G7 One
Xiaomi A1/A2 Lite
Moto X4
Nokia 6.1/6.1+/7+
The Moto G6 for example has Treble but Motorola has said it will only get one major update, to Pie. It came out in May with March security patches, they released the May security patch in July, and then released the July security patch in September.
Android One devices will (supposedly) all receive 2 major version updates and 3 years of monthly security patches.
But when Treble is installed, isn't installing a ROM with the new version a simple business, at least for people who can follow technical instructions ?
In principle a Generic System Image (GSI) can be flashed onto any Treble device and everything will just work. From what I've seen so far this is not really quite true and there will still need to be device-specific tweaks to ROMs, but the amount of device-specific code should be far lower than before and make life easier for maintainers. Hopefully the end result is more devices with functioning and well maintained ROMs available.
You keep using that word, fiasco. I don't think it means what you think it means. It doesn't mean "hoopla". It means "disaster/failure".
With the phones selling more than any model before them, I'd hardly call that decision a fiasco for Apple.
People have a natural resistance to change, 20 years ago my city saw major protests when it wanted to close a road and open up to the river underneath it. It would be a colossal failure, naturally it wasn’t and today no one can imagine the town without the nice nature stuff.
I think the headphone jacks are in that category. They weren’t really great, and now that they are gone, only niches really miss them.
The AirPods are such a nice product. I mean, Apple basically made Bluetooth not suck. They are locked to the Apple ecosystem, but they connect seamlessly across your devices, and Apple has frankly once again embarrassed the rest of the tech sector by making age old technology actually useable for people who don’t want to fiddle around.
Now, if removing the headphone jack had been a failure, it would probably have come back, and everyone else, the one-plus included, probably wouldn’t be removing it.
I’m not for or against it by the way. The AirPods would’ve worked with the headphone jack. I just think calling it a failure or a fiasco is silly when it’s so obviously working out great.
The iPhone rarely was the top selling phone and never had the majority of the market (though it was of course a single company against 4-5 other companies anyway).
It was the phone that caught most of the top end (pricy) market and almost all of the profits, and it remains that.
That said, not sure what's this "isn't the top selling phone any more" is supposed to mean. The headphone-jack-less iPhone X killed it in the market:
https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-x-was-best-selling-smartpho...
That report was the moment I knew Apple had lost their position as the leader in the market, because they had to take specific dates in time to say they were best-selling...as opposed to a few years ago, when they were best selling all year long in a runaway.
Besides, not even sure what you're going about. Apple never sold the most phones.
If anything it's the opposite: they're catching up to Samsung:
https://www.statista.com/chart/7941/apple-vs-samsung-smartph...
https://www.cnet.com/news/iphone-x-was-best-selling-smartpho...
You can now buy $20 bluetooth earbuds from Anker that are pretty decent. Apple saying “guess what, everybody: you love bluetooth” has forced the market to respond, and that whole price-down-quality-up thing is really starting to happen.
This, of course, is of no use to people who depend on minimal latency. It will be a very long time, if ever, before bluetooth can match hardwired latency.
What we really need next from Apple is for them to replace lightning with USB-C. I’d love to see the ability to choose to externalize the DAC+amplifier without buying either a lightning-only accessory or a camera adapter. Oh, and also be able to charge the phone while we’re at it.
It happened long ago, with Apt-X, especially Apt-X HD and Apt-X LL.
> The latency of the aptX-HD codec can be scaled to as low as 1 ms for 48 kHz sampled audio
Not to mention Apple’s beef with Qualcomm means we’ll probably never see apt-X support in an iPhone.
That was true a couple of years ago. Now apt-x support is pretty common even in $20 niche. You can buy FiiO BTR3 for $50 (at Taobao), and it supports everything from apt-X (HD and LL) and LDAC (contributed to the Android Open Source Project by Sony) to Huawei HWA, works as USB-DAC too, and you can plug your favorite headphones into it.
"Your brain can’t tell the difference between a delay of 0 and 100ms"*
Reminds me of the old "brain can't process more than 30fps" Marketing folks running wild over there.
But there are other areas where tolerance matters more I think. Say you press a key and sound comes either after 5ms or after 50 ms. I think that would be noticeably different.
The brain obviously notices far smaller latencies.
Please be consistent. USB-C everywhere in all your devices. You’re a trillion dollar company now, get your shit together!
I'd think Apple's trick isn't really Bluetooth which remains often “not great”. It's the W1 chip:
“As well as making pairing and switching devices a lot easier, the W1 chip also increases the range of the Bluetooth connection and gives headphones a better battery life. For example, the Beats Solo3 has a battery life that lasts 40 hours and a range of up to 150 feet. Those numbers are just insane for Bluetooth.”[1]
1. https://www.howtogeek.com/340290/what-is-apple’s-w1-chip/
I wish they’d not removed the port, it’s a real pain and I’m not willing to go wireless until there’s a way to do it with zero latency. I’ll be really disappointed if the new iPad removes the headphone socket as it’s pretty essential for music making on the go.
i think he makes a false dichotomy in his article. He is not bringing up a dongle at all and makes the choice to either a phone with a 3.5mm output or bluetooth. I would give this more credibility if this was discussed as well.
If you forget the massive number of compatible headphones in existence, the 3.5mm jack isn’t that great. If we were designing the ideal audio interface today, it would not be the 3.5mm jack.
For an audiophile experience, you’d better love the DAC built into your phone. You also probably need to live with whatever audio processing parameters the phone manufacturer chose because probably few, if any, are exposed. You’re largely shut out of control over audio processing details.
Meanwhile, for mobile use you, need to thether your head to your phone and manage the cord. Not a great fit for mobile uses because you don’t want to move around too freely. It gets worse in the oft-mentioned scenario of charging while listening, because now you’re generally tethering your head to a wall or at least a battery pack. Not great.
The 3.5mm jack also doesn’t have a decent protocol for on-device listening controls. There are workarounds so maybe you can play/pause or skip tracks, but then again maybe not. There are wide compatibility problems. Forget about anything advanced.
It’s not like lightning connector is perfect, and neither is Bluetooth. I’m just pointing out that the 3.5mm jack isn’t a no-brainer by any stretch and it makes sense to look for something better, whether or no you think Apple or other OEMs succeeded.
that's why i use lg's v series of phones that include a high-end audio dac.
> Meanwhile, for mobile use you, need to tether your head to your phone and manage the cord. Not a great fit for mobile uses because you don’t want to move around too freely.
that's a false argument because the inclusion of an audio jack does not prevent the use of bluetooth. i use high-end headphones at work, home, and in certain travel situations like a plane and use bluetooth everywhere else like with my car and wireless bluetooth speakers.
you said the 3.5mm jack would not be the interface designed today, but yet, you didn't come up with an alternative. the sound with a proper dac and headphones and a physical audio jack is incomparable to bluetooth and bluetooth headphones. and having the physical audio jack makes it much easier to do what i want with the audio when i want. whether it's attaching to a bose bluetooth speaker or outputting audio to sample on my op-1, it's the best of both worlds.
the problem i have with apple is that they have never given a compelling and logical reason for removing the audio jack. my lg v35 has the audio jack plus a high-end audio dac and yet the design is every bit as sleek and compact as the iphone x phones, in fact, maybe even more so because the camera doesn't protrude.
so all of this is pointless arguing simply because apple can't even answer the question of "why", as in why even remove it in the first place.
People charge their phone everyday so it isn't a massive deal to charge your AirPods as well. And the sound quality right now is more than good enough especially given that you're asking people to tradeoff their data usage.
If I have to charge them then I have to remember to take them out and plug them in, and also then have to remember to take them out of the charger and take them with me.
I'm not super sensitive to sound quality, but charging is a deal breaker.
3.5mm is de facto hi-fi.
A cheap DAC can produce around 16 bits and 20 kHz. It's not difficult. A pair of $10 earplugs is much more limited in what sound it can physically play.
It’s a long game, but I think part of their rationale is that we had to get rid of that thing eventually — which is inarguable, IMHO — and so the earlier, the better. If you’re forced to make wireless headphones that don’t suck, you will.
So you’re basically stuck with AirPods or new Beats if you want low latency Bluetooth headphones for an iPhone. And this seems unlikely to change.
You're trusting/hoping that [0] will never happen, or (for WiFi) that [1] will never happen. At least with most Internet usage there are additional layers involved that have their own security which can protect your in flight data, but the firmware on BT/WiFi chipsets doesn't necessarily have that sort of layered security.
I'd call it a dangerous goal.
[0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16294904/bluetooth-hack-e...
Apple really lost points for removing the jack.
I probably use the new iPhone at least as long as I used the old one. The update cycles are getting longer as these phones get more powerful.
You only really have one way to communicate with a large corporation - give money, or withhold money.
Apple knows how to make truly great audio hardware; the AirPods really are extraordinary. But the Beats lineup clearly hasn't received any serious attention, as evidenced by two things:
1) they still sell wireless hardware that doesn't have the W1 chip, two years after it was first released
2) for God's sake, all their devices charge over micro-USB!
Counter argument. The product lineup sucks so they had to help the sales in any way possible.
There's a big scuzzy pop when you plug in or remove the jack while speakers are on.
I've had several devices get crud in the jack, so that you have to rotate and push and position the jack just right to get sound.
Still, I appreciate having the wire and I wish that USB-C headphones had done better. I would have liked to get phones with two USB-C ports.
I get the same pop when jacking in using the Lightning-to-3.5 dongle. And I mean, making the 3.5 connection first, Lightning second.
Also, Lighting (and I suspect USB C) female connectors are dust, lint, and particulate magnets. What happens when those get fouled, the gold plating on the Lightning cable is scraped off one or more of the pins. So then you have either a broken cable or one that will charge but only if oriented correctly. So same issue, rotate the connector and maybe it works.
AND the thing that pisses me off the most...I have to carry around some old earbuds with the 3.5 in case I want to watch some Netflix on my MacBook Pro because I can’t plug my new EarPids into it. There’s no Lightning jack on any Mac. And there’s not even a dongle for that use case. All the USB M to Lightning F are for charging only.
Furthermore they look terrible. They're white, and they look like I have an Oral B toothbrush in my ears. I have no option to avoid either of that? Thank you, no.
As for the discussion: I'd like to be able to enter a store, listening to music, with all my radios off. It is called airplane mode. Was removing 1 gbit ethernet from laptops a good idea? I miss it, but having an adequate amount of USB ports solves the issue. Why not have two 2 USB-C ports on a smartphone and be done with it?
Not being able to charge the phone and be on the phone at the same time is incredibly annoying. Sometimes I take video calls on my laptop and I can’t plug the lightning headphones into my laptop without an adapter.
I didn’t think it would annoy me so much but there are times when I need to get work done and this gets in the way, and the alternatives just aren’t reliable enough.
Having a thinner phone is irrelevant because I have to put a case around it anyway.
It’s frustrating that we have so many different connectors (lightning, 3.5mm, Bluetooth, hdmi, mini usb, usb C, usb A, MagSafe, ...). I wish apple would pick one and go for it (usb C maybe?)
I often answer calls whilst wearing these cheap Mpow earphones. Even with background traffic noise people can still hear me http://amzn.eu/d/8zNp1kz
Also, it looks weird if I don’t pull the mic closer. With your headphones people can’t tell you’re on the phone.
We’ve had telephones for over 100 years so I don’t think it’s too much to ask.
it does however highlight an interesting point, most portable devices make a consideration for air travel in their design, the dell xps15 for example has a 97wh battery because 99wh is the limit for taking into an airplane cabin, yet turn on airplane mode on your phone and it disables all wireless connections, bluetooth included so if you were relying on your airpods to provide your in flight music youre out of luck
i guess it highlights how stupid the ban on wireless connectivity on planes is (not like it wasnt blatantly obvious that theyd never let a vehicle carrying hundreds of lives into the sky with unsheilded components that could be brought down by anyone with a ten quid nokia)
(Your writing would be much easier to read with capital letters and apostrophes.)
I don't believe that one either, but it's a little more believable than thinking that a single phone can cause enough interference to affect the plane.
I don't think the real concern was ever that cellphones would cause planes to fall out of the sky, however, there's real reason to be concerned that they could interrupt the pilot's ability to communicate with ATC, which I'm sure could get dangerous.
There's probably no faster way to get everyone to shut their phones off than a "this is your Captain speaking; a cellphone on board is preventing me from talking to the ATC" however.
but mission critical equipment like life support systems, airplanes and other such tech would never be allowed to be produced and used without at least basic shielding all round
I would be very surprised if that is how it works, given that some Inflight WiFi solutions do not need any approval at all. (Keyword: Portable IFE)
It used to be that running any uncertified electronic equipment at all was disallowed on takeoff/landing, no matter what the radio status. In the top hits on Google for "Portable IFE" I'm seeing WiFi devices on pages with 2012 copyright dates that claim no certification is required. Sounds like BS to me.
Also I am going by the 2 Portable IFE systems from our hardware partners that I have in my Lab to play around with. Portable IFE systems are completely battery powered and have no connection to the Aircraft. The only "certification" that you need is that you would need to demonstrate that this device does not need certification. Which in the case of the 2 devices I have right here is fairly simple thing.
It’s possible to turn bluetooth on while in flight mode. People use bluetooth headphones a lot in flight. One of the premier use case of Bose’s noise cancelling bluetooth headphones is to use on planes. No announcement is made to ask people to not use bluetooth. No flight attendant asks people to not use bluetooth headphones. Planes are not crashing.
It’s probably safe to use bluetooth headphones on a plane.
And when I tap to connect a specific bluetooth headphone, it may or may not connect. If it doesn't, its an even more annoying process of turning bluetooth on and off and the headphones on and off to get a connection.
It's this part of bluetooth alone that is the most annoying part of them. On top of apple not giving a good dedicated UI to managing your bluetooth headphones. Burying it 3-5 screens deep is not a good user experience.
Too bad android is a security and privacy mess.
Not saying I like the trend, just that it does make sense even if you don’t sell wireless headphones too.
That and other experiences with car infotainment systems have lead me to believe that any electronics that go in a car are at least 5 years behind their non-automobile equivalents.
The only problem with the 3.5m jack is that it's too cheap, unobtrusive, and reliable. You can't brand it, market it, or upsell it.
They probably require a wire to be charged.
They also lose charge when it's least convenient.
And so it isn't like you're carrying anything extra.
And as someone who has owned many IEMs over the long term those cables all end up breaking. And for IEMs with replaceable cables it's the connectors that break.
There simply isn't enough bandwidth.
Also repairing a cable is really easy task generally, and there is even easier solution available: make the cable replaceable, i.e. have it also be connectorized on the headphone end.
Highly subjective. Some people have other hobbies.
> make the cable replaceable, i.e. have it also be connectorized on the headphone end.
I might try that.
But of course these days the whole concept of repairing things is completely bygone thing for most people, so yeah, maybe wireless headphones do make sense.
wireless however have other issues, what of the battery? over time it will wear like any battery does and their runtime will significantly decrease, changing the cable on a pair of wired phones will be a lot less hassle than cracking open your wireless phones to replace the battery
not to mention the fact that wireless devices have far more tech in them that could go wrong, a pair of wired headphones are fairly simple devices, theres a whole lot more tech inside a pair of bluetooth phones (battery, charging circuit, bluetooth components etc) and while theyre wireless theyll still have to be charged by way of a cable somehow so like a pair of wired phones they still have a wire, its just used for charging rather than sound but that doesnt mean it cant break just the same
However, the problem you are describing:
> One side of the headphones stops playing sounds; you can sometimes spin the connector and get the sound back, [...] and it stops working eventually.
I suspect that might be terrible quality wires, not necessarily the headphones. The quality of patch cable at the usual big-box consumer stores has fallen dramatically over the last ~5-10 years. It can be really difficult to find a cable hasn't changed the outer protective wrapping from traditional softer rubber(?) to some sort of cheap plastic. The wrapping on the new cables can harden badly over as little as 2-3 months, leading to sharp kinks/bends forming over time that break the delicate wires inside.
The newer cables also tend to lack protective stiffeners at the ends for protection against damaging the wires if the cables is pulled at a right angle to the connector.
Once the wire has started to break, you might be able to get it working again for a while by turning the connector (if the break is at or near the connector) or otherwise moving the cable until the broken ends of the conductor touch.
On the other hand, most of the cables that I bought in the late-80s/early-90s still work fine. (they never formed permanent kinds) The problem is race-to-the-bottom we're seeing everywhere as businesses try to squeeze every last cent out their products. This will happen to wireless headphones eventually, but for now they are in a honeymoon period where they are still a "new(-ish) tech" that is experimenting with new designs. Eventually the value engineers and must-meet-growth-targets management will get around to "optimizing" their quality and longevity too.
Exactly what happened to my headphones. I end up replacing the cable every 6-12 months. Fortunately user-replaceable cables make it almost a non-issue.
FWIW audio cables in consumer stores were pretty much always PVC, though, as you like many other people discovered, there are quality plastics and cheap plastics. The former will last quite a number of years before turning hard and brittle, the latter won't, smells badly and probably gives you cancer for free, too.
Speaker, microphone and guitar cables for studio / stage use often have rubber sheathing (~neoprene), though many are just higher quality PVC.
> The newer cables also tend to lack protective stiffeners at the ends for protection against damaging the wires if the cables is pulled at a right angle to the connector.
Using the tiniest of ferrules seems to be a conscious design choice, though incorrect material and manufacture are commonly seen as well. In any case, a bad design that's poorly manufactured is not going to work.
As usual, non-consumer products don't have the problem, at all.
> The problem is race-to-the-bottom we're seeing everywhere as businesses try to squeeze every last cent out their products.
While that's certainly true, the ali/bangood-mentality also has to do with it. "Oh look, I can get $thisThing for 2.5 $ delivered from China, which normally costs 10 $". A compounding problem is of course, that the 10 $ store item is the same as the 2.5 $ Ali item, so you actually need to turn to the proper online store to get the quality matching price point.
It may also be related to water proofing , eliminating another source of water risk.
Some of the android flagships have both the jack and a IP68 rating.
Ignoring issues of latency and connection robustness, is this a bandwidth limitation of Bluetooth or is it that the driver/codec support isn't there? Or is it audiophile hyperbole?
There's no technical reason why you couldn't stream lossless digital audio to a pair of headphones, which might well have a better DAC chipset than the phone.
Really the Bluetooth protocol is mostly just a ultra low power 802.11. It has more channels but they are thinner bands are only 1-2 Mbit (depending on classic or LE mode).
That being said its not really a bandwidth limitation. One device can use multiple channels and thus you can easily get, say, the 6 Mbit that DVD quality PCM takes up.
It is more that being so low power means bluetooth gets pummeled with a lot of inference. This isn't much of a problem if you are using one channel and alternating to avoid hot regions but the 2.4 band is super congested. Trying to drive constant 6+ Mbit through Bluetooth losslessly would take way more power than most Bluetooth devices are capable of or willing to spend to accomplish it.
Also, how the heck many things do I need a charger for now? Its bad enough they created a mouse that cannot be used during charging because of the poor placement of the charging port. If I was to go Bluetooth with the headphones, I need to buy a new cart with additional chargers for each headphone. Never mind loosing the damn things or their cost.
From an accessibility point of view, I take it Apple's design team has never heard of Talking ATM[1].
The way I see it, taking a feature away needs to be justified with some proportional advantage.
The parts themselves are pretty cheap, so the only argument against the port is space. Apple did not use the space for anything useful (same battery , same features , more expensive). I have heard water proofing as an argument, but many manufacturers can do both & the jack is more useful than water proofing to me.
As I see it, manufacturers took a away a relatively useful feature for nothing in return.
The decision was very much guided by greed, and that very much irks me.
If you need pro-gear, there's usually a pro-option. Sometimes form factors change and you need to swap out some of your gear, it happens. Anyways, 3.5mm wasn't ever the 'pro' standard. It's a consumer level adaptation, and so is Bluetooth. I have no problem with it.
- if you are really an audiophile you will have at least a Dragonfly or similar feeding your expensive cans off of USB. You would not use iPhone’s (previous) tiny dac/amp. Also note that iPads still have a builtin DAC/amp and that they are, in fact, really really good.
- Same for music making on iPhone. You will have one of many audio interfaces for iOS. I mean, come on, you are not recording guitars into your pc over a builtin audio input, surely?
I don’t believe this whole “cornering the market” argument. I do believe removing unnecessary hardware and making way for bigger battery/thinner phones or whatever other benefit may come out of it.
As in television (and so, movies on television), all analog links in the chain of delivery are being driven out.
Even if you agree with that (and I don't), this means that simultaneously, any and all other use cases for these analog channels are simply fucked. Too bad, screw you.
Big entertainment, and its big dollars, monopolizing the platform for its own benefit.
I don't know this. I just can't help suspecting it -- not just out of thin air, though, but rather based upon what I've read about how these industries work and advocate, in general and in other specific cases.
May do another year with the 6s.
I'm surprised this is not a problem for the iPhone, or I've never read anything about it yet.
I agree that this would be useful to have at the OS level though!
Then I bought Star Wars and watched it at home. VHS for the win! Then the same frickin' movie came out on DVD. I decided to buy it. Why would I do that? Because I was sold on the feature combination of DVDs. Then BluRay. I bought again. Why? The movie had new features, and BluRay was more cool.
I had become those people I was laughing at with the ringtones, spending money for stuff that either should be free or was basically worthless. I love movies. I have a lot of movies in various formats. But re-mixes of the same stupid movie? I'm being taken for a ride.
Now they keep the same movie, the same plot, the same hardware -- but re-make it with currently-popular actors. Why would people pay for this....I asked myself as I sat in the movie theater a couple of months ago.
There's less and less "new people creating new things that enriches society" and more and more "You bought X, you'll really love X1!"
Anybody that doesn't know where headphoneless-phones is going hasn't been paying attention. Ten years from now, when they've finally locked down DRM audio from the seller to the actual device you listen to it on? They'll be charging you multiple times to listen to the same sound.
Plus they make money on the hardware. Double bonus points for getting you on a hardware upgrade gravy train also locked in by vendor.
It’s much easier to make the case that removing the headphone jack is a huge money grab and inconvenience if you ignore the fact that a $9 dongle included with your phone lets you listen with any pair of headphones you want.
https://www.amazon.com/Belkin-Audio-Cable-Lightning-Connecto...
I don't want to carry a single around, and the 3.5mm jack is the standard for analog stereo audio.
Have you seen the prices on Apple devices?
Now Apple is killing it.
Wired wirelessness.
Just another marketing win, engineering loss.
I'd rather have Bluetooth everywhere with USB as a backup now.
Now I have a pair of airpods and I love them. The improvement is marginal, but it's an improvement that touches many aspects of my life (commuting, cooking, sleeping, working). I love, love, love them.
> Does anyone truly believe they removed the headphone jack for any reason other than to sell more dongles and more wireless headphones?
I think Apple believes that wireless headphones are the future and they decided to prove that it can be done right. IMO they succeeded with airpods.
Removing the headphone jack was a forcing function. It's only an issue if you don't buy into the Apple ecosystem. Obviously that's a risk, but it's a risk that Apple has taken before.
Assuming it's some kind of cockameme plan to sell more dongles doesn't really fit the profile of Apple as a company, IMO.
If you tried other Bluetooth headphones than the Airpods now, you would also notice the better battery life. My work headphones (over-ear) only need to be charged on the weekend after over 40h of use and they are very light, too.
Ditching the only analogue sound connector was without question a bad idea though.
It's entirely conceivable, based on my experience, that removal of the headphone jack is attributable to ignorance and not to malice.
I am temporarily annoyed with the audio jack removal, but I get it. It’s a “burn the boats” type strategy of pushing for the wireless, portless future.
There's lots of reasons to believe that removing the jack is NOT meant to drive accessory revenue:
1. They included the dongles in the box for years, and still sell them at $9.
2. They include compatible headphones in every box.
3. iPhones are compatible with all wireless headphones.
I suspect the two most significant reasons were to reduce manufacturing cost/complexity and to improve reliability (one less physical port to get dirty and break, one less entry point for water damage).
Headphone jacks take up quite a bit of space that can be used to improve battery life.
Still, several of the older people in my life have gotten them, and they were a huge improvement for those people.
Now if you were talking purely about the connector itself. Whatever wireless technology was forced upon the population is not actually capable of replacing a wired connection.
* Bluetooth doesn't work in crowded environments. * Standard Bluetooth sound quality is inferior without proprietary extensions to the protocol. * Latency between device and headphone can be massive (500ms to 100ms), * You have to recharge it. * Devices have to be paired and sometimes "unpair" for no reason.
Bluetooth just sucks for audio. I'm sure there are hundreds of wireless technologies that are better than bluetooth, otherwise these proprietary extensions wouldn't exist.
You can in theory get <32ms latency with a special obscure subvariant of a proprietary standard of bluetooth (aka aptX LL) that no one has ever heard of for which you need a certain dongle and your headphone must support it. (hint your phone and headphones don't support it)
Apple's success depends on the iPhone. Without it their services businesses become useless, their retail presence becomes an albatross, peripheral devices like Apple Watch, AppleTV start to look a lot less useful and forget about future growth in AR/VR. And so the idea that Apple would compromise all of that just to make a comparatively tiny hundred million or so is just crazy. And Tim Cook is anything but crazy.
The fact is that the market is moving towards wireless for everything. Audio included. And 99.999% of the world aren't audiophiles who can tell the difference (or even care if they can) between BT and non BT audio. So why waste valuable phone space for an insignificant number of people when you can improve battery life by say 5% ?
Most companies try to leverage their market position in this way. To not do it would be unusual.
The question was:
>Does anyone truly believe they removed the headphone jack for any reason other than to sell more dongles and more wireless headphones?
There are attributes to wireless beyond it being more expensive. Wireless isn't some gimmik to increase revenue. It genuinely is better in some ways and an acceptable complete replacement. If you're sold on wireless you don't need a headphone jack.
And worse is some ways. It is not absolutely better; and, for plenty of people, not "an acceptable complete replacement".
Your claim in your original comment ("Anyone who has felt a tug at their head from headphones getting snagged by something accidently[sic] is quickly sold to the merits of wireless.") is also far from convincing that wireless is "an acceptable complete replacement", or even better than wired in more than one minor way.
> If you're sold on wireless you don't need a headphone jack.
In which case, I repeat, you keep using wireless. A headphone jack does not hurt those who want to use wireless. Removing the jack actively denies them a feature, while doing little for those who want to use wireless. Not to mention, removing the jack does not sell people on wireless, it forces them to choose between a dongle and wireless; or worse, a different platform.
No.
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The reason for my wired preference is security. I trust cables more than i trust wireless.
Bluetooth is insecure. I dont think it is secure to walk around in a mall with your bluetooth turned on. (correct me if i am wrong)
Wifi WPA2 is probably secure. However wifi WEP is completely insecure. For many years WEP has been widely used. Another problem with wifi are fake networks that use the same name as a public network.
Another interesting fact with wired headphones is they wont fall down directly on the floor, because of the wires. The same goes with the computer mouse.. sometimes it moves to the edge of the table and might want to fall.. the wire will hold it.
Wireless keyboards is definitively a no go since teorically its possible to passively listen for pressed keys just like a keylogger.
Wireless technology sure looks better without all the wires, however when people choose convenience(wireless), they lose some security.
So when i can, i choose wires.
You are wrong. I don't recall any Bluetooth security issues from just having Bluetooth on or from having an established connection. Those things are pretty well solved in all vaguely modern wireless standards.
The issues are always around the initial connection and key exchange. PIN-based pairing has various flaws in Bluetooth, but Bluetooth headphones use "Just Works" pairing, which I don't think has had any issues, other than the design compromise that it is vulnerable to MitM. That is vanishingly unlikely to happen with Bluetooth headphones though.
WPA2 is secure if you use a very strong password. WEP is basically extinct.
> "Just having Bluetooth on puts you at risk," said Izrael.
The WPA2 standard is not secure against key reinstallation attacks, which can be used to decrypt packets in an MitM position. Most implementations of WPA2, though, have patched themselves in a backwards-compatible manner since discovery of this vulnerability.
The IEEE has put out WPA3 which fixes this vulnerability (among other changes).
Well that and I have some very nice headphones that I am obviously not going to ditch because some smartphone removes the single world-wide standard socket in existence...
You can also use wired Ethernet with iPad, the performance is unreal.
- You can't take lightning headphones
and use them as headphones in all
lightning ports.
- You can't take lightning headphones
and use them on any other Apple
product other then modern, premium
iPhones.
- It doesn't enable compatibility with
other new Apple products. In fact, it
hinders compatibility with USB-C ports
in newer Apple laptops. *What?*
- If Apple went all-in on USB-C with
laptops, the lightning port on new
iPhones feels like either an anachronism
or accentuates the lock-in attempt.
- Bluetooth really isn't very good, not
at a level that guarantees perfect,
continuous audio streams. It's not
an ideal step up from a good, durable wire.
- Air pods and other headphone upgrades
are double disposable, in that, not only
are they particularly expensive options,
but easily lost, stolen or destroyed.
Laundry and drop hazards, above and beyond
theft, basically add constant anxiety to
the total cost of ownership for air pods
in particular.
- General inconvenience of replacement
forces odd work-around strategies for
times when you can't find your headphones.
If you're running late, and you lost them
in the couch cushions or under the bed,
what are your options?
But now what? It's just going to be this irritating thing, until an excuse lets Apple back down while saving face.
Whatever.
The article is missing that very reasonable use case for no Jack.
This argument about the quality of the headphones seems very much beside the point. For those purchasing these newer smart phones, there is only one type of headphones that work. Clearly that is the one they will buy.
Airpods are awesome, and they'll only get better. A cord running to your pocket is seriously a thing of the past, and all these posts will age terribly. Just like the serial port ones, the floppy ones, the cd rom ones...
And for all this noise, what I can't for the life of my understand is why these people can't just use a god damn adapter. They make high quality DAC ones, too. Just leave it attached to your headphones. What's the damn problem? The rest of us get a better, thinner phone.
Should I just always carry a spare dongle in my pocket? Or rely on everyone having the appropriate Lightning/USB-C dongle already? Or maybe just use the industry standard 3.5mm jack, because it always Just Works.
Also it's completely untrue that the iPhone is "thinner" without a headphone jack; this guy added a jack to an iPhone 7 without external modification:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA
The video has over 6M views.
Apple doesn't care much about their users -- but it's hard to blame them, since said users are apparently happy with it.
From my limited knowledge it certainly seems easier to make it waterproof without a headphone jack.
If you bothered to look at the specs, you'd have noticed this not to be true.