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Comment by peapicker | Hacker News Reader

I say no. I use my iPhone heavily as a synth or guitar processor etc. Bluetooth latency is too high to make it useable wirelessly so I require a hardwire into a mixer to perform. The iPhone has the lowest latency audio stack of smartphones when used with a wire. This is important and removing the headphone jack means dongles or latency. What makes this especially bad is that the iPhone camera connector dongle is already required when plugging in many MIDI controllers. This has prevented me from upgrading beyond my 6s as many of my apps are challenged without a real-time audio output that doesn’t also use my lightning connector which I need for the camera connector.

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This is the rub. With the removal of the jack, Apple is telling us that their phones are not [music/audio] creators' tools. Apparently it's their desire that creators use, what, iPad? Their ever-disappointing line of laptops? The outdated Mac Pro? I just don't know.

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®.

> Apparently it's their desire that creators use, what, iPad? Their ever-disappointing line of laptops? The outdated Mac Pro? I just don't know.

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.

It’s a mistake. We’re paying $1000+ for this tool that presents itself as a versatile information slinger, well I hope it can do more than Facebook, Instagram and Gmail. This is an amazing platform, completely damaged by its limited IO. Apple is moving away from its roots. Not good. Creators will go elsewhere, their desirable creations will become native elsewhere, and the sheep will follow.

It's a bit late to say so. Apple has moved away from its accessible hardware roots when it has moved from Apple II to the original Macintosh.

Just to remind, the original iPhone did not allow user-installable apps at all.

Why try to appeal to the creators when people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for pretty social media boxes?

I think it'd be a mistake to ignore them. Content creators are cool and they set trends and fashion. The first iterations of the iMac, the iPod and the iPhone were nothing special, yet they were successful because they were used by cool people. i.e. Apple products became status symbols.

While I don't like this answer, I feel like it's probably the most accurate.

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.

It's the same thing as the Macbook Pro. Not to mention letting the Mac Pro stagnate. They seem to have abandoned power users and decided to focus on mass consumers.

How dare a company trying to sell more things not target their products at the specific needs of my loud cranky minority!

Power users are the worst customers, I'm surprised more companies don't try to drive them away on purpose.

If you can satisfy their desire for power, power users are extremely loyal.

And influencing. As someone above said well,their creations will become native elsewhere.

That minority pays great margins one can only dream of in the masses space.

Would you pay $2000 for an iphone with a headphone jack? Because the masses are paying $1100 for an iphone. You need to beat that.

$995 gets me a Samsung, jack, sd card, pen, respectable battery...

Apple has an eco system, and gets margin on all of it. Others do not.

No need for 2k pricing.

They can do whatever they want. That said, there are certain classes of power users (creatives) that are very loyal users, and it seems like a good core demographic to cater to. Devs are probably much less loyal, but catering to creatives would likely cater to us as well.

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).

The most successful companies are those with a minority of power users who evangelize them at every turn. Apple only became the behemoth it its because of the steadfast dedication of its most loyal customers.

Not really. I you are a content creator you should probably use a dedicated AD box connected via lightning instead.

I'm with you but you can't say you would have used an iPhone if it had a jack yet a Mac pro or laptop won't cut it for processing power.

1) It's more like I already have the iPhone without the jack and I already attempt to make use of the thing for creation and the Bluetooth lag is a problem.

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.

Have you checked the Samsung Galaxy S8/Note8 line? It seems that these phones include a customized sound framework for very low processing delays, AND they include jacks. Google for Soundcamp.

That looks really cool. Thanks for recommending it here!

The other problem with Android is due to sideloading and app hacking, the best pro level apps (which are expensive for apps) have mostly chosen to avoid Android rather than experience high levels of piracy the last time I researched it. (KORG Gadget for example doesn’t exist on Android)

I feel your pain. I can’t use an external mic with my iPhone on a gimbal because the dongle causes a gap meaning it won’t balance.

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.

Maybe these aren't mainstream problems, but they do reflect a change in Apple's brand. Apple used to position themselves as the brand for artists, musicians, and other creative types. They even used to hide an optical audio port in the MacBook Pro headphone jack -- talk about a niche feature!

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.

It was part of their branding, Apple stuff is for creative people, it lets them get shit done.

Now it’s more of a status symbol, I’ve got an apple rather than a crappy generic android or think pad.

Tim Cook is to Apple as Steve Balmer was to MS.

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.

This is just silly. First, Steve Jobs would have cut these obsolete interfaces just as ruthlessly as Apple has done so under Tim Cook. Jobs had a long history of doing so. Second, this almost certainly wasn't even Tim Cook's call. I don't think Tim tells Jony Ive and the iPhone team which design decisions to make.

Obsolete how?

Saying Jobs would have cut those is contrary to one important fact: Apple under Jobs did not cut those interfaces. He "would have" later? Why? Surrounding market conditions aren't that different. Bluetooth audio is almost 20 years old. A2DP was available mid 2000s.

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.

> Bluetooth audio is almost 20 years old. A2DP was available mid 2000s.

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?

It's possible that Jobs might have made the same move. And just as possible that he would have been as wrong to do so.

Those who think 3.5" floppy drives and CD-ROM drives just worked in the same way that 1/8" jacks just work have yet to grasp just works.

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.

> Like 3.5" floppy drives, or CD-ROM drives?

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.

Old =/= obsolete

It's not obsolete, they're trying to force it to be. There's lots of high quality analog stuff especially for pros out there with 10+ years of life still in it and Bluetooth is a relatively complicated, expensive, underperforming (latency/fidelity/reliability) alternative. It also raises the barrier to entry to headphone manufacturing meaning we'll have less choice, less competition, and as I hope we all know, that leads to less value for consumers.

But the phone jack is not obsolete is it

Steve Jobs pulled Firewire and ExpressCard ports out of the Macbook Pro at a time when they were used by creators to integrate with their tools and workflows. Apple decided that they were not the future, and faced a ton of complaints for removing them.

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.

All the current and past iPad models come with 3.5mm headphone jack.

So I suppose Apple would just want you to buy an iPad as well! for your music production.

All the rumors I heard point to apple ditching the headphone jack in the coming model.

Will Apple ditch Lightning and switch to USB Type-C solve your problem?

That would probably make it worse since USB-C audio is such a mess right now.

USB C audio isn’t a mess right now. We’ve had USB audio figured out for at least 10 years and USB C is no different.

According to Google’s official documentation: “Android 5.0 (API level 21) and above supports a subset of USB audio class 1.” This subset is more limited than the full class 1 specification, limiting audio to two channels of 24-bit PCM data with a frequency up to 48kHz. There’s no default support for high sample rate audio over USB out of the box.

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/

So then Android USB is a mess right now.

I don't think it makes a great argument to say the USB Audio is great, it's just USB is a problem. They both need to work for USB Audio to work.

I was referring to Android specifically.

While that’s quite unfortunate for you, is this a use case that affects a lot of users? I imagine that people in your situation are far less common than those who think the bundled headphones are good enough.

Hardly an edge case. Consider the revenue generated by the Line6 Helix or Headrush and their many clones; it's a substantial revenue generator for these companies. Most live music musicians also purchase custom molded IEMs to protect their hearing and listen to a click track. Digital wireless audio simply does not work here. Even major brands like Sennheiser forgo digital transmission on their monitoring wireless packs because 5ms of latency is enough to induce combfiltering and throw a performer off.

You seem to misunderstand my point.

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?

The difference is that now you won't see DJs in front of crowds using Apple products. Apple has decided to trade measurable cost-cutting for non-measurable brand prestige, and in the next few years I expect Microsoft to launch a new mobile/desktop hybrid with an ad about how Apple is what your grandparents use, and cool young trendy people use Windows.

That wouldn’t be a new move for Microsoft. They have found some success with Surface and they’re expanding the line. However, they are making similar trade-offs to Apple where able. They may release a new, popular product, but it will just solidify the trends that people in this thread are complaining about.

> The difference is that now you won't see DJs in front of crowds using Apple products.

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.

Thanks for downvoting and then ignoring my point.

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?

Can you please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN?

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Calling out someone totally ignoring the point of a post is uncivil?

I personally think that pulling out a strawman is probably more uncivil than calling it out, but whatever you say.

You made a personal attack. If you do it again we will ban you.

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.

Sennheiser's revenue in 2017 was 600m. In 2017, Apple's revenue was 220b.

Well, at a minimum, it affects all people that want to play video games.

Or you could just use an iPad or iPad mini?

I'm using the headphone jack right now connecting to wireless headphones with a failed Bluetooth section. The headphones will be sent back to the mfgr for warranty service.

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