Yeah, well, I wish it had one eye, in the form of a headphone jack.
Those of us who cherish our headphone jacks still desperately want them back, there's just no great avenue to express our rage.
I want my headphone jack.
I have $1K+ headphones that are effectively collecting dust because I can't plug them into my phone.
More seriously, why don't you get a better phone? (Or carry around an audio player?)
They're fine.
If you really want to use headphones you can use a pigtail on the Lightening connector or plug them into a bluetooth adapter.
EDIT: Fine, there are people who still want headphone jacks. I’m not the one who decided to remove them and I’m glad they did, but I can’t give them back to you.
For listening to music this is great. A lot of very good headphones to choose from and very good audio quality.
But when you want to include a microphone, volume control and other features it becomes a problem. Hacks with different jack types were introduced but they are all hacks.
So I understand why Bluetooth is better for different types of communication.
What a lot of people don't understand is why Apple removed the jack while Bluetooth was already there. Apple did not introduce something better but removed a feature.
Some brands are listening to customers. They started including the jack again.
Having a jack and Bluetooth is great because you can choose what to use: great sound and a broad choice of good headphones or Bluetooth headphones with a lot of integrated features.
Example?
It's a fact that people are, what's there to "believe"? And "absolutely obsolete" also doesn't say anything. Come to think of it, I don't drop things, and I don't get them wet, so your concerns are absolutely obsolete for me: having the sufficient motor skills I don't need to waste additional energy and pollute the world some more, both physically and the radio spectrum, just for a tiny bit of convenience.
I'm sure you don't need a recap of the pigtail problems, but for the record, (1) they break (2) they get lost (3) they're not around when you need them (4) they risk breaking the usb/lightning port when in pocket, falling asleep on your phone, dropping the phone, etc. (5) they're expensive (6) they disable charging, docking, external displays, usb gamepad use etc (7) cognitive load to manage/carry around yet another accessory
The problem isn't that we think you should put the jack back in. The problem is that you're non-empathetic and believe everybody should have the the same opinion that you do.
I've had issues with the USB-C to 3.5mm dongle, including a period of time in which it was completely non-functional. But then a week ago I noticed out of the corner of my eye that my iPad (the new Pro 11) was rebooting itself. And now the dongle works perfectly again.
Give it a shot - if it starts acting goofy again, reboot your iPad and see if that "fixes" it. I'm going to pay attention to it for a while and file a bug report if it looks to be correlated.
How fast will this wear out the Lightning socket?
Since Apple put the springs in the socket and not the plug (like USB-C) when that socket wears out the phone is a right off.
Well at least you understood the point I was trying to convey.
I suspect Apple sometimes recognizes when they make a wrong turn. They'll never put the headphone jack back in the phone, or remove the touchbar from the laptop, because they would lose face if they did so. But they'll avoid compounding mistakes; as such the headphone jack remains on the laptop.
How is there a parallel to the headphone jack?
Flash drives were first released in 2000.
So... were “better alternatives” available? Yes. Were they incorporated onto the machine? No.
The idea was that almost all output would occur through the network, and that was a fairly prescient idea. If you wanted writable media, you had to add it externally — via a USB 1.1 connection, if memory serves (though maybe the machine also had a FireWire port, I can’t quite remember).
The point was that the floppy drive wasn’t removed because they replaced it with “better alternatives” on the machine, the point was that they thought that obsolete media had no place on modern almost-turn-of-the-millennium platforms.
I’d argue that there’s a pretty good parallel here.
(This wouldn't have taken very long, however, unlike the headphone jack, which is likely to remain the superior audio connector for consumers longer than the iPhone remains a product.)
While I'm not an expert on cars, most cars that have keyless entry that I've came across DO come with physical key, either separately, hidden inside the key fob, or the whole key fob works as a physical key as well. The only exception I know of is Tesla, but even they give you 2 keycards and you can purchase more. The reason is basically the same the reason I want headphone jacks back - fobs/Bluetooth can run out of battery, they are expansive to replace so you can't have multiple of them lying around.
While I do use the wireless option most of the time. I want the wired option as a backup.
Additionally, wired better functionality than the wireless option in this case - FM radio (not relevant for iPhones, but it does for Android), better audio quality, less battery consumption, ability to charge the phone while in use - features I personally am not very attached to but can see why they might be important for other people.