Hacker News Reader

Comment by qubex | Hacker News Reader

I honestly find it hard to believe that people are still bemoaning the ‘loss’ of the headphone jack. I stopped using it well before it was removed, probably sometime while using an iPhone 6 Plus/6S Plus (so 2015-2016). It was an absolutely obsolete interface and clearly a weak point for water resistance and structural integrity.

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.

View on HN

For audio the jack is a perfect interface. Extreme bandwidth, very easy to connect. That's why it is far from obsolete.

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.

> Some brands are listening to customers. They started including the jack again.

Example?

Xperia 1 II

It seems like audio jacks settled on the 3 ring design for microphones. My earpods mic work on my xbox, my iphone, and android phones.

Analog headphone ports aren't a serious weak point for water resistance. Older Samsung phones with such ports had good water resistance ratings.

You could simply film under water with a galaxy S8 and it had a headphone jack without any rubber caps. It's baffling to see the water resistance argument used against 3.5mm jack.

> I honestly find it hard to believe that people are still bemoaning

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.

All of my headphones are still wired. I hate those pigtail on lightning connectors. Even official Apple ones fall out so easily. Please give me my headphone jack back.

Why would the headphone jack be harder for water resistance than the other (USB/Lightning) ports?

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

All of my headphones are wired. Sure, I have BT earbuds, but I'd never be able to use my headphones with any of these phones and the audio quality on them is far superior to any BT headphones I could buy at a similar price. And no, an adapter is a terrible solution (especially a BT one, really?).

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.

The reason I'm bemoaning the loss of the headphone jack on the newer iPad Pro: 1) the dongle is fragile; I broke one in the space of a few weeks, 2) Zoom doesn't retain my input settings between meetings. So I am forced to unplug and replug the USB-C dongle between every meeting.

I suspect that this is actually a bug in iPadOS.

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.

I'll try it again but I found that oddly using a Baseus iPad Pro USB C hub also fixes the issue. Unfortunately the headphone jack on the hub doesn't have enough gain for me so I still have to use the dongle, but at least I don't have to unplug and replug for every call.

> If you really want to use headphones you can use a pigtail on the Lightening connector or plug them into a bluetooth adapter.

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.

I've been using the adapter in my car for 2 years, twice a day, no problems so far. Lightning is far more resilient to this than USB-C ports in my Macbook for example, which have become pretty loose over the years of plugging in chargers and monitors.

It's the lead that becomes loose not the port with USB-C so you can change the cable you use to connect to your monitor and it will be like new again.

It really depends on how you treat my phone. My iphone 5 took a lot of abuse, and I had to use a rubber band to apply pressure on the port to get it to charge by the end of its life. So far my SE1 is holding up.

Right off the bat, I think you mean write-off. ;)

Ah the beauty of being dyslexic. Occasionally I substitute the wrong spelling of words, especially when replying on a phone for some reason.

Well at least you understood the point I was trying to convey.

It is not an obsolete interface, if every PC and nearly all wired headphone/earphone uses it.

many PC headsets and speakers these days are USB for the same reason Apple went Bluetooth. It’s a limited interface.

Limited by what, DAC/amplifier performance? I am honestly curious. For driving audio signal it is a very reasonable interface, outside of professional territory (such as balanced or digital connections)

If it is absolutely obsolete, why is it still present on Apple's laptops?

> If it is absolutely obsolete, why is it still present on Apple's laptops?

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.

Or Laptops have just much more available space. They don't have to compromise as much for an extra port at a laptop. But an extra port at a phone changes design considerations a lot.

There were tech writers who were cutting open their iphone 7s and shoving in their own headphone jack. Space is there. This was a business decision to sell more airpods.

IMO, phones are already too small. The only way my SE works for me is having a nice thick case.

Macbooks are actually used by Audio professionals, so it makes sense to keep it there for a while. A phone is a consumption device and 99% of customers are probably fine with using bluetooth or the adapter.

They removed 3D Touch from the iPhone.

Technically it’s called Force Touch on their laptops. I think they have a little more depth margin on those devices.

Laptops are huge.

I’m sure you can find people who miss floppy drives and dot-matrix printers too.

Yes, I’m sure you can. But there doesn’t seem to be the same sense of anger or rage that they be ‘returned’. I’m really sorry I took the bait and commented on this.

Is this a fair comparison? A floppy disk stored 1.44MB. The first imac was released without a floppy drive was 1998. There was other superior alternatives. Floppy’s where quite easily corrupted by magnetically or through other means. Sandisk Flash drives and other alternatives where much faster offered much higher capacity and improved reliability / integrity.

How is there a parallel to the headphone jack?

Is it a fair comparison? I don’t know, you tell me, on the basis of the actual facts. When the iMac was released without a floppy drive in 1998, it was launched with a CD-ROM (and, only in the DV models, with a DVD-ROM) drive, which meant it was not able to write to CDs or DVDs.

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.

Ironically, if you're right about the order of events, I agree with you about the parallel being pretty good, but disagree with you about the implications of the argument. They should have waited until it was possible to include some form of writable media support on the iMac to remove the floppy drive.

(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.)

The original iMac 233MHz did not have Firewire, only the later "DV" (digital video) models did. But it had USB (instead of ADB), and the Iomega Zip 100MB drives were a popular alternative to floppy disks for personal use. New Mac-compatible software was already available on CDs, so the lack of a CD burner or floppy drive was not actually that much of an issue in practice.

I can pair my bluetooth headphones to different devices with the click of a button (eg. when leaving the desk etc). I can be connected to my phone and the Laptop at the same time. It's very convenient when making phone calls on the go or listening to navigation on the bike without messing with cables. I am not an Audiophile but have two decent pairs of Bluetooth headphones with subjectively great audio quality. For me personally, it is a huge step up in convenience, i would never go back to have another wire on the desk or under my clothes.

There is no sense of anger or rage outside the tiny tech bubble that complains about it. In the real world people have forgot about the headphone jack a long time ago.

No bait, just expressing my genuine misunderstanding of said "rage" or "anger" and using the "taken" terminology. It sounds to me like a bunch of people yelling at a car manufacturer for giving them keyless entry and demanding physical keys back. (and no, I don't use Bluetooth audio. Everything I own is wired)

That analogy doesn't really work tho. No one is complaining about getting keyless entry (almost all phone had Bluetooth for the past decade or so, no one minded), just the removal of physical keys (the 3.5mm jack).

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.

Audio jack isn't outdated. It's still the wired format for audio and that will never change. You will always see wired cans in studios. The only thing that changed is that Apple wanted to get into the $200 disposable bluetooth headphone game, and based on their sales this play was enormously profitable.

I know every gate at an airport has a dot matrix printer for the passenger list that is handed to the cabin crew.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com