Hacker News Reader

Comment by tzs | Hacker News Reader

Looks like they have moved the headphone jack from the back to the side.

On the one hand, that would be better for me, because the way my desk is laid out to plug in my headphones on my iMac I have to reach under the front and jumble around blindly.

Having the headphone jack on the left side would be easier.

On the other hand, someone with a second monitor that prefers it on the left might find that it is in the way of their headphones.

What I really wish they would do is make it so that you can keep your headphones plugged in, and choose via the Sound settings whether you want sound to go to them or the internal speakers.

EDIT: My iMac is a 2017 model. From what I've read elsewhere, they may have changed the behavior described in the "What I really wish" paragraph in later models.

View on HN

I do this on my MacBookPro. I keep my headphones plugged in. I have the system sound go via the Mac speakers. And I have zoom set to use the headphones.

It’s easy to switch between built in speakers, wired headphones and AirPods. All with unplugging anything.

Yeah, it was easy on my 2008 and 2009 Mac Pros too. And from what I've reading it might be easy on 2020 iMac and maybe 2019 iMac. But from 2017 iMac (which I have) back at least to 2011 MacOS considers the headphone jack and internal speaker to be the same output, with whether or not you have headphones plugged in determining where it sends the sound.

I think you can switch between sound output sources. Just click on the sound button in the menu bar.

You can indeed switch between sound output devices, but on iMac "headphones" and "internal speakers" are the same device, so switching is only available if you have something else, like USB speakers or an AirPlay device.

If you click the sound button on the menu bar to open the menu, it will have a headphones entry if headphones are plugged in, and an internal speakers entry if headphones are not plugged in.

As you plug in and unplug headphones, with the menu showing, that entry dynamically changes. (Same on the Sound panel in System Preferences).

This appears to be entirely a software decision on Apple's part, rather than some sort of electrical/mechanical design that forces the speakers to be disconnected when the headphones are inserted. In this discussion [1] on Ask Different people report that when they run Windows via Bootcamp, they can choose via software between headphones and internal speakers.

BTW, my iMac is a 2017 model. They might have changed this with later models.

[1] https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/6510/use-internal-...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com