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Comment by tristanj | Hacker News Reader

They're taking a card from Apple's playbook: intentionally creating controversy. Remove some basic functionality and refuse to give it back claiming it's better this way, causing an internet debate between diehard fans and critics, resulting in free promotion and advertising. Now everyone knows about their latest product. Just like what happened when Apple removed the headphone jack, power brick, butterfly keyboard (looks nice but terrible to use), etc.

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I don’t think your theory is correct that Apple made their products worse on purpose. Hanlon’s Razor suggests it was simply Apple trying something new that didn’t turn out to be an improvement, and them taking some time to accept that internally and decide how to right the situation.

Intentionally hampering their products as a marketing stunt sounds like an awfully far fetched theory for the most valuable brand in the world with one of the most effective marketing teams.

Removing the headphone jack was just the method to force users to buy bluethooth buds.

This has turned out great for Apple. Air pods sell incredibly well.

It also helps reduce the number of places where water can get in your iPhone.

People talk about Apple’s marketing teams from time to time but I feel like Apple is large enough they effectively don’t need one.

that shows how effective their marketing team has historically been.

> Just like what happened when Apple removed the headphone jack, power brick, etc.

Ha! Where have you been? You missed quite a few decades of the “firsts” from Apple. They are the first ones to remove floppy disks, CDs from computers :-)

And the only ones that thaught it's a good idea to have only one mouse button.

The reason they removed the headphone jack was so that they could sell airpods.

The reason they removed the power brick was because they have a monopoly and it won't affect sales.

Tesla doing this doesn't seem as straight-forward. It surely is to reinforce their image as innovative and special (which removing headphone jack or power brick doesn't really do).

That's not really the Apple playbook.

Apple's moves tend to have a background of reason: The Headphone jack removal allowed for the Taptic Engine on the 7. It was a halo item for reviews when they added it. The Brick removal was an E-Waste concern that all other brands are following.

(This does not ignore the upside to Apple with the Airpods and Wall adaptors, just that there is grey here)

Then there were the prior items: Removing Apple Serial (iMac) was super controversial, it led to USB being mainstream. Removing the CD Drive on the MacBook air directly led to 10 hour battery life laptops. Removing full size ports on laptops led to a more versatile port and charging situation (if not less convenient)

Apple's moves have advantages.

This wheel is just Sci-Fi theater that doesn't do anything better.

Elon doesn't play 4D chess. Hell, he disbanded Tesla's entire PR department.

> The Headphone jack removal allowed for the Taptic Engine on the 7

Most of the space that would be taken by the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 is instead taken by the utterly useless piece of plastic called "barometric vent". And it's not like Apple engineers couldn't have figured out how to combine water resistance with a headphone jack — Samsung did that somehow. Oh, and there's plenty of space inside an iPad, but newer models also come without a headphone jack. It has to be a political decision, not a practical one. As well as their insistence on keeping Lightning a thing.

This whole situation is so ridiculous at this point — the lack of a headphone jack is now considered a flagship feature. If you have a lot of money to spend on a phone, you can't not want the unreliable mess that is bluetooth, right? And before you say it: bluetooth is not a replacement for a wired connection. And, for that matter, neither is wifi a replacement for ethernet.

Wi-Fi has entirely replaced Ethernet for me for almost 15 years. I also notice no difference these days with Bluetooth headphones. Both of these seem to act as replacements for their wired predecessors that fulfill the needs and expectations of most people. This is clearer when it comes to Ethernet, as the advantage of wireless networking is far greater than the advantage of wireless earphones. What more do you need to consider these replacements?

There's nothing that can fix them for me. They're unreliable by virtue of being wireless and using a medium shared with many similar devices as well as things like microwaves. Wired connections don't have that problem — either they work or they don't because the cable broke or the connector isn't all the way in. They're much easier to troubleshoot because your devices aren't connected by invisible ether and common state in their memory, you can actually see and touch the thing that connects them.

Besides, I just don't trust the connection that is managed by software. Complex, proprietary software, that implements thousands pages worth of specifications. Where you would simply insert a plug into a jack and be done with it, in this "future" you now need to go through menus and click buttons, some of which sometimes do nothing, when your headphones won't connect to your phone. And don't even get me started on using the same headphones with more than one device. It's a ridiculous mess.

Then I just don't want my headphones to have a firmware and a CPU. I also don't want them to have a battery that ages and needs charging.

Bluetooth will never work for applications that require low audio latency, such as pro audio software or rhythm games. Even in the best case, BT latency seems to be on the order of 50-100ms.

I once lived in an apartment where I saw 45 simultaneously active wifi networks. Not even in a skyscraper, only an ordinary 3 story building in a residential street. It wasn't fun, even on 5 GHz it constantly disconnected.

Video showing someone adding the headphone jack back to an iPhone 7.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA

The headphone jack did not make space for the taptic engine; it made space for a piece of plastic.

Well you put it much better than I could have. I had come to say the same

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