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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

They need to mandate the presence of a physical cable, otherwise Apple will drop the port and move to wireless charging. Wired cable remains important for high-quality audio and secure data transfers. Both WiFi and Bluetooth have a long and storied history of vulnerabilities.

While they are at it, can we please have a dedicated physical cable port for audio? It doesn't have to be TRRS 3.5mm, but it must be possible to have a wired audio/mike connection that is separate from wired power, without power-hungry dongles. e.g. an entire ecosystem of 3rd party audio devices was sidelined by the removal of headphone jacks.

Now that everyone who wants a Bluetooth headset has one, can we go back to the pre-Beats era of optional, high-quality wired audio? It can be restricted to Pro devices, if necessary.

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I wonder what % of phone users have actually used a cable to move data to or from their phone in the last couple of years. I have, but I'm a weird nerd who likes to plug in removable storage once every 6 months or so.

The ones who still own their data? If data is money, they can also afford to buy new phones. iXpand USB-Lightning drives are supported by some iOS apps which process large files, e.g. media playback and editing.

There's no need for everything to be lowest-common-denominator. Product management is not statistics, it is aspirational leadership for upward mobility in human values, including but not limited to function, form, and creative power. e.g. a tiny minority of humans create art for millions, yet both can use the same device + accessories, if devices are not neutered.

iPhone can backup to a PC or NAS wirelessly, no reason for a cable other than charging.

WiFi is vulnerable to many, many, many, many attacks.

How do you backup iPhone to NAS? Do you mean mounting a NAS drive on a PC/Mac and then using WiFi for iTunes backup?

I'm curious what your threat model is. State actors? Hanging out at DEFCON?

Corporate IP protection, which these days includes state threats.

A recent WiFi vulnerablity, https://www.fragattacks.com/

> The discovered vulnerabilities affect all modern security protocols of Wi-Fi, including the latest WPA3 specification. Even the original security protocol of Wi-Fi, called WEP, is affected. This means that several of the newly discovered design flaws have been part of Wi-Fi since its release in 1997! Fortunately, the design flaws are hard to abuse because doing so requires user interaction or is only possible when using uncommon network settings. As a result, in practice the biggest concern are the programming mistakes in Wi-Fi products since several of them are trivial to exploit.

I do on a daily basis, but I'm a bit of an oddity in that I've strenuously avoided the shift to streaming music. I don't want all the music. To me that's the same as having none of the music. Heck, I don't even want all of my music. I have a set of smart playlists that keep my phone loaded with a mix of less played and less-recently played songs that give me a set of music that changes every day (although it would take me a few weeks of continuous listening to listen to everything on my phone as it is). I've found wifi sync to be flakey enough that I do my daily sync with a cable.

> otherwise Apple will drop the port and move to wireless charging

Since the aim is to reduce e-waste, I suppose going all-in with wireless charging wouldn't be a problem (or even preferable) in the eyes of the law.

A thin cable is much less waste than a wireless charger, which has a larger surface area and is still an evolving standard, e.g. magnetic docking, so it will be years of generational upgrades. Cables exist today and work much faster.

Should human time spent waiting for phone chargers be a metric for central planning regulation? e.g. what does a 100% speed increase in rapid charging mean for the economy, vs. travelers waiting at an airport or cafe, or running their car to charge their phone?

The laws of physics still apply to wired audio, networking and electricity, no matter how many billions are spent on glitzy ads for wireless.

Not to mention the inefficiency.

wireless charging is less efficient and may even affect battery longevity.

> Since the aim is to reduce e-waste, I suppose going all-in with wireless charging wouldn't be a problem (or even preferable) in the eyes of the law.

wireless charging uses more energy than cable one, so it is not that eco friendly

For the love of God, we do not want a government to be in charge of the innovation. When government declares specifically what technology is mandated then we can be quite certain that there will be no more progress in this area. For example why bother working on a better port than USB-C, if there is this new risk of not being able to even use it.

Agreed, but IF there are going to be government mandates, let those mandates be used to balance the non-transparent power of corporations prioritizing business interests (e.g. selling more wireless headphones) instead of serving a diverse set of customer use cases.

Are dongles for audio actually noticeably more power-hungry than a wired connection?

The device is still a digital audio device, requiring a DAC for output and an ADC for input to connect to your analog headphones and microphone. I don't see why putting the DAC and/or ADC in a dongle would use more power than putting them in the device.

I'd argue that the DAC and/or ADC are best placed as close to the headphones and mic as possible. If I'm using very high quality headphones or mics I'm going to want a very high quality DAC/ADC. If I'm using low quality headphones or mics I'm fine with a lower quality DAC/ADC.

With the DAC/ADC built into the device I'm either limited by the quality the device maker chose or am paying for more than I need.

In practice a good phone amp and DAC such as those in the LG V series is the best audio quality you can get without massive boondoggles.

A good amp/DAC combo in the phone is much cheaper than an external amp/DAC of similar quality.

> They need to mandate the presence of a physical cable, otherwise Apple will drop the port and move to wireless charging.

I think the free market can take care of that. If you want a physical connector, just buy a device that comes with one.

You just might need to go to a place like Guitar Center (instrument store) to buy one. That's what I did when I needed headphones.

Sadly, non-iOS devices have way less security, so that's not an option. Spoken as a former user of Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Maemo and Meego. And current owner of Sailfish and Pinephone.

Network effects mean that some apps are only on iOS and Android. Of those two, only iOS has a net-effective security and privacy story, if used without iCloud.

The free market includes feedback from existing users. Microsoft learned that over time. Even Apple does, reversing course on keyboards and touch bar.

Keep wire port is also important for not to use wireless charging. Wireless charging is inefficient, and reduces battery life due to heat so it produces much waste.

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