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Comment by ranger_danger | Hacker News Reader

You don't have to, you can still use headphones with a USB-C adapter.

I can’t believe, after so many YEARS, that people are still so hurt about the damn headphone jack. Even given the existence of adapters, some just won’t let it go and are willing to die on such a ridiculous hill. It’s like still being upset about computers not coming with CDROM drives anymore.

It all went to shit when they removed the floppy drive.

If so many people are still complaining about it after all this time, perhaps it's not because they're luddites but because many still use it despite you thinking it's obsolete.

And no, it's not comparable with CD drives at all, those are obsolete and gone even from desktops where space is not really a concern. It's more like complaining about the Macbook Pro 2016 not having USB-A ports. And Apple actually put those back, and I don't need to explain why they are incentivized to not do the same for headphones.

It's not my hill to die on but I will say use wireless in-ear monitors myself to avoid ever having to deal with adapters because... Adapters are terrible, often wonky in one way or another, incredibly inconvenient for anything but having them lie on a desk. It's also something you easily forget to carry around, or you lose or break because of shoddy build quality.

It's a bad alternative to something that wasn't a problem except it took up space and people still talk about it because there's still a need for something better

Can I buy headphones without headphone jacks that cost $5, can be transferred between devices near instantly with no registration, and allow me to charge my phone at the same time?

If not, then that is why I'm not shifting off of them.

I've gone through like 3 of those for one of my other devices. They're way too easy to lose and sometimes they outright don't work. It's a product that should not have to exist in 2025.

I use my built-in headphone jack daily and would buy another phone if it went out.

I understand your frustration but I think the reality is that the vast majority of people simply do not use wired headphones, so it doesn't make financial sense for them to keep it.

Then why do they keep it in Macbooks if it makes no sense? To repeat excuses in this thread, people could just use an external DAC if they like cables so much.

Comparisons with CD drives I see here are absurd, those drives actually take up a massive amount of space, are obsolete and used by almost no one anymore. Meanwhile headphone jacks are still very widely used. To the people saying "just use an adapter" I would suggest trying your own advice every day for a month, you'll see why it's not comparable.

And saying the vast majority of people don't use wired headphones when wired headphones are actively made inconvenient and incompatible is not a very convincing argument.

The removal was simply unnecessary, comes with no noticeable upside in return and is suspiciously convenient for those companies considering they also sell wireless headphones as the solution.

If so many people are still complaining about it, perhaps it's not because they're dumb but because there is still a real need for it.

Macbooks get used for pro audio and video things that phones generally don't, and the much larger form factor means that the 3.5mm jack is far less of a design tradeoff.

I was referring to phones not having headphone jacks, there are still other uses for it on laptop/desktop that I think are more widely used.

> not a very convincing argument

I still believe it either way, but you don't have to.

> If so many people are still complaining about it

I don't think they are, at least not so many relative to the majority of phone users in the world. Tech savvy users are a rounding error in the grand scheme of things.

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