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Everyone lamenting the loss of the headphone jack reminds me of the same people lamenting the loss of the CD-ROM drive in the MacBooks. The headphone jack is a

Everyone lamenting the loss of the headphone jack reminds me of the same people lamenting the loss of the CD-ROM drive in the MacBooks. The headphone jack is a legacy, bulky port. I would not be surprised to see a port-less phone in the next few years. Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc. At each of those steps there were people decrying the loss of these things. Today however, most people don’t miss any of them. They made the right choice then and I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt now.

bauerd 9y ago
I spent a good amount of money on decent headphones and if I can't use them with my phone without a dongle that's a no-no. I get that "the future is portless" but the future hasn't arrived yet and until then I'm not gonna hand out 800EUR for something I can't use with my headphones with.
- Spivak 9y ago
  But if you're the type of person that has one good pair of headphones then attach the adapter to them all the time and just pretend that the port on your phone is a weird shape. I get that it's not ideal and that adapters are awkward but it seems like it's such a minor inconvenience for your use case. I would expect that audiophiles are used to adapters to go between 2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 1/4" stereo already. What's one more?
  - bauerd 9y ago
    I get where you're coming from but the "What's one more?" idea is what led to this whole donglemania. Dongles are conceived of bridges into a brighter future but no thanks I'll happily live in the past for now.
  - dpkonofa 9y ago
    I just wanted to say that this is a really great point and, inevitably, the answer from people with these objections is always the same - they just prefer what they already have and are comfortable with. It's such a mild inconvenience that they're already ok with in every other scenario but, for some reason, this time it's completely different. It doesn't make sense.
    - bauerd 9y ago
      Im not ok with it in every other scenario, I just swallow it often times because e.g. making a switch away from my MacBook would be prohibitively costly for me and I'll rather endure these "mild inconveniences" (dongle for Cinema Display, USB, Ethernet). And yes, I really do prefer what I already have (my headphones working without a dongle). Edit: I'm not even an audiophile btw
      - dpkonofa 9y ago
        So what do you do when you need to plug those headphones into a DAC with a stereo input? You need an adapter. What do you do when you need to plug them into a TV or game system? You need an adapter. You are definitely ok with it in other scenarios, just not this very specific one.
        bauerd 9y ago
        >need to plug those headphones into a DAC with a stereo input Don't have one. >need to plug them into a TV or game system Don't have either. You're completely right that I need adapters but that doesn't mean I'm ok with getting increasingly more of them. Especially when I get nothing out of them except backwards-compat for hardware that is simply not of the legacy type. Adapters are easy to forget at home, lose on the go, break, etc. pp. They're detrimental to the user experience and hence should be restricted to support of legacy hardware.
  - photojosh 9y ago
    This is exactly what I've done. I have one pair of $250 headphones I've had for years that I use when I want to sit in a dark room and just listen to music. Now the dongle lives on them and there is no inconvenience at all.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > I spent a good amount of money on decent headphones and if I can't use them with my phone without a dongle that's a no-no. I get that "the future is portless" but the future hasn't arrived yet What's your criteria for when that future will have arrived?
  - bauerd 9y ago
    When there's a decent wireless competitor to the headphones I already have. When there's cheap wireless in-ears on the market.
foxfired 9y ago
The problem is, the alternative to dropped techs were better to some extent: - CD-ROM -> Bigger hard drives, faster internet connections. - Floppy -> CD-ROMs And BIOS upgrade - Flash -> Better browser security, and faster javascript Now for headphone jack, we have bluetooth. Slow, unreliable, requires to charge an extra device, when you run out of earphone battery, you are done listening. If you use the USB/Lightning to AUX, you can't charge your phone at the same time. If lose the earpiece, you pay premium to replace it. Also: I can't watch a video with a half-second audio delay. Half a second is being generous.
- vtange 9y ago
  Not to mention for audiophiles there is the extra concern about sound quality loss.
  - bb88 9y ago
    The DAC on most consumer devices is not audiophile quality. Having had a mac book and a standalone USB DAC, there's really no comparison.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - koolba 9y ago
      Are you being serious or was that meant sarcastically? I genuinely can’t tell as your comment reminds me of hilarious HDMI cable reviews.
      - themacguffinman 9y ago
        Are you going to say something of substance or just act like a douche?
        dang 9y ago
        Please don't be uncivil on HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment was. It would be a good idea to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure you follow them when posting here. Your previous comment broke them as well.
yeukhon 9y ago
I still have CDs / DVDs I love, so I have to get a portable. My friend loves vinyl, so she has to get a vinyl machine. The latter example is probably a stretch, but there is a value in using and appreciating old technology. The drop of headphone jack comes with one problem: I can't charge and listen to music at the same time unless I pay for the earbuds, or get a third-party thunderbolt hub which has serious quality issue... P.S: Mr. Robot saves whatever he wants to store away on discs. Kinda interesting. He probably doesn't trust hard drive as much as discs, and thinks discs will survive longer.
- epmaybe 9y ago
  I believe that discs do survive longer. I remember reading some article describing the decay of data over time. As long as the discs aren't horribly scratched up they will retain data for a very long time without decay.
whipoodle 9y ago
A lot of people make this point but I just don't think the analogy works. For one, you use the headphones with the phone as well as other devices, and those things might not grow a Lightning port.
- hanklazard 9y ago
  Exactly. Are airplanes manufacturers going to start building in the lightning port?
  - dpkonofa 9y ago
    You joke but this has already been suggested by several airplane manufacturers. They want to build in lightning and USB-C ports to replace/add to the power outlets. Most airports already have the extra USB ports now next to the power block.
  - whipoodle 9y ago
    Hell even recent Apple laptops don’t have one.
davesque 9y ago
Has any bluetooth wireless headphone maker solved the latency issue yet? If not, then portless might still be a ways off.
- cycrutchfield 9y ago
  Apple Airpods.
  - davesque 9y ago
    Really? Have you tried playing a game with them or any kind of app that is like a musical instrument?
    - cycrutchfield 9y ago
      I just checked now and there is a very slight lag, maybe on the order of 100-200ms. It's pretty subtle though and I definitely did not notice it before you mentioned it. I can imagine that it would be maddeningly slow if it were something like a rhythm game or a musical instrument app though.
      - davesque 9y ago
        Yeah that's what I was referring to. At one point, I thought I was going to wirelessly connect my electric keyboard at home to my stereo through a bluetooth transmitter. I soon found out that there's a delay associated with audio transmission through bluetooth. I don't think anyone's really solved this problem for these kinds of applications because most people use bluetooth audio for passive tasks like listening to music.
cycrutchfield 9y ago
Precisely this. We see this crying and beating of chests whenever some obsolete legacy interface is finally deprecated to the dustbin of history. "You can pry my 3.5mm headphone jack out of my cold dead hands!" the knee-jerk reactionaries foam at the mouth in mock outrage, and then they go and buy a good set of bluetooth headphones or earbuds a few months later. I have an iphone and the airpods and I haven't missed the tangled mess of the old earbuds at all.
kllrnohj 9y ago
> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc. > At each of those steps there were people decrying the loss of these things. Today however, most people don’t miss any of them. Those statements don't really support each other. There's no particular evidence that Apple's timing was good, just that they dropped it and eventually nobody cared. But if they dropped it years before everyone moved on, then their timing was awful, not great, even though the end-state was the same. Flash is a particularly weird example since Flash on mobile largely never existed, so claims to "drop" it are nonsensical. You can't drop that which didn't exist. Yes there was a brief attempt at Flash on Android, but that came long after the iPhone. Dropping flash on desktop would have been a better example, but Apple didn't actually have the courage to do that, at least not on their own. It was more a unified push by all the browser vendors combined with Adobe themselves dropping support for Flash.
- mrgordon 9y ago
  Flash on iPhone didn’t exist because Apple didn’t want it due to security issues. It was controversial when they decided not to allow it. https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016/12/12/steve-jobs-iphone-adobe-flash-testing/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016/12/12/steve-jobs-iph...
bb88 9y ago
We'll see how dropping the escape key does with people who love developing in vim.
- rifung 9y ago
  I don't think it'll matter? I think it will just drive adoption of Ctrl + [ for vim users which is arguably better anyway since it's closer to the home row
  - sooheon 9y ago
    The home row isn’t magic, I don’t get the obsession with it. Our fingers don’t lie in a naturally perfectly straight line—each finger has its natural zone, it tends to stray vertically from the home row.
    - rifung 9y ago
      Well I suppose my fingers normally stay around the home row because that's how I was taught. I suppose it's my mistake for assuming that's how others type! Nevertheless, esc is still super far away from all the letters which is presumably what you are likely to be pressing.
  - nathancahill 9y ago
    I preemptively remapped escape to caps lock since my next laptop probably won't have an escape key. It took about a day to adjust to. Now, I can't see how I ever used escape in the first place, it's so far to reach. Although now, I keep turning on caps lock when I use other people's computers.
- ves 9y ago
  serious people map caps lock to escape! Seriously though, using the corner esc key to get into normal mode sucked anyway.
  - monocasa 9y ago
    Or get a computer with a sane keyboard.
voltagex_ 9y ago
For the loss of the headphone jack to not be a downgrade, two things have to happen: * Bluetooth has to work flawlessly - I hear there's been some issues even on iOS 11 and Android's Bluetooth has always been terrible * USB C Audio has to work flawlessly [1] 1: http://pocketnow.com/2016/09/08/the-impending-horror-of-usb-type-c-audio-adapters http://pocketnow.com/2016/09/08/the-impending-horror-of-usb-...
makmanalp 9y ago
> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc. Counterexamples to your claim: Thunderbolt? Magsafe? Magsafe2? The physical escape key? All of your examples were actually significant improvements: floppy / CD-ROM took up immense physical space and removing them caused a significant improvement in space and weight. SSDs initially had less capacity, but at least they had way better performance and also improved upon space and weight. > The headphone jack is a legacy, bulky port The headphone jack doesn't save on weight, its alternatives aren't an improvement. It does save on space, and I understand that space is tight on a phone, but honestly, we've already had so many brilliant and slim phones that have headphone jacks that I don't really buy this as an excuse. Do we /really/ need ever so slightly slimmer phones every year? Remember the bent iphone 6es? I'd be willing to buy this if there was something amazingly novel that USB-C provides for headphones, or if wireless earbuds lasted more than 5-6 hours. Here's what it comes down to: my 2013 macbook pro is fantastic, and none of the new stuff regarding ports is a genuine improvement to my experience, but all of it adds to potential frustration when I eventually have to make the switch when the hardware can't keep up anymore. I feel similarly with my iphone SE. I really wish they'd stop futzing around with everything just for trivial improvements.
- dpkonofa 9y ago
  >Counterexamples to your claim: Thunderbolt? Magsafe? Magsafe2? The physical escape key? How are any of those counterexamples? Thunderbolt wasn't dropped and most users don't care a single bit about Magsafe and/or the physical escape key.
  - xuki 9y ago
    Magsafe is a lifesaver if you have kids/pets. I even tripped the wire sometimes. I understand the appeal of a single cable for power/data but Magsafe was great.
  - com2kid 9y ago
    Early on Apple shipped with a thunderbolt connector that the rest of the industry ended up not using. Any tech purchased around that connector was deprecated when the machine it was to connect to was upgraded.
katzgrau 9y ago
I'm usually ready to embrace the next step, but the loss of the headphone jack was what made switch to the Pixel. Call it what you will, but the headphone jack is superior to its predecessor, unlike the floppy, cd-rom, etc. When I heard they were discontinuing it, it felt wrong - it felt intentionally radical. And I knew there was no way I was going to pay extra for some Bluetooth earbuds I will definitely lose on my morning runs.
barrkel 9y ago
Bluetooth is a merely adequate replacement, though. It regularly has dropouts depending on radio interference, and it means another peripheral that needs charging. I don't know about you, but I regularly - at least 5 times a year - find the battery drained in my Bluetooth peripheral when I wanted to play audio, typically before or during a long trip. I keep wired headphones in my jacket pocket for these times, as a backup. I use three different peripherals often, and I don't track their charge state - the first I know about low battery is when they start giving warnings, usually about 10 minutes before they shut down, leaving me in silence. I don't have the time or patience to be checking their charge statuses constantly, or continually plugging them in to charge up, meaning disconnecting them from their home locations and needing retrieval before use.
timbo1642 9y ago
Actually you're wrong. They dropped the standard USB ports and EVERYONE is pissed off about that. And if someone isn't, they're a retard. Flash is still important even though its written like garbage. Your last argument is as dumb as can be too. You're trying to say because people have forgotten what they were made about, it doesn't matter. So since people forgot that the iMac they had was USB only and couldn't use older devices, its not important. It may not be now, but it was important then.
- dang 9y ago
  This comment breaks the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do that, so please read them and follow them when commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
1_2__4 9y ago
I really wish people like you would stop pooh-poohing legitimate complaints about attempts to prematurely retire tech just because companies have found something more lucrative for them. We’re not luddites. We’re not short sighted. We understand tech moves on. That’s all fine and also irrelevant, because the situation here is that real tech used be lots of people every day with no real replacement is being yanked out from under us in the name of profit. Stop acting like you’re woke and the rest of us just need to catch up. It’s insulting as hell.
- nicky0 9y ago
  No one has taken away anything. Your current phone still has a headphone jack. Stop acting like somebody took something away from you.
  - ta201201201 9y ago
    In the age of mass production, you get what they make. Custom items of the same price & quality as those mass produced are often/usually prohibitively expensive. If they stop making what you want, you stop being able to get it. So what's Parent going to do when his current phone dies?
    - ceejayoz 9y ago
      > So what's Parent going to do when his current phone dies? Buy virtually any other phone, if it's that important to them?
  - archagon 9y ago
    Completely false. There is no adapter out there that can do simultaneous audio and data. My Apogee JAM sits gathering dust as a result.
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > Your current phone still has a headphone jack. My current phone is rapidly disintegrating. If I had the time, I could argue that the current method of production and rapid obsolescence did, in fact, take both my current phone away, and my ability to easily transition to the new model being offered without having to rethink how I listen to music.
hota_mazi 9y ago
> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc They have a good track record of dropping technologies in order to push their own proprietary technology instead. And failing most of the time, resulting in ultimately adopting the standard that everybody else is using.
- matt4077 9y ago
  Floppy -> CD-ROM CD-ROM -> Internet/USB stick Ethernet -> WLAN Flash -> HTML etc -> pp The only proprietary port on today's Macs and iDevices is the lightning connector, which is quite obviously better than the abomination that is microUSB, which the competition uses. I can't fathom how people can delude themselves into believing such easily disproven myths.
  - kruptos 9y ago
    Newest Android phones are using USB C, not microUSB.
makecheck 9y ago
Apple and others should have only considered removing the headphone jack if they were prepared to do all of the following at the same time: 1. Abandon all proprietary connectors and adopt USB-C only on the phone. Keeping the Lightning port while moving MacBook Pros to USB-C-only was incredibly dumb because it immediately made the new products less useful than ANY older and less-expensive combination. Let’s see: older iPhone with charge cable and earphones that seamlessly plug into both the phone and the computer, or new-and-expensive-for-no-reason computer that can’t do any of that!? 2. Put multiple ports on the phone to avoid port-unavailable issues during charging; or, make sure that so-called “wireless” charging is working first so it can be a viable alternative. Instead they just broke a bunch of things and figured at some unspecified point in the future it would all work out. Well, what exactly is the point of buying the product in the meantime? 3. Assume that people will still want wired earphones. Wireless is NOT automatically better, for any number of reasons (risk of loss, sound cutting out, constant recharge, worse sound quality). I have wireless headphones and I basically hate them; seems that every other time I want to use them they’re already out of battery, or they just STOP working halfway through some music. And it’s one of those products that can’t be used while it’s being recharged. As a result, I just use them way less, and it is a step backwards in every conceivable way. All I want is a wire.
- otachack 9y ago
  I also don't see why they didn't go full USB-C with their phones. Maybe they didn't want to put out too many changes at once. Still, iPhone 8 seemed a great time to pair USB-C.
  - LaikaF 9y ago
    It's to close to the point where they ditched the 40 pin and everyone bought new stuff.
  - kurusii 9y ago
    I don't remember where I read it, but apparently Apple committed to the Lightning port for a certain number of years when speaking to accessory manufacturers.
specialp 9y ago
Apple did not drop the floppy drive at the right time. They did in in 1998 which was at least 4 years before widely available USB flash drives. I remember every computer in the labs at school having a external floppy drive or even worse a Zip drive as there was no easy way for students to save their work and bring it with them. They also weren't responsible for the death of the Floppy disk as their marketshare then was low single digits. Removing USB A from laptops for "professionals" and removing 3.5mm headphone jack is not really helping anything. USB C adoption will continue but there so many USB A products out there that it is inconvenient to the customer with zero advantage. Yeah I'd really like less ports on here for no decrease in price or increase in portability and would like to carry dongles said no one ever.
et-al 9y ago
I rented a Hyundai over the summer and to play music from my iPhone, I had to Bluetooth pair with the car. Guess what? It started syncing my entire contacts list. I just wanted to pipe audio from my phone to the car speakers, not share my life with a rental car. So for those of us who value compartmentalising our lives, we'd very much like that bulky 3.5mm headphone jack, in addition to Bluetooth. Thanks.
- dpkonofa 9y ago
  You didn't have to do that, though. You can connect Bluetooth audio without syncing your contact list. Additionally, just because your phone is showing your contacts in the car's interface, that doesn't mean anything was synced to the car. It may have just been reading your contacts from the phone via Bluetooth. As soon you as unpair the device, those contacts would be gone, if that's the case...
  - r00fus 9y ago
    My Ford does this (sync contacts) by default too. Yes it's an inexpensive car but you have explicitly turn this off and it's not intuitive. Not quite a dark pattern per se but I prefer to not connect BT to rentals for that reason alone.
  - et-al 9y ago
    Thanks for pointing that out possibility because I couldn't find it. I wonder if it's an option for Hyundais because it's not included in their quick start guide either: http://www.hyundaibluetooth.com/content/dam/Bluetooth/Hyundai/QSG/2017/13008_5%20Quick%20Start%20Tucson%20(2).pdf http://www.hyundaibluetooth.com/content/dam/Bluetooth/Hyunda...
- bobsoap 9y ago
  On Android, there's a prompt when a paired device requests access to your contacts/call history/messages, and you can deny the request. It's irrelevant to play audio but it allows the car to give you a built-in interface to use your phone for calling and such. I didn't know that iOS didn't prompt you for that.
mattnewton 9y ago
This isn’t about making phones smaller- they didn’t get smaller. This is about upselling some wireless earbuds. It made more sense to me when apple did it, owning beats, so even if you don’t go for the AirPods they win, but it looks like Google wants some of that upsell with the pixel buds.
ge96 9y ago
I was recently listening to a podcast (embedded fm) regarding paypal and this triangular BLE block that had no ports. Would be funny if your phone was bricked and you had no way to interface with it. Maybe by display at the very least.
- photojosh 9y ago
  There's only one phone you can use? ;) I set up the equivalent Square card-reader device for my kids' school parents group, together with a dedicated iPad with cell connection. It's magic... even the most technophobic mum can operate it. Sure, would be a problem if (or when) the iPad died, but it is stupidly cheap (and contract-free!) compared to a dedicated payment machine.
  - ge96 9y ago
    I don't know if this tech was released yet, it was something to do with wireless payments if I recall right. I think I bricked my phone once when I was messing with rooting/overclocking. I don't do that anymore, I bought a pretty solid LG phone for like $80 (new) from a lower end mobile provider it functions better than this other phone by ZTE that had a finger print sensor, it kept freezing after running say more than 4 apps. Edit: The podcast was about PayPal Beacon
erickhill 9y ago
I use a tiny dongle that allows me to use any headphones I want. It's really not that big of a deal. It's about 2" in length that looks exactly like my apple headphone jack - so no one's the wiser really. I thought it would be a big deal - I was wrong. It's fine. If you still want to use your cheap/expensive wired headphones, you can.
kentt 9y ago
Actually I agree that this is just like a CD drive but reach the opposite conclusion. Removing the CD drive was mostly worse for the consumer of the MBA at the time. Sure, almost no one wants a CD drive now, but that gives little credence to the idea that it should have been removed while still best for the consumer.
microcolonel 9y ago
CD-ROM was not the only removable storage medium, and it had an enormous cost in space (and sometimes power, if not implemented correctly). A good consumer-grade headphone amplifier has a minuscule cost in terms of space, even relative to a smartphone. The only reason to remove it is if you want your phone to be thinner than can support a 3.5mm receptacle, but as a smartphone consumer I don't really see the point in making a phone thinner than that, I figure it makes it hard to grasp the phone without touching the screen inadvertently. The iPhone 8 is about as thin as a phone should ever be, in my humble opinion, and at 7.3mm deep, there is definitely room for a 3.5mm receptacle, and there is already an audio chipset and opamp bank in the handset. In short, the marginal cost in space, power, and BOM is negligible; and the value is high. I can't see myself buying a smartphone without a 3.5mm jack until wireless earbuds don't need to be charged more than once a month, and I can forget to put them back in the case for a couple days in a row without losing the ability to listen to audio.
- Bud 9y ago
  I know you think you believe all that, but as an AirPods user and addict, I am at least somewhat confident in saying that you'd believe it a lot less after 48 hours using AirPods. Until you use them, you can't grasp just how rapidly they charge, just how easy it is to keep them topped off without even thinking about it, just by putting them back in the case, and the fact that you can't and don't "forget" to put them back in the case. Because the case is always with you, and because they're just a pain to carry without the case, and because of the penalty if you lose one. AirPods are a miracle; a true "wow" product. And as an aside, the audio is really surprisingly decent. I'm a professional classical musician, so my ears aren't terrible.
  - macintux 9y ago
    The recharging story is made even better by the ability to put one at a time in the case. That's particularly important for long phone calls/web conferences/etc, when the microphone tends to drain the battery faster.
    - 9y ago
cyberpunk0 9y ago
Pretty much. Wonder how much crying will be happening as we transition to a screen less, brain chipped world
patcon 9y ago
having a headphone jack is graceful degradation imho
nocman 9y ago
1) floppy was not big loss at the time -- not even close to the same thing 2) CDROM -- was just about as obsolete at the time it was removed -- also not even close to the same thing 3) flash -- well that did cause some people problems, but I didn't really care at the time, and it isn't really the same thing either. The headphone jack may be old, but it is still way more useful than either a floppy disk or a CDROM were at the time they were removed. In the case of the floppy drive -- they were already on the way out, and the CDROM drive was there to replace them. When they ditched the CDROM drive, it could easily be replaced by a USB thumb drive or similar device -- which was still standard hardware, didn't have to be made by Apple, and was a reasonable replacement for the device removed. Having to have a separate adapter in order to use a standard set of headphones is, IMHO, NOT a reasonable replacement for just having the jack. And, yes, I DO believe that at least part of Apple's motivation was to make money by selling you Apple-branded headphones with their proprietary connector on it. It's a legitimate gripe by paying customers. Apple is welcome to make whatever decisions they want on the hardware they sell, and we should not be essentially told to shut up when we (very reasonably) disagree with their decision.
anbotero 9y ago
LG V30 is a flagship that instead of taking the port away, made improvements to actually take advantage of it, offering a Hi-Fi Quad DAC built-in. It means I can use my studio-quality headphones and enjoy crisper sounding music on my phone and on the go. All in all, all four of my headphones use the 3.5mm jack. Don’t see myself paying premium now for half-thought solutions, thank you. Apple is not a god when deciding what ports to drop, alright? Just because they practically indoctrinate an industry to follow in their footsteps doesn’t mean it’s always right. I’m all for leaving really old or badly designed ports IF there are better alternatives. What’s currently out there is buggy at best.
- antongribok 9y ago
  The LG V20 has the Hi-Fi Quad DAC as well (in case anyone wants to pick it up at half the price). The sound is quality truly amazing.
trumpownsyou420 9y ago
holy shit, fucking kill yourself.
RikNieu 9y ago
I voted with my wallet. After owning every iPhone since 3G up to 5s, I ditched Apple, and bought a new phone last week specifically because it had a headphone jack. My WHOLE PHONE cost only a little bit more than Airpods alone. It's a Chinese phone that offers incredible value for money and I can't be happier(Xiaomi Note 4, for those interested). Sure, it's specs don't quite match up to the flagship models from A and G, but it had what I wanted - a headphone jack(cheap, good, battery-less and reliable audio), a large-enough screen, lots of ram and a fast-enough processor. I believe the dropping of the headphone jack was not meant as a way of herding users to better tech, like the CD-ROM ect. They could have left the jack in the iPhone 7 and released the AirPods anyway, as a cross-over test. The market would've decided on the winner. But they didn't do that. They didn't do that because they knew AirPods would not have sold as well. It was just a blunt move of trying to increase profits. Just like the death-by-a-thousand-dongles decision. Bad Apple. Bad.
- aorth 9y ago
  > Xiaomi Note 4 I picked up a Xiaomi Mi A1 for ~$325 last week when my Nexus 5X died of sudden bootloop. I think it's very similar to the Note 4 but is part of the Android One initiative which means it runs stock Android and should get updates more regularly. I think it's marked up a bit in my market but it was still cheap enough and is a great device—awesome build quality, fast enough, and has a headphone jack!
johnchristopher 9y ago
I rarely see mentioned the fact that the mini jack port ends up broken (connect /disconnect) a lot after a while. It always happens to me, no matter the cost of the device (except for my first gen gameboy).
sjg007 9y ago
There should be no ports.. wireless charging, bluetooth, wifi, induction usb if you really need a physical connection otherwise...
archagon 9y ago
The headphone jack’s legacy-ness is purely marketing-driven. There are alternatives with tradeoffs, but no replacements. Barring some technical miracle, you will never be able to use BT headphones to play games, make music, or play guitar.
puranjay 9y ago
While I'm a big fan of my Bluetooth earphones, let's be honest: the sound quality isn't nearly as good as wired hardware.
funnelsgun 9y ago
I don't know about other people, but I get a lot of interference on 2.4GHz between WiFi and Bluetooth at home. It doesn't matter whether its Bose Soundlink IIs or on-ear headphones. We have a UniFi access point that is brilliant. However, I don't use 5GHz because the signal can't penetrate though more than 2 brick walls, which is an issue in some of the bedrooms.
SmallDeadGuy 9y ago
I'll copy what I said to a similar comment a long time ago: > Well the major difference is that optical drives were becoming more and more obsolete with the increase in streaming and download services. With spotify, netflix, amazon prime, itunes, etc, the main uses of optical drives for dvds and music disks were decreasing in popularity pretty rapidly. The only uses I ever have these days for my optical drive is to install drivers for new hardware in my PC, which in most cases can be found online anyway. And even this isn't needed on Macs because, unlike customisable PCs, you'll never need to install drivers for a fancy new PCIE wifi card. > The headphone jack is different, because it isn't being replaced by convenient online services. Sure there are wireless alternatives, but the cost increases, difficulty of pairing, and the fact that 3.5mm is a standard across a huge range of devices from simple headphones to complex audio recording/mixing/playback setups means it just cannot be replaced. They could remove the optical drive without including the external drive because most people wouldn't need it, they definitely could not have removed the headphone jack without including an adapter in the box because of how popular the jack still is.
tomerbd 9y ago
my ears hurt from bluetooth wireless radiation :/
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bauerd 9y ago

I spent a good amount of money on decent headphones and if I can't use them with my phone without a dongle that's a no-no. I get that "the future is portless" but the future hasn't arrived yet and until then I'm not gonna hand out 800EUR for something I can't use with my headphones with.

Spivak 9y ago
But if you're the type of person that has one good pair of headphones then attach the adapter to them all the time and just pretend that the port on your phone is a weird shape. I get that it's not ideal and that adapters are awkward but it seems like it's such a minor inconvenience for your use case. I would expect that audiophiles are used to adapters to go between 2.5mm, 3.5mm, and 1/4" stereo already. What's one more?
- bauerd 9y ago
  I get where you're coming from but the "What's one more?" idea is what led to this whole donglemania. Dongles are conceived of bridges into a brighter future but no thanks I'll happily live in the past for now.
- dpkonofa 9y ago
  I just wanted to say that this is a really great point and, inevitably, the answer from people with these objections is always the same - they just prefer what they already have and are comfortable with. It's such a mild inconvenience that they're already ok with in every other scenario but, for some reason, this time it's completely different. It doesn't make sense.
  - bauerd 9y ago
    Im not ok with it in every other scenario, I just swallow it often times because e.g. making a switch away from my MacBook would be prohibitively costly for me and I'll rather endure these "mild inconveniences" (dongle for Cinema Display, USB, Ethernet). And yes, I really do prefer what I already have (my headphones working without a dongle). Edit: I'm not even an audiophile btw
    - dpkonofa 9y ago
      So what do you do when you need to plug those headphones into a DAC with a stereo input? You need an adapter. What do you do when you need to plug them into a TV or game system? You need an adapter. You are definitely ok with it in other scenarios, just not this very specific one.
      - bauerd 9y ago
        >need to plug those headphones into a DAC with a stereo input Don't have one. >need to plug them into a TV or game system Don't have either. You're completely right that I need adapters but that doesn't mean I'm ok with getting increasingly more of them. Especially when I get nothing out of them except backwards-compat for hardware that is simply not of the legacy type. Adapters are easy to forget at home, lose on the go, break, etc. pp. They're detrimental to the user experience and hence should be restricted to support of legacy hardware.
- photojosh 9y ago
  This is exactly what I've done. I have one pair of $250 headphones I've had for years that I use when I want to sit in a dark room and just listen to music. Now the dongle lives on them and there is no inconvenience at all.
jamesrcole 9y ago
> I spent a good amount of money on decent headphones and if I can't use them with my phone without a dongle that's a no-no. I get that "the future is portless" but the future hasn't arrived yet What's your criteria for when that future will have arrived?
- bauerd 9y ago
  When there's a decent wireless competitor to the headphones I already have. When there's cheap wireless in-ears on the market.

foxfired 9y ago

The problem is, the alternative to dropped techs were better to some extent: - CD-ROM -> Bigger hard drives, faster internet connections. - Floppy -> CD-ROMs And BIOS upgrade - Flash -> Better browser security, and faster javascript Now for headphone jack, we have bluetooth. Slow, unreliable, requires to charge an extra device, when you run out of earphone battery, you are done listening. If you use the USB/Lightning to AUX, you can't charge your phone at the same time. If lose the earpiece, you pay premium to replace it. Also: I can't watch a video with a half-second audio delay. Half a second is being generous.

vtange 9y ago
Not to mention for audiophiles there is the extra concern about sound quality loss.
- bb88 9y ago
  The DAC on most consumer devices is not audiophile quality. Having had a mac book and a standalone USB DAC, there's really no comparison.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - koolba 9y ago
    Are you being serious or was that meant sarcastically? I genuinely can’t tell as your comment reminds me of hilarious HDMI cable reviews.
    - themacguffinman 9y ago
      Are you going to say something of substance or just act like a douche?
      - dang 9y ago
        Please don't be uncivil on HN regardless of how bad someone else's comment was. It would be a good idea to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and make sure you follow them when posting here. Your previous comment broke them as well.

yeukhon 9y ago

I still have CDs / DVDs I love, so I have to get a portable. My friend loves vinyl, so she has to get a vinyl machine. The latter example is probably a stretch, but there is a value in using and appreciating old technology. The drop of headphone jack comes with one problem: I can't charge and listen to music at the same time unless I pay for the earbuds, or get a third-party thunderbolt hub which has serious quality issue... P.S: Mr. Robot saves whatever he wants to store away on discs. Kinda interesting. He probably doesn't trust hard drive as much as discs, and thinks discs will survive longer.

epmaybe 9y ago
I believe that discs do survive longer. I remember reading some article describing the decay of data over time. As long as the discs aren't horribly scratched up they will retain data for a very long time without decay.

whipoodle 9y ago

A lot of people make this point but I just don't think the analogy works. For one, you use the headphones with the phone as well as other devices, and those things might not grow a Lightning port.

hanklazard 9y ago
Exactly. Are airplanes manufacturers going to start building in the lightning port?
- dpkonofa 9y ago
  You joke but this has already been suggested by several airplane manufacturers. They want to build in lightning and USB-C ports to replace/add to the power outlets. Most airports already have the extra USB ports now next to the power block.
- whipoodle 9y ago
  Hell even recent Apple laptops don’t have one.

davesque 9y ago

Has any bluetooth wireless headphone maker solved the latency issue yet? If not, then portless might still be a ways off.

cycrutchfield 9y ago
Apple Airpods.
- davesque 9y ago
  Really? Have you tried playing a game with them or any kind of app that is like a musical instrument?
  - cycrutchfield 9y ago
    I just checked now and there is a very slight lag, maybe on the order of 100-200ms. It's pretty subtle though and I definitely did not notice it before you mentioned it. I can imagine that it would be maddeningly slow if it were something like a rhythm game or a musical instrument app though.
    - davesque 9y ago
      Yeah that's what I was referring to. At one point, I thought I was going to wirelessly connect my electric keyboard at home to my stereo through a bluetooth transmitter. I soon found out that there's a delay associated with audio transmission through bluetooth. I don't think anyone's really solved this problem for these kinds of applications because most people use bluetooth audio for passive tasks like listening to music.

cycrutchfield 9y ago

Precisely this. We see this crying and beating of chests whenever some obsolete legacy interface is finally deprecated to the dustbin of history. "You can pry my 3.5mm headphone jack out of my cold dead hands!" the knee-jerk reactionaries foam at the mouth in mock outrage, and then they go and buy a good set of bluetooth headphones or earbuds a few months later. I have an iphone and the airpods and I haven't missed the tangled mess of the old earbuds at all.

kllrnohj 9y ago

> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc. > At each of those steps there were people decrying the loss of these things. Today however, most people don’t miss any of them. Those statements don't really support each other. There's no particular evidence that Apple's timing was good, just that they dropped it and eventually nobody cared. But if they dropped it years before everyone moved on, then their timing was awful, not great, even though the end-state was the same. Flash is a particularly weird example since Flash on mobile largely never existed, so claims to "drop" it are nonsensical. You can't drop that which didn't exist. Yes there was a brief attempt at Flash on Android, but that came long after the iPhone. Dropping flash on desktop would have been a better example, but Apple didn't actually have the courage to do that, at least not on their own. It was more a unified push by all the browser vendors combined with Adobe themselves dropping support for Flash.

mrgordon 9y ago
Flash on iPhone didn’t exist because Apple didn’t want it due to security issues. It was controversial when they decided not to allow it. https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016/12/12/steve-jobs-iphone-adobe-flash-testing/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/bgr.com/2016/12/12/steve-jobs-iph...

bb88 9y ago

We'll see how dropping the escape key does with people who love developing in vim.

rifung 9y ago
I don't think it'll matter? I think it will just drive adoption of Ctrl + [ for vim users which is arguably better anyway since it's closer to the home row
- sooheon 9y ago
  The home row isn’t magic, I don’t get the obsession with it. Our fingers don’t lie in a naturally perfectly straight line—each finger has its natural zone, it tends to stray vertically from the home row.
  - rifung 9y ago
    Well I suppose my fingers normally stay around the home row because that's how I was taught. I suppose it's my mistake for assuming that's how others type! Nevertheless, esc is still super far away from all the letters which is presumably what you are likely to be pressing.
- nathancahill 9y ago
  I preemptively remapped escape to caps lock since my next laptop probably won't have an escape key. It took about a day to adjust to. Now, I can't see how I ever used escape in the first place, it's so far to reach. Although now, I keep turning on caps lock when I use other people's computers.
ves 9y ago
serious people map caps lock to escape! Seriously though, using the corner esc key to get into normal mode sucked anyway.
- monocasa 9y ago
  Or get a computer with a sane keyboard.

voltagex_ 9y ago

For the loss of the headphone jack to not be a downgrade, two things have to happen: * Bluetooth has to work flawlessly - I hear there's been some issues even on iOS 11 and Android's Bluetooth has always been terrible * USB C Audio has to work flawlessly [1] 1: http://pocketnow.com/2016/09/08/the-impending-horror-of-usb-type-c-audio-adapters http://pocketnow.com/2016/09/08/the-impending-horror-of-usb-...

makmanalp 9y ago

> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc. Counterexamples to your claim: Thunderbolt? Magsafe? Magsafe2? The physical escape key? All of your examples were actually significant improvements: floppy / CD-ROM took up immense physical space and removing them caused a significant improvement in space and weight. SSDs initially had less capacity, but at least they had way better performance and also improved upon space and weight. > The headphone jack is a legacy, bulky port The headphone jack doesn't save on weight, its alternatives aren't an improvement. It does save on space, and I understand that space is tight on a phone, but honestly, we've already had so many brilliant and slim phones that have headphone jacks that I don't really buy this as an excuse. Do we /really/ need ever so slightly slimmer phones every year? Remember the bent iphone 6es? I'd be willing to buy this if there was something amazingly novel that USB-C provides for headphones, or if wireless earbuds lasted more than 5-6 hours. Here's what it comes down to: my 2013 macbook pro is fantastic, and none of the new stuff regarding ports is a genuine improvement to my experience, but all of it adds to potential frustration when I eventually have to make the switch when the hardware can't keep up anymore. I feel similarly with my iphone SE. I really wish they'd stop futzing around with everything just for trivial improvements.

dpkonofa 9y ago
>Counterexamples to your claim: Thunderbolt? Magsafe? Magsafe2? The physical escape key? How are any of those counterexamples? Thunderbolt wasn't dropped and most users don't care a single bit about Magsafe and/or the physical escape key.
- xuki 9y ago
  Magsafe is a lifesaver if you have kids/pets. I even tripped the wire sometimes. I understand the appeal of a single cable for power/data but Magsafe was great.
- com2kid 9y ago
  Early on Apple shipped with a thunderbolt connector that the rest of the industry ended up not using. Any tech purchased around that connector was deprecated when the machine it was to connect to was upgraded.

katzgrau 9y ago

I'm usually ready to embrace the next step, but the loss of the headphone jack was what made switch to the Pixel. Call it what you will, but the headphone jack is superior to its predecessor, unlike the floppy, cd-rom, etc. When I heard they were discontinuing it, it felt wrong - it felt intentionally radical. And I knew there was no way I was going to pay extra for some Bluetooth earbuds I will definitely lose on my morning runs.

barrkel 9y ago

Bluetooth is a merely adequate replacement, though. It regularly has dropouts depending on radio interference, and it means another peripheral that needs charging. I don't know about you, but I regularly - at least 5 times a year - find the battery drained in my Bluetooth peripheral when I wanted to play audio, typically before or during a long trip. I keep wired headphones in my jacket pocket for these times, as a backup. I use three different peripherals often, and I don't track their charge state - the first I know about low battery is when they start giving warnings, usually about 10 minutes before they shut down, leaving me in silence. I don't have the time or patience to be checking their charge statuses constantly, or continually plugging them in to charge up, meaning disconnecting them from their home locations and needing retrieval before use.

timbo1642 9y ago

Actually you're wrong. They dropped the standard USB ports and EVERYONE is pissed off about that. And if someone isn't, they're a retard. Flash is still important even though its written like garbage. Your last argument is as dumb as can be too. You're trying to say because people have forgotten what they were made about, it doesn't matter. So since people forgot that the iMac they had was USB only and couldn't use older devices, its not important. It may not be now, but it was important then.

dang 9y ago
This comment breaks the site guidelines badly. We ban accounts that do that, so please read them and follow them when commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

1_2__4 9y ago

I really wish people like you would stop pooh-poohing legitimate complaints about attempts to prematurely retire tech just because companies have found something more lucrative for them. We’re not luddites. We’re not short sighted. We understand tech moves on. That’s all fine and also irrelevant, because the situation here is that real tech used be lots of people every day with no real replacement is being yanked out from under us in the name of profit. Stop acting like you’re woke and the rest of us just need to catch up. It’s insulting as hell.

nicky0 9y ago
No one has taken away anything. Your current phone still has a headphone jack. Stop acting like somebody took something away from you.
- ta201201201 9y ago
  In the age of mass production, you get what they make. Custom items of the same price & quality as those mass produced are often/usually prohibitively expensive. If they stop making what you want, you stop being able to get it. So what's Parent going to do when his current phone dies?
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    > So what's Parent going to do when his current phone dies? Buy virtually any other phone, if it's that important to them?
- archagon 9y ago
  Completely false. There is no adapter out there that can do simultaneous audio and data. My Apogee JAM sits gathering dust as a result.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > Your current phone still has a headphone jack. My current phone is rapidly disintegrating. If I had the time, I could argue that the current method of production and rapid obsolescence did, in fact, take both my current phone away, and my ability to easily transition to the new model being offered without having to rethink how I listen to music.

hota_mazi 9y ago

> Apple has a really good track record of dropping things at the right time: floppy, CD-ROM, Flash, etc They have a good track record of dropping technologies in order to push their own proprietary technology instead. And failing most of the time, resulting in ultimately adopting the standard that everybody else is using.

matt4077 9y ago
Floppy -> CD-ROM CD-ROM -> Internet/USB stick Ethernet -> WLAN Flash -> HTML etc -> pp The only proprietary port on today's Macs and iDevices is the lightning connector, which is quite obviously better than the abomination that is microUSB, which the competition uses. I can't fathom how people can delude themselves into believing such easily disproven myths.
- kruptos 9y ago
  Newest Android phones are using USB C, not microUSB.

makecheck 9y ago

Apple and others should have only considered removing the headphone jack if they were prepared to do all of the following at the same time: 1. Abandon all proprietary connectors and adopt USB-C only on the phone. Keeping the Lightning port while moving MacBook Pros to USB-C-only was incredibly dumb because it immediately made the new products less useful than ANY older and less-expensive combination. Let’s see: older iPhone with charge cable and earphones that seamlessly plug into both the phone and the computer, or new-and-expensive-for-no-reason computer that can’t do any of that!? 2. Put multiple ports on the phone to avoid port-unavailable issues during charging; or, make sure that so-called “wireless” charging is working first so it can be a viable alternative. Instead they just broke a bunch of things and figured at some unspecified point in the future it would all work out. Well, what exactly is the point of buying the product in the meantime? 3. Assume that people will still want wired earphones. Wireless is NOT automatically better, for any number of reasons (risk of loss, sound cutting out, constant recharge, worse sound quality). I have wireless headphones and I basically hate them; seems that every other time I want to use them they’re already out of battery, or they just STOP working halfway through some music. And it’s one of those products that can’t be used while it’s being recharged. As a result, I just use them way less, and it is a step backwards in every conceivable way. All I want is a wire.

otachack 9y ago
I also don't see why they didn't go full USB-C with their phones. Maybe they didn't want to put out too many changes at once. Still, iPhone 8 seemed a great time to pair USB-C.
- LaikaF 9y ago
  It's to close to the point where they ditched the 40 pin and everyone bought new stuff.
- kurusii 9y ago
  I don't remember where I read it, but apparently Apple committed to the Lightning port for a certain number of years when speaking to accessory manufacturers.

specialp 9y ago

Apple did not drop the floppy drive at the right time. They did in in 1998 which was at least 4 years before widely available USB flash drives. I remember every computer in the labs at school having a external floppy drive or even worse a Zip drive as there was no easy way for students to save their work and bring it with them. They also weren't responsible for the death of the Floppy disk as their marketshare then was low single digits. Removing USB A from laptops for "professionals" and removing 3.5mm headphone jack is not really helping anything. USB C adoption will continue but there so many USB A products out there that it is inconvenient to the customer with zero advantage. Yeah I'd really like less ports on here for no decrease in price or increase in portability and would like to carry dongles said no one ever.

et-al 9y ago

I rented a Hyundai over the summer and to play music from my iPhone, I had to Bluetooth pair with the car. Guess what? It started syncing my entire contacts list. I just wanted to pipe audio from my phone to the car speakers, not share my life with a rental car. So for those of us who value compartmentalising our lives, we'd very much like that bulky 3.5mm headphone jack, in addition to Bluetooth. Thanks.

dpkonofa 9y ago
You didn't have to do that, though. You can connect Bluetooth audio without syncing your contact list. Additionally, just because your phone is showing your contacts in the car's interface, that doesn't mean anything was synced to the car. It may have just been reading your contacts from the phone via Bluetooth. As soon you as unpair the device, those contacts would be gone, if that's the case...
- r00fus 9y ago
  My Ford does this (sync contacts) by default too. Yes it's an inexpensive car but you have explicitly turn this off and it's not intuitive. Not quite a dark pattern per se but I prefer to not connect BT to rentals for that reason alone.
- et-al 9y ago
  Thanks for pointing that out possibility because I couldn't find it. I wonder if it's an option for Hyundais because it's not included in their quick start guide either: http://www.hyundaibluetooth.com/content/dam/Bluetooth/Hyundai/QSG/2017/13008_5%20Quick%20Start%20Tucson%20(2).pdf http://www.hyundaibluetooth.com/content/dam/Bluetooth/Hyunda...
bobsoap 9y ago
On Android, there's a prompt when a paired device requests access to your contacts/call history/messages, and you can deny the request. It's irrelevant to play audio but it allows the car to give you a built-in interface to use your phone for calling and such. I didn't know that iOS didn't prompt you for that.

mattnewton 9y ago

This isn’t about making phones smaller- they didn’t get smaller. This is about upselling some wireless earbuds. It made more sense to me when apple did it, owning beats, so even if you don’t go for the AirPods they win, but it looks like Google wants some of that upsell with the pixel buds.

ge96 9y ago

I was recently listening to a podcast (embedded fm) regarding paypal and this triangular BLE block that had no ports. Would be funny if your phone was bricked and you had no way to interface with it. Maybe by display at the very least.

photojosh 9y ago
There's only one phone you can use? ;) I set up the equivalent Square card-reader device for my kids' school parents group, together with a dedicated iPad with cell connection. It's magic... even the most technophobic mum can operate it. Sure, would be a problem if (or when) the iPad died, but it is stupidly cheap (and contract-free!) compared to a dedicated payment machine.
- ge96 9y ago
  I don't know if this tech was released yet, it was something to do with wireless payments if I recall right. I think I bricked my phone once when I was messing with rooting/overclocking. I don't do that anymore, I bought a pretty solid LG phone for like $80 (new) from a lower end mobile provider it functions better than this other phone by ZTE that had a finger print sensor, it kept freezing after running say more than 4 apps. Edit: The podcast was about PayPal Beacon

erickhill 9y ago

I use a tiny dongle that allows me to use any headphones I want. It's really not that big of a deal. It's about 2" in length that looks exactly like my apple headphone jack - so no one's the wiser really. I thought it would be a big deal - I was wrong. It's fine. If you still want to use your cheap/expensive wired headphones, you can.

kentt 9y ago

Actually I agree that this is just like a CD drive but reach the opposite conclusion. Removing the CD drive was mostly worse for the consumer of the MBA at the time. Sure, almost no one wants a CD drive now, but that gives little credence to the idea that it should have been removed while still best for the consumer.

microcolonel 9y ago

CD-ROM was not the only removable storage medium, and it had an enormous cost in space (and sometimes power, if not implemented correctly). A good consumer-grade headphone amplifier has a minuscule cost in terms of space, even relative to a smartphone. The only reason to remove it is if you want your phone to be thinner than can support a 3.5mm receptacle, but as a smartphone consumer I don't really see the point in making a phone thinner than that, I figure it makes it hard to grasp the phone without touching the screen inadvertently. The iPhone 8 is about as thin as a phone should ever be, in my humble opinion, and at 7.3mm deep, there is definitely room for a 3.5mm receptacle, and there is already an audio chipset and opamp bank in the handset. In short, the marginal cost in space, power, and BOM is negligible; and the value is high. I can't see myself buying a smartphone without a 3.5mm jack until wireless earbuds don't need to be charged more than once a month, and I can forget to put them back in the case for a couple days in a row without losing the ability to listen to audio.

Bud 9y ago
I know you think you believe all that, but as an AirPods user and addict, I am at least somewhat confident in saying that you'd believe it a lot less after 48 hours using AirPods. Until you use them, you can't grasp just how rapidly they charge, just how easy it is to keep them topped off without even thinking about it, just by putting them back in the case, and the fact that you can't and don't "forget" to put them back in the case. Because the case is always with you, and because they're just a pain to carry without the case, and because of the penalty if you lose one. AirPods are a miracle; a true "wow" product. And as an aside, the audio is really surprisingly decent. I'm a professional classical musician, so my ears aren't terrible.
- macintux 9y ago
  The recharging story is made even better by the ability to put one at a time in the case. That's particularly important for long phone calls/web conferences/etc, when the microphone tends to drain the battery faster.
  - 9y ago

cyberpunk0 9y ago

Pretty much. Wonder how much crying will be happening as we transition to a screen less, brain chipped world

patcon 9y ago

having a headphone jack is graceful degradation imho

nocman 9y ago

1) floppy was not big loss at the time -- not even close to the same thing 2) CDROM -- was just about as obsolete at the time it was removed -- also not even close to the same thing 3) flash -- well that did cause some people problems, but I didn't really care at the time, and it isn't really the same thing either. The headphone jack may be old, but it is still way more useful than either a floppy disk or a CDROM were at the time they were removed. In the case of the floppy drive -- they were already on the way out, and the CDROM drive was there to replace them. When they ditched the CDROM drive, it could easily be replaced by a USB thumb drive or similar device -- which was still standard hardware, didn't have to be made by Apple, and was a reasonable replacement for the device removed. Having to have a separate adapter in order to use a standard set of headphones is, IMHO, NOT a reasonable replacement for just having the jack. And, yes, I DO believe that at least part of Apple's motivation was to make money by selling you Apple-branded headphones with their proprietary connector on it. It's a legitimate gripe by paying customers. Apple is welcome to make whatever decisions they want on the hardware they sell, and we should not be essentially told to shut up when we (very reasonably) disagree with their decision.

anbotero 9y ago

LG V30 is a flagship that instead of taking the port away, made improvements to actually take advantage of it, offering a Hi-Fi Quad DAC built-in. It means I can use my studio-quality headphones and enjoy crisper sounding music on my phone and on the go. All in all, all four of my headphones use the 3.5mm jack. Don’t see myself paying premium now for half-thought solutions, thank you. Apple is not a god when deciding what ports to drop, alright? Just because they practically indoctrinate an industry to follow in their footsteps doesn’t mean it’s always right. I’m all for leaving really old or badly designed ports IF there are better alternatives. What’s currently out there is buggy at best.

antongribok 9y ago
The LG V20 has the Hi-Fi Quad DAC as well (in case anyone wants to pick it up at half the price). The sound is quality truly amazing.

trumpownsyou420 9y ago

holy shit, fucking kill yourself.

RikNieu 9y ago

I voted with my wallet. After owning every iPhone since 3G up to 5s, I ditched Apple, and bought a new phone last week specifically because it had a headphone jack. My WHOLE PHONE cost only a little bit more than Airpods alone. It's a Chinese phone that offers incredible value for money and I can't be happier(Xiaomi Note 4, for those interested). Sure, it's specs don't quite match up to the flagship models from A and G, but it had what I wanted - a headphone jack(cheap, good, battery-less and reliable audio), a large-enough screen, lots of ram and a fast-enough processor. I believe the dropping of the headphone jack was not meant as a way of herding users to better tech, like the CD-ROM ect. They could have left the jack in the iPhone 7 and released the AirPods anyway, as a cross-over test. The market would've decided on the winner. But they didn't do that. They didn't do that because they knew AirPods would not have sold as well. It was just a blunt move of trying to increase profits. Just like the death-by-a-thousand-dongles decision. Bad Apple. Bad.

aorth 9y ago
> Xiaomi Note 4 I picked up a Xiaomi Mi A1 for ~$325 last week when my Nexus 5X died of sudden bootloop. I think it's very similar to the Note 4 but is part of the Android One initiative which means it runs stock Android and should get updates more regularly. I think it's marked up a bit in my market but it was still cheap enough and is a great device—awesome build quality, fast enough, and has a headphone jack!

johnchristopher 9y ago

I rarely see mentioned the fact that the mini jack port ends up broken (connect /disconnect) a lot after a while. It always happens to me, no matter the cost of the device (except for my first gen gameboy).

sjg007 9y ago

There should be no ports.. wireless charging, bluetooth, wifi, induction usb if you really need a physical connection otherwise...

archagon 9y ago

The headphone jack’s legacy-ness is purely marketing-driven. There are alternatives with tradeoffs, but no replacements. Barring some technical miracle, you will never be able to use BT headphones to play games, make music, or play guitar.

puranjay 9y ago

While I'm a big fan of my Bluetooth earphones, let's be honest: the sound quality isn't nearly as good as wired hardware.

funnelsgun 9y ago

I don't know about other people, but I get a lot of interference on 2.4GHz between WiFi and Bluetooth at home. It doesn't matter whether its Bose Soundlink IIs or on-ear headphones. We have a UniFi access point that is brilliant. However, I don't use 5GHz because the signal can't penetrate though more than 2 brick walls, which is an issue in some of the bedrooms.

SmallDeadGuy 9y ago

I'll copy what I said to a similar comment a long time ago: > Well the major difference is that optical drives were becoming more and more obsolete with the increase in streaming and download services. With spotify, netflix, amazon prime, itunes, etc, the main uses of optical drives for dvds and music disks were decreasing in popularity pretty rapidly. The only uses I ever have these days for my optical drive is to install drivers for new hardware in my PC, which in most cases can be found online anyway. And even this isn't needed on Macs because, unlike customisable PCs, you'll never need to install drivers for a fancy new PCIE wifi card. > The headphone jack is different, because it isn't being replaced by convenient online services. Sure there are wireless alternatives, but the cost increases, difficulty of pairing, and the fact that 3.5mm is a standard across a huge range of devices from simple headphones to complex audio recording/mixing/playback setups means it just cannot be replaced. They could remove the optical drive without including the external drive because most people wouldn't need it, they definitely could not have removed the headphone jack without including an adapter in the box because of how popular the jack still is.

tomerbd 9y ago

my ears hurt from bluetooth wireless radiation :/

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