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Forget about headphones or not for a second. Removing the jack is about killing the last analog hole for good. It's about control. Yes there are adapters for no

Forget about headphones or not for a second. Removing the jack is about killing the last analog hole for good. It's about control. Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away. Once the output is locked down, expect to see the equivalent of HDCP show up. Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. That's the broader issue here, and it shows one more step in the long path to removing your ownership of your devices.

mattnewton 9y ago
I think that’s a problem, but I don’t think it was done for DRM or to prevent the next square- more done to upsell Wireless earbuds. The cost of the iPhone can only go up so many hundreds of dollars per year, so they do things like offer exponentially more storage and fancy wireless earbuds as high-margin upsells to keep growing revenue on the same user base.
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  Why not both? Apple makes a killing from selling media on iTunes and with a healthy profit margin. A better DRM helps protect that golden goose just a little more.
  - djrogers 9y ago
    That argument makes absolutely no sense when you apply it to a company that fought against and removed DRM from their music store many many years ago.
    - brian-armstrong 9y ago
      That was a marketing strategy, not something that was necessarily important to Apple. Apple did that to enter a market dominated by downloaded mp3s. Now it doesn't need that position. And besides many people have left the company since then, so a decision change wouldn't be strange. More recently, the Movies and Apps parts of iTunes are very much DRM encumbered.
nemothekid 9y ago
>Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. Is music piracy still a hot button issue that would motivate Google/Apple to remove the headphone jack? I'd imagine that most people that care about ownership are in the shrinking minority - the rest already don't own their music and streaming it via Spotify/Apple/Play.
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  Well, aside from that, it was the only interface that used a standard connector and an unobtrusive driver library. You could run data in and out through the jack. But now all that's left is the proprietary lightning port and the wifi stack which could have all sorts of undocumented filtering or restrictive behavior in its driver. So it also locks the phone down further in that regard.
exikyut 9y ago
Ah, someone else who also shares this view. I realized this myself a few weeks ago, and it was kinda sad. The reason I realized this could become something to reckon with is the intricacy of the AirPods' innards: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/lScC1ACEJmdTFQRm.huge https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/lScC1ACEJmdTFQRm.h..., https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/XwBdUPqAmhHbWgWn.huge https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/XwBdUPqAmhHbWgWn.h..., https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/1ZnAZMJBfmIxFr1f.huge https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/1ZnAZMJBfmIxFr1f.h... (from https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578) Only Apple could design something like that. Have fun reverse engineering such a monster. If good crypto got applied to something like this... ouch. That's one possibility, at least. The other possibility is this. Shhhhhh, but Encrypted Media Extensions can't really stop you from, uhh, tinkering with PulseAudio on Linux, maybe doing a little rerouting, and et voila, who ordered PCM? Obviously everyone's interested in making such systems be full-stack all the way down to the hardware level in the very long term, but for now, Spotify's entire DRM model is based (very successfully!) on this status quo. It could be argued that this is why they're actually delivering Ogg audio (I'm not sure of the bitrate) but the more logical explanation is that it requires much less diskspace. But I'm sure everyone in the industry is aware of the above, and it's factored in somehow. So the cyberpunk distopian worst case scenario is speakers with SoC DACs woven into the acuator coil in the speaker itself, but I strongly (and with much relief) suspect this is objectively quite unlikely.
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  With new inventions like UEFI and the Intel Management Engine, running Linux might be ruled out entirely at some point.
  - exikyut 9y ago
    While somewhat meta, ME actually runs on Minix, which is a UNIX-like too, so... Linux isn't going anywhere on servers at least. If anything, Linux's problem is that it's edging uncomfortably close to the point of being too big to fail, in many sectors. But I can unfortunately concede your point with consumer devices. I've come to the conclusion that Android will be doing a quiet Linux->Fuschia switcharoo in the future (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506377), for example.
thirdsun 9y ago
> Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away. Unlikely. The headphone market is huge and these devices are expected to work with everything, from mobile devices to AV Receivers, DACs, amps and studio equipment. The headphone jack isn't going anywhere. > Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. I doubt it. The music industry is pretty open these days and has given up on DRM for a long time - you can buy DRM-free, lossless music from countless places and while I understand that purchasing music has become rare, your scenario would be a dealbreaker for anyone that still does and truly owns their music. That might be a small share, but still a significant crowd. It would render the device close to useless for people like me. This is a whole other level compared to the compromise of an adapter.
- fehrm 9y ago
  > > Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away. > Unlikely. The headphone market is huge and these devices are expected to work with everything, from mobile devices to AV Receivers, DACs, amps and studio equipment. The headphone jack isn't going anywhere. > > Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. > I doubt it. The music industry is pretty open these days and has given up on DRM for a long time - you can buy DRM-free, lossless music from countless places and while I understand that purchasing music has become rare, your scenario would be a dealbreaker for anyone that still does and truly owns their music. That might be a small share, but still a significant crowd. It would render the device close to useless for people like me. This is a whole other level compared to the compromise of an adapter. For how long, until they come up with a new report that shows the margins are decreasing and they new ways to earn money?
- brian-armstrong 9y ago
  What do you mean it isn't going anywhere? It's already gone. People who have discrete equipment are vastly in the minority and won't have any choices left anyway once every phone maker has dropped the jack. Plus, how often do you see an iPhone plugged into an AVR?
sullyj3 9y ago
They already could've done that if they wanted to. . The analogue hole is still digitally controlled, that's why it takes a second for audio to come through your headphones when you plug them in, your alarm plays through the speakers even with headphones plugged in, etc. The reason they don't do that is because they are obviously aware it would be commercial suicide.

mattnewton 9y ago

I think that’s a problem, but I don’t think it was done for DRM or to prevent the next square- more done to upsell Wireless earbuds. The cost of the iPhone can only go up so many hundreds of dollars per year, so they do things like offer exponentially more storage and fancy wireless earbuds as high-margin upsells to keep growing revenue on the same user base.

brian-armstrong 9y ago
Why not both? Apple makes a killing from selling media on iTunes and with a healthy profit margin. A better DRM helps protect that golden goose just a little more.
- djrogers 9y ago
  That argument makes absolutely no sense when you apply it to a company that fought against and removed DRM from their music store many many years ago.
  - brian-armstrong 9y ago
    That was a marketing strategy, not something that was necessarily important to Apple. Apple did that to enter a market dominated by downloaded mp3s. Now it doesn't need that position. And besides many people have left the company since then, so a decision change wouldn't be strange. More recently, the Movies and Apps parts of iTunes are very much DRM encumbered.

nemothekid 9y ago

>Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. Is music piracy still a hot button issue that would motivate Google/Apple to remove the headphone jack? I'd imagine that most people that care about ownership are in the shrinking minority - the rest already don't own their music and streaming it via Spotify/Apple/Play.

brian-armstrong 9y ago
Well, aside from that, it was the only interface that used a standard connector and an unobtrusive driver library. You could run data in and out through the jack. But now all that's left is the proprietary lightning port and the wifi stack which could have all sorts of undocumented filtering or restrictive behavior in its driver. So it also locks the phone down further in that regard.

exikyut 9y ago

Ah, someone else who also shares this view. I realized this myself a few weeks ago, and it was kinda sad. The reason I realized this could become something to reckon with is the intricacy of the AirPods' innards: https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/lScC1ACEJmdTFQRm.huge https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/lScC1ACEJmdTFQRm.h..., https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/XwBdUPqAmhHbWgWn.huge https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/XwBdUPqAmhHbWgWn.h..., https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/1ZnAZMJBfmIxFr1f.huge https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/1ZnAZMJBfmIxFr1f.h... (from https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/AirPods+Teardown/75578) Only Apple could design something like that. Have fun reverse engineering such a monster. If good crypto got applied to something like this... ouch. That's one possibility, at least. The other possibility is this. Shhhhhh, but Encrypted Media Extensions can't really stop you from, uhh, tinkering with PulseAudio on Linux, maybe doing a little rerouting, and et voila, who ordered PCM? Obviously everyone's interested in making such systems be full-stack all the way down to the hardware level in the very long term, but for now, Spotify's entire DRM model is based (very successfully!) on this status quo. It could be argued that this is why they're actually delivering Ogg audio (I'm not sure of the bitrate) but the more logical explanation is that it requires much less diskspace. But I'm sure everyone in the industry is aware of the above, and it's factored in somehow. So the cyberpunk distopian worst case scenario is speakers with SoC DACs woven into the acuator coil in the speaker itself, but I strongly (and with much relief) suspect this is objectively quite unlikely.

brian-armstrong 9y ago
With new inventions like UEFI and the Intel Management Engine, running Linux might be ruled out entirely at some point.
- exikyut 9y ago
  While somewhat meta, ME actually runs on Minix, which is a UNIX-like too, so... Linux isn't going anywhere on servers at least. If anything, Linux's problem is that it's edging uncomfortably close to the point of being too big to fail, in many sectors. But I can unfortunately concede your point with consumer devices. I've come to the conclusion that Android will be doing a quiet Linux->Fuschia switcharoo in the future (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506377 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15506377), for example.

thirdsun 9y ago

> Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away. Unlikely. The headphone market is huge and these devices are expected to work with everything, from mobile devices to AV Receivers, DACs, amps and studio equipment. The headphone jack isn't going anywhere. > Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. I doubt it. The music industry is pretty open these days and has given up on DRM for a long time - you can buy DRM-free, lossless music from countless places and while I understand that purchasing music has become rare, your scenario would be a dealbreaker for anyone that still does and truly owns their music. That might be a small share, but still a significant crowd. It would render the device close to useless for people like me. This is a whole other level compared to the compromise of an adapter.

fehrm 9y ago
> > Yes there are adapters for now but they're transitional and we can expect them to eventually go away. > Unlikely. The headphone market is huge and these devices are expected to work with everything, from mobile devices to AV Receivers, DACs, amps and studio equipment. The headphone jack isn't going anywhere. > > Only music you have purchased through your phone's marketplace may be played, and only to an authorized device. > I doubt it. The music industry is pretty open these days and has given up on DRM for a long time - you can buy DRM-free, lossless music from countless places and while I understand that purchasing music has become rare, your scenario would be a dealbreaker for anyone that still does and truly owns their music. That might be a small share, but still a significant crowd. It would render the device close to useless for people like me. This is a whole other level compared to the compromise of an adapter. For how long, until they come up with a new report that shows the margins are decreasing and they new ways to earn money?
brian-armstrong 9y ago
What do you mean it isn't going anywhere? It's already gone. People who have discrete equipment are vastly in the minority and won't have any choices left anyway once every phone maker has dropped the jack. Plus, how often do you see an iPhone plugged into an AVR?

sullyj3 9y ago

They already could've done that if they wanted to. . The analogue hole is still digitally controlled, that's why it takes a second for audio to come through your headphones when you plug them in, your alarm plays through the speakers even with headphones plugged in, etc. The reason they don't do that is because they are obviously aware it would be commercial suicide.