9 ms·

Most users don't care about any of those things. - You can use the included adapter instead of a headphone jack. I do this every day to plug my phone into the

by udp 8y ago

Most users don't care about any of those things. - You can use the included adapter instead of a headphone jack. I do this every day to plug my phone into the car and it's no big deal. If I had a newer car stereo it'd be bluetooth anyway, and wireless headphones are pretty cheap now. - What would a normal user use NFC for other than Apple Pay? - Most people couldn't care less if the port is Lightning, USB-C, or micro USB so long as it charges their phone. - iMessage works flawlessly, and the standard (at least here in the UK) is WhatsApp rather than MMS now to communicate across the iOS/Android void.

numbsafari 8y ago
Not to mention that NFC payments are not nearly as secure or privacy preserving as Apple Pay.
davrosthedalek 8y ago
Yes, for each of these, many people do not care about them. And yes, there are people who don't care about all of these things at the same time. But that might be a smaller group. For anecdata, I want a headphone jack and wireless charging. USB-C is nice-to-have. I switched from Google devices to S8 for that reason.
shittyadmin 8y ago
> - You can use the included adapter instead of a headphone jack. I do this every day to plug my phone into the car and it's no big deal. If I had a newer car stereo it'd be bluetooth anyway, and wireless headphones are pretty cheap now. Bad wireless headphones are pretty cheap. Even the expensive Apple AirPods can barely keep up with a $20 wired pair of Xiaomi or VSonic IEMs on the quality front. I can go through a pair every 6 months and still come out ahead before the batteries fail in the AirPods.
- rusk 8y ago
  Not to mention it's yet another thing to forget to charge. I want smart devices that reduce my cognitive load, not increase it.
  - shittyadmin 8y ago
    Yeah, that is honestly my main reason, I often forget to charge my watch even, having to go through a bus ride with nothing to stick in my ears would be rather brutal.
    - rusk 8y ago
      > having to go through a bus ride with nothing to stick in my ears For my commuting experience this is nearly a health & safety requirement, like wearing a hard hat on a building site. Not taking any chances.
    - nicoburns 8y ago
      I have an old-school analog watch for similar reasons!
- dionidium 8y ago
  It's hard for me to imagine a person who has used Apple's AirPods preferring anything else. They are game-changing. They're the Apple product that's most delighted and surprised me since I first got an iPhone. I've owned and used other Bluetooth headphones. There's no comparison.
  - rusk 8y ago
    I hear ya bud ... but it would be great if they didn't result in such an inconvenience for everybody else.
  - shittyadmin 8y ago
    I looked at the objective sound quality data on them and well, it's less than positive, I'm used to Sennheiser HD650s at home, which score quite well on such metrics, so I'm quite doubtful I'd like them much. My first and only experience with Apple products was not a good one and I don't intend to repeat it. Macbook - ran extremely hot, many of the supposedly amazing Apple UIs were trash (Alt+O to open a file? Why can't I maximize a window like a normal person? How about the need to use 3rd party tools to do Super+Left/Super+Right that works out of the box on Windows and KDE), battery is glued in with some of the strongest glue I've ever seen so when I had to replace it after 2 years it was not a fun experience. I did learn lipo cells can take far more abuse than I expected though. I wound up running Windows on it and eventually just deleting the OS X partition. You've provided no reasons except "There's no comparison", "They are game-changing" - shit like that is why I don't buy much Apple stuff. It's hype that fails to deliver.
    - dionidium 8y ago
      The reason is that they've completely fixed Bluetooth. They just work. My Bluetooth mouse sometimes fails to connect. The Bluetooth in my old car was always flaky. The Bluetooth in my non-Apple headphones sometimes connects and sometimes refuses. I don't own a Bluetooth device that works like the Airpods do. The Airpods always just work. They've completely integrated it. You open the case and you see that they've connected with a nice image right on screen. You want to switch them from your phone to your iPad? You select them on the iPad and they just connect. Every single time. Without exception. No other Bluetooth device even enters into the conversation for me until they just work like the Airpods do. Nothing outweighs that for me. Sound quality doesn't. Shape or comfort in-ear doesn't outweigh it. The price of entry is that you have to make the Bluetooth just work. The reason Apple gets the kind of praise that you seem to despise is that they figure out how to make things just work. And for a certain type of customer, that outweighs literally any other concern. You can respond all day about this spec or that spec or this or that performance test or "objective sound quality data." But it has to just work.
drb91 8y ago
C’mon, just because people can live with things doesn’t mean they don’t care about them.
zaarn 8y ago
- Dongles are annoying, 3.5mm is delightfully simple and universally supported across the audio industry. It's not hard to implement and can carry a fairly high quality signal if your DAC is good enough. If you want digital, a normal 3.5mm jack plus cable should be able to carry enough bandwidth and still remain backwards compatible. I would see that as an improvement over simply-analog-3.5. - The normal end user wouldn't care about the difference in NFC but banks would be thankful for not having to pay Apple for the privilege of having their customer use an iPhone. - True but people care about not having to care and a universal charging port is good for that. Then people can just plug chargers into things and it works. No thinking required. And less waste too because vendors might not have to package chargers with every device and people won't have to buy new chargers every new iPhone release.
- rusk 8y ago
  Funny that you got downvoted and flagged for talking sense, and yet not a single reply.
- MBCook 8y ago
  > banks would be thankful for not having to pay Apple for the privilege of having their customer use an iPhone. Could you expand on this? I’m not aware of banks having to pay Apple.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    Apple takes a cut of every ApplePay transaction.
    - MBCook 8y ago
      Even physical point of sale transactions? I could see Apple Pay on the Web.
    - artimaeis 8y ago
      Source? The source I found [0] indicates otherwise: > Are there additional fees to accept Apple Pay? > Apple does not charge users, merchants or developers to use Apple Pay for payments. [0] - https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/get-started/ https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/get-started/ Edit: Looks like they charge banks and payment networks for the transaction. I suppose it's possible that the networks pass that fee back to the retailer at some point. Can't find great sources for any of that though.
rusk 8y ago
Complete Nonsense. > - You can use the included adapter .. So what. I'd prefer to not have to carry around any adapter > - What would a normal user use NFC for .. Off the top of my head, I can use it for topping up my travel card. Or at least I could if I had an android device ... > - Most people couldn't care less if the port .. Yeah that's why the EU ruled that a standard port must be used. Also why a significant selling point for Nokia handsets for years was availability of chargers. Why is it so hard to grasp that I might be caught out from time to time without my own proprietary charger? > - iMessage works flawlessly.. AHHHHHHH HA HA HAH HAH HA ahem HAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA I really loved iMessage around 2011 to the point that I didn't even see the sense in Whatsapp cause all my Friends and Family had iPhones. They've lost that race big-time.
rhodysurf 8y ago
They no longer include the adapter in the box
detaro 8y ago
consumer use cases of NFC: - travel cards/apps (afaik Apple supports at least emulating some cards through iPhones) - quickly connecting consumer devices to the phone (be it to establish a data transfer, connect an app to a device, ...). NFC can skip most of the discovery/network join dance you otherwise have to do. - games

by udp 8y ago

numbsafari 8y ago

Not to mention that NFC payments are not nearly as secure or privacy preserving as Apple Pay.

davrosthedalek 8y ago

Yes, for each of these, many people do not care about them. And yes, there are people who don't care about all of these things at the same time. But that might be a smaller group. For anecdata, I want a headphone jack and wireless charging. USB-C is nice-to-have. I switched from Google devices to S8 for that reason.

shittyadmin 8y ago

> - You can use the included adapter instead of a headphone jack. I do this every day to plug my phone into the car and it's no big deal. If I had a newer car stereo it'd be bluetooth anyway, and wireless headphones are pretty cheap now. Bad wireless headphones are pretty cheap. Even the expensive Apple AirPods can barely keep up with a $20 wired pair of Xiaomi or VSonic IEMs on the quality front. I can go through a pair every 6 months and still come out ahead before the batteries fail in the AirPods.

rusk 8y ago
Not to mention it's yet another thing to forget to charge. I want smart devices that reduce my cognitive load, not increase it.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  Yeah, that is honestly my main reason, I often forget to charge my watch even, having to go through a bus ride with nothing to stick in my ears would be rather brutal.
  - rusk 8y ago
    > having to go through a bus ride with nothing to stick in my ears For my commuting experience this is nearly a health & safety requirement, like wearing a hard hat on a building site. Not taking any chances.
  - nicoburns 8y ago
    I have an old-school analog watch for similar reasons!
dionidium 8y ago
It's hard for me to imagine a person who has used Apple's AirPods preferring anything else. They are game-changing. They're the Apple product that's most delighted and surprised me since I first got an iPhone. I've owned and used other Bluetooth headphones. There's no comparison.
- rusk 8y ago
  I hear ya bud ... but it would be great if they didn't result in such an inconvenience for everybody else.
- shittyadmin 8y ago
  I looked at the objective sound quality data on them and well, it's less than positive, I'm used to Sennheiser HD650s at home, which score quite well on such metrics, so I'm quite doubtful I'd like them much. My first and only experience with Apple products was not a good one and I don't intend to repeat it. Macbook - ran extremely hot, many of the supposedly amazing Apple UIs were trash (Alt+O to open a file? Why can't I maximize a window like a normal person? How about the need to use 3rd party tools to do Super+Left/Super+Right that works out of the box on Windows and KDE), battery is glued in with some of the strongest glue I've ever seen so when I had to replace it after 2 years it was not a fun experience. I did learn lipo cells can take far more abuse than I expected though. I wound up running Windows on it and eventually just deleting the OS X partition. You've provided no reasons except "There's no comparison", "They are game-changing" - shit like that is why I don't buy much Apple stuff. It's hype that fails to deliver.
  - dionidium 8y ago
    The reason is that they've completely fixed Bluetooth. They just work. My Bluetooth mouse sometimes fails to connect. The Bluetooth in my old car was always flaky. The Bluetooth in my non-Apple headphones sometimes connects and sometimes refuses. I don't own a Bluetooth device that works like the Airpods do. The Airpods always just work. They've completely integrated it. You open the case and you see that they've connected with a nice image right on screen. You want to switch them from your phone to your iPad? You select them on the iPad and they just connect. Every single time. Without exception. No other Bluetooth device even enters into the conversation for me until they just work like the Airpods do. Nothing outweighs that for me. Sound quality doesn't. Shape or comfort in-ear doesn't outweigh it. The price of entry is that you have to make the Bluetooth just work. The reason Apple gets the kind of praise that you seem to despise is that they figure out how to make things just work. And for a certain type of customer, that outweighs literally any other concern. You can respond all day about this spec or that spec or this or that performance test or "objective sound quality data." But it has to just work.

drb91 8y ago

C’mon, just because people can live with things doesn’t mean they don’t care about them.

zaarn 8y ago

- Dongles are annoying, 3.5mm is delightfully simple and universally supported across the audio industry. It's not hard to implement and can carry a fairly high quality signal if your DAC is good enough. If you want digital, a normal 3.5mm jack plus cable should be able to carry enough bandwidth and still remain backwards compatible. I would see that as an improvement over simply-analog-3.5. - The normal end user wouldn't care about the difference in NFC but banks would be thankful for not having to pay Apple for the privilege of having their customer use an iPhone. - True but people care about not having to care and a universal charging port is good for that. Then people can just plug chargers into things and it works. No thinking required. And less waste too because vendors might not have to package chargers with every device and people won't have to buy new chargers every new iPhone release.

rusk 8y ago
Funny that you got downvoted and flagged for talking sense, and yet not a single reply.
MBCook 8y ago
> banks would be thankful for not having to pay Apple for the privilege of having their customer use an iPhone. Could you expand on this? I’m not aware of banks having to pay Apple.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Apple takes a cut of every ApplePay transaction.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    Even physical point of sale transactions? I could see Apple Pay on the Web.
  - artimaeis 8y ago
    Source? The source I found [0] indicates otherwise: > Are there additional fees to accept Apple Pay? > Apple does not charge users, merchants or developers to use Apple Pay for payments. [0] - https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/get-started/ https://developer.apple.com/apple-pay/get-started/ Edit: Looks like they charge banks and payment networks for the transaction. I suppose it's possible that the networks pass that fee back to the retailer at some point. Can't find great sources for any of that though.

rusk 8y ago

Complete Nonsense. > - You can use the included adapter .. So what. I'd prefer to not have to carry around any adapter > - What would a normal user use NFC for .. Off the top of my head, I can use it for topping up my travel card. Or at least I could if I had an android device ... > - Most people couldn't care less if the port .. Yeah that's why the EU ruled that a standard port must be used. Also why a significant selling point for Nokia handsets for years was availability of chargers. Why is it so hard to grasp that I might be caught out from time to time without my own proprietary charger? > - iMessage works flawlessly.. AHHHHHHH HA HA HAH HAH HA ahem HAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA I really loved iMessage around 2011 to the point that I didn't even see the sense in Whatsapp cause all my Friends and Family had iPhones. They've lost that race big-time.

rhodysurf 8y ago

They no longer include the adapter in the box

detaro 8y ago

consumer use cases of NFC: - travel cards/apps (afaik Apple supports at least emulating some cards through iPhones) - quickly connecting consumer devices to the phone (be it to establish a data transfer, connect an app to a device, ...). NFC can skip most of the discovery/network join dance you otherwise have to do. - games