11 ms·

It's not like the old headphones can't be used without a headphone jack. The 3.5mm-to-lightning or 3.5mm-to-usb-c dongles are small and relatively cheap. I just

by mh8h 8y ago

It's not like the old headphones can't be used without a headphone jack. The 3.5mm-to-lightning or 3.5mm-to-usb-c dongles are small and relatively cheap. I just keep mine hooked up to my wired headphones.

finnthehuman 8y ago
>I just keep mine hooked up to my wired headphones. This works great, until... You leave the pair of headphones with the dongle behind by mistake and spend the rest of the day frustrated because you have access to a perfectly good pair of headphones but no the dongle. Or you stick to one primary pair of headphones and are frequently taking the dongle on and off making it even easier to misplace or leave behind.
- mh8h 8y ago
  It's not supposed to be perfect. It's just a solution to that problem. Remember when optical drives where removed from laptops? We had to carry an external optical drive. Some times we'd forget it. It was inconvenient. But we survived.
  - jinushaun 8y ago
    No, “we” did not carry external optical drives. By the time Apple removed them, downloading music and software was already mainstream. Removing the headphone jack is not the same.
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    > It's not supposed to be perfect. It's just a solution to that problem. It's frustrating to have to come up with solutions, however effective, to problems that should never have existed in the first place.
  - city41 8y ago
    But usb thumb drives and services like Dropbox are arguably superior to optical media. Bluetooth is not superior to wired.
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    Optical drives take up lots of space, use a lot of electricity, and have moving parts that can break easily in a portable device like a laptop. A computer like the Macbook Air would simply be impossible with an optical drive. I'm willing to make that trade, especially given how uncommon DVD's were even by the time the MBA launched. (Although I'll note that my desktop has a BluRay drive and I wouldn't have it any other way.) What benefit am I getting in exchange for the loss of a headphone jack? An extra couple millimeters of screen real estate?
- _vn5r 8y ago
  If you’re constantly switching then it may be a good idea to buy another dongle.
  - arvinsim 8y ago
    If you have to switch between lightning and 3.5mm constantly, how in the world does buying another dongle help?
    - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
      This is my biggest problem. Even across Apple's own line, you have iPhones with only lightning ports, and iPads with no lightning ports. If I use headphones across those different devices, I'll have to unplug and replug the adapter constantly. Which means that adapter is going to get lost. This is all such an unnecessary problem.

by mh8h 8y ago

finnthehuman 8y ago

>I just keep mine hooked up to my wired headphones. This works great, until... You leave the pair of headphones with the dongle behind by mistake and spend the rest of the day frustrated because you have access to a perfectly good pair of headphones but no the dongle. Or you stick to one primary pair of headphones and are frequently taking the dongle on and off making it even easier to misplace or leave behind.

mh8h 8y ago
It's not supposed to be perfect. It's just a solution to that problem. Remember when optical drives where removed from laptops? We had to carry an external optical drive. Some times we'd forget it. It was inconvenient. But we survived.
- jinushaun 8y ago
  No, “we” did not carry external optical drives. By the time Apple removed them, downloading music and software was already mainstream. Removing the headphone jack is not the same.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  > It's not supposed to be perfect. It's just a solution to that problem. It's frustrating to have to come up with solutions, however effective, to problems that should never have existed in the first place.
- city41 8y ago
  But usb thumb drives and services like Dropbox are arguably superior to optical media. Bluetooth is not superior to wired.
- Wowfunhappy 8y ago
  Optical drives take up lots of space, use a lot of electricity, and have moving parts that can break easily in a portable device like a laptop. A computer like the Macbook Air would simply be impossible with an optical drive. I'm willing to make that trade, especially given how uncommon DVD's were even by the time the MBA launched. (Although I'll note that my desktop has a BluRay drive and I wouldn't have it any other way.) What benefit am I getting in exchange for the loss of a headphone jack? An extra couple millimeters of screen real estate?
_vn5r 8y ago
If you’re constantly switching then it may be a good idea to buy another dongle.
- arvinsim 8y ago
  If you have to switch between lightning and 3.5mm constantly, how in the world does buying another dongle help?
  - Wowfunhappy 8y ago
    This is my biggest problem. Even across Apple's own line, you have iPhones with only lightning ports, and iPads with no lightning ports. If I use headphones across those different devices, I'll have to unplug and replug the adapter constantly. Which means that adapter is going to get lost. This is all such an unnecessary problem.