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We need to take into account _Accessibility_. A large use case that I've found most people seems to miss are individuals who are older and don't have much exper

We need to take into account _Accessibility_. A large use case that I've found most people seems to miss are individuals who are older and don't have much experience with bluetooth or wireless technology. I'm fine with Apple removing the headphone jack, but they've alienated so many people to find their own path when they don't include the adapter. Anecdotal example: I recently purchased headphones for my 65-year old father and showed him how to use it, in preparation for his "headphone jack-less" future. After about a month (he lives in China, so I see him only a couple times a year), I asked him how it's going and he said he doesn't use them anymore because he just couldn't figure it out. I tried to explain "Turn on Bluetooth on your phone, then turn on your headphones, then hold down the button to pair, etc", but it was actually quite complicated because once he did this dance, 2 months later his phone restarted and bluetooth was off and we had to do it again. Software-wise, I can just send a link, but when it comes to hardware + software like printers, things become really challenging to explain. I bring this up because if we're moving to the "wireless" world, we need to really consider accessibility for the elderly. My father ended up throwing away these really expensive Beats headphones, went to his local market and bought some cheap Sony headphones and is now listening fine. I'm not really sure what's going on happen when his next phone doesn't have the headphone jack.

m_mueller 8y ago
maybe an industry standard that works like AirPods pairing?
- Natanael_L 8y ago
  NFC pairing is a thing, used by a few Sony headphones. Android supports it.
- roboyoshi 8y ago
  Yes, but looking at Apple, Google, HTC, Samsung and recent history, I think it will come down to this: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ . I'm almost certain that whatever Apple developed for the Airpods will not be shared with other companies. And whatever other companies push forward as a "Standard" will not replace the Apple Solution in the near future. Even replacing apples crappy AFP Network Protocol took 13 years, until SMB finally took over in macOS Mavericks. And even then, they used their own implementation instead of the official "Standard" one.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    I wouldn't be so sure - it will take years for sure, but industry has many times come up with decent standards in the past - ethernet, USB, PCI, just to give a few examples. Bluetooth as a network protocol also seems to be fine with its latest revisions, it's just the pairing that sucks - if Apple can do it on top of bluetooth I think others should also be able to.
    - lowercased 8y ago
      > if Apple can do it on top of bluetooth I think others should also be able to. they're only "doing it" with their own limited hardware combinations. the experience of pairing any random bluetooth devices even in ios is still mediocre overall.
      - zimpenfish 8y ago
        Anecdata: I have 19 Bluetooth devices on my iPhone (gamepads, speakers, headphones + dongles, watches, etc.) - of which, I'd say, only one gives me trouble[1] and none really were problematic for pairing. [1] Cricut Air but then it also has trouble talking Bluetooth reliably to my Windows 10 desktop; I'm not blaming this on iOS just yet.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      Actually kind of curious about this. Because I bought the Sony 1000MX3 and its pairing at least with one device is much faster and more reliable than Airpods. It definitely is worse with multiple devices however.
      - InternetOfStuff 8y ago
        Anecdotally, Sony BT headsets are pretty good (I'm currently on my fourth set, I wear them out eventually). In my personal experience they have decent sound, pair reasonably easily (through NFC and "normally"), and the connection is pretty stable. Pairing partner were various Samsung Galaxies. I recommend Sony BT headphones. That said, I also use the 3.5mm jack regularly :-)
- Latteland 8y ago
  Maybe go back to the industry standard that worked well for 100+ years, the headphone jack.
  - christopherwxyz 8y ago
    CD drives worked well for 30 years. Why not bring them back to all our modern devices, too?
    - einr 8y ago
      They were removed only when few people used them because there was a better alternative. Many, many people use headphones with 3,5 mm plugs and it is not at all clear that the alternative is better.
      - threeseed 8y ago
        Well it is pretty clear that the alternative is at least satisfactory. Because iPhone sales aren't dropping because of the headphone jack and people seem to be enjoying Bluetooth headphones given how popular those are.
        qwertay 8y ago
        Bluetooth was a step sideways. I like not having my cable get stuck under my chair wheels but holy fuck its annoying to use when you have multiple devices.
        superflyguy 8y ago
        What's your source for the reason iPhone sales are dropping?
        GuB-42 8y ago
        When you buy into Apple you are supposed to follow the trend. It has been the case since the earliest Macs. So it is not surprising that Apple followers simply do what Apple tells them to do and switch to wireless. I don't like it but it has value. Apple products tend to work quite well when used as intended. As for sales dropping, smartphone sales do drop. Or at least, the upgrade cycles are becoming longer. It is mostly because phones are becoming "good enough" for many years, but the removal of the headphone jack may have played a tiny part.
skgoa 8y ago
> they've alienated so many people to find their own path when they don't include the adapter. My iPhone came with an adapter, though. I continue using the same headphones as I did with my old phone.
- wish5031 8y ago
  anecdotally, the adapter Apple provided me broke after about three weeks, and it seems like most of my family/friends are in similar situations
  - pseudolus 8y ago
    I've experienced a similar problem. I wear my headphones for about 1.5 - 2 hours per day while walking and I've found that I have to purchase a new adapter about every 45 days. I'm surprised that for the approximately $10 they charge for the adapter that they can't come up with a more durable design.
  - novaRom 8y ago
    Most of Apple original cables are getting broken pretty much quickly. This is my experience. Why is that?
  - laken 8y ago
    All official first-party Apple cables have a 1-year warranty. You can just take it into an Apple Store and they'll just replace it.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  I felt the same way about the adapter my phone came with, until I wanted to use the headphones on my desk at work and realized I couldn't do that because I left the adapter with the headphones in my car.
- pookieinc 8y ago
  My understanding is that the latest version of iPhone doesn't ship with the adapter anymore.[0] 0: https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17827970/no-more-free-iphone-dongles https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17827970/no-more-free-iph...
daveFNbuck 8y ago
We don't just need to consider accessibility for the elderly. I need to regularly reconfigure my Bluetooth connections on my phone. They just randomly stop working. With the latest version of Android, I couldn't figure out how to even access the Bluetooth settings. When I connect some devices, they don't show up in the list of paired devices. Somehow it still ended up working, but I don't know how or why. When I walk into the bathroom wearing my Bluetooth headphones, my podcasting app starts detecting disconnections and pausing, so I have to turn off the feature to stop playing on headset disconnect. This makes everything else work poorly. My podcast player also often crashes when I connect a Bluetooth device. My problems get a lot worse when I try to pair a speaker or headphones with multiple devices. I often have to factory reset the device to get it to work again when switching sources. I'm clearly not the only technically-minded person dealing with random nasty Bluetooth issues, as evidenced by this article and https://xkcd.com/2055/ https://xkcd.com/2055/
- randycupertino 8y ago
  This is why I hold on to my iPhone 6 like it's precious and won't install any software updates so as not to kill the battery. I have bluetooth headphones but they're a pain to charge and the headphone jack just works consistently. I love my iPhone 6!!
  - LeonM 8y ago
    From a security point of view, it's really worrying that a lot of users refuse to upgrade software because of the track record of Apple making devices less usable with every upgrade. I prefer the method of Samsung in this case, they clearly state for the monthly update that it is mostly a security update. Where Apple seems to apply marketing by promising 'the best experience yet' and shiny new features with each major version bump. edit: typo
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >From a security point of view, it's really worrying that a lot of users refuse to upgrade software because of the track record of Apple making devices less usable with every upgrade. A lot of users? iOS has the fastest and widest adoption rate for new releases of any mobile or not OS. Android specifically used to have awful fragmentation issues and phones never updated by the vendor 3 and 4 releases behind. APPLE IOS 12 HAS SEEN THE FASTEST ADOPTION RATE, RUNNING ON 50% OF IPHONES AND IPADS (Oct 12) https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/apple-ios-12-has-seen-the-fastest-adoption-rate-running-on-50-of-iphones-and-ipads-5366251.html https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/apple-ios-12-ha... iOS 11 is now installed on 81% of Apple’s over a billion active iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices in the wild, up from the 76% adoption rate reported on April 25. By contrast, Android Oreo versions powered less than six percent of active Android-driven smartphones and tablets that had been accessing Google’s Play Store during a seven-day period ending on May 7, 2018. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/06/05/ios-11-adoption-rate-81-percent/ https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/06/05/ios-11-adoption-rat...
Klover 8y ago
Just attach the tiny little dongle that comes with the phone to the headphones. Then say to him that he can put the charging cable there and also the headphones cable. Would this be too complicated too? You can get the EarPods with a lightning connector. If that’s too complicated then maybe you can draw a picture explaining it?
- pookieinc 8y ago
  Not sure of the intent with your tone, but I wouldn't need to draw a picture of something so simple. As mentioned in the post, I would love to resort to a connector, _if the dongle came with his iPhone_. The only new information I can provide is, because the dongle is small, I know he'd lose it and continuously buying this connector isn't an option (hence why I tried to future-proof him)
- thrower123 8y ago
  Then you misplace the lot and you're out $50-$100 worth of kit, rather than a $4 set of 3.5mm headphones, which you already have six compatible pairs of sitting in the culch drawer.
  - Klover 8y ago
    $50-$100 worth of kit? The dongle is €10 (21% VAT incluis) in an Apple Store. EarPods with lightning connector integrated are €23 (again, VAT included) if you want the most easy solution on a like €600 minimum phone. If you have a phone that doesn't come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, then you're able to spend €10 on a dongle to make your $4 set of 3.5mm headphones work. If you cannot afford that, then you have one of the many phones that do have a headphone jack. I'm sure that, if in the future everyone for some strange reason got rid of the integrated headphone jack and there's no company that sees it as a USP while people still want to use 3.5mm headphones, that the price of dongles will be next to nothing.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      You don't have to buy Apple's dongle. I found third party ones for $1.46. At the price you could just buy like 5 and permanently attach them to each pair of headphones.
masonic 8y ago
It's no coincidence that you never see anybody with a visible disability in any general purpose Apple advertisement -- video or print. Or an overweight person, for that matter.
- sneak 8y ago
  Or any ad, really. Apple is at least one order of magnitude better at a11y than everyone else in the industry; this is simply a nonsense comment. Nobody else remotely approaches them on this front—it may be their biggest and most unassailable moat, albeit for a tiny market that won’t ever increase in size. It’s one of the most charitable things they do as an organization.
- coldtea 8y ago
  >It's no coincidence that you never see anybody with a visible disability in any general purpose Apple advertisement -- video or print. Actually you see several such persons. E.g.: Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPv9jFWhzGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPv9jFWhzGE WWDC video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgk_Jawzdwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgk_Jawzdwk Also Apple has the greatest accessibility track record (and tons of awards on such matters), and e.g. blind people etc swear by its products (as opposed to at it). Blind person describing his use of iPhones etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlbIF7IOb_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlbIF7IOb_Q
- dmitriid 8y ago
  You mean this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB4cjbYywqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB4cjbYywqg Or the "Designed for ..." series? Meera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d6zKINudi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d6zKINudi0 Andrea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoEUsUWihsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoEUsUWihsM Patrick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whioDJ8doYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whioDJ8doYA Todd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PoE9tHg_P0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PoE9tHg_P0 ?
  - masonic 8y ago
    By "advertising" I was referring to broadcast or print advertising, not special-interest outreach. None of those has been part of their broadcast TV campaigns.
yiyus 8y ago
There is a good supply of Chinese phones that include a headphone jack. If the iPhone is a product you don't like, just buy another phone. It will be cheaper and will do the same and probably more. It may take a while to get used to a different OS, but I've seen my parents switching between iPhone and Android without problems so I don't think your father (about the same age) will have more difficulties.
- itake 8y ago
  I think the US gov just decided that Chinese phones are not to be trusted. At least Apple has a small semblance of privacy in China.
  - ArchTypical 8y ago
    > At least Apple has a small semblance of privacy in China. No, they don't. China doesn't even let AWS operate in China without having all the network traffic filter and land in China. Nothing about the Apple network is different. Still towers in China, still servers in China.
- sytelus 8y ago
  One would think Android phone makets would take this as opportunity given the massive uproar. But instead they are absolutely determined to blindly follow Apple off the cliff. Now many major Android phones have not only removed headphone jack but even introduced unnecessary notch even though they don’t have FaceID!! The lack of independent thinking is stunning among leading Android phone makers and very sad thing for consumers in this duopoly.
  - qwertay 8y ago
    Phones have long since left functionality for fashion. The notch is in season this year, no one cares why.
  - omaranto 8y ago
    Aren't you only thinking of a few expensive "flagship" Android phones? I don't think the vast majority of recent Android phones have followed either of those two innovations.
sytelus 8y ago
I am also very strongly against having 2.4GHz Bluetooth radiation wrapped right around my head. There is a good chance this doesn’t matter but some chance that it does. No one knows. I refuse to be forced guinea pig in this wireless headset experiment.
- Arnt 8y ago
  The radiator is your phone. The wireless headset does a lot of receiving and very, very little radiation. That's why those tiny bluetooth things can have many weeks of battery lifetime on a battery the size of a fingernail: They don't radiate much energy either towards your brain or towards the phone. (Digressing, I wonder how much radiation incidental WLAN use on a phone causes, compared to a bluetooth headset. I mean things like googleplay chancing to upgrade a few apps via WLAN while you're holding the phone against your ear.)
- simonh 8y ago
  Do you not use mobile phones against your ear either? Bluetooth earphones are mostly receivers and are several orders of magnitude lower power than a mobile phone transmitter. In fact they're a lot lower power than most domestic landline walk-about DECT phone handsets. Where does the force come from? Are you required to use this kit for your job?
muse900 8y ago
Personally I feel like makers saw an opportunity on 1) boost sales on new headphones 2) get rid of the cable hanging around. I can understand and feel your fathers frustration trying to use wireless headphones, on the other side if they never ever get rid of the headphone jack then users are going to end up never getting trained on how to use wireless headphones. Generally with leaps in tech there are leaps in reduced accessibility for older people, and with how fast tech is changing I can’t see the current older generation getting more familiar with tech. Although give it a generation more and people that are currently 40 will be able to adapt new tech much easier and accessibility is going to be much less of an issue for the foreseen future. Also at the end of the day I think there are adaptors that convert the jack into whatever port your phone has. I know it’s not ideal as you get more pieces to carry around and you might lose them but again there is a solution. Also I have to state the fact that I was highly against not having a headphone jack as I own several pairs of good headphones with jacks and also I just didn’t like that change. I adapted and tbh I am much happier with Wirless headphones right now and not having those cables around me. Battery life could improve which am sure it will with time and I won’t need to charge them every so often but over all I am admitting that I was mistakenly thinking that wireless headphones and no jack sucks.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  > I can understand and feel your fathers frustration trying to use wireless headphones, on the other side if they never ever get rid of the headphone jack then users are going to end up never getting trained on how to use wireless headphones. But why do you want to get rid of the headphone jack? For iPhone, this is a direct downgrade, loss of very useful functionality. That's why people are complaining; while companies seem to like trading utility for fashion all the time, this case was unprecedently blatant. > Also at the end of the day I think there are adaptors that convert the jack into whatever port your phone has. That's the trick though. Someone's gonna make money on the adapters :). Also, I start to think this was a move meant to "disrupt" the headphones market. Suddenly the perfectly good headphones no longer work for a big and rich chunk of people, and out come new wireless options. The conspiracist in me wonders whether people responsible for this decision have any ties to people selling AirPods and their alternatives :).
simonh 8y ago
A agree completely, but we're not really moving to a wireless world yet unless we choose to. The default in-the-box solution is still wired headphones.
randomsearch 8y ago
Apple devices are shipped with headphones, which plug into the device. Does that circumvent the accessibility issue?
- AstralStorm 8y ago
  No, and definitely not the charging issue. The earphones may not fit you at all.
  - Spivak 8y ago
    If iPhones shipped with an adapter would it be okay then?
zimpenfish 8y ago
If we're doing anecdata, my mother (70) got my old iPhone and coped perfectly happily with switching to Bluetooth headphones; indeed, she managed all the pairing, etc., herself.
tjoff 8y ago
Elderly? I can guarantee that no human being on earth can confidently setup bluetooth on all devices. And that's the issue, these one-off pairings. I had a friend sync with my car bluetooth-stereo, it took a while and from the steering wheel I couldn't be of enough help. But it worked in the end, was quite frustrating though. Then later when I tried to use my phone again it had been lost from the receiver (eventhough it can support two concurrent connections and I've only ever paired with two devices). So now I had to go through the whole dance that it was only paired in one device. Thing is, anything that literally takes more than 3 seconds is a disaster. After a minute of fiddling with it I remembered I had an AUX cable. And then I could patiently fix it when I had time for it. Bluetooth is a nightmare for temporary connections. Removing the headphone-jack is akin to removing a fire-alarm system because "it isn't used anyway". Well, the times you need it it is indispensable and it doesn't cost anything.
- alpaca128 8y ago
  Exactly. Just recently I struggled with pairing a bluetooth speaker with my father's laptop. Another, exactly identical bluetooth speaker paired fine just the day before. The second one couldn't be paired for two days, and I have no idea why. The fact that this bluetooth speaker has three different bluetooth modes with three different ways to switch between them via a single button doesn't help, and even after years I couldn't figure out which mode is meant for what purpose. And the problem is that this happens regularly unless you never switch any device, which in reality doesn't happen, because nobody wants to buy nice headphones for every audio source. Bluetooth is a mess, and I'm glad I stayed with headphone jacks so far.
- arsenico 8y ago
  That is exactly why AirPods are an absolutely superior product.
  - tjoff 8y ago
    For one very niche use-case. No wireless technology is a replacement for the headphone jack. It will probably be decades before we have anything decent (though I'm not hopeful).
pizza234 8y ago
I think the problem, in the specific audio area, is the technology itself rather than accessibility. The Bluetooth standard is trash; no stack/device [combination] just works as it's supposed to do. If BT worked, I think accessibility would pose no problem; ultimately, the intended workflow is: 1. turn on BT on the host device (if required); 2. turn on the client device; 3. listen to music. As the BT committees and implementers keep pushing features rather than taking care of the stability, for a stable BT to ever happen, it would require all of them to be exiled and replaced by a new generation; I don't think this will ever happen.
- jcelerier 8y ago
  > 1. turn on BT on the host device (if required); 2. turn on the client device; 3. listen to music. how does that work in a crowded space, e.g. public transport, where I'd wager most people are using BT headsets nowadays ?
  - Ambroos 8y ago
    Generally quite well. Pairing means your devices know to look for eachother, and the bitrate of music streaming over Bluetooth combined with the low range means you'll need some unrealistic congestion before things really start to fail.
    - geggam 8y ago
      unrealistic congestion before things really start to fail. aka public transit...
      - pimeys 8y ago
        Or any busy street crossing with lots of cars.
        TeMPOraL 8y ago
        On the one hand, that suggests either shitty Bluetooth devices you're using, or some pretty unusual density of Bluetooth users in the crowd. On the other hand, this is what mass adoption of wireless headphones will lead to, and it shows how ridiculously bad this is compared to the tried-and-true wire.
sacado2 8y ago
I'm not an eldery, and I prefer a jack socket. I just don't get the benefit of bluetooth in most situations. Jacks are more reliable and definitely plug-and-play. Unless it has a physical failure, your jack socket always just works. As you state it, bluetooth requires you to "Turn on Bluetooth on your phone, then turn on your headphones, then hold down the button to pair, etc", for no benefit. Oh, and now you need batteries on your headphone. Look at professional musicians: you won't find anybody connecting his guitar to the amp through bluetooth. They are using good old wires and jack sockets: why is that? Are they too old?
- simonh 8y ago
  >why is that? Are they too old? Latency. When you're making music and interacting with it directly, you can't afford any noticeable latency. When you're passively listening to it, that doesn't really matter. For phone/tablet users the main place this matters is games, due to their interactive nature.
  - laurentl 8y ago
    Don’t forget video. Bluetooth adds latency, and “true wireless” (no cable between the earbuds) adds another layer of latency as the signal has to be sent from one earbud to the other. Noticeable enough that you have to manually add delay between the video and audio tracks, if your player allows it.
    - TeMPOraL 8y ago
      Exactly. I bought Bluetooth headphones to listen to music at work & home, and it was all fine... until I decided to watch some TV shows in my free time. It was then that I realized I have 0.5 - 1.5s lag in audio (growing with time), which made movies unwatchable. Very quickly I bought two pairs of wired headphones instead.
      - rikkus 8y ago
        Something very wrong in the stack there. There should be a delay in the video in order to compensate for the latency sending the audio to your ears (Bluetooth does not add much here but it all adds up) and you should experience no latency.
scarface74 8y ago
So he couldn’t figure out how to use the included wired headphones?
m_fayer 8y ago
I think this is a wonderful point. I have elderly parents who depend on the web and mobile apps for a lot of the logistics of their everyday life, so I see the harm that this causes. The constant forced updates (looking at you, Windows) represent arbitrarily moving goal posts, UX-wise. Gratuitous animation, new "social/platform" features, notification-spam, new "design languages", and etc. benefit the elderly even less than they benefit the rest of us - rather these things actively hurt them when basic things suddenly become confusing and difficult without warning. We've made digital technology mandatory for most people, and we've made it unnecessarily bewildering for a big subset of them, basically by pretending that all users are youngish, digitally-fluent, time-rich, and open to unasked-for "innovation".
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
  It all started when we abandoned all the advances in UI that were accomplished by IBM and Microsoft (yes, Microsoft) in the 80s and let art majors start designing "UX".
cassianoleal 8y ago
> but they've alienated so many people to find their own path when they don't include the adapter. Have they stopped including it? My latest iPhone is an iPhone X and it certainly came with the adapter, as well as the 7 I had before it.

m_mueller 8y ago

maybe an industry standard that works like AirPods pairing?

Natanael_L 8y ago
NFC pairing is a thing, used by a few Sony headphones. Android supports it.
roboyoshi 8y ago
Yes, but looking at Apple, Google, HTC, Samsung and recent history, I think it will come down to this: https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/ . I'm almost certain that whatever Apple developed for the Airpods will not be shared with other companies. And whatever other companies push forward as a "Standard" will not replace the Apple Solution in the near future. Even replacing apples crappy AFP Network Protocol took 13 years, until SMB finally took over in macOS Mavericks. And even then, they used their own implementation instead of the official "Standard" one.
- m_mueller 8y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure - it will take years for sure, but industry has many times come up with decent standards in the past - ethernet, USB, PCI, just to give a few examples. Bluetooth as a network protocol also seems to be fine with its latest revisions, it's just the pairing that sucks - if Apple can do it on top of bluetooth I think others should also be able to.
  - lowercased 8y ago
    > if Apple can do it on top of bluetooth I think others should also be able to. they're only "doing it" with their own limited hardware combinations. the experience of pairing any random bluetooth devices even in ios is still mediocre overall.
    - zimpenfish 8y ago
      Anecdata: I have 19 Bluetooth devices on my iPhone (gamepads, speakers, headphones + dongles, watches, etc.) - of which, I'd say, only one gives me trouble[1] and none really were problematic for pairing. [1] Cricut Air but then it also has trouble talking Bluetooth reliably to my Windows 10 desktop; I'm not blaming this on iOS just yet.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    Actually kind of curious about this. Because I bought the Sony 1000MX3 and its pairing at least with one device is much faster and more reliable than Airpods. It definitely is worse with multiple devices however.
    - InternetOfStuff 8y ago
      Anecdotally, Sony BT headsets are pretty good (I'm currently on my fourth set, I wear them out eventually). In my personal experience they have decent sound, pair reasonably easily (through NFC and "normally"), and the connection is pretty stable. Pairing partner were various Samsung Galaxies. I recommend Sony BT headphones. That said, I also use the 3.5mm jack regularly :-)
Latteland 8y ago
Maybe go back to the industry standard that worked well for 100+ years, the headphone jack.
- christopherwxyz 8y ago
  CD drives worked well for 30 years. Why not bring them back to all our modern devices, too?
  - einr 8y ago
    They were removed only when few people used them because there was a better alternative. Many, many people use headphones with 3,5 mm plugs and it is not at all clear that the alternative is better.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      Well it is pretty clear that the alternative is at least satisfactory. Because iPhone sales aren't dropping because of the headphone jack and people seem to be enjoying Bluetooth headphones given how popular those are.
      - qwertay 8y ago
        Bluetooth was a step sideways. I like not having my cable get stuck under my chair wheels but holy fuck its annoying to use when you have multiple devices.
      - superflyguy 8y ago
        What's your source for the reason iPhone sales are dropping?
      - GuB-42 8y ago
        When you buy into Apple you are supposed to follow the trend. It has been the case since the earliest Macs. So it is not surprising that Apple followers simply do what Apple tells them to do and switch to wireless. I don't like it but it has value. Apple products tend to work quite well when used as intended. As for sales dropping, smartphone sales do drop. Or at least, the upgrade cycles are becoming longer. It is mostly because phones are becoming "good enough" for many years, but the removal of the headphone jack may have played a tiny part.

skgoa 8y ago

> they've alienated so many people to find their own path when they don't include the adapter. My iPhone came with an adapter, though. I continue using the same headphones as I did with my old phone.

wish5031 8y ago
anecdotally, the adapter Apple provided me broke after about three weeks, and it seems like most of my family/friends are in similar situations
- pseudolus 8y ago
  I've experienced a similar problem. I wear my headphones for about 1.5 - 2 hours per day while walking and I've found that I have to purchase a new adapter about every 45 days. I'm surprised that for the approximately $10 they charge for the adapter that they can't come up with a more durable design.
- novaRom 8y ago
  Most of Apple original cables are getting broken pretty much quickly. This is my experience. Why is that?
- laken 8y ago
  All official first-party Apple cables have a 1-year warranty. You can just take it into an Apple Store and they'll just replace it.
daveFNbuck 8y ago
I felt the same way about the adapter my phone came with, until I wanted to use the headphones on my desk at work and realized I couldn't do that because I left the adapter with the headphones in my car.
pookieinc 8y ago
My understanding is that the latest version of iPhone doesn't ship with the adapter anymore.[0] 0: https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17827970/no-more-free-iphone-dongles https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/12/17827970/no-more-free-iph...

daveFNbuck 8y ago

We don't just need to consider accessibility for the elderly. I need to regularly reconfigure my Bluetooth connections on my phone. They just randomly stop working. With the latest version of Android, I couldn't figure out how to even access the Bluetooth settings. When I connect some devices, they don't show up in the list of paired devices. Somehow it still ended up working, but I don't know how or why. When I walk into the bathroom wearing my Bluetooth headphones, my podcasting app starts detecting disconnections and pausing, so I have to turn off the feature to stop playing on headset disconnect. This makes everything else work poorly. My podcast player also often crashes when I connect a Bluetooth device. My problems get a lot worse when I try to pair a speaker or headphones with multiple devices. I often have to factory reset the device to get it to work again when switching sources. I'm clearly not the only technically-minded person dealing with random nasty Bluetooth issues, as evidenced by this article and https://xkcd.com/2055/ https://xkcd.com/2055/

randycupertino 8y ago
This is why I hold on to my iPhone 6 like it's precious and won't install any software updates so as not to kill the battery. I have bluetooth headphones but they're a pain to charge and the headphone jack just works consistently. I love my iPhone 6!!
- LeonM 8y ago
  From a security point of view, it's really worrying that a lot of users refuse to upgrade software because of the track record of Apple making devices less usable with every upgrade. I prefer the method of Samsung in this case, they clearly state for the monthly update that it is mostly a security update. Where Apple seems to apply marketing by promising 'the best experience yet' and shiny new features with each major version bump. edit: typo
  - coldtea 8y ago
    >From a security point of view, it's really worrying that a lot of users refuse to upgrade software because of the track record of Apple making devices less usable with every upgrade. A lot of users? iOS has the fastest and widest adoption rate for new releases of any mobile or not OS. Android specifically used to have awful fragmentation issues and phones never updated by the vendor 3 and 4 releases behind. APPLE IOS 12 HAS SEEN THE FASTEST ADOPTION RATE, RUNNING ON 50% OF IPHONES AND IPADS (Oct 12) https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/apple-ios-12-has-seen-the-fastest-adoption-rate-running-on-50-of-iphones-and-ipads-5366251.html https://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/apple-ios-12-ha... iOS 11 is now installed on 81% of Apple’s over a billion active iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices in the wild, up from the 76% adoption rate reported on April 25. By contrast, Android Oreo versions powered less than six percent of active Android-driven smartphones and tablets that had been accessing Google’s Play Store during a seven-day period ending on May 7, 2018. https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/06/05/ios-11-adoption-rate-81-percent/ https://www.idownloadblog.com/2018/06/05/ios-11-adoption-rat...

Klover 8y ago

Just attach the tiny little dongle that comes with the phone to the headphones. Then say to him that he can put the charging cable there and also the headphones cable. Would this be too complicated too? You can get the EarPods with a lightning connector. If that’s too complicated then maybe you can draw a picture explaining it?

pookieinc 8y ago
Not sure of the intent with your tone, but I wouldn't need to draw a picture of something so simple. As mentioned in the post, I would love to resort to a connector, _if the dongle came with his iPhone_. The only new information I can provide is, because the dongle is small, I know he'd lose it and continuously buying this connector isn't an option (hence why I tried to future-proof him)
thrower123 8y ago
Then you misplace the lot and you're out $50-$100 worth of kit, rather than a $4 set of 3.5mm headphones, which you already have six compatible pairs of sitting in the culch drawer.
- Klover 8y ago
  $50-$100 worth of kit? The dongle is €10 (21% VAT incluis) in an Apple Store. EarPods with lightning connector integrated are €23 (again, VAT included) if you want the most easy solution on a like €600 minimum phone. If you have a phone that doesn't come with a 3.5mm headphone jack, then you're able to spend €10 on a dongle to make your $4 set of 3.5mm headphones work. If you cannot afford that, then you have one of the many phones that do have a headphone jack. I'm sure that, if in the future everyone for some strange reason got rid of the integrated headphone jack and there's no company that sees it as a USP while people still want to use 3.5mm headphones, that the price of dongles will be next to nothing.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    You don't have to buy Apple's dongle. I found third party ones for $1.46. At the price you could just buy like 5 and permanently attach them to each pair of headphones.

masonic 8y ago

It's no coincidence that you never see anybody with a visible disability in any general purpose Apple advertisement -- video or print. Or an overweight person, for that matter.

sneak 8y ago
Or any ad, really. Apple is at least one order of magnitude better at a11y than everyone else in the industry; this is simply a nonsense comment. Nobody else remotely approaches them on this front—it may be their biggest and most unassailable moat, albeit for a tiny market that won’t ever increase in size. It’s one of the most charitable things they do as an organization.
coldtea 8y ago
>It's no coincidence that you never see anybody with a visible disability in any general purpose Apple advertisement -- video or print. Actually you see several such persons. E.g.: Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPv9jFWhzGE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPv9jFWhzGE WWDC video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgk_Jawzdwk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgk_Jawzdwk Also Apple has the greatest accessibility track record (and tons of awards on such matters), and e.g. blind people etc swear by its products (as opposed to at it). Blind person describing his use of iPhones etc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlbIF7IOb_Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlbIF7IOb_Q
dmitriid 8y ago
You mean this one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB4cjbYywqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB4cjbYywqg Or the "Designed for ..." series? Meera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d6zKINudi0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3d6zKINudi0 Andrea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoEUsUWihsM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoEUsUWihsM Patrick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whioDJ8doYA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whioDJ8doYA Todd https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PoE9tHg_P0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PoE9tHg_P0 ?
- masonic 8y ago
  By "advertising" I was referring to broadcast or print advertising, not special-interest outreach. None of those has been part of their broadcast TV campaigns.

yiyus 8y ago

There is a good supply of Chinese phones that include a headphone jack. If the iPhone is a product you don't like, just buy another phone. It will be cheaper and will do the same and probably more. It may take a while to get used to a different OS, but I've seen my parents switching between iPhone and Android without problems so I don't think your father (about the same age) will have more difficulties.

itake 8y ago
I think the US gov just decided that Chinese phones are not to be trusted. At least Apple has a small semblance of privacy in China.
- ArchTypical 8y ago
  > At least Apple has a small semblance of privacy in China. No, they don't. China doesn't even let AWS operate in China without having all the network traffic filter and land in China. Nothing about the Apple network is different. Still towers in China, still servers in China.
sytelus 8y ago
One would think Android phone makets would take this as opportunity given the massive uproar. But instead they are absolutely determined to blindly follow Apple off the cliff. Now many major Android phones have not only removed headphone jack but even introduced unnecessary notch even though they don’t have FaceID!! The lack of independent thinking is stunning among leading Android phone makers and very sad thing for consumers in this duopoly.
- qwertay 8y ago
  Phones have long since left functionality for fashion. The notch is in season this year, no one cares why.
- omaranto 8y ago
  Aren't you only thinking of a few expensive "flagship" Android phones? I don't think the vast majority of recent Android phones have followed either of those two innovations.

sytelus 8y ago

I am also very strongly against having 2.4GHz Bluetooth radiation wrapped right around my head. There is a good chance this doesn’t matter but some chance that it does. No one knows. I refuse to be forced guinea pig in this wireless headset experiment.

Arnt 8y ago
The radiator is your phone. The wireless headset does a lot of receiving and very, very little radiation. That's why those tiny bluetooth things can have many weeks of battery lifetime on a battery the size of a fingernail: They don't radiate much energy either towards your brain or towards the phone. (Digressing, I wonder how much radiation incidental WLAN use on a phone causes, compared to a bluetooth headset. I mean things like googleplay chancing to upgrade a few apps via WLAN while you're holding the phone against your ear.)
simonh 8y ago
Do you not use mobile phones against your ear either? Bluetooth earphones are mostly receivers and are several orders of magnitude lower power than a mobile phone transmitter. In fact they're a lot lower power than most domestic landline walk-about DECT phone handsets. Where does the force come from? Are you required to use this kit for your job?

muse900 8y ago

Personally I feel like makers saw an opportunity on 1) boost sales on new headphones 2) get rid of the cable hanging around. I can understand and feel your fathers frustration trying to use wireless headphones, on the other side if they never ever get rid of the headphone jack then users are going to end up never getting trained on how to use wireless headphones. Generally with leaps in tech there are leaps in reduced accessibility for older people, and with how fast tech is changing I can’t see the current older generation getting more familiar with tech. Although give it a generation more and people that are currently 40 will be able to adapt new tech much easier and accessibility is going to be much less of an issue for the foreseen future. Also at the end of the day I think there are adaptors that convert the jack into whatever port your phone has. I know it’s not ideal as you get more pieces to carry around and you might lose them but again there is a solution. Also I have to state the fact that I was highly against not having a headphone jack as I own several pairs of good headphones with jacks and also I just didn’t like that change. I adapted and tbh I am much happier with Wirless headphones right now and not having those cables around me. Battery life could improve which am sure it will with time and I won’t need to charge them every so often but over all I am admitting that I was mistakenly thinking that wireless headphones and no jack sucks.

TeMPOraL 8y ago
> I can understand and feel your fathers frustration trying to use wireless headphones, on the other side if they never ever get rid of the headphone jack then users are going to end up never getting trained on how to use wireless headphones. But why do you want to get rid of the headphone jack? For iPhone, this is a direct downgrade, loss of very useful functionality. That's why people are complaining; while companies seem to like trading utility for fashion all the time, this case was unprecedently blatant. > Also at the end of the day I think there are adaptors that convert the jack into whatever port your phone has. That's the trick though. Someone's gonna make money on the adapters :). Also, I start to think this was a move meant to "disrupt" the headphones market. Suddenly the perfectly good headphones no longer work for a big and rich chunk of people, and out come new wireless options. The conspiracist in me wonders whether people responsible for this decision have any ties to people selling AirPods and their alternatives :).

simonh 8y ago

A agree completely, but we're not really moving to a wireless world yet unless we choose to. The default in-the-box solution is still wired headphones.

randomsearch 8y ago

Apple devices are shipped with headphones, which plug into the device. Does that circumvent the accessibility issue?

AstralStorm 8y ago
No, and definitely not the charging issue. The earphones may not fit you at all.
- Spivak 8y ago
  If iPhones shipped with an adapter would it be okay then?

zimpenfish 8y ago

If we're doing anecdata, my mother (70) got my old iPhone and coped perfectly happily with switching to Bluetooth headphones; indeed, she managed all the pairing, etc., herself.

tjoff 8y ago

Elderly? I can guarantee that no human being on earth can confidently setup bluetooth on all devices. And that's the issue, these one-off pairings. I had a friend sync with my car bluetooth-stereo, it took a while and from the steering wheel I couldn't be of enough help. But it worked in the end, was quite frustrating though. Then later when I tried to use my phone again it had been lost from the receiver (eventhough it can support two concurrent connections and I've only ever paired with two devices). So now I had to go through the whole dance that it was only paired in one device. Thing is, anything that literally takes more than 3 seconds is a disaster. After a minute of fiddling with it I remembered I had an AUX cable. And then I could patiently fix it when I had time for it. Bluetooth is a nightmare for temporary connections. Removing the headphone-jack is akin to removing a fire-alarm system because "it isn't used anyway". Well, the times you need it it is indispensable and it doesn't cost anything.

alpaca128 8y ago
Exactly. Just recently I struggled with pairing a bluetooth speaker with my father's laptop. Another, exactly identical bluetooth speaker paired fine just the day before. The second one couldn't be paired for two days, and I have no idea why. The fact that this bluetooth speaker has three different bluetooth modes with three different ways to switch between them via a single button doesn't help, and even after years I couldn't figure out which mode is meant for what purpose. And the problem is that this happens regularly unless you never switch any device, which in reality doesn't happen, because nobody wants to buy nice headphones for every audio source. Bluetooth is a mess, and I'm glad I stayed with headphone jacks so far.
arsenico 8y ago
That is exactly why AirPods are an absolutely superior product.
- tjoff 8y ago
  For one very niche use-case. No wireless technology is a replacement for the headphone jack. It will probably be decades before we have anything decent (though I'm not hopeful).

pizza234 8y ago

I think the problem, in the specific audio area, is the technology itself rather than accessibility. The Bluetooth standard is trash; no stack/device [combination] just works as it's supposed to do. If BT worked, I think accessibility would pose no problem; ultimately, the intended workflow is: 1. turn on BT on the host device (if required); 2. turn on the client device; 3. listen to music. As the BT committees and implementers keep pushing features rather than taking care of the stability, for a stable BT to ever happen, it would require all of them to be exiled and replaced by a new generation; I don't think this will ever happen.

jcelerier 8y ago
> 1. turn on BT on the host device (if required); 2. turn on the client device; 3. listen to music. how does that work in a crowded space, e.g. public transport, where I'd wager most people are using BT headsets nowadays ?
- Ambroos 8y ago
  Generally quite well. Pairing means your devices know to look for eachother, and the bitrate of music streaming over Bluetooth combined with the low range means you'll need some unrealistic congestion before things really start to fail.
  - geggam 8y ago
    unrealistic congestion before things really start to fail. aka public transit...
    - pimeys 8y ago
      Or any busy street crossing with lots of cars.
      - TeMPOraL 8y ago
        On the one hand, that suggests either shitty Bluetooth devices you're using, or some pretty unusual density of Bluetooth users in the crowd. On the other hand, this is what mass adoption of wireless headphones will lead to, and it shows how ridiculously bad this is compared to the tried-and-true wire.

sacado2 8y ago

I'm not an eldery, and I prefer a jack socket. I just don't get the benefit of bluetooth in most situations. Jacks are more reliable and definitely plug-and-play. Unless it has a physical failure, your jack socket always just works. As you state it, bluetooth requires you to "Turn on Bluetooth on your phone, then turn on your headphones, then hold down the button to pair, etc", for no benefit. Oh, and now you need batteries on your headphone. Look at professional musicians: you won't find anybody connecting his guitar to the amp through bluetooth. They are using good old wires and jack sockets: why is that? Are they too old?

simonh 8y ago
>why is that? Are they too old? Latency. When you're making music and interacting with it directly, you can't afford any noticeable latency. When you're passively listening to it, that doesn't really matter. For phone/tablet users the main place this matters is games, due to their interactive nature.
- laurentl 8y ago
  Don’t forget video. Bluetooth adds latency, and “true wireless” (no cable between the earbuds) adds another layer of latency as the signal has to be sent from one earbud to the other. Noticeable enough that you have to manually add delay between the video and audio tracks, if your player allows it.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Exactly. I bought Bluetooth headphones to listen to music at work & home, and it was all fine... until I decided to watch some TV shows in my free time. It was then that I realized I have 0.5 - 1.5s lag in audio (growing with time), which made movies unwatchable. Very quickly I bought two pairs of wired headphones instead.
    - rikkus 8y ago
      Something very wrong in the stack there. There should be a delay in the video in order to compensate for the latency sending the audio to your ears (Bluetooth does not add much here but it all adds up) and you should experience no latency.

scarface74 8y ago

So he couldn’t figure out how to use the included wired headphones?

m_fayer 8y ago

I think this is a wonderful point. I have elderly parents who depend on the web and mobile apps for a lot of the logistics of their everyday life, so I see the harm that this causes. The constant forced updates (looking at you, Windows) represent arbitrarily moving goal posts, UX-wise. Gratuitous animation, new "social/platform" features, notification-spam, new "design languages", and etc. benefit the elderly even less than they benefit the rest of us - rather these things actively hurt them when basic things suddenly become confusing and difficult without warning. We've made digital technology mandatory for most people, and we've made it unnecessarily bewildering for a big subset of them, basically by pretending that all users are youngish, digitally-fluent, time-rich, and open to unasked-for "innovation".

ConceptJunkie 8y ago
It all started when we abandoned all the advances in UI that were accomplished by IBM and Microsoft (yes, Microsoft) in the 80s and let art majors start designing "UX".

cassianoleal 8y ago

> but they've alienated so many people to find their own path when they don't include the adapter. Have they stopped including it? My latest iPhone is an iPhone X and it certainly came with the adapter, as well as the 7 I had before it.