4 ms·

> They're often the ones holding the gun. Apple customers historically are often the most accepting of new things, even if that means change that involves spen

by gopalv 4y ago

> They're often the ones holding the gun. Apple customers historically are often the most accepting of new things, even if that means change that involves spending more money, because Apple will cover the other end of change well (& expand a little that way). The 3.5mm jack loss is tolerated because of airpods. I'm old enough to remember the furor caused by Apple taking the 3.5 floppy drive when every publisher used Apple hardware for QuarkExpress & everything Adobe, replaced with this new-fangled usb thing. The crucial thing over there was that Apple didn't bring in their own USB drive thing, but instead let IOMega try to deliver it & it went poorly for Apple customers who had big data swaps between them & others (DTP shops, magazine layouts, Photoshop artwork etc).

KerrAvon 4y ago
You have to remember that this was pre-iPod — Apple did not have infinite money at that time; it had been not quite two years since it was nearly bankrupt. They really had to be careful with resources. Having third parties provide all of the interesting external peripherals might have been a simple necessity.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  Nah, Steve was smarter than that. First, removing the floppy bought Apple millions of dollars worth of publicity - it seemed scandalous and people still remember it 25 years later just like he somehow got away with using public domain images of Ghandi and Martin Luther King to hawk consumer electronics. It was as if Albert Einstein personally thought you should really buy an iPod. Second, as with all of Apple products, aesthetics concerns were more important than functionality. If you've ever dealt with that original iMac, it's a tight fit. The design ratios would be off with a floppy so it had to go. Now I wish it didn't also have a bios battery that would freaking explode at about the 10 year mark, splattering battery acid everywhere and destroying the hardware but that's part of the long tradition of Apple's occasional exploding devices.
laurencerowe 4y ago
1.44 MB 3.5" floppy drives were becoming problematically small in the early 1990s, long before apple dropped the floppy drive from the iMac in 1998. Iomega's Zip and Jaz drives came out in the 1994 and 1995 and were pretty popular for a while until CD-R and CD-RW drives became cheap and reliable enough in the late 1990s. Perhaps the DTP shops were complaining about the iMac dropping the SCSI port which all Macs had had up to that point for USB, obsoleting their existing external SCSI peripherals - scanners as well as various external drives.
toastal 4y ago
Bluetooth earbuds are just not a substitute for wired heaphones. They could have supported both without compromising either but instead they started a trend of “we too have expensive-for-the-sound-quality branded earbuds” trend who’s two-year lifespan with little-to-no repairability will just be e-waste in the landfill. Thanks Apple.
- toastal 4y ago
  Hilariously, this includes the everyone's favorite Fairphone 4 which did away with the 3.5mm jack marketed with sustainability despite the waste these earbuds produce compared to a good pair of wired IEMs with detachable cable that can last a decade. Likely users had a pair of fine headphones and felt compelled to consume and buy a new pair of earbuds just to overcome the hassle of losing dongles or having to choose between charging or audio.
- avianlyric 4y ago
  > They could have supported both without compromising either I find this a little hard to believe. If there really are no compromises to continuing to support the 3.5mm jack, then I would expect other phone manufacturers to continue support on their flagship devices, and hammer Apple for removing it. I think in reality, mobile devices are so small, that having a single purpose port just doesn’t make sense. The 3.5mm port is larger in volume than a USB-C port, and USB-C is quite capable of carrying analog audio. I don’t see why any manufacturer would continue paying the cost of a 3.5mm port, when it’s so trivially rolled into other existing ports on the device. I also suspect that the current domination of wireless headphone would have occurred even if the 3.5mm jack had stayed. After all it’s trivially easy to adapt a pair of wired headphones for a USB-C port or lightning port, and yet people still choose wireless headphones.
  - enragedcacti 4y ago
    I don't disagree with your arguments but its hard not to point out the obvious conflict of interest with companies dropping the headphone jack while selling their own wireless headphones as the solution, both to the lack of headphone jack and to the fear of technical issues that BT headphones had at the time. I don't think we can really use the removal as evidence on its own when Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc. all got a jump on a multi-billion dollar market because of their position as a device OEM. The only real exceptions are Asus and Sony who are both targeting niche buyers with most of their phone offerings.

by gopalv 4y ago

KerrAvon 4y ago

You have to remember that this was pre-iPod — Apple did not have infinite money at that time; it had been not quite two years since it was nearly bankrupt. They really had to be careful with resources. Having third parties provide all of the interesting external peripherals might have been a simple necessity.

kristopolous 4y ago
Nah, Steve was smarter than that. First, removing the floppy bought Apple millions of dollars worth of publicity - it seemed scandalous and people still remember it 25 years later just like he somehow got away with using public domain images of Ghandi and Martin Luther King to hawk consumer electronics. It was as if Albert Einstein personally thought you should really buy an iPod. Second, as with all of Apple products, aesthetics concerns were more important than functionality. If you've ever dealt with that original iMac, it's a tight fit. The design ratios would be off with a floppy so it had to go. Now I wish it didn't also have a bios battery that would freaking explode at about the 10 year mark, splattering battery acid everywhere and destroying the hardware but that's part of the long tradition of Apple's occasional exploding devices.

laurencerowe 4y ago

1.44 MB 3.5" floppy drives were becoming problematically small in the early 1990s, long before apple dropped the floppy drive from the iMac in 1998. Iomega's Zip and Jaz drives came out in the 1994 and 1995 and were pretty popular for a while until CD-R and CD-RW drives became cheap and reliable enough in the late 1990s. Perhaps the DTP shops were complaining about the iMac dropping the SCSI port which all Macs had had up to that point for USB, obsoleting their existing external SCSI peripherals - scanners as well as various external drives.

toastal 4y ago

Bluetooth earbuds are just not a substitute for wired heaphones. They could have supported both without compromising either but instead they started a trend of “we too have expensive-for-the-sound-quality branded earbuds” trend who’s two-year lifespan with little-to-no repairability will just be e-waste in the landfill. Thanks Apple.

toastal 4y ago
Hilariously, this includes the everyone's favorite Fairphone 4 which did away with the 3.5mm jack marketed with sustainability despite the waste these earbuds produce compared to a good pair of wired IEMs with detachable cable that can last a decade. Likely users had a pair of fine headphones and felt compelled to consume and buy a new pair of earbuds just to overcome the hassle of losing dongles or having to choose between charging or audio.
avianlyric 4y ago
> They could have supported both without compromising either I find this a little hard to believe. If there really are no compromises to continuing to support the 3.5mm jack, then I would expect other phone manufacturers to continue support on their flagship devices, and hammer Apple for removing it. I think in reality, mobile devices are so small, that having a single purpose port just doesn’t make sense. The 3.5mm port is larger in volume than a USB-C port, and USB-C is quite capable of carrying analog audio. I don’t see why any manufacturer would continue paying the cost of a 3.5mm port, when it’s so trivially rolled into other existing ports on the device. I also suspect that the current domination of wireless headphone would have occurred even if the 3.5mm jack had stayed. After all it’s trivially easy to adapt a pair of wired headphones for a USB-C port or lightning port, and yet people still choose wireless headphones.
- enragedcacti 4y ago
  I don't disagree with your arguments but its hard not to point out the obvious conflict of interest with companies dropping the headphone jack while selling their own wireless headphones as the solution, both to the lack of headphone jack and to the fear of technical issues that BT headphones had at the time. I don't think we can really use the removal as evidence on its own when Apple, Samsung, Google, Xiaomi, Oppo, etc. all got a jump on a multi-billion dollar market because of their position as a device OEM. The only real exceptions are Asus and Sony who are both targeting niche buyers with most of their phone offerings.