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Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

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Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#121

Post by jccc »

markbao wrote: post #108

Four opinions, going off of this article and partly in response to Gruber's[0]: 1. There was a functional reason that CDs and floppies went out of style: low capacity and the Internet. What’s the functional reason to get rid of analog headphones? It’s not quality – analog headphones have excellent sound quality, and 99% of people won’t be able to tell the difference with ‘digital’ sound, right? 2. So what happens if…

Daring Fireball:

> Maybe now is the wrong time, and Apple is making a mistake. I don’t know.

You might be responding to the Gruber in your head rather than the one who wrote that post.

He's not extolling the virtues of Apple's decision, saying it was the right thing. He's responding to Patel's reaction to it.

It's okay for people to be ambivalent, or to have an opinion on only some aspects of an issue. Not everything you see is Red Team vs. Blue Team.

(He also kind of addressed some of your other points in the article as well, but perhaps not to your satisfaction or as directly as you'd like.)

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#122

Post by wtbob »

bsimpson wrote: post #5

John Gruber's response ( http://daringfireball.net/2016/06/headphone_jacks_are_the_ne... ): > Should the analog headphone jack remain on our devices forever? If you think so, you can stop reading. What's the advantage to removing the headphone jack? Is the jack some sort of bottleneck to sound quality that nobody noticed until now? I really don't see a benefit in removing the headphone jack, now or anytime in the for…

If Apple announced that they are adding a new steel-spike-through-the-eye feature, John Gruber would be there to patiently explain how this could be really useful, and how it doesn't kill you unless you actually use it.

If Apple announced that they were using ground-up baby bones in their newest iPhone case, John Gruber would be there to patiently explain how there's a surplus of babies in the world, and besides dirty diapers don't really fit in with the whole Apple æsthetic.

If Apple announced that from this day forth the only way to get an Apple product would be in exchange for selling oneself into slavery under Apple, John Gruber would be there to patiently explain how this is a revolutionary new welfare programme which will ensure that no Apple customer ever goes to bed hungry.

I absolutely love Markdown: he genuinely made the world a better place by coming up with it. But he's about the furthest thing from objective when it comes to Apple.

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#123

Post by wlesieutre »

dsr_ wrote: post #76
wlesieutre wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The 3.5 mm jack still delivers the absolute best sound quality compared to the other options available on a smart phone. That's only true because the only headphones that exist for smartphones are headphone jack or Bluetooth. You can build a USB-C or Lightning headset with much higher impedance and use a digital signal to a higher quality DAC than the one built into the phone.

You can do that with USB2 as well, but hardly anyone does, because they aren't forced to do so. Most people don't want a higher quality DAC than the one built into the phone. High quality DACs are cheap. If the one in your phone isn't good enough for you, in two years you will get a new phone -- pick one with a better DAC, since now you know that's important to you. In the meantime, your $1000 headphones from four ye…

> You can do that with USB2 as well, but hardly anyone does, because they aren't forced to do so.

You can plug a USB2 DAC into your phone?

A ton of people who own good headphones for their computer use a USB sound device instead of the motherboard's built-in audio. But today, similarly good headphones for mobile phones do not exist because phones can't drive them. This may not be a priority for a lot of people yet, but Apple is in a position to hugely increase the size of the market.

I'm not thrilled that it would create headphone lock-in on iOS vs Android, but you have to at least admit that it opens up opportunities for better headphones for phones than what's out there now.

If you'd tried to do this 10 years ago it would have been pointless because people's music libraries were all a bunch of MP3s ripped at 128 kbps. Now that Apple Music exists, Apple has direct control over the quality of the music they're streaming. If they want to make better headphones workable they can push out media in a format that makes them actually worth using.

Using an adapter to 3.5mm headphones doesn't feel like that big a deal to me. I would guess that Apple can output an analog signal over the lightning connector to allow a small passive cable (like DVI-I to VGA).

Going the other direction, someone (guessing Apple won't) could build a 3.5mm device that converts to a Lightning signal, but I'd expect it to also have to plug into a phone's accessory port to get enough power.

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#124

Post by prodmerc »

SloopJon wrote: post #37
rplst8 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing the 3.5 mm audio jack to the floppy drive is ridiculous. The jack has become far, far, more ubiquitous than the floppy drive. Additionally, the things that use the jack are often of higher quality and not disposible like a floppy disk was. And this ignores the fact that the floppy disk/drive was technologically usurped by other removable storage formats. The 3.5 mm jack still delivers the absolute best soun…

Yeah, this is amazing apologism, even for Gruber. "And in five years we’ll look at analog headphone jacks the way we look at all the other legacy ports we’ve abandoned." In five years, there are going to a lot of crappy Lightning earbuds in drawers and landfills.

"Ports we've abandoned"

Yeah like 1/4" and XLR, which are used on most studio and enthusiast equipment. Why don't manufacturers ditch that in favor of USB or full fiber, the poor fools?

Some people live in a fairy land with heads up their ass...

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#125

Post by jkot »

rayiner wrote: post #64

I'm looking forward to getting rid of the headphone jack. I'm looking forward to getting a MacBook Pro with the MacBook low-travel keyboard. I'd even be fine with a MacBook Pro with a single USB-C port! One thing Apple gets is that you don't need to constrain your design to appease small minorities of users. I bet 99.9% of people only ever plug in the stock earbuds or a pair of Beats they bought at the Apple Store. S…

> you don't need to constrain your design to appease small minorities of users.

> I bet 99.9% of people only ever plug in the stock earbuds

99.9% is a small minority? We could use the same argument for removing display :-)

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#126

Post by danblick »

arthurfm wrote: post #114
gambiting wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do - you now can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time, unless you have some weird Y-splitter-type cable. Can we have two usb-c ports on phones?

> you now can't charge your phone and listen to music at the same time, unless you have some weird Y-splitter-type cable Rather than have a splitter cable, couldn't you have an additional USB-C port on the headphones which could be used to power the smartphone indirectly? If that's not possible I reckon some manufacturers will start putting small batteries in USB-C headphones.

I think you just suggested running a power line around my head?

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#127

Post by markbao »

jccc wrote: post #121
markbao wrote: post #108

Four opinions, going off of this article and partly in response to Gruber's[0]: 1. There was a functional reason that CDs and floppies went out of style: low capacity and the Internet. What’s the functional reason to get rid of analog headphones? It’s not quality – analog headphones have excellent sound quality, and 99% of people won’t be able to tell the difference with ‘digital’ sound, right? 2. So what happens if…

Daring Fireball: > Maybe now is the wrong time, and Apple is making a mistake. I don’t know. You might be responding to the Gruber in your head rather than the one who wrote that post. He's not extolling the virtues of Apple's decision, saying it was the right thing. He's responding to Patel's reaction to it. It's okay for people to be ambivalent, or to have an opinion on only some aspects of an issue. Not everything…

> You might be responding to the Gruber in your head rather than the one who wrote that post.

You're probably right – there's likely more mutually shared opinions between my thoughts and Gruber's article than I think, though I'm only partly responding to his post.

> (He also kind of addressed some of your other points in the article as well, but perhaps not to your satisfaction or as directly as you'd like.)

Yes, exactly. I think a big thing that got me was his response to the dongle question: "External floppy drives sucked too." That's it. Not quite the level of detail I was looking for.

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#128

Post by phil21 »

falcolas wrote: post #82
ghshephard wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I came here to say just this, but you captured every though I had, and better. USB-C finally has the chance to be the universal adapter for "phone sized" devices (there will probably have to be a micro-USB C for things that are tinier) - and if Apple really wanted to show courage/leadership, they would replace their lightning ports with a standard that every device in the world is moving to. I'd have no problem with…

> I'd have no problem with USB-C headphones. I would. Can you imagine how terrible the sound would be for 90% of the headphone market? We have all of these manufacturers racing to the bottom of the headphone market, offering crappy speakers and microphones for $50. Now we expect them to also include an amp and DAC? The least expensive, decent headphone USB DAC that I've personally used was already over $70, and it's…

Why does everyone keep saying you need a DAC?

That's an option, the other option is simply using the physical connector for an old-school analog audio connection.

If the concern is device manufacturers won't support USB-C analog audio that's one thing, but pretending like it isn't the (current) intention to utilize is quite strange to me. This is quite literally changing a round plug to a oval one if implemented properly and to the spec.

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#129

Post by prodmerc »

thirdsun wrote: post #30
creshal wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole discussion is based on the dishonest claim that it's either 3.5mm or no analog. We already have a standardized 2.5mm jack to replace the 3.5mm one in space-constrained environments (just like 6.35mm is still around for hifi setups). Why is everyone pretending we need to ditch analog audio completely for smaller phones when we can just start using 2.5mm (again!)?

If we do that we might as well use a lightning to 3.5 jack-adapter since audio equipment and headphones with 2.5 jack are very rare. I'm all for keeping the jack output, but using a 2.5 one doesn't solve the problem.

It solves it for the thinness problem. Which is stupid imo, cause why not just shove more battery in that millimeter (I thought the RAZR Maxx was gonna be revolutionary, no one cared apparently), but whatever. 2.5->3.5mm adapters are small and cheap...

Re: Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid

#130

Post by stuaxo »

deelowe wrote: post #99
ju-st wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thickest feature on most phones is the camera

This needs to be higher. Take a phone a part and you'll see that the headphone jack isn't the constraint.

Yup, and apple even put a bump in the back of their case to accommodate the camera.
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