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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

#191

Post by FilterSweep »

jwebb99 wrote: post #77

I don't understand this push to get rid of the analogue headphone jack. It's a solution in search of a problem--like removing physical buttons from the Kindle...the alternative (touch screen page turns) is more high-tech, but not as pleasant. I'm sure audophiles would appreciate a digital interface for their headphones, but everyone else is perfectly content to use cheap $5 earbuds for their highly compressed audio f…

> I'm sure audophiles would appreciate a digital interface for their headphones, but everyone else is perfectly content to use cheap $5 earbuds for their highly compressed audio files.

Well about that......Heres another point to your argument:

As an audiophile, I'm going to have to compress the music regardless to fit on the phone due to storage limitations. I enjoy owning my music, as does many other people who work in digital music. Otherwise, I can barely fit one full length studio album in lossless compressed FLAC or lossless uncompressed WAV format.

There is also a school of thought that compressed, and even lossy (to an extent) audio sounds better ("punchier" drums is the often cited argument).

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

#192

Post by Grishnakh »

deelowe wrote: post #178
Grishnakh wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to put your money where your mouth is. If you "call foul" on Apple, but continue sending them your money for their new iPhone sans headphone jack, then you're a hypocrite and Apple has no incentive to listen to your complaints. IE (6 mainly, that was what everyone was complaining about the most) finally failed not because of people "calling foul" on it, it failed because people abandoned the thing and used a…

> "Calling foul" on an industry leader is useless, unless you're trying to convince people to abandon that leader and switch to an alternative. This is exactly what these discussions are about.

They are? They only seem to me to be people complaining about it, while mentioning that they have an iPhone. I don't see anyone saying "I'm not going to buy another iPhone because of this."

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

#193

Post by marcosdumay »

prodmerc wrote: post #129
thirdsun wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Well, I for one do not care enough about battery life to pay the huge bonus the Maxx was selling for when I last brought a Motorolla phone (what I have no plans of doing again).

I'd pay for more battery life, but the bonus was just not worth it. It was easily twice as expensive as the phone I brought, with similar specs. Batteries last for a couple of days already, some more days are just not that big a differential.

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

#194

Post by marcosdumay »

Grishnakh wrote: post #162
prodmerc wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, look at the RAZR Maxx - people still went for the slightly thinner RAZR with half the battery capacity...

Sounds like a good point, however, what was the price differential between the two? If the double-capacity version cost twice as much, then obviously not many people are going to buy it. I think it'd be interesting to have an experiment where some flagship phone (like the Galaxy S*) is sold in two versions, one with double the battery life but a little thicker (and cases for both sizes are available), at the exact sa…

When I last brought a Motorolla phone, the Maxx was a bit more than double the price of the similar, but thinner one I brought.

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

#195

Post by Zigurd »

In principle this is good.

In principle, the dac and amp should be paired with the transducers. The longer the digital path, the better.

If you have high-end analog headphones, you might already have a headphone amp. Now a headphone amp will have digital inputs.

BUT this opens the door to various limitations imposed by content publishers. That so many people are so opposed to usb c audio, is a damning indictment of the content publishing industry's untrustworthiness.

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

#197

Post by tptacek »

Grishnakh wrote: post #173
Godel_unicode wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you never been on an airplane? Bose on virtually every head, because their noise cancelling is the best (and protected by patent). Look at all the work Bose and Beats put in to fighting each other for endorsement and "official headphones of..." deals. This is about giving Beats a leg up on Bose, or at least stealing revenue in licensing or dongles.

I have no problem with that. If those Bose users really value their Bose headphones so much, then they won't buy a new iPhone that doesn't work with them. Apple only gets away with this behavior because countless sheep happily pay them for it.

I'm sure there's a log somewhere on the Internet of a message board where people called Apple customers "sheep" when they got rid of the 3.5" floppy drive.

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

#198

Post by gergles »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #185
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…

Great points, and mostly agree. 1. as far as I know, the jack takes up quite a bit of volume, it's a long and empty space, that could be used for battery, heatsink etc. It's a minor save, but smartphones are some of the most volume-dependent devices, and marginal benefits can be high. i.e. most users may swing around say 4 hours of screen on-time, and get frustrated with 3.8h of capacity. Small increases can push the…

> There's suddenly a forced market demand when the port drops, which opens up industry incentives to push wireless price/performance ratio improvements which I feel are around the corner (and partially announced already).

Bluetooth will be great next year!

(People have been saying this about Bluetooth since 1999.)

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

#199

Post by rayiner »

Godel_unicode wrote: post #141
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…

Have you never been on an airplane? Bose on virtually every head, because their noise cancelling is the best (and protected by patent). Look at all the work Bose and Beats put in to fighting each other for endorsement and "official headphones of..." deals. This is about giving Beats a leg up on Bose, or at least stealing revenue in licensing or dongles.

Bluetooth?

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

#200

Post by markbao »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #185
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…

Great points, and mostly agree. 1. as far as I know, the jack takes up quite a bit of volume, it's a long and empty space, that could be used for battery, heatsink etc. It's a minor save, but smartphones are some of the most volume-dependent devices, and marginal benefits can be high. i.e. most users may swing around say 4 hours of screen on-time, and get frustrated with 3.8h of capacity. Small increases can push the…

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Some things that came to mind:

> 1. as far as I know, the jack takes up quite a bit of volume, it's a long and empty space, that could be used for battery, heatsink etc.

This is a good idea in theory, but in this particular case, what is being said now is that the phone will be thinner by 1mm. I'm very, very much for more battery – even with a Plus I don't have enough – but Apple tends not to handle these tradeoffs with an eye toward functional improvements. What I worry about is being able to shave off a millimeter off the thickness of the phone, but then having to carry around an adapter or two that will easily outweigh the space savings. As you say, in stationary situations like car/office, it's not a big deal, but in those situations, neither is the thickness of the phone or battery life, really.

> 3. ... There's suddenly a forced market demand when the port drops, which opens up industry incentives to push wireless price/performance ratio improvements which I feel are around the corner (and partially announced already).

Unfortunately I can only speculate as to what will happen. The plausible explanation is that the market will be able to generate excellent alternatives that become the gold standard, but as my sibling commenter says, this has been said of Bluetooth for a long time. I'm not confident that Bluetooth will be able to catch up soon enough, given its history and how far it lags behind today in sound quality, cost, and reliability. With that said, this will certainly be a big shock that may cause the desired shift, or Apple might have new wireless audio technology up their sleeves (though I shudder at the thought of another closed A/V standard) – and the 90% of people who don't care too much for audio quality will probably be unaffected on this dimension.

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