101–110 of 741 posts
Right off the bat, in the first paragraph, with an unnecessary political statement. Turns off half the audience right there. Everything said thereafter is taken with a giant grain of salt.
Is this person living in such a bubble that he can't have a conversation without mentioning Trump?
The blog ends with the best and most insightful comment: And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS: "if only there was one universal audio port they both could use" Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible p…
> And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. Eh, you could have said the same thing when they removed serial ports, 3.5" floppy drives, CD drives, etc. etc. etc. Yes, the world is moving forward. Yes, it's a little inconvenient.
The use-case for the 3.5mm headphone jack is still well and truly within the mainstream, and will probably stay there for some time as per the comment in the blog:
the right pair of headphones was the pair of headphones in front of you, or in your pocket, or mangled at the bottom of your bag. It didn’t matter.
There's a lot of legacy-weight hanging around in people's houses, bags, and workplaces.
Your point, however, isn't completely lost on me. I still miss CD drives occasionally, having to retrieve an older laptop in order to grab data from a disc I haven't yet bothered to archive to an ISO file. However, removing a CD drive from a laptop feels like a much higher percentage space saver than losing the 3.5mm jack from a smartphone.
The blog ends with the best and most insightful comment: And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS: "if only there was one universal audio port they both could use" Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible p…
I probably wouldn’t have bought AirPods if my phone still had a 1/8” jack, and every time I have had to use wired earphones since have been worse than if I had my AirPods on me. So here’s one human who disagress with the first bit.
every time I have had to use wired earphones since have been worse than if I had my AirPods on me
Apple has had great success in the past by pushing new standards in computer peripherals, deprecating old standards, and generally moving the industry forward by fiat. I think we've all benefitted somewhat from this attitude, even if it was inconvenient. The distinction here is that the 3.5mm standard isn't/wasn't a computer peripheral standard. It is/was an audio industry standard. There are many uses for 3.5mm that…
what is funny is that apple gave the excuse of wanting to save space getting rid of the audio jack. but my lg v35 has an audio jack and is thinner than and just as nicely designed as the iphone xs. additionally, lg actually has a high end audio dac in the phone, so music on my v35, and the v10 before it, sounds insanely good on my beyerdynamic headphones.
if i were to move to an iphone, apple would want to take these experiences away from me. and for what? pure hubris predicated on the business plan to sell more accessories like dongles and headphones mascaraed as design courage.
The blog ends with the best and most insightful comment: And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS: "if only there was one universal audio port they both could use" Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible p…
Personally, I detest wired headphones. I find they always get caught on things while I'm wearing them, and because of the neck problems I have that's a big issue for me (and as well as that, they'd always get tangled up in my bag, which was a bit of a hassle). So I'm personally glad they've removed the headphone jack, because it will help push wireless into the mass market (and bring down prices) at a faster rate tha…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I detest wired headphones. I find they always get caught on things while I'm wearing them, and because of the neck problems I have that's a big issue for me (and as well as that, they'd always get tangled up in my bag, which was a bit of a hassle). So I'm personally glad they've removed the headphone jack, because it will help push wireless into the mass market (and bring down prices) at a faster rate tha…
but that doesn’t really answer the question of “why remove it?” keeping the audio jack does not prevent the use of wireless headphones. and keeping the audio jack does not really pose a problem.
The blog ends with the best and most insightful comment: And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS: "if only there was one universal audio port they both could use" Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible p…
Removing the headphone jack makes the waterproofing easier and more effective.
The blog ends with the best and most insightful comment: And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS: "if only there was one universal audio port they both could use" Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible p…
> And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. Eh, you could have said the same thing when they removed serial ports, 3.5" floppy drives, CD drives, etc. etc. etc. Yes, the world is moving forward. Yes, it's a little inconvenient.
And yes, this was apparently Steve Job's idea, as he felt that fans were "too noisy and inelegant". I imagine that he felt that fans were holding humanity back, and smugly told people who disagreed that they were clinging to obsolete technology.
It got so bad, that Apple actually advised their customers to physically lift and drop their Apple IIIs to re-seat the chips that had popped out from the excessive heat.[2]
Of course, if today Apple decided that fans were obsolete again, and the latest Macbooks were twice as heavy and still overheated, then it would become the new normal, and it would be hard to find computers that had fans anymore, and we would long for the days when we could just use computers for as long as we wanted without worrying about them overheating. And on the internet, commenters would say that it wasn't a big deal at all, and if you were some sort of power user that wanted to use your laptop for more than a few hours at a time, you should buy a $250 cooling pad for it.
[1]: http://lowendmac.com/2015/apple-iii-chaos-apples-first-failu...
The blog ends with the best and most insightful comment: And no human’s life is measurably better since Apple had the “courage” to remove the 3.5 mm jack. But a lot of our lives are just a little worse. The author also points towards active de-standardisation between Android and iOS: "if only there was one universal audio port they both could use" Apple gets an advantage from this with their iron-grip on compatible p…
It's not that insightful, since it's obviously false. The fact is that the much-improved water resistance made possible in part by ditching the headphone jack has made a lot of users' lives much better, because they have dunked their iPhones in water and the result has been no damage, as opposed to the expense and inconvenience of replacing their phones. It would have been more effective if the author didn't cherry-p…
I still use the FM tuner built into Snapdragon phones. I guess everyone else streams their radio these days.
I could stream the local radio station, sure, but that's a fair whack of data just doesn't need to clog up my internets / quota.