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I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

fastcompany.com

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Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#201

Post by mattnewton »

eksemplar wrote: post #148
S_A_P wrote: post #17

100% agree with this. Its pretty interesting that I almost never use headphones anymore now because bluetooth headphones require a few things: 1) preplanning/foresight in charging the headphones 2) refer to number 1. I have 2 really nice pairs of bluetooth headphones, and almost NEVER use them. Guess what pair gets used almost daily? my 15 year old beyerdynamic DT770s. 3.5mm or ¼" plug, closed back. Not really the mo…

Weird, I noticed no difference between using the headphone jack headphones or the usb-c headphones I guess I can’t charge my phone and use headphones at the same time, but I really couldn’t before either considering the length of the charging cable. But I guess you must always be charging your phone since the usbport is occupied?

A common use case for me was in the car, where I want to be charging it but also use the audio port to interface with one of those tape deck adaptors, or just a rental with a terrible Bluetooth implementation (seriously, some of them scrape all your contacts assuming it is your car, and store them in the center console).

I also have broken or lost over 3 adaptors now. This wasn’t broken and was pretty transparently done to increase the adoption rate of airpods IMO, so it is pretty frustrating. If I hadn’t had mind-blowing-ly bad experiences with samsung phones I would have jumped ship over this.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#202

Post by city41 »

eksemplar wrote: post #178
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a pain in the ass to have to carry around another fiddly bit of tech gear which should have been completely unnecessary. Yeah, it's petty. But literally no one benefits from the absence of jack (or at least no user), so why inflict even a petty annoyance on some users with nothing gained for it?

Could they have build the iPhone XS with a jack? Because if they couldn’t, I’d argue that everyone who owns one benefits from it not having a jack. The real annoyance for me isn’t the lack of the jack, it’s that they haven’t also replaced the jack on the MacBook line yet.

Why couldn’t they build it with a jack? Due to the thickness?

I’m typing this out on my iPhone 6 (which I will keep until it disintegrates because of its headphone jack) and it is plenty thin. I think only Apple themselves are obsessed with thin devices.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#203

Post by xg15 »

jamesrcole wrote: post #32
BLKNSLVR wrote: post #3

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…

I don't know, I don't think any of those personal reasons invalidates the arguments of the parent. Your mileage on cables may vary, but the removal of an interface that had been understood by laypeople and was universally supported for the last 50 years seems a more important point to me.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#204

Post by jamesrcole »

xg15 wrote: post #198
jamesrcole wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if it was stupid, that doesn't stop something from being courageous.

Well yes, it's technically courageous, in the sense that punching a random person on the street is courageous.

Whether you like something or not has nothing to do with whether it is courageous or not.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#205

Post by xg15 »

jamesrcole wrote: post #204
xg15 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, it's technically courageous, in the sense that punching a random person on the street is courageous.

Whether you like something or not has nothing to do with whether it is courageous or not.

I don't disagree with you, I'd just question why that particular kind of courageousness is relevant to the discussion.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#206

Post by city41 »

mh8h wrote: post #117
finnthehuman wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just keep mine hooked up to my wired headphones. This works great, until... You leave the pair of headphones with the dongle behind by mistake and spend the rest of the day frustrated because you have access to a perfectly good pair of headphones but no the dongle. Or you stick to one primary pair of headphones and are frequently taking the dongle on and off making it even easier to misplace or leave behind.

It's not supposed to be perfect. It's just a solution to that problem. Remember when optical drives where removed from laptops? We had to carry an external optical drive. Some times we'd forget it. It was inconvenient. But we survived.

But usb thumb drives and services like Dropbox are arguably superior to optical media. Bluetooth is not superior to wired.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#208

Post by mattnewton »

NeedMoreTea wrote: post #21
aerophilic wrote: post #16

One of the things I feel happens in the tech world is innovation for innovation’s sake. In my opinion, “Real innovation” solves problems. What was the problem Apple was really trying to solve by removing the jack? The only thing I can come up with is to allow a “thinner” design. In all the previous “radical changes”, they created a “better solution” to a problem. Take the removal of Floppies or CD drives, in both cas…

Many have said thinner is the reason, yet phones without jacks are not thinner than those with. The problem solved was encouraging sales of some very expensive wireless earbuds. I really do think it was as simple as that. Those who want Bluetooth wireless could just as easily have it on a phone with a jack without losing any benefit. They already did.

100% this. The average sale price of the phone can only go up so much.

Re: I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back

#210

Post by wl »

astrostl wrote: post #179
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's a pain in the ass to have to carry around another fiddly bit of tech gear which should have been completely unnecessary. Yeah, it's petty. But literally no one benefits from the absence of jack (or at least no user), so why inflict even a petty annoyance on some users with nothing gained for it?

I don’t use wired headphones, but I imagine that I would just leave the adapter on them 24/7?

I'd rather keep the 1/8" to 1/4" adapter on it. Lightning or USB C means now I have two adapters to carry around.
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