Apple says it was right to remove "dinosaur" headphone jack from the iPhone 7

[lripplinger]

Crapple just used getting rid of it as a good excuse to sell exclusive, adapters to use your headphones. This how they make their money. How else are we supposed to see this? Engineering excuses just don't fly here for me. This is how Crapple has made their money: selling outrageously priced adapters, and sell people on that as being some good thing. Crapple likes to make things complicated and counter intuitive.

 

[Hazydave]

No headphone socket = no sale given
how often I use my phone as an MP3 player. .... +$400 price premiums for increasingly nerfed functionality any day...

You get another adapter for that money, included with each iPhone 7...

You get the adapter now. Don't expect it to be included in the Apple 7s box. In the long term, nixing the audio jack gurantees that Apple saves $5+ per device, makes their usual 50% profits on add-ins that everyone will need, or their 30% for any aftermarket adapters.

No DRM, but expect Apple's Beats division to sell headphones with Lightning connectors, which of course only work on iDevices, once again helping to lock up their ecosystem.

It doesn't by itself improve audio quality... it just moves the problem. Sure, if you replace the crappy Apple DAC with something better, it might sound better. But that was true last week, before the iPhone 7 was released.

 

[Hazydave]

It will probably stick around on other types of audio equipment for many years to come.

What features do you think audio over USBc and thunderbolt have that make it superior to 3.5mm?

There are none. They're just moving the problem -- the phone is all digital, the adapter is where the DAC exists, and a crappy DAC is still a crappy DAC. Of course, Apple will makes money not having to include the DAC... they'll probably not include it with the iPhone 7s, since by then the adapters will be available for $30 or so in retail stores.

 

[Hazydave]

Maybe adapters is where they hope to make up revenue for those falling tablet and phone sales

They will sell Beats headphones with built-in Lightning connectors, pushing iPhone users to Beats phones. Another lock-in to the Apple infrastructure.

 

[Spike666]

"It had its last big innovation about 50 years ago. You know what that was? They made it smaller. It hasn’t been touched since then. It’s a dinosaur. It’s time to move on.”

So the justification for changing it is that it's worked well for fifty years? Sounds like they couldn't find a good reason for the change, other than profit.

 

[Spike666]

The Wheel, it's round, it's old. It's had no new innovation. It's been made bigger, been made smaller, but hasn't been touched since then. It's a dinosaur, it's time to move on. And the tire? A mere hole filled with air...

If Apple made dishwear, they would put a hole in the bottom of cups. Why? They haven't changed in thousands of years.

 

[BrianMontanye]

If Apple made dishwear, they would put a hole in the bottom of cups. Why? They haven't changed in thousands of years.

More likely they would sell the adapter to plug the hole.

 

[Bigtruckseries]

Crapple just used getting rid of it as a good excuse to sell exclusive, adapters to use your headphones. This how they make their money. How else are we supposed to see this? Engineering excuses just don't fly here for me. This is how Crapple has made their money: selling outrageously priced adapters, and sell people on that as being some good thing. Crapple likes to make things complicated and counter intuitive.

Ordered mine this morning. 256GB.

Ordered one for my girlfriend so she wouldn't have to even consider those exploding samsung phones.

 

[Phr3d]

Ordered mine this morning. 256GB.

Ordered one for my girlfriend so she wouldn't have to even consider those exploding samsung phones.

ROFLMAO -- oh, yeah, I'm believing that your GF would consider a NOTE 7 given your obvious quiet, thoughtful support for all things not " I ", but you saved the day.. you are a psychological case study, complete with your Tonka inner-whatever, but keep On! Not one, but TWO thousand-dollar iJects on the way! Life is indeed good.. (I included the required options for you, I'm sure your GF can't survive without the requisite 5hr Where-did-I-lay-them-and-why-do-I-need-a-different-connector-128bit-compressed-to-unrecognizability-5foot-max-range-Pods..)
/rant (at least I announced it Was one, lol)

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

What features do you think audio over USBc and thunderbolt have that make it superior to 3.5mm?

It's not about adding features, you can only do so much with stereo sound. It's about saving space.

 

[yRaz]

It's not about adding features, you can only do so much with stereo sound. It's about saving space.

>saving space
>using a larger connector

 

[noc81]

Apple basically ELIMINATED the CD-ROM/ DVD ROM and pushed us towards Digital Downloads

Now look - their Macbooks are HIGHLY desired and the NUMBER 1 travel/productivity computer.

Their newest line of portable computers are amazingly thin, light and have batteries that last for 9-10 hours easy.

Nowhere near as bulky as a computer with a HDD, ROM-drive and CPU fans...

this is just what they do.

Either you're in it - or you can stick to exploding Note 7.

Apple had nothing to do with the disappearance on the DVD/CD drive.. It's been something long in the making, just for sheer convenience.

I've always been a power user if anything, but until recently when I had a problem getting a win10 iso extracting to a usb drive without problems, I haven't used my optical drive for years. I could tell exactly how long, as the last dvd I used was still in the tray -- an install disc for the Win7 technical preview.

I used to rip/burn a lot of cd's for friends, but as I gave up on using my HiFi system 15 years ago in favor of the convenience of having several hundred gb of flac files, I have also given up on burning audio cd's -- most everyone has a big enough data plan and enough connectivity options, it's just way easier to stream. I've even deleted my treasure trove of hundreds of movies and tens of thousands of songs, just because I can typically find a better quality copy online when needed and have the choice of streaming or downloading if I have a few moments to spare.

Apple removed optical drives as a design incentive, to make devices thinner -- not because that's where the market already was. Just as they have done with the 1/8" audio connector. What they forget about, though, is the many users of theirs who will come up with $600+ for a new iPhone, yet they are still driving around a car requiring the use of one of those horrible tape cassette adapters. They really have to act as if even if their customers can afford their overpriced phones, they'll still likely be struggling to keep food on the table -- that's their bread and butter, the type of consumers that they rely on for the majority of their profits.

 

[noc81]

What features do you think audio over USBc and thunderbolt have that make it superior to 3.5mm?

There are some advantages.. Really, the analog side of audio hasn't been improved for about as long as the mini-phono connector. Instead of relying on the underpowered, noisy, and lossy DACs inside the phone, you can push the burden of achieving higher audio quality to the headset, where there is arguably more room to place better hardware. You can also then put more pressure on the headset manufacturers to implement better audio quality, instead of taking an analog stream from the phone (which was already converted from digital), converting it back to digital to push some horrible convolution filtering on the sound (beats, ie), and then converting it back into analog to make it to the drivers.

Any audiophile will tell you that the best theoretical sound can be achieved by a straight wire with gain applied, which is technically impossible.. But this shows that the more steps you take out of the process, the better the sound quality is.

 

[carlos42]

“The audio connector is more than 100 years old,” said Joswiak.“It had its last big innovation about 50 years ago. and do you know why? because is perfect if something works well you dont need to change it

 

[yRaz]

There are some advantages.. Really, the analog side of audio hasn't been improved for about as long as the mini-phono connector. Instead of relying on the underpowered, noisy, and lossy DACs inside the phone, you can push the burden of achieving higher audio quality to the headset, where there is arguably more room to place better hardware. You can also then put more pressure on the headset manufacturers to implement better audio quality, instead of taking an analog stream from the phone (which was already converted from digital), converting it back to digital to push some horrible convolution filtering on the sound (beats, ie), and then converting it back into analog to make it to the drivers.

Any audiophile will tell you that the best theoretical sound can be achieved by a straight wire with gain applied, which is technically impossible.. But this shows that the more steps you take out of the process, the better the sound quality is.

nothing is being converted "back" to digital. The sound goes from the DAC, to the amplifier and then to the drivers through the headphones. On top of the, Analog is the prefered way to transfer audio. Further, digital signals are just multiple modulated analog signals.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

What features do you think audio over USBc and thunderbolt have that make it superior to 3.5mm?

I don't want to see it removed from proper mobile devices but it's seeing it's only Apple thus far (and a couple of Motorola devices AFAIK who probably are just trying to say "Look, we beat Apple to the market") I really couldn't care any less.

 

[Darth Shiv]

They will sell Beats headphones with built-in Lightning connectors, pushing iPhone users to Beats phones. Another lock-in to the Apple infrastructure.

Except they license lightning to other vendors. And you can still use bluetooth.

nothing is being converted "back" to digital. The sound goes from the DAC, to the amplifier and then to the drivers through the headphones. On top of the, Analog is the prefered way to transfer audio. Further, digital signals are just multiple modulated analog signals.

No analog is not. No-one is playing vinyl off their phone - *that* is the preferred analog source and it's never been in the equation here. Analog out converted from a digital source is irrevocably lossy over any medium.

Digital is not if a lossless format is used like PCM, FLAC or lossless AAC. Then you only have the analog losses from your DAC which will be a LOT closer to the driver if the DAC is *in* the headphones.

Also for anything apart from earbuds, you can put a better DAC than a phone could contain because you have more room. The only other constraint is power.

Disclaimer: I hate Apple lockdown but this is just FUD. Not being able to use analog earbuds directly is a pain for sure but this is a positive direction for digital audio in general and inevitable.

 

[yRaz]

Except they license lightning to other vendors. And you can still use bluetooth.


No analog is not. No-one is playing vinyl off their phone - *that* is the preferred analog source and it's never been in the equation here. Analog out converted from a digital source is irrevocably lossy over any medium.

Digital is not if a lossless format is used like PCM, FLAC or lossless AAC. Then you only have the analog losses from your DAC which will be a LOT closer to the driver if the DAC is *in* the headphones.

Also for anything apart from earbuds, you can put a better DAC than a phone could contain because you have more room. The only other constraint is power.

Disclaimer: I hate Apple lockdown but this is just FUD. Not being able to use analog earbuds directly is a pain for sure but this is a positive direction for digital audio in general and inevitable.

Do you even have a basic understanding of how audio works? The drivers, IE speakers, require an analog signal to move the voice coils. Further, the iPhone still has a DAC in it because of the speaker you hold up to your ear to hear the person calling you. I'd also guess that it would have a second speaker as a "speaker phone" that would also require a DAC to drive it.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Do you even have a basic understanding of how audio works? The drivers, IE speakers, require an analog signal to move the voice coils. Further, the iPhone still has a DAC in it because of the speaker you hold up to your ear to hear the person calling you. I'd also guess that it would have a second speaker as a "speaker phone" that would also require a DAC to drive it.

Yeah I have a pretty good idea. You are right. The speaker does. But being such a poor speaker, it only needs a poor quality DAC which is economical because phone speakers are trash and you waste a good DAC if you put anything decent in there.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Well, the current "leak" is that the new Pixel 2 will also drop the 3.5mm adapter.... wow, doesn't it suck to be so wrong?

 

[Satish Mallya]

Well, the current "leak" is that the new Pixel 2 will also drop the 3.5mm adapter.... wow, doesn't it suck to be so wrong?

Oh, really? You seem to assume that anyone dinging Apple for removing the 3.5 mm jack wouldn't also ding Google for doing so. Fanboy much?

 

[Squid Surprise]

Oh, really? You seem to assume that anyone dinging Apple for removing the 3.5 mm jack wouldn't also ding Google for doing so. Fanboy much?

lol... my point was that GOOGLE was doing a lot of that digging.... and now here they are playing "follow the leader"...

 

[yRaz]

lol... my point was that GOOGLE was doing a lot of that digging.... and now here they are playing "follow the leader"...

Oh, really? You seem to assume that anyone dinging Apple for removing the 3.5 mm jack wouldn't also ding Google for doing so. Fanboy much?

What will probably happen is that google will release two models, one with and one without a headphone jack and see which one sells better.

I just see this whole thing as really stupid considering I have heard someone at the gym say, "****, I forgot to charge my headphones". And, IMO, there is a very easy solution to that problem. On the other hand, working out is the one area I've found that I WANT wireless headphones. But in my car or when I'm doing a bikepacking or backpacking trip, I don't want to worry about charging my headphones. That is exacerbated by the fact that I can only carry a limited about of battery power with me on those trips and I need to use it sparingly

 

[OcelotRex]

Well, the current "leak" is that the new Pixel 2 will also drop the 3.5mm adapter.... wow, doesn't it suck to be so wrong?

When Apple does it it effects 100M+ handsets.

This will effect 100,000+ handsets.

 

[brianhopps]

You know, after that baffling change with the earphone jack last year, I'm getting numb with these changes they make.