I thought it crazy to make the iPad Air 2 so thin. But now that I have one I see the benefit. Just reducing the effort required to pick the thing up is a big benefit.
I rarely use corded headphones and would not miss the jack.
I really appreciate that I can relatively easily pick up my MacBook Air. But it still requires quite a bit of effort. The MacBook dropped all ports bar two so it could be lighter and thinner, and while that bothers some people, I'd love a laptop that lightweight.
If only there was evidence that a lot of units of a different kind of phone get sold and that the proportion of the market they carry has grown over the last 5 years...
As long as there's an adapter that provides a headphone jack, I don't see a problem in removing the onboard headphone jack.
The bigger problem lies with the use of Lightning to begin with, rather than a standard like USB type-C. That would solve the power problem: adapters exist to split out power and other ports from a single type-C port. It would also solve the "only works with" problem, since normal USB headphones would work, or analog-over-type-C devices; that, unfortunately, makes it far less likely to happen on an iDevice.
I look forward to incredibly thin Android devices with nothing except type-C, though.
Or you could just attach it to the end of your headphones, and store it with them. That would cover the bulk of the cases, except people that need to plug into multiple AV outputs throughout the day.
What do you do if you need to charge your phone but also want to listen to some music at the same time? Another special adapter that allows you to plug in both?
1) Audio over bluetooth offers mediocre sound quality at best. It's really not ideal.
2) So....I'm on my bed, 3% of battery left, and I want to watch something on YT on my phone. Right now, I simply connect the power cable to it + my headphones. With wireless charging I can't be watching anything because the phone has to stay on the charging cradle. Or if I connect the cable, then I can't connect headphones.
Except they're going to sell the adapter for $30. It is just a rip off. From the sounds of things (ho ho), there's no improved sound quality or usability...
bonus point if the USB consortium could step up the game and make mixed mode a part of the port speck so one could use a cheaper splitter instead of a more costly hardware adapter. the driver need to be aware of the possibility tho, with added complexity.
Yes; I've seen several small adapters that plug into a single USB type-C port and provide charging, displayport, and USB type-A ports. So, you could plug in a single type-C cable and get power, display, and keyboard/mouse.
A similar adapter that includes audio seems plausible, once the type-C standards for analog and/or digital audio get wider adoption.
How does the author go from "Apple shouldn't get rid of the perfectly fine headphone jack" to "The truth is we need a new standard for headphones, and we haven’t figured out what that is yet."?
"We need a new standard for headphones, and we haven’t figured out what that is yet."
Bluetooth stereo headsets have been available for years. It's time for the all-wireless phone - wireless charging, wireless everything else. Waterproof, too.
Are people still using iDweebs with their silly white wires?
If you want to develop a new connector, just use fucking MagSafe. Watertight phones without a way for water to enter, easier cleaning because no dirt in your pants can sneak into the connector, and if you trip on your headphone wire (or the cat plays with it), the phone won't go down with the headphones.
That would be amazing! It's too bad Apple made such an investment in Lightning; it's appearing even in peripheral devices such as the Pencil and Apple TV remote. I imagine they would be reluctant to switch away from it so soon, especially after all the rage from obsoleting the 30-pin connector the last time around.
How could you charge your phone and listen to music simultaneously?
There could be two lighting ports. After all, there is currently a lighting port and a 3.5mm jack, so why would replacing the jack with a lightning port be out of the question?
But what if I want to play music at a party?
Use Bluetooth.
But my current set of headphones won't work!
Get a new pair. Think that's ridiculous? Most people buy new headphones pretty often, it's not that hard to imagine that in a year's time when the iPhone 7 comes out that people who don't currently have Bluetooth headphones (which would work anyway) or a lighting port compatible set of headphones that aren't satisfied with the set that ship with the iPhone (probably not an overwhelming percentage) wouldn't buy a new set.
Looks like a few are in the market (my favorite being Sennheiser) but the prices are, from what I can tell, 2x what a comparable corded headphone set would run. Yikes.
No one actually cares about the "I want to DJ at a party!" usecase that badly. Those people that do will carry the right cables, like they already probably have to.
Seriously, pretending that's an important use case is what lead Google to invent the Nexus Q and no one cared about that even though it was a stunning device.
> There could be two lighting ports. After all, there is
> currently a lighting port and a 3.5mm jack, so why would
> replacing the jack with a lightning port be out of the
> question?
Apple made the last iPod shuffle so small that it was a bad design. The super tiny design couldn't be operated easily when running and it was hard to press the buttons. The "next track" button was moved so close to the headphone jack that my fingers couldn't actually get in there to click it (the headphone jack used to be on the other side of the device).
They trimmed a few millimeters off the edge of the device so that the clip used to clip it to your clothing could no longer be operated easily. My fingers kept slipping off the clip when trying to operate it.
The previous model iPod shuffle was, I think, one of the finest designed consumer electronics ever - it didn't need anything changed. But Apple just had to go make it smaller.
Apple seems to have come to believe that smaller is better when in fact there is an optimal size and any smaller is detrimental to usability. Apple doesn't understand the concept of "the right size", all it wants to do is stroke its own ego by making things smaller.
I miss that old iPod shuffle design. I would have kept buying them buy they are no longer available, and I'm not going to buy the crappy new useless super tiny design.
You might be right. There is a sibling comment that mentioned that even smaller shuffle, which I must have had in my mind when I replied to the parent.
Have you read the article? It's not about them killing the headphone jack, as much as it is about them killing it with a proprietary connector. Something as ubiquitous as a headphone jack should be standardized in an open way.
Actually, Apple's onerous/expensive licensing requirements on Firewire are probably what allowed USB to beat it.
"Thunderbolt"/Displayport: yes, after decades of making laptops with proprietary adapters, they finally conceded that point. Intel deserves some thanks here too, I think.
Facetime: what lawsuit are you talking about? It's still only interoperable with Apple's software on Apple's platforms. Proprietary.
Webkit, Darwin, and LLVM: these are all good things. Note that all of them have non-Apple (and also non-NeXT) origins.
Probably untrue. My main use case for my smartphone is watching videos while I eat lunch; audio over headphones is a requirement. Floppy discs were only used with computers. 3.5mm cables are presently the ubiquitous way for getting audio out of 'cheaper' electronics to an adapter for more professional audio situations (typically XLR).
There is also a /wide/ array of hardware from other ecosystems (headphones in this case) which interact quite well with that port as they have become standards for interoperability and are dirt cheep.
Wired, for all of it's potential annoyances, also has the benefit of being direct, isolated, and low power (lower than radio anyway) as well as allowing the whole system to operate off of one supply instead of also needing to worry about charging headphones.
The best solution I see is standardizing on a power/data 'hub' that is a generic USB device. It would have the audio line and optionally HDMI/DVI ports that are expected while allowing for device recharging. However even that is seriously annoying.
All it will do is create yet-another-strandard.gif. The recording, performance, and production industry isn't throwing away wired headphone jacks any time soon, and is not swayed by apple trends -- and neither are audiophiles, but they're a smaller market driver. For the most part, it will lead to more fragmentation and higher markups on proprietary devices.
Frankly, I don't see the pain with the headphone jack. It's raw sound delivered in the simplest possible circuits. I don't understand what we gain by complicating the transport of soundwaves, as it's certainly not quality. I wish historic search was easier, because this whole "apple is getting rid of the headphone jack" gets repeated and squashed year after year.
Look, I'm not on some big high-horse about audio quality in the modern era (cough Pono cough), so I really don't see any reason to be upset with Apple deciding "thinner" is an improvement by way of ditching support for a widely used industry standard. We're talking about consumer electronics, an industry where (subjectively speaking) over-priced, under-performing headphones like Beats command significant status and market share. iDevices are nice-to-have items, and after having several, I can honestly say I care less about upgrading for 'features' and more about build quality concerns (having various buttons giving out across different models, etc) so I'm really comfortable viewing Apple products as expensive yet disposable items. Shrug
Oh, and anybody who is surprised by such a mentality might want to refresh a few historical examples. CD-Rom drives, gone. Final Cut? Turned into consumer-class software. Now they have a high-priced laptop with a single connector which really doesn't make sense for live performers and professionals. It's kind of how the company does business, so yeah I buy this rumor somewhat.
Apple dropped the Ethernet port from the MacBook Pro because it was too big, and the MacBook Air couldn't have an HDMI port for the same reason. But they replaced both of those with WiFi and Mini DisplayPort (now Thunderbolt).
They didn't "replace" the Ethernet with WiFi. The WiFi was always there.
The Ethernet port was for people who _needed_ to plug into an Ethernet socket. If you still have that need, WiFi doesn't replace that. So now you're in a situation where you _need_ to plug in an external adapter every single time.
not gonna happen with every reviewer oo-ing and aah-ing about the phone being 0.1mm thinner and leaving the battery to a back page where it says that it lasted them all day therefore it's fine.
Look at Samsung having to get rid of replaceable batteries (very user friendly and environmental) and move to glued/sealed phone because every single time a new phone came out the reviewers complained about how it didn't feel "premium" enough due to the plastic back (which personally I think is a lot more user-friendly than glass anyways)
If the market continues to reward style over substance, that is what we will get, people will keep grumbling about the too-low battery life but will still upgrade every year or two to the latest-and-greatest.
"Apple is reportedly planning on shipping EarPods that connect through the Lighting port with the next iPhone"
Good proofreading Verge. Also blanket statements like "no one is clamoring for a thinner iPhone".
I look forward to iPhone removing the headphone jack, making a thinner, lighter phone, and also propelling forward the market demand for bluetooth headphones. I love my Jaybirds, but there needs to be more players in the market.
I mean, it would also be great if it also shipped with a lightning -> 3.5mm adapter, but there is almost no chance of that happening. You can buy one for 40$.
"and also propelling forward the market demand for bluetooth headphones"
If bluetooth audio quality actually improved, and they got rid of the lag that makes videos unwatchable - sure. Until then, I would rather at least have an option to use my old analog headphones.
I look forward to more people joining me outside the ecosystem of iPhone, so I think we are aligned.
Apple is systematically strangling the ecosystem to force their short-term prosperity. Their price setting, app store review model, NDA on developers (the fearful silence devs are forced into) and their increasingly bad mobile UI are things worth killing.
So I hope Apple continues to isolate their ecosystem, because while the upshot is you can make more money selling the entire ecosystem (or licensing it), the downside is that it gets easier and easier for people to start ignoring you.
I'm with you on the price setting and App Store stuff, but it was my impression that they had gotten much better about the NDA issue over the last couple of years.
I would love to see the 3.5mm jack disappear though. I have mixed feelings about consolidating on Lightning though considering that it'd mean the end of auxiliary in car trips for those of us not BT enabled. Regardless of how you feel about the quest for thinness, the headphone jack is unreasonably wide, and something thinner would make it easier to get other components in there, as well as opening it up for other control methods beyond the simple clicker found on many headphones without the need for any hackery to do it.
I think it'd be inevitable that they would then license it rather than making it an open hardware spec, which would be a crying shame though.
I don't understand the desire to get ever thinner. I truly don't. I never ever hear anyone saying their iPhone is too thick. What I hear is that the 5S had the best design of all iPhones to date. I also hear that people would not mind a couple millimeters thicker if it meant a larger battery.
Who is Apple listening to? Are there people out there who think the iPhone should be thinner? (That was a rhetorical question. Of course there's someone reading this that is going to say yes. I get that. But I don't believe for a moment that most iPhone users want a thinner phone.)
I don't understand the desire to get ever thinner. I truly don't. I never ever hear anyone saying their iPhone is too thick.
This is my experience as well. I have heard people complaining about battery, screen size, and/or durability but never thickness.
To me (an adult male) there are only really two sizes of portable objects: things that fit comfortably in my pants pocket and things that don't. The iPhone has passed that test for years and years now and making it thinner will make no difference to me.
Young women complain about the thickness of phones a lot. Specifically, that it sticks out when they put it in the front pocket of their very tight jeans.
Apple will make millions for licensing MFA lightning to 3.5mm adapters. The only reason I would want something like this is if the lightning port was more like magsafe, magnetic. Break away headphone jack? Yes please.
Yes. Of every possible reason to eliminate the headphone jack, the idea that a $200bil company wants to make a few extra million dollars is literally the only reason I'd conclusively rule out.
It would take a $2bil product to even change their revenue by 1%. They're not going to make a big strategic move for a few million.
I should have looked it up first, but I'm surprised that so much time elapsed between the 2 actions. Maybe some other reason is the root cause of this decision then (some people use this port for other purposes for example).
"... famously killed both optical and floppy drives with no remorse — doing things that upset people in the name of progress isn’t new for the company."
The difference with floppies and optical drives was that many people were using alternative delivery and storage methods already. Many of us welcomed fewer moving parts in our computers. That doesn't apply here.
If Apple switches to USB-C for the iPhone and friends, then this would make sense, because with USB-C EarPods they could replace the headphone jack on the MacBook with a second USB-C port.
I figure thinness is secondary. The headphone jack is not controlled by Apple and Apple demands control. It now owns a headphone manufacturer that manufactures devices at very high markups, so why would it continue to permit competition on its devices with other companies? The adapter will cost enough and be inconvenient enough that it will prevent 3rd party manufacturing of headphones.
You say bluetooth, but that requires another battery and is much more expensive to make that a pair of earbuds. Also Apple is now a top tier member of the Bluetooth SIG, which controls the bluetooth standard and trademarks. Expect your Extend phase for bluetooth soon. I personally expect nothing less from the anti-standards anti-interoperability Apple.
Possible alternate explanation: maybe Apple is promoting Lightning headphones not because they want to eliminate the headphone jack, but because they intend to start pushing some kind of smart functionality to headphones and audio devices.
That's pure speculation. No clue what that functionality might be. What if they were leveraging the processing power of the iPhone to achieve some kind of adaptive noise canceling on any headphones? I don't know.
I do know this: this isn't like dropping the floppy drive or optical drives on Macs. By the time those were dropped, hardly anybody was using those features on their Macs. But a casual glance around any plane or public transit tells you that a lot people use their headphone jacks all the time.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadI rarely use corded headphones and would not miss the jack.
The bigger problem lies with the use of Lightning to begin with, rather than a standard like USB type-C. That would solve the power problem: adapters exist to split out power and other ports from a single type-C port. It would also solve the "only works with" problem, since normal USB headphones would work, or analog-over-type-C devices; that, unfortunately, makes it far less likely to happen on an iDevice.
I look forward to incredibly thin Android devices with nothing except type-C, though.
Well, you have to keep track of an adapter, which you can easily lose or forget to bring with you.
2) So....I'm on my bed, 3% of battery left, and I want to watch something on YT on my phone. Right now, I simply connect the power cable to it + my headphones. With wireless charging I can't be watching anything because the phone has to stay on the charging cradle. Or if I connect the cable, then I can't connect headphones.
like this http://cdn.iphonehacks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/lightn...
bonus point if the USB consortium could step up the game and make mixed mode a part of the port speck so one could use a cheaper splitter instead of a more costly hardware adapter. the driver need to be aware of the possibility tho, with added complexity.
A similar adapter that includes audio seems plausible, once the type-C standards for analog and/or digital audio get wider adoption.
Bluetooth stereo headsets have been available for years. It's time for the all-wireless phone - wireless charging, wireless everything else. Waterproof, too.
Are people still using iDweebs with their silly white wires?
There could be two lighting ports. After all, there is currently a lighting port and a 3.5mm jack, so why would replacing the jack with a lightning port be out of the question?
But what if I want to play music at a party?
Use Bluetooth.
But my current set of headphones won't work!
Get a new pair. Think that's ridiculous? Most people buy new headphones pretty often, it's not that hard to imagine that in a year's time when the iPhone 7 comes out that people who don't currently have Bluetooth headphones (which would work anyway) or a lighting port compatible set of headphones that aren't satisfied with the set that ship with the iPhone (probably not an overwhelming percentage) wouldn't buy a new set.
>Use Bluetooth.
Or use lightning. Stereos have been using the 30-pin and lightning connectors to get audio from the iPod/Phone for a while now.
Not to mention that most companies making medium-to-high end headphones are not even dealing with bluetooth.
No one actually cares about the "I want to DJ at a party!" usecase that badly. Those people that do will carry the right cables, like they already probably have to.
Seriously, pretending that's an important use case is what lead Google to invent the Nexus Q and no one cared about that even though it was a stunning device.
One word - adapter.
One word - adapter.
As in "Where the he11 did my adapter go?"
They trimmed a few millimeters off the edge of the device so that the clip used to clip it to your clothing could no longer be operated easily. My fingers kept slipping off the clip when trying to operate it.
The previous model iPod shuffle was, I think, one of the finest designed consumer electronics ever - it didn't need anything changed. But Apple just had to go make it smaller.
Apple seems to have come to believe that smaller is better when in fact there is an optimal size and any smaller is detrimental to usability. Apple doesn't understand the concept of "the right size", all it wants to do is stroke its own ego by making things smaller.
I miss that old iPod shuffle design. I would have kept buying them buy they are no longer available, and I'm not going to buy the crappy new useless super tiny design.
(Small size remains a problem. I've lost 3 Shuffles and a Nano in my house. The Touch disappeared for 6 months too, reappearing in the bed frame.)
Edit: Thanks, I didn't realize there were multiple clip-on models
SNL's Fred Armisen totally nailed this back in 2005. The iPod Invisa: http://vk.com/video-35284506_162126808
Thankfully I was able to find a link. SNL is brutal about keeping their content off the Interwebs.
Sure, it will be a bit of a pain in the mean time, but worth it in the long run.
USB? FireWire? Mini DisplayPort? Thunderbolt? FaceTime (before they were sued)? WebKit? Darwin?
"Thunderbolt"/Displayport: yes, after decades of making laptops with proprietary adapters, they finally conceded that point. Intel deserves some thanks here too, I think.
Facetime: what lawsuit are you talking about? It's still only interoperable with Apple's software on Apple's platforms. Proprietary.
Webkit, Darwin, and LLVM: these are all good things. Note that all of them have non-Apple (and also non-NeXT) origins.
You're still going to use headphones if you use them currently.
Apple was lauded crazy, as the web was not yet omnipresent nor were usb pen drives.
There is also a /wide/ array of hardware from other ecosystems (headphones in this case) which interact quite well with that port as they have become standards for interoperability and are dirt cheep.
Wired, for all of it's potential annoyances, also has the benefit of being direct, isolated, and low power (lower than radio anyway) as well as allowing the whole system to operate off of one supply instead of also needing to worry about charging headphones.
The best solution I see is standardizing on a power/data 'hub' that is a generic USB device. It would have the audio line and optionally HDMI/DVI ports that are expected while allowing for device recharging. However even that is seriously annoying.
Frankly, I don't see the pain with the headphone jack. It's raw sound delivered in the simplest possible circuits. I don't understand what we gain by complicating the transport of soundwaves, as it's certainly not quality. I wish historic search was easier, because this whole "apple is getting rid of the headphone jack" gets repeated and squashed year after year.
Yeah, Apple is not an influential company in this field at all, and not a trend setter in general.
…and neither are audiophiles…
I'm sure audiophiles would hate the demise of an analog format in favor of a purely digital one.
Are you being sarcastic?
Oh, and anybody who is surprised by such a mentality might want to refresh a few historical examples. CD-Rom drives, gone. Final Cut? Turned into consumer-class software. Now they have a high-priced laptop with a single connector which really doesn't make sense for live performers and professionals. It's kind of how the company does business, so yeah I buy this rumor somewhat.
The Ethernet port was for people who _needed_ to plug into an Ethernet socket. If you still have that need, WiFi doesn't replace that. So now you're in a situation where you _need_ to plug in an external adapter every single time.
Look at Samsung having to get rid of replaceable batteries (very user friendly and environmental) and move to glued/sealed phone because every single time a new phone came out the reviewers complained about how it didn't feel "premium" enough due to the plastic back (which personally I think is a lot more user-friendly than glass anyways)
If the market continues to reward style over substance, that is what we will get, people will keep grumbling about the too-low battery life but will still upgrade every year or two to the latest-and-greatest.
Good proofreading Verge. Also blanket statements like "no one is clamoring for a thinner iPhone".
I look forward to iPhone removing the headphone jack, making a thinner, lighter phone, and also propelling forward the market demand for bluetooth headphones. I love my Jaybirds, but there needs to be more players in the market.
I mean, it would also be great if it also shipped with a lightning -> 3.5mm adapter, but there is almost no chance of that happening. You can buy one for 40$.
If bluetooth audio quality actually improved, and they got rid of the lag that makes videos unwatchable - sure. Until then, I would rather at least have an option to use my old analog headphones.
Apple is systematically strangling the ecosystem to force their short-term prosperity. Their price setting, app store review model, NDA on developers (the fearful silence devs are forced into) and their increasingly bad mobile UI are things worth killing.
So I hope Apple continues to isolate their ecosystem, because while the upshot is you can make more money selling the entire ecosystem (or licensing it), the downside is that it gets easier and easier for people to start ignoring you.
I would love to see the 3.5mm jack disappear though. I have mixed feelings about consolidating on Lightning though considering that it'd mean the end of auxiliary in car trips for those of us not BT enabled. Regardless of how you feel about the quest for thinness, the headphone jack is unreasonably wide, and something thinner would make it easier to get other components in there, as well as opening it up for other control methods beyond the simple clicker found on many headphones without the need for any hackery to do it.
I think it'd be inevitable that they would then license it rather than making it an open hardware spec, which would be a crying shame though.
Who is Apple listening to? Are there people out there who think the iPhone should be thinner? (That was a rhetorical question. Of course there's someone reading this that is going to say yes. I get that. But I don't believe for a moment that most iPhone users want a thinner phone.)
To me (an adult male) there are only really two sizes of portable objects: things that fit comfortably in my pants pocket and things that don't. The iPhone has passed that test for years and years now and making it thinner will make no difference to me.
I can't one-hand my 6S.
It would take a $2bil product to even change their revenue by 1%. They're not going to make a big strategic move for a few million.
The difference with floppies and optical drives was that many people were using alternative delivery and storage methods already. Many of us welcomed fewer moving parts in our computers. That doesn't apply here.
Meanwhile, my much younger iPhone5, I've gone through 3 Lightening cables and of the 3, 2 have fully blown out. They are complete crap.
The iPhone5 headphone cables are okay-ish and better quality compared to the Lightening cable.
Get rid of the stupid crappy made Lightening and keep the headphone jack. Figure out why the Lightening cables are such crap and fix them!
...
Oops.
You say bluetooth, but that requires another battery and is much more expensive to make that a pair of earbuds. Also Apple is now a top tier member of the Bluetooth SIG, which controls the bluetooth standard and trademarks. Expect your Extend phase for bluetooth soon. I personally expect nothing less from the anti-standards anti-interoperability Apple.
That's pure speculation. No clue what that functionality might be. What if they were leveraging the processing power of the iPhone to achieve some kind of adaptive noise canceling on any headphones? I don't know.
I do know this: this isn't like dropping the floppy drive or optical drives on Macs. By the time those were dropped, hardly anybody was using those features on their Macs. But a casual glance around any plane or public transit tells you that a lot people use their headphone jacks all the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcPhMqLPuvQ
http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MKLD2AM/A/beats-by-dr-dre-...
Who wants to buy expensive certified headphones or wireless in all cases? Headphones are pure commodity -- they can be had for $3.
I wouldn't buy another iOS device if this happens.