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posted by martyb on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the why-not-ask-the-cowardly-lion? dept.

Apple's 'courage' to remove the headphone jack has created a brave new world

It was barely two years ago when we lamented the loss of the headphone jack on the iPhone. The iPhone 7 had just arrived with a gorgeous jet black color, a solid-state home button, and a dongle in place of the 3.5mm headphone jack. At the iPhone 7 introduction, Apple VP Phil Schiller talked about having the "courage" to make the change, to leave the headphone jack behind.

At the time it was kind of cringe-worthy. Rather than try to convince the audience of the benefits of wireless charging or the annoyances of wired earphones, Schiller basically told the audience that they might not understand now, but one day they will. You could hear the snickers in the auidence when he said that removing the headphone jack required the "courage to move on and do something new that betters all of us." It sounded ridiculous. All we could see was the inconvenience ahead.

But you know what? He was right.

It might have sounded like the reality distortion field on steroids, but Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack from its most popular product wasn't a flippant design whim. It was the start of a new strategy that would bring convenience, simplicity, and downright delight.

The move led to courageous sales of AirPods.

See also: Poll: Looking back now, did Apple exhibit 'courage' in removing the headphone jack from iPhones?

Related: New Moto Z Omits Analog Headphone Jack; Adds Moto Mods
Bring Back the Headphone Jack: Why USB-C Audio Still Doesn't Work
Apple on the Decline


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by aiwarrior on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:59AM (4 children)

    by aiwarrior (1812) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:59AM (#826639) Journal

    I have the exact same use case and I do not need the 3.5mm Jack. Furthermore if your interest is in the audio quality I think the DACs of phones are not spectacular when compared with the digital transmission in the BT.

    In the end in a free world you get your way and I get mine, but it may be that your experience starts to be more expensive or limited.

    Cheers

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  • (Score: 4, Touché) by Alfred on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:49PM (3 children)

    by Alfred (4006) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @01:49PM (#826719) Journal
    Um, you do realize that once you get past the "digital transmission in BT" there is another crappy DAC right?
    • (Score: 2) by aiwarrior on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:52PM (2 children)

      by aiwarrior (1812) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @02:52PM (#826789) Journal

      More or less. It depends on your audio equipment not on generic, for the masses equipment. So if you have good audio equipment you do not limit it to your generic smartphone, and you can actually extract more value per buck from it.

      • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:34PM

        by Alfred (4006) on Tuesday April 09 2019, @04:34PM (#826883) Journal
        Yes, if you have a reliable BT connection and decent gear on the other side you can avoid the phone DAC issue. But if I were to take a random sampling of all BT equipped gear it would be mass market crap. I made a grade-A generalization and you pointed out the very-minority exception to the norm. I've had suck bad experience with BT audio that I'm jaded but I also am not an audiophile/fool because there isn't any music that good anyway.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 09 2019, @09:52PM (#827129)

        Not more or less. There's a DAC in your ear if you have a wireless earbud. It's not the highest quality but that doesn't really matter because it's in an earbud, with all the limits of that enclosed space, and your ear probably can't tell the difference between hifi and AM radio.

        Not because there's not a real difference - there is! Huge! But when you're out in traffic with earbuds in (not over-ears!) the environment's noise floor is above the DAC's low quality, unless the DAC's response curve is radically poor (ie. mis-specced).

        tldr: there IS a shit DAC post-BT, and your use cases probably can't tell shit from gold in that component.