Samsung Mocks Apple's Decision to Remove the Headphone Jack in iPhone 7

[gregoryalee]

Didn't miss you point all. Understood what you are saying and I agree with you about scientific measurements. But at the end of the day, it's still a matter of personal preference, regardless of fancy measurements. We've seen plenty of heated arguments related to this topic, especially after Apple purchased Beats. Personally, I know what I like in the $100 price range, but some folks will argue that their $15 Skull Candy earbuds are superior. I don't get it either, but it is a fickle topic.

That is true.

Interesting story for you: I have let some guys at work hear my high dollar headphones... guys with $100+ bluetooth sets that swear by them. When A/Bing their cans to mine, they hear the difference immediately and they do admit my cans sound much better, but then choked when they asked how much mine cost. So it is probably more to do with their own personal point of diminishing returns and how important hearing every detail of the music is.

I am probably near an audiophool when it comes to audio quality (minus paying retarded amounts of money for cables), BUT I do have my own limits as well. They are usually far higher than the average listener however.

 

[pkginstall]

I don't think you or most people understand the reasons behind moving away from the 50 year old technology of the 3.5mm analog headphone jack. All music files played on any handheld device today are digital. The audio jack requires an analog output, so every device has to have a digital to analog converter chip to convert the file on the fly. It makes sense to just keep the flow of digital to digital. And the biggest port now on any device is the audio jack, so it limits the size to which a device can be manufactured. So why should we stick with 50 year old technology and limit the size of our devices, just for nostalgia? Heck, let's just put the 8mm headphone jack on there too. When you have a look at old pc laptops of the 90's and see the massive serial ports on the back, you cringe. The same will go for the headphone jack.

I take it you are aware that ears are analogue? Or, maybe you're a cyborg, and you have a DAC in your skull that can decode lightning port audio...

Your argument about 3.5mm jacks being "thick" does not hold water. I am an electronic engineer who has opened, examined and repaired more items with 3.5mm jacks than a lot of people, and they are not the cause of the iPhone being thick, let me assure you. Case in point, the iPod nano 7th gen... look...

If you "need" an iPhone thinner than THAT, then you're crazy.

 

[Gilligan's last elephant]

The

You started, it's in your message go revisit what you wrote.

Again, puzzled. I never mentioned any other manufacturers. I queried how someone could consider the S7 rubbish when it is clearly a top quality phone. It is pretty much universally accepted that the S7 camera is currently the best camera in a phone, especially low light conditions. Just Google reviews. I said the S7 display is very high quality. This is not saying it is better than other phones. It is just undeniably a very high quality display. As are those in Apple, Sony, HTC, LG etc. Again to consider the S7 as rubbish is ridiculous.

 

[TallManNY]

I think the biggest problem with wireless for all customers, has been quality and price. Not everyone needs endless battery life, but certainly that has been a drawback too. And let's not forget, anyone who's tried them, especially an inexpensive pair, has had issues with pairing, and reliability using them. And let's be honest, Apple isn't going to do much initially about lowering the price. But you're right, there's nothing like taking away something to force people to seek out and try alternatives. But Apple can't remove something so universally reliable, and add inconvenience without at least offering something comperbale to replace it.

And it sounds like that's exactly what's coming -- BT 5, new low power BT earbuds rumors, lossless streaming from iTunes rumors, all suggesting an effort by Apple to introduce a complete solution for digital audio. And then there's Intel promoting USB-C audio, suggesting an even broader industry move to digital mobile audio. And that suggests a need to remove the headphone jack to keep phones as small as possible but add as many features as possible.

Now I suppose it's possible that the headphones could charge from the iPhone, but I don't think that benefits anybody unless they substantially increase the iPhone battery life, and removing the headphone jack isn't likely to reclaim enough space for that. More than likely, they will simply just become wired Lightning headphones, allowing the customer to keep listening for now.

But a thought did occur to me. What if the headphone jack is being removed to make room to add this new, superior, wireless technology, and a larger battery to help power it. That would be worth losing the headphone jack to me, even if they don't add anything else.

Two rumors about the new phones are that the CPU's smaller form factor will make it more energy efficient. And there is a rumor that the battery is a bit bigger. Combined that will be some serious battery life gains. In my view the 6S has already ended the battery life issue for the iPhone unless you are in a bad cell service area for extended parts of the day. And the 6+ ended the issue for that size phone last year. The percentage of people who will leave their house in the morning with a charged 6S and deplete it before getting home has to be in the single digits at this point. So a phone with even better battery life really has to just end the battery issue. It will be over, just like it is over for laptops and iPads. The battle is won. If the earpods charged from the phone, like the pencil can charge from iPad, that might work great. The battery in these earpods are really small and even a partial charge lasts an hour or two. Since I think these phones are now going to have battery life to spare, they can be a charging source.

If you want to get novel, how about Apple not package the headphones with the phone? Instead you get to pick either a wireless version or a high-fidelity lightning cord version (with the easy up sell that the one you don't pick costs $30 and you can buy it right then so you have both). I know that is never going to happen. But I do see a divide coming between the sound quality folks versus the convenience folks. The only issue being that if you want sound quality you really have to get Cans. Just having a nice lightning connector which goes to small in ear speakers is not going to produce great sound. You can make bluetooth better at streaming audio (and it does get better with each iteration), but if the speakers in the earphones are small then there won't be great sound. (Possible exception is really expensive small earphones, but even then I bet they are only approaching the level of cheap Cans.)

 

[Mac 128]

Two rumors about the new phones are that the CPU's smaller form factor will make it more energy efficient. And there is a rumor that the battery is a bit bigger. Combined that will be some serious battery life gains. In my view the 6S has already ended the battery life issue for the iPhone unless you are in a bad cell service area for extended parts of the day. And the 6+ ended the issue for that size phone last year. The percentage of people who will leave their house in the morning with a charged 6S and deplete it before getting home has to be in the single digits at this point. So a phone with even better battery life really has to just end the battery issue. It will be over, just like it is over for laptops and iPads. The battle is won. If the earpods charged from the phone, like the pencil can charge from iPad, that might work great. The battery in these earpods are really small and even a partial charge lasts an hour or two. Since I think these phones are now going to have battery life to spare, they can be a charging source.

If you want to get novel, how about Apple not package the headphones with the phone? Instead you get to pick either a wireless version or a high-fidelity lightning cord version (with the easy up sell that the one you don't pick costs $30 and you can buy it right then so you have both). I know that is never going to happen. But I do see a divide coming between the sound quality folks versus the convenience folks. The only issue being that if you want sound quality you really have to get Cans. Just having a nice lightning connector which goes to small in ear speakers is not going to produce great sound. You can make bluetooth better at streaming audio (and it does get better with each iteration), but if the speakers in the earphones are small then there won't be great sound. (Possible exception is really expensive small earphones, but even then I bet they are only approaching the level of cheap Cans.)

Actually, isn't Apple already doing this with desktop Macs? Customers can chose whether they want a wired, or wireless keyboard and mouse? Granted that's on a smaller scale than the volume iPhones sell, but really it's just another SKU that product analytics predict for packaging based on customer propensity.

It's definitely doable. Just like the Watch and the myriad of watch band options they currently ship for each model ...

 

[MaloCS]

You can hem and haw. You can call me a conspiracy idiot. But what about the health benefits of long term exposure to Bluetooth radiation. It is a proven fact that Bluetooth microwave radiation kills sperm so what about the long term effects of this tech on our brains.

You can quote me all the "low-power" excuses but even low power, in long intervals can be damaging. When I listen to music it often times is for eight hours or more for five days a week. If these new high tech headphones are broadcasting as well as receiving then there may be long term consequences.

Apple has admitted that light frequency can affect our sleep patterns when they introduced "Night Shift". If simple blue light waves, over time negatively affect our sleep patterns then what the hell is Bluetooth doing? We should all be very concerned with this radiation tech that hasn't been properly vetted.

Again, call me crazy but this concerns me.

 

[Michael Goff]

You can hem and haw. You can call me a conspiracy idiot. But what about the health benefits of long term exposure to Bluetooth radiation. It is a proven fact that Bluetooth microwave radiation kills sperm so what about the long term effects of this tech on our brains.

You can quote me all the "low-power" excuses but even low power, in long intervals can be damaging. When I listen to music it often times is for eight hours or more for five days a week. If these new high tech headphones are broadcasting as well as receiving then there may be long term consequences.

Apple has admitted that light frequency can affect our sleep patterns when they introduced "Night Shift". If simple blue light waves, over time negatively affect our sleep patterns then what the hell is Bluetooth doing? We should all be very concerned with this radiation tech that hasn't been properly vetted.

Again, call me crazy but this concerns me.

Wow that made no sense. Also, there is radiation everywhere. 2.4ghz radiation is everywhere, even.

 

[kdarling]

Denison didn't mention Apple on stage, but it's clear his headphone jack comments were directed at the Cupertino-based company and its plans to eliminate the 3.5mm headphone jack in future iPhones.

Or, as others have noted...

... he could easily have been referring to the other companies who have already actually eliminated the headphone jack.

You can hem and haw. You can call me a conspiracy idiot. But what about the health benefits of long term exposure to Bluetooth radiation. It is a proven fact that Bluetooth microwave radiation kills sperm so what about the long term effects of this tech on our brains.

Of course, "radiation" in this case simply refers to magnetic waves "radiating" outward... like ripples in a pond.

In fact, Bluetooth and cellular are similar to an electric floor heater radiating heat waves. It's the heating effect that people worry might cause health problems.

For example, the fact that heat lowers sperm production is a very well known phenomenon. Heck, a hot bath does it. So just don't keep your cell phone or BT headphones in your front pants pocket. Easy peasy.

The bigger worry some have, is can the heating effect mess with brain cells etc. The jury is out on that, I think. One fortunate thing is that our skulls are excellent barriers to this.

The downside is that we have holes in our skulls where our ears are. So the trick is to make sure any radiating antenna is not opposite that hole, but is instead alongside the protective skull bone.

 

[redhawk87]

The headphone jack is a LOT different!!!!!! Unlike CD-Roms and floppy drives, there is NOTHING WRONG with current headphones or the jack they use!

So, your saying there is something wrong with CDs? I see nothing wrong with CDs except the fact that they do not store as much as blueray disks. Apple could of easily upgraded the drive to a Blueray one, but why? Why would anyone want to store anything on Blueray? You say you have a huge collection of movies? Store them in the cloud! I know a ton of people who do just that. They have hundreds of movies and they just use various services that do exactly that... So, if you do not want to store them in the cloud, then how will you watch them at your friends house? I guess you can just take over your binder of 400 BD disks and flip through the pages like I used to do 10 years ago. Oh remember that movie you bought 5 years ago that your friend really wants to see? well, you cant find it in your stack of 400 disks. Where did it go? Oh, you might of left it in your PS3 by accident. Whoops. I guess you cannot watch it. If you store it in the cloud, you could of watched it. You can store movies on a computer at 1080p quality. You can even store at 4k quality. The quality of the movie does not depend on the disk you write it to, it depends on the format it is saved as at time of creation.

So you trying to compare obsolete standards with something that will NEVER be "obsolete" in the technical sense is RIDICULOUS. The iPhone needs to lose its headphone jack about as bad as I need to lose my hand and replace it with a freaking hook!

That made me laugh. I do not think you should ever use the term "NEVER" when you talk about technology. That is such a strong word in a field that changes as fast as the hair on my face.

I have NO IDEA why you think it HAS TO GO AWAY (or rather "DEFINITELY" will) when there's nothing wrong with it.

There is a difference between "HAS TO GO AWAY" and "DEFINITELY". 'Has to go away' implies I want it to go away or that keeping it around will hold us back somehow. What I am talking about is regardless of my personal feeling and beliefs on the issue, the market is gravitating towards something. The argument is not about why its gravitating there or why it should not gravitate there because no matter how hard I fight it, the market is going to change. That is what I meant by "DEFINITELY"

How thin does your phone need to be? At what point is it going to be uncomfortable to carry if it's even thinner?

How thin does your laptop need to be? How thin does your TV need to be? How thin does your smartwatch need to be? Everybody is always trying to make the thinnest <insert electronic device here>. Also, to your point... It is false to assume that removing a component on a phone makes it thinner. As you point out, thinner is not always better. So you might say, what is the point in removing something if it is not going to be thinner? Maybe an hour of extra battery life would entice you instead? Or more storage? Or more memory? That void can be filled with whatever Apple wants. Or not filled at all (thinner phone).

There is NO NEED to get rid of that jack today, tomorrow or EVER. Even if Bluetooth had tons of bandwidth, it would still require batteries in the headphones (just what you need, more batteries to worry about) so there will always be a COST associated with going wireless and in many situations wireless offers no real benefit (e.g. on an airplane).

As I pointed out above, a smartphone user has many needs: Battery life, sound quality, storage space, screen quality, responsiveness, etc. It is not a matter of "needing" to get rid of the headphone jack, it is a matter of juggling all the needs of the customer and seeing which is more important. Apple might of decided that the majority of their user base would prefer an hour more battery life in exchange for the headaches of no headphone jack. It is a balancing act. As I stated in my OP, there are definitely going to be a ton of headaches produced by getting rid of the headphone jack. One of those headaches you have mentioned above.

It made less sense to ditch optical drives entirely when Blu-Ray is still around and moving a music collection will still require a drive, etc. (i.e. I had to buy an external USB3 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD drive for my Mac Mini.

As I stated above... THE CLOUD. Ok, so you do not like the cloud. What is wrong with a Lightning/USB3 External HardDrive to store/move your music? I would think storing music on a Blueray disk as backwards. Can I play a BD in a CD player? no. Can I use it in my car? no. Can I play it in something other than a blueray player? no. For all those reasons, I see no advantages storing music on a BD over an external HDD.

It's vital to maintaining my whole house media system (I have to get those movies onto the computer from BD somehow unless you'd rather have Apple-System locked iTunes files that are far inferior to Blu-Ray). Getting rid of a standard that has nothing wrong with it and never will makes NO SENSE except to Apple as they hope to resell you Beats headphones that only work with Apple products or requires an expensive adapter to use with anything else.

Ok. You love physical disks and you love the 3.5mm headphone jack. Now I get it. You dont like change. Yes, BD will technically get your job done, but so will CDs. Hell, you could technically even store them on Vinyl if you have the technology to do it!

And yes, you can technically buy Blueray disks, but you do not have to. I personally see no benefit to buying a Blueray disk for a couple of very important reasons:

1. They take up physical space in my house
2. They have to be manually indexed and searched
3. They are not easy to bring with you from one place to another. Especially in large quantities.
4. They are limited in the number of devices they can be played on.
5. Their quality is not superior (except maybe 4K bluerays, but only until everyone switches to streaming 4k)

 

[MaloCS]

Wow that made no sense. Also, there is radiation everywhere. 2.4ghz radiation is everywhere, even.

Do the research. Until then, feel free to belittle me as much as you want.

Bluetooth radiation kills sperm: FACT
Call me crazy but I choose not to put something directly next to my brain that has been proven to reduce sperm motility.

Like I said earlier, I listen to headphones at least eight hours a day, 5 days a week. That's 40 hours a week of low power Bluetooth radiation potentially beamed directly into my brain. This concerns me.

However, if these devices are just receiving then they should be relatively safe. It's the broadcasting that's relevant. Even if the headphones are antennas only, where the hell is your phone that's broadcasting the signal? More than likely it's in a hip picket, just a few inches away from the very sperm it's been proven to kill.

 

[pkginstall]

They always say, don't they, that people mock what they don't understand or what they fear... so that speaks volumes. Never mind, Samsung wouldn't be a threat to Apple as long as they produce goon show products like those which they churn out, in gaudy chromed plastic trim. No taste, no design sense, no threat... and absolutely no idea at all what makes Apple, Apple - or what makes people drawn to Apple's products and services, and so they'll stoop to cheap, lazy stunts, as they always do.

 

[TallManNY]

Actually, isn't Apple already doing this with desktop Macs? Customers can chose whether they want a wired, or wireless keyboard and mouse? Granted that's on a smaller scale than the volume iPhones sell, but really it's just another SKU that product analytics predict for packaging based on customer propensity.

It's definitely doable. Just like the Watch and the myriad of watch band options they currently ship for each model ...

Yes, that is right, they do do that. I think choice is best for customer. And I bet if they give customers a choice, the result is that Apple gets a good chance at selling another set of phones!
But in the end of the day having the iPhone be self contained in one box is best. And if they make two skus they will end up on the situation of having guessed demand wrong on how the choice gets split. So some folks won't be able to find the choice they want during the launch month. But it is doable, if they also ship a bunch of the headphones separately so you can buy the one you want if the SKU with included headphone you want isn't available. Everyone can use another headphone especially if the experience is different between the lightning and the bluetooth headphones.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

So, your saying there is something wrong with CDs?

You need to learn to read more carefully, IMO. I said CD-ROM, not music CDs. In other words, CD-Roms are obsolete in the sense that they don't store enough information to be very useful these days. That is why the floppy disk died as well (plus lack of speed). Yes, Apple killed ALL optical discs shipped with Macs in the process. That makes it difficult to get your music CD collection onto your Mac (or DVDs, let alone Blu-Rays) which is why I said I had to buy an external BD/DVD/CD burner for my 2012 Mac Mini Server (implying that in order to transfer my music and movie collection over, I needed a USB3 drive to do it and yes, that includes any new music CDs I might buy as well.

I see nothing wrong with CDs except the fact that they do not store as much as blueray disks. Apple could of easily upgraded the drive to a Blueray one, but why? Why would anyone want to store anything on Blueray?

I have NO desire to store ANYTHING on Blu-Ray. Other people's needs may vary, but my ONLY use for a BD drive (as I already said if you had actually read my post) is to transfer BD movie purchases over (and of course any music CD or possibly the odd DVD, although I don't buy DVDs anymore normally as they are standard definition and I have moved on to high definition).

Why would I want to buy a Blu-Ray? AGAIN, I already spelled this out my previous post which you clearly chose to NOT read very carefully. iTune movies are LOWER QUALITY (higher compression) and most of the time they cost MORE MONEY. I've picked up most of my favorite older movies for $4-8 a movie on BD in superior quality. Once transferred to my Mac, they are not locked into the Apple eco-system either (huge bonus if I don't want to be tied to AppleTV forever, although there are ways to remove Fairplay as well out there). In short, WTF would I want to buy an inferior iTunes movie that is locked into Apple's iTunes system when I can get a BD that I can rip at full BD quality and which will play on Amazon's FireTV or any other number of players should I choose to move back to Windows or even run a Linux server?

What's funny is that you think I watch BDs directly. I don't even OWN a regular BD player, just the USB3 BD player/burner for my Mac Mini. But like I said, you apparently didn't read my post very carefully at all before spewing off some giant post of nonsense.

You say you have a huge collection of movies? Store them in the cloud!

Some people have data caps and my upload bandwidth is 5Mbps. It would be an utter waste of time to buy/rent space in "The Cloud" when a 2.5" 3TB hard drive will do the job faster and more secure. I can take that drive with me to "my friend's house" if need be or I can bring the original BD if that's what his system has (if they aren't set up to play movies on their main system from "The Cloud", it wouldn't be very helpful. You make too many assumptions about what everyone else around me might have/use. Having the BD *AND* a digital rip gives me far more flexibility than say just buying an iTunes movie (which short of removing the encryption won't work on non-Apple products).

I know a ton of people who do just that.

A ton of people? What's that 10 people weighing an average of 200 pounds each? LOL.

They have hundreds of movies and they just use various services that do exactly that... So, if you do not want to store them in the cloud, then how will you watch them at your friends house? I guess you can just take over your binder of 400 BD disks and flip through the pages like I used to do 10 years ago. Oh remember that movie you bought 5 years ago that your friend really wants to see? well, you cant find it in your stack of 400 disks. Where did it go? Oh, you might of left it in your PS3 by accident. Whoops.

I find your rant hilarious in that all my movies are on a 2.5" hard drive and I don't own an Playstation (1, 2 or 3) for that matter and again, I don't even have a single Blu-Ray player in my house, just the BD-Rom drive. Oh and they are backed up including an off-site backup so there's no danger in losing them or tens of thousands of photos I've taken and/or scanned from photo albums, etc. LP record transfers, VHS tape transfers, etc. ALL my media is stored digitally now (and yes it was a lot of work scanning old film negatives and cleaning them up via Photoshop, etc. and transferring old VHS home videos, Hi8 home videos, etc. from a time long ago when digital was something imaginary for video. I even have a few 8-Track transfers from albums that had differences (e.g. Pink Floyd's Animals 8-Track where Pigs on the Wing is one song combined from the two on the LP/CD with a bridge solo guitar part that exists nowhere else). I have plenty of records that are STILL not available on CD or digital. They've been transferred of a high-end deck/cartridge and cleaned up with iZotope RX. You'd be hard pressed to tell they are from records at all in many cases.

I guess you cannot watch it.

You'd "guess" wrong.

That made me laugh. I do not think you should ever use the term "NEVER" when you talk about technology. That is such a strong word in a field that changes as fast as the hair on my face.

Full bandwidth output capability in regards to human hearing means it can never technically be "obsolete" for a stereo headphone jack. We've got a long way to go for video in terms of the limits of human vision (where you couldn't tell the screen from a window), but human auditory capability is far more limited. Try a binaural recording with headphones. It's "holographic" sound that you won't be able to tell from real life (some scary sounding crap with a sound effects recording; I've got one where bees land in your ear. That's fun to play for someone and watch their reaction.

There is a difference between "HAS TO GO AWAY" and "DEFINITELY". 'Has to go away' implies I want it to go away or that keeping it around will hold us back somehow. What I am talking about is regardless of my personal feeling and beliefs on the issue, the market is gravitating towards something. The argument is

By market, do you mean Apple? I don't really see any evidence of the mainstream other platforms gravitating away from headphone jacks and hence the topic of this thread where Samsung MOCKS APPLE for doing so (because it's an IDIOTIC MOVE). If Bluetooth EVER gets to even full red-book CD bandwidth without compression and EVERYONE ON EARTH only uses those headphones, you'd have an argument to ditch wired jacks altogether. Otherwise, if you need a jack, it might as well be a compatible one. At the very least, they should include a free adapter, but those do tend to get lost rather easily.

How thin does your laptop need to be? How thin does your TV need to be? How thin does your smartwatch need to be? Everybody is always trying to make the thinnest <insert electronic device here>. Also, to your point... It is false to assume that removing a component on a phone makes it thinner.

I'm not assuming their device is GOING TO BE thinner; I'm trying to figure out WTF they can't manage to add the extra stereo speaker without ditching the audio jack when everyone else on Earth already has managed it. What other possible reason (than thinner) could they have? Oh yeah, that's right. I already stated it. It's to trap you in their eco-system better and/or increase revenues. Those aren't good reasons unless you're Apple.

As you point out, thinner is not always better. So you might say, what is the point in removing something if it is not going to be thinner? Maybe an hour of extra battery life would entice you instead? Or more storage? Or more memory? That void can be filled with whatever Apple wants. Or not filled at all (thinner phone).

Apple already has piss poor storage and battery life compared to nearly everyone else out there. I've got a cheap-arse $48 Microsoft Lumia phone for god's sake and with a micro-SD card added, I have 208GB of storage on it! That's higher than anything Apple offers. It's got two cameras including an 8MP HD camera and full 1080p video. It plays Bluetooth audio in my car if I want (and for the phone) and has the power of a $300 Android phone. Other than a lack of certain Apps I don't use, it's the freaking bargain of the century. Oh and the battery is fully removable (quite easily at that) as well and lasts like 3x that of a typical iPhone regardless. Yeah Microsoft blew it with their phones (for market share), but then that's been true of the Mac for long periods of time as well. I use what works best for me ($17 a month for a smart phone that cost less than $150 total means I can buy another Macbook Pro every other year instead of giving it a cell phone carrier).

As I pointed out above, a smartphone user has many needs: Battery life, sound quality, storage space, screen quality, responsiveness, etc. It is not a matter of "needing" to get rid of the headphone jack, it is a matter of juggling all the needs of the customer and seeing which is more important. Apple might of

The only thing important to Apple is MORE $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. They are already behind most of the phones out there in almost every category (storage, memory, camera quality) and yet those phones already have stereo sound in both orientations and still manage to keep a headphone jack. Just how do they do it? I guess you're saying Apple is too incompetent too keep their headphone jack AND fit another speaker in it (their speakers suck BTW and Beats headphones are noisy inaccurate bloated bass makers; they SHOULD have bought Grado instead, but it seems street appeal was more important to Apple than having the best possible product kind of like how having a pretty ultra-thin case for an iMac is more important than having a good graphics card despite the fact that a desktop doesn't need to be anywhere near that thin period. I don't like a lot of Apple's choices since Steve died. They are choosing fashion over function, but then Mr. Cook is a fashionable kind of guy.

decided that the majority of their user base would prefer an hour more battery life in exchange for the headaches of no headphone jack. It is a balancing act. As I stated in my OP, there are definitely going to be a ton of headaches produced by getting rid of the headphone jack. One of those headaches you have mentioned above.

All horse manure. They didn't trade the headphone jack for a larger battery. They put a speaker there instead. If they wanted more battery time, they wouldn't have kept making the phone needlessly thinner (which got them a lot of criticism for short battery life leading them to release that obscenely stupid looking external battery "hump" case. Yeah, great design choices Jony Ive! Keep it up buddy.

As I stated above... THE CLOUD. Ok, so you do not like the cloud. What is wrong with a Lightning/USB3 External HardDrive to store/move your music?

Nothing, as numerous posts have indicated in numerous threads have indicated including this one that I already do have them on a hard drive....

I would think storing music on a Blueray disk as backwards. Can I play a BD in a CD player? no. Can I use it in my car? no. Can I play it in something other than a blueray player? no. For all those reasons, I see no advantages storing music on a BD over an external HDD.

As I already pointed out, I don't "store"; I BUY and I get higher quality and a hard backup that can run on "friends" systems that "only" have BD players. I use Kodi on Amazon FireTV these days. That gives me full DTS-HD/DTS/AC3/etc options and even a 3D playback option. Kodi's picture viewer can zoom in and rotate photos. AppleTV's built-in players cannot. But you can get a variation of Kodi for the newer ATV now.

Ok. You love physical disks and you love the 3.5mm headphone jack. Now I get it.

No, you don't get it at all. You need to actually carefully read posts. You're wasting my time.

You dont like change. Yes, BD will technically get your job done, but so will CDs. Hell, you could technically even store them on Vinyl if you have the technology to do it!

I don't like change? I've got vinyl. I moved it using 24/96 transfers to Apple Lossless. I used a Firewire box and a professional Panasonic VHS deck to transfer my home movies off VHS and Hi8 and even some movies that aren't available on DVD/BD/Digital to this very day. I'm the freaking definition of change.

And yes, you can technically buy Blueray disks, but you do not have to. I personally see no benefit to buying a Blueray disk for a couple of very important reasons:

1. They take up physical space in my house
2. They have to be manually indexed and searched
3. They are not easy to bring with you from one place to another. Especially in large quantities.
4. They are limited in the number of devices they can be played on.
5. Their quality is not superior (except maybe 4K bluerays, but only until everyone switches to streaming 4k)

Yeah, those thin little discs take up LOADS of space on a shelf in my closet. Mine aren't manually anything. They're transferred to my Mac already. iTunes movies are limited to what devices they can be played on, not BDs (they play just fine on my Mac with a free player if I really want to view them live), let alone the transfers which will play on any digital media player not just iTunes. BD video quality is VASTLY SUPERIOR due to less compression than ANY streaming format out there and nearly every single digital storage format (i.e. iTunes uses FAR more compression). When transferring a BD yourself, you can choose how much compression to use or just dump it to MKV at 100% quality. In other words, other than taking up space in the house, your other points are just plain incorrect.

 

[Michael Goff]

Do the research. Until then, feel free to belittle me as much as you want.

Bluetooth radiation kills sperm: FACT
Call me crazy but I choose not to put something directly next to my brain that has been proven to reduce sperm motility.

Like I said earlier, I listen to headphones at least eight hours a day, 5 days a week. That's 40 hours a week of low power Bluetooth radiation potentially beamed directly into my brain. This concerns me.

However, if these devices are just receiving then they should be relatively safe. It's the broadcasting that's relevant. Even if the headphones are antennas only, where the hell is your phone that's broadcasting the signal? More than likely it's in a hip picket, just a few inches away from the very sperm it's been proven to kill.

Okay? How much sperm do you have in your head?

 

[Soccertess]

Apple knows exactly what they're doing.

- iPhone 7: no 3.5mm jack. Other smartphone manufacturers follow suit by releasing smartphones with no 3.5mm jack in 2017.

- iPhone 8 (10 year anniversary edition): Apple puts back 3.5mm jack. Phil Schiller tells crowd at Sept 2017 launch

hahahahahahahahaha.. love it!

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

I take it you are aware that ears are analogue? Or, maybe you're a cyborg, and you have a DAC in your skull that can decode lightning port audio...

Isn't it amazing how much sheer ignorance is out there on topics and yet people talk about topics like they are authorities on the subject?

Of course if someone could figure out the neuron encoding system in the ear that turns analog audio waves into nerve impulses that the brain can then understand, you might be able to replace or supplement your cochlea with a digital to nerve signal chip and put a jack on your skull (or even have a Bluetooth style receiver), allowing you to bypass headphones altogether, but how you would power such a system (cyber biotech implants that can use the body's own circular system to power it probably won't exist for some time) and who would WANT to implant such a system in their skull (that could probably be overloaded to harm or kill them somehow) is another matter.... I think I'll stick with headphones.

 

[pkginstall]

Isn't it amazing how much sheer ignorance is out there on topics and yet people talk about topics like they are authorities on the subject?

Of course if someone could figure out the neuron encoding system in the ear that turns analog audio waves into nerve impulses that the brain can then understand, you might be able to replace or supplement your cochlea with a digital to nerve signal chip and put a jack on your skull (or even have a Bluetooth style receiver), allowing you to bypass headphones altogether, but how you would power such a system (cyber biotech implants that can use the body's own circular system to power it probably won't exist for some time) and who would WANT to implant such a system in their skull (that could probably be overloaded to harm or kill them somehow) is another matter.... I think I'll stick with headphones.

If that was an attempt to be funny through sarcasm, pardon me, but it was a little too elaborate and obscure. I'm not entirely sure if you were making a joke of my comment or of the one I replied to. Pardon my being somewhat dense on this matter.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

If that was an attempt to be funny through sarcasm, pardon me, but it was a little too elaborate and obscure. I'm not entirely sure if you were making a joke of my comment or of the one I replied to. Pardon my being somewhat dense on this matter.

The first part referred to the post you were responding to (i.e. you can't keep it digital if you want to hear it). The second part was pointing out that the brain doesn't actually hear analog signals either (the cochlea turns them into nerve impulses that the brain understands) so if someone really Really wanted to bypass the analogue output stage, it could possibly be done but they would need a biotech device to directly transcode the digital audio signals into nerve impulses and connect that device to the nervous system/brain. I don't know that I'd call that nerve code "digital" in the sense we code in binary digital, but it's certainly not carrying an analogue wave either. But then like I said, I don't think most people would really want an implant just to avoid headphones (even if we could do it which we currently cannot).

 

[Ghost31]

Ya know...I don't really care if they remove the headphone jack. I use Bluetooth headphones, but I don't feel strongly against removing the jack. So I'm kinda in the middle.

But I'll admit, the arguments for keeping it sounds like the exact arguments for keeping other out dated technologies in the past. "Because there's stuff now that uses it" isn't a good reason. Technology and culture change over time. 5 years from now people will have Bluetooth/wireless everything anyway. So yeah...there would be growing pains with the switch, but we'll all be ok. 10 years from now we would look back on now and laugh at how short sighted we were.

 

[Mac 128]

Ya know...I don't really care if they remove the headphone jack. I use Bluetooth headphones, but I don't feel strongly against removing the jack. So I'm kinda in the middle.

But I'll admit, the arguments for keeping it sounds like the exact arguments for keeping other out dated technologies in the past. "Because there's stuff now that uses it" isn't a good reason. Technology and culture change over time. 5 years from now people will have Bluetooth/wireless everything anyway. So yeah...there would be growing pains with the switch, but we'll all be ok. 10 years from now we would look back on now and laugh at how short sighted we were.

True. I think the other significant reason that goes along with that is "there is no reason to do it, or improvement to be had with Lightning". Well of course there is. People just aren't interested in the benefits such a change offers, especially if it costs money or brings inconveniences.

 

[Burger Thing]

True. I think the other significant reason that goes along with that is "there is no reason to do it, or improvement to be had with Lightning". Well of course there is. People just aren't interested in the benefits such a change offers, especially if it costs money or brings inconveniences.

The point is: all of the "benefits" you mentioned, are not really "benefits" for most of the people raising their concerns here. I think it's downright condescending for you to assume that people like myself are simply ignoring possible advantages and somehow like to be "stuck in the past" (at least that is very often implied). As someone with a solid background in technology (Masters in Computers and Physics), I found most your arguments to this topic very questionable, if not cringeworthy. Sorry, apart from making space for new groundbreaking technology in the phone (possibly the only half-worthy argument of you) I don't see benefits.

And even then other manufacturers seem to build a device with a boatload of features in them. For Christ sake, they can even squeeze a stylus in. So even that argument of yours is in reality on very thin ice.

Go and read Magnums post above. Maybe that educates you a bit.

 

[Keirasplace]

Do the research. Until then, feel free to belittle me as much as you want.

Bluetooth radiation kills sperm: FACT
Call me crazy but I choose not to put something directly next to my brain that has been proven to reduce sperm motility.

Like I said earlier, I listen to headphones at least eight hours a day, 5 days a week. That's 40 hours a week of low power Bluetooth radiation potentially beamed directly into my brain. This concerns me.

However, if these devices are just receiving then they should be relatively safe. It's the broadcasting that's relevant. Even if the headphones are antennas only, where the hell is your phone that's broadcasting the signal? More than likely it's in a hip picket, just a few inches away from the very sperm it's been proven to kill.

Right... Go away.

 

[MaloCS]

Right... Go away.

LOL The ostrich syndrome. How does the sand taste?

Watch the video. I think WE all should be concerned that this tech is so freely used when the health risks are numerous and PROVEN.

 

[MaloCS]

I truly hope the removal of the 3.5mm port is just a well played rumor.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

Ya know...I don't really care if they remove the headphone jack. I use Bluetooth headphones, but I don't feel strongly against removing the jack. So I'm kinda in the middle.

But I'll admit, the arguments for keeping it sounds like the exact arguments for keeping other out dated technologies in the past. "Because there's stuff now that uses it" isn't a good reason. Technology and culture change over time. 5 years from now people will have Bluetooth/wireless everything anyway. So yeah...there would be growing pains with the switch, but we'll all be ok. 10 years from now we would look back on now and laugh at how short sighted we were.

True. I think the other significant reason that goes along with that is "there is no reason to do it, or improvement to be had with Lightning". Well of course there is. People just aren't interested in the benefits such a change offers, especially if it costs money or brings inconveniences.

These posts make me feel like some of you didn't read a darn thing. The technology isn't "outdated" (zero improvement removing it) and the argument is NOT "because it's there now" but rather what they're proposing to use instead locks you into the eco-system and/or requires batteries (Bluetooth which also has low bandwidth and therefore is INFERIOR to an analog headphone jack). Go re-read my posts. The ONLY reason they are doing it is $$$. PERIOD. Anything else people have convinced themselves of is due to a lack of knowledge about the technology they're using. Some of us are electronic or electrical engineers (I am with two degrees) and reading what is basically NONSENSE from people that have no clue about the things they use is just getting old. But then one only has to look at the current ongoing election to see that ignorance rules everything in the USA.