Apple Said to Be Removing Headphone Jack From Upcoming 2018 iPad Pro Models

[Goner259er]

I miss Steve. He was smart enough to see that people did not like the idea of them removing the 3.5mm jack from the phones. Tim appears to have the attitude of, "Hey if everyone hated it then we should do that on our products as well" None of this would be going on if Steve was still running Apple.

Steve is dead and gone..get over it. Want a head phone jack? Go to amazon or Samsung

 

[Dostoy]

I miss Steve. He was smart enough to see that people did not like the idea of them removing the 3.5mm jack from the phones.

If true, I would guess that this is not Tim Cook's decision, but Jony Ives, based only on visual design ideals. Even though I wish the current iPhones had a headphone port, I can see why the port was omitted from the iPhone: size and water-resistance. But the iPad? That's just silly. There's lots of room for a 3.5mm headphone port on the iPad, even the iPad Mini. Same with the 12-inch MacBook. I get why it only has a USB-C port. But the MacBook Pros? What's with the whole "USB-C only" thing? That's why I still have a 2015 MacBook Pro, for the extra ports and the SD card slot. As many people observed in 2016, when the current body style MacBook Pro was released, the product had actually lost functionality compared to the previous model. Sure, visual design is important, but not at the expensive of function. We are now a full two years on from that mid-2016 release, and MacBook Pro owners still have make sure they keep their adaptor dongles handy.

Apple should remember that the reason people have liked their products so far is: "It just works".
I have held off getting one of the new MacBook Pros because I could imagine the disaster of turning up at an important meeting with my MacBook Pro, but without a dongle, and having to say: "Sorry folks. It doesn't work."

 

[geromi912]

Are they high? Music production is impossible with wireless headphones quality and latency. The iPad has enough space and no water resistance so what’s their ****** excuse?

 

[verpeiler]

I would have been dissapointed if they didn’t remove the headphone jack. It’s time to move on and go wireless.

I don't get why people say something (stupid) like this, makes no sense at all. You can go wireless for years, that's completely unrelated to having a headphone jack...

 

[theluggage]

Same here, I can't recall the last time I needed to use the iPad in landscape mode.

I can't recall the last time I needed to use my iPad in portrait mode.
I also quite like bezels that make the device easy to handle without accidentally activating something on the screen.
I quite like touch ID, too.

If this rumor were true, it would be another triumph of form over function.

But then, "worse" is the new "better".

 

[GadgetBen]

Here we go again with the AUX jack rage (older generation).

Move with the times. Wireless is the Future. Get a Bluetooth device!

 

[dannys1]

If that rumour is true, I'm holding on to all of my pre-2017 Apple equipment (with the exception of the company-provided MacBook "Pro") and if Apple continues down this road I'm offloading them in a couple of years for whatever the competition is offering. This just doesn't work for me.

My loyalty to Apple is gone, habit and ecosystem lock-in are soon to follow. I've found the value of an Apple product becomes really evident when you own all the other Apple products and have them work as well as can be expected together. Well, they don't, not anymore, not without a slew of dongles. Whenever I plug in my 2017 iPad or iPhone to my 2017 MBP with a USBC to Lightning connector it asks me to "disconnect USB accessories that drain too much power". Seriously now.

Just as the halo effect has nabbed new customers in the past, then the reverse is going to be true as well. People won't just leave one device -they will start questioning their entire ecosystem, one device at a time. Pro users already do that due to Apple's hideous treatment to the Mac. And probably pretty quickly they'll end up with few to no Apple devices at all.

Thanks for nothing, Tim.

Bye then!

 

[somethingelsefl]

I miss Steve. He was smart enough to see that people did not like the idea of them removing the 3.5mm jack from the phones. Tim appears to have the attitude of, "Hey if everyone hated it then we should do that on our products as well" None of this would be going on if Steve was still running Apple.

Maybe you don't remember that the original iPhone had a severely messed up headphone jack? Steve never liked the headphone port and did everything he could at the time to remove or improve it.

https://www.recode.net/2016/9/10/12871500/iphone-2007-headphone-jack

 

[dannys1]

Completely different situation. The floppy disk was obsolete when Steve removed it. The 3.5mm headphone jack is currently the most mainstream audio input. Apples and oranges.

The optical drive removal was a similar situation as streaming was becoming more popular and broadband speeds had become fast enough to replace it without issue.

Currently though, no wireless headphones can replace the quality of wired ones. That is why people are pissed.

I'd give you half a million quid if you could reliably spot the difference between wired and headphones using AAC or APTx without just guessing.

"Streaming was becoming more popular"

Well guess what, wireless headphones are becoming more popular and regardless if you actually care about audio quality you weren't using the cheap DAC built into iOS devices, now you can plug in a Dragonfly or a Soundkey and if you've got £150+ headphones actually appreciate the difference.

 

[oldmacs]

During his short lifespan, Steve seen a lot of that, made a lot of that, if Steve were alive, he would remove the headphone jack the moment A2DP came out (much earlier).

Steve would have removed the headphone port but gone with USB-C and standardised like with USB replacing SCSI and Firewire - an OPEN standard rather than the crap current situation Apple is in.
[doublepost=1532780320][/doublepost]

I don't get why people say something (stupid) like this, makes no sense at all. You can go wireless for years, that's completely unrelated to having a headphone jack...

People like to defend anything Apple does regardless of how sensible it is.

If Apple turned around and said they were bringing the 3.5mm jack back you'd have people clapping just as loudly.

 

[cardfan]

Lol at those wanting Face ID in an iPad. You should be demanding oled if sacrificing Touch ID, headphone jack, etc. No doubt it’ll be faster but without oled there’s no great reason to pass on the current pro. You’ve been conditioned to think oled is too expensive for Apple. But IMO it’s absurd to pay this pro price for a limited iPad without oled. You may as well get a 299 ipad.

 

[ValO]

This confirms the the new “ 10.5 inch” ipad , will actually be a 11 inch ipad, because it will be wider, and if you look at the old vs new dimensions , the new 12.9 inch relatively loses much more length than the new “10.5” does.

Actually using the newer 12.9 inch as a portable device could be much more doable vs the old 12.9 inch.

I don’ t buy all that faceid only working in portrait mode and portrait keyboard stuff. I think it will work in landscape and the new smart keyboard will be a landscape keyboard.
Perhaps it means that the new keyboards will also work in portrait mode, next to the landscape option, and i am still hoping for portrait split screen option.
Don’ t care about the headphone jack.
So i am looking forward to these new ipads.

 

[oldmacs]

Adapters still work.

Because I love having to have another thing to keep track of all the time!!!

 

[Shanghaichica]

I believe there will be slight size changes. We’re talking a couple of millimeters here so that’s barely a change at all.

I believe they would remove the haeadohone jack and there’s no point whining about it. The major popularity of AirPods is proof to Apple that people are ok with going wireless.

What I don’t believe is the moving of the Smart Connector, or at least the notion that you would have to use the keyboard in portrait mode. There is absolutely no way that part of the rumor is true. If they are moving the connector to that spot, I’m sure there’s some kind of new Apple Smart Keyboard that can connect to it in that spot but still operate in landscape mode.

i've read that the 10.5 inch is going to have reduced bezels and will have an 11 inch screen in the body of the current 10.5 inch iPad. The 12.9 is apparently keeping the same sized screen but the bezels will reduce so it becomes smaller in overall size.

The only part of this rumour I believe is the headphone jack going. Once they did it on the iPhone it was only a matter of time before they would do it on other devices.

I doubt they would bring face ID to the iPad if it couldn't be used in both orientations.

The smart keyboard also has to work in landscape otherwise it's pointless so I don't believe that rumour either.

Personally I'm thinking of just keeping my current iPad pro 10.5 and getting another MacBook instead as I think that's gonna be a better device for me as my current MBA whilst it still works just as well as the day I bought it is getting old now. Nothing to do with the headphone jack as I have Airpods.

 

[ValO]

Because I love having to have another thing to keep track of all the time!!!

With that argument things will never change, and everything remains the same. The market has to adjust. Sometimes that is painfull, but in the long term, things will only get simpler.
Hardware and pheriphals will adapt, market is already adapting, customers are adapting, etc. In a year or 2, there will be no more headphone jack, there will be more wireless options and for the high end , headphones with wires will have better dedicated dacs than the cheap ones that were integrated in former ipads and iphones.

 

[ggibson913]

Makes me glad that I bought my 10.5 last year. Not because of the headphone jack though. I know I am in the minority, but I actually like the current form factor. For me it’s perfect size for holding.

 

[where is it]

How can you possibly say that? At the time Steve was alive, removing the audio jack would have been a terrible idea, just like keeping a 3.5” display in the growing age of media consumption would also have been an awful idea and would have killed the iPhone. Would Steve have gone to bigger displays? Who knows.

But just to refresh your memory, Steve didn’t die and then they removed the audio jack immediately. “Mwahaha!”, cackled Tim. “Now that Steve is finally gone, I can now remove the audio jack — the one thing he would never agree on doing!”

It did take SIX damn phones/years later before they did it. That’s a long time.

You can’t with any certainly say what Steve would or wouldn’t have done because technology is an evolution. What is right one day is wrong the next.

Personally I don’t see how it’s such a leap to suggest Steve would have removed the headphone jack for thinness & waterproofing purposes. Honestly it seems like the kinda decision he’d be indifferent about once wireless headphone technology had matured.

The Samsung Galaxy S9 has an earphone jack and is rated a higher spec than the iPhone X waterproof spec. So having a jack or not has no impact on waterproofing...

 

[Shanghaichica]

Maybe you don't remember that the original iPhone had a severely messed up headphone jack? Steve never liked the headphone port and did everything he could at the time to remove or improve it.

https://www.recode.net/2016/9/10/12871500/iphone-2007-headphone-jack

It's really difficult to say what Jobs would or wouldn't have done. The market has changed a lot since he was alive and he would have had to adapt to the changing market for Apple to continue to grow and compete. Tim Cook may not be the visionary that Jobs was but I think he's doing an amazing job of moving Apple forward. Under his leadership Apple have become insanely profitable.

 

[littyboy]

I have owned wired headphones before. Just that I have moved on, as the convenience afforded by the Airpods more than makes up for every other drawback combined for me.

You couldn’t pay me enough to plug in a pair of wired headphones back into my iPad or iPhone.

I think mrzz's statement still stands. It's obvious you've never owned quality headphones before for you to say such a comment.

 

[simonmet]

It's all great until your wireless accessory runs out of battery.

That's why you buy a wireless headphone with an optional passive/wired mode. You get the best of both worlds. Ask me for a recommendation; I won't post here in case it's deemed advertising.

 

[Count Blah]

I miss Steve. He was smart enough to see that people did not like the idea of them removing the 3.5mm jack from the phones. Tim appears to have the attitude of ...

"If we remove a needed plug, we MUST release a high margin product to sell to the masses to replace the functionality."

And thus the airpods were born. The Airpods didn't come out when there was a 3.5mm plug. How people cannot see the reason being 10000000% this, is beyond me. Screwing over people to sell more products.

I'm glad I got the 10.5" with the 3.5mm plug. Now I can still use my wired headphones with 4Gigs of glorious RAM on a kick as screen. BTW, I use wireless headphones as well - Both has uses at different times, and I'm glad Apple produced a product that fit every need. My sig becomes more and more true, every release

 

[oldmacs]

With that argument things will never change, and everything remains the same. The market has to adjust. Sometimes that is painfull, but in the long term, things will only get simpler.
Hardware and pheriphals will adapt, market is already adapting, customers are adapting, etc. In a year or 2, there will be no more headphone jack, there will be more wireless options and for the high end , headphones with wires will have better dedicated dacs than the cheap ones that were integrated in former ipads and iphones.

No, Apple's choice to go with a propriety connector for headphones does not simplify anything. Simplification and courage would have been dumping lightning for USB-C and working to make USB-C the default standard for wired headphones.

SCSI and ADB to USB was painful, but with a good outcome, because it opened things up due to it being a standardised connector. This is different.

 

[MoreRumors?]

I miss Steve. He was smart enough to see that people did not like the idea of them removing the 3.5mm jack from the phones. Tim appears to have the attitude of, "Hey if everyone hated it then we should do that on our products as well" None of this would be going on if Steve was still running Apple.

Obviously, anything that is removed is reduction in options and as consumers, we want more and not less.

So Apple removes the headphone and not include the dongle, it is obvious the motivation is to make more money. Every time Apple removes something, it cost us consumers more money. It looks like this "new" iPad is not ready to come out.

 

[oldmacs]

"If we remove a needed plug, we MUST release a high margin product to sell to the masses to replace the functionality."

And this the airpods were born. The Airpods didn't come out when there was a 3.5mm plug. How people cannot see the reason being 10000000% this, is beyond me. Screwing over people to sell more products.

I'm glad I got the 10.5" with the 3.5mm plug. Now I can still use my wired headphones with 4Gigs of glorious RAM on a kick as screen. BTW, I use wireless headphones as well - Both has uses at different times, and I'm glad Apple produced a product that fit every need. My sig becomes more and more true, every release

Yeah looks like we bought the last good iPad Pro.

 

[Shanghaichica]

"If we remove a needed plug, we MUST release a high margin product to sell to the masses to replace the functionality."

And this the airpods were born. The Airpods didn't come out when there was a 3.5mm plug. How people cannot see the reason being 10000000% this, is beyond me. Screwing over people to sell more products.

I'm glad I got the 10.5" with the 3.5mm plug. Now I can still use my wired headphones with 4Gigs of glorious RAM on a kick as screen. BTW, I use wireless headphones as well - Both has uses at different times, and I'm glad Apple produced a product that fit every need. Too bad they are continuing on their less functional path.

I probably would have still bought the AirPods even if they headphone jack was still there because I only ever used the EarPods before they took away the headphone jack. After they took it away I used the lightning EarPods until the AirPods came out.

However as I said before I'm not an audiophile but I really appreciate that the headphone jack is important for other people for many different reasons not limited to the fact that wired headphones have better sound quality than bluetooth headphones.

Apple could have kept the jack and still released the AirPods.