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Google Channels Jony Ive in Ad Promoting Pixel 5a Headphone Jack

This is freaking hilarious ... I don't know what's wrong with some of you. Lighten up. The random "aluminium" at the end was great.

architect1337 said:
Do people still use wired headphones for their phones? If there is a market, then good for them.
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They did and still do with adapters. It wasn't their choice to have it removed, it was Apple's.
 
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Come on, if this didn't at least make you smile, then I don't know....it was pretty funny. "Fancy pronunciation," indeed.
 
mikethemartian said:
Just because it may be a budget phone doesn’t mean it will have worse audio performance than an expensive phone with lots of bells and whistles.
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It’s an odd pairing. Someone who cares about high end audio, obviously spending top dollar for headphones to use on the go, but also wants a cheap phone. I’m now audiophile, but the few I know seem like they prefer the high end of things. We’ll see if it works out for Google, just feels like a weird ad.
 
I cannot believe I scrolled through seven pages of comments on this and not a single person pointed out that Google *began* the idiotic trend to not have headphone jacks with the ADP1/G1, in other words, their FIRST Android device which shipped commercially, required a dongle to use headphones.

So, finally, Google is eating crow! Good that they can laugh at themselves at their own expense. It is long overdue.

I hope Apple realizes what an abysmal idea it was to drop headphone jacks on the iPhone. They have kept 3.5mm headphone jacks on the iPad, the M1 Apple Silicon MacBooks and MacMini and as far as I know, the only product which lost that fundamentally useful bit of kit, was the iPhone with the iPhone model 7.

Albeit, I also met the guy who went to great lengths to add back a headphone jack to an iPhone 7, e.g.

Some headphone jacks, such as in the PineBook Pro, even offer serial console support, which is pretty awesome! Albeit, most headphone jacks on Apple devices have also supported laser TOSLink/digital audio output, which is also, really awesome!

As many others pointed out, Apple´s BlueTooth implementation is not lossless. Albeit, I long since gave up on Apple being sane with regards to music and have opted for DAPs from the likes of Cayin and Astell & Kern which play back ALAC, FLACs, and a helluva lot more lossless audio codecs up to 32bit 384KHz lossless, many with balanced audio jack outputs, and some even have vacuum tubes too. Apple is no where near audiophile levels of gear, but at least the iPad is still serviceable.

It may be an unpopular opinion, but I think Apple was completely off their gourd ditching MagSafe connectors on their laptops too. USB-C is less reliable than Lightning connectors in my experience and do I ever have some bad Lightning connector experiences.
 
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Apple made a lot of false decisions during the last years. Removed ports, „deligthed“ the users with a crippled butterfly keyboards. Refusing to adopt the USB-C port since Lightning is better to lock users in.

Now ports are slowly coming back to Mac. So will the iPhone audio jack?
 
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DNichter said:
Seems like overkill for minimal audio improvement.
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Audio quality improvement aside, the latency with wireless phones/headphones/microphones is driving me nuts. Since covid started I've been sitting in audio/video conferences for hours every week. Sometimes having to dial in people on the phone and connect them with Skype/Zoom/etc. to talk to everyone. Latency adds up. Wireless is a pain.

I'm fully back to a classical studio setup. Dynamic mic with XLR, 10-channel mixer with USB audio interface, compressor/gate, wired headphones, phone and additional PCs.
 
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Anyone else remember sifting through thousands of posts claiming Apple was doomed for removing a 40-year old technology from their $1,000 state-of-the-art phones? And look at us today... All growed up, and somehow unable to imagine why anyone would want to physically connect cable'd headphones to their phone. Apple knew we'd get there. I always get a chuckle from those so resistant to inevitable change/evolution.

And like many are saying here, this ad does feel to have missed the relevance mark by about 5 years. Eek.
 
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GrumpyCoder said:
Audio quality improvement aside, the latency with wireless phones/headphones/microphones is driving me nuts. Since covid started I've been sitting in audio/video conferences for hours every week. Sometimes having to dial in people on the phone and connect them with Skype/Zoom/etc. to talk to everyone. Latency adds up. Wireless is a pain.

I'm fully back to a classical studio setup. Dynamic mic with XLR, 10-channel mixer with USB audio interface, compressor/gate, wired headphones, phone and additional PCs.
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Yeah, no wireless audio systems come close to wired audio. Even SKAA® Pro, which is lower latency than Bluetooth, is estimated to be around 18ms to 40ms. To put that in context, SpaceX StarLink satellites which are orbiting the Earth 440km (273 miles) away are 20-30ms latency.

Wired audio systems will typically have nanosecond level latency. (For those who need a reminder on nanoseconds, here is Grace Hopper lecturing about such things:
) Some higher sample rate audio gear these days is in the femtoseconds range of latency.

Bluetooth is not as bad as it gets, usually around 120ms latency, Apple´s AirPlay over WiFi is in the 2000-3000ms latency range, yikes!

Some additional break downs on various implementations can be found here:
www.soundguys.com

Android's Bluetooth latency needs a serious overhaul

Bluetooth latency for audio has been a long-running problem, but the Android ecosystem is largely to blame. We crunch the numbers.
www.soundguys.com

Or here: https://korussound.wordpress.com/2013/08/02/korus-vs-bluetooth-speakers-no-contest/

Personally I more or less exclusively use wired audio, with some rare exceptions being some Bluetooth solar powered speakers which are more for efficient outdoor portable fun than deejayin´ or audio work. I fudged around with AirPlay after support was added to my older AirPort Express systems, but waiting seconds to hear what was being played back was usually useless for what I had in mind.
 
GrumpyCoder said:
Audio quality improvement aside, the latency with wireless phones/headphones/microphones is driving me nuts. Since covid started I've been sitting in audio/video conferences for hours every week. Sometimes having to dial in people on the phone and connect them with Skype/Zoom/etc. to talk to everyone. Latency adds up. Wireless is a pain.

I'm fully back to a classical studio setup. Dynamic mic with XLR, 10-channel mixer with USB audio interface, compressor/gate, wired headphones, phone and additional PCs.
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As long as it works for you, all that matters. I use AirPods all day with my iPad for meetings and I don’t run into any issues, and I’m definitely someone who would notice issues like that. It’d be a pain.
 
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The point is that you can't use what isn't there. It doesn't hurt me to have it on my Pixel 5a 5g. I use my Airpods with it anyway, but I don't have to. I can use my gaming headset too--which is wired.
 
This ad was really funny! There is Apple... and there is Samsung... but there is also Google... the reputable alternative to Apple.
 
EightBitJoe said:
Because, Juli, normal people don’t keep track of that stuff nor care. Just us nerds.
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By the same token, few “normal people” will be familiar with Ive’s style. It’s not like he appeared in a lot of ads. He was in long-form promo videos at press events.

So, I dunno, who’s the audience for this? It can’t be that big.
 
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