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I saw the loss of the headphone jack from the iPhone 7 as...


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Generally no, because I've switched to wireless headphones and keep a 3.5mm to lightning adapter in the car.
 
As someone who always used the bundled earphones anyway it doesn't affect me at all. Those with expensive 3.5mm's are justified in being frustrated but as you can just buy a dongle I think it all got blown a little out of proportion.
 
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I can honestly say, after over 8 months of owning my 7Plus. I have never once been in a position that I needed to use the lightning port for both headphones and charging at the same time. I already knew that in the last 10+ years of iPods/iPhones that I never needed to charge and use headphones at the same time, but this just verified that I really never needed it.

Yes, everyone's usage is different, but I truly believe that the backlash a year ago when rumors started coming up about no headphone jack was completely overblown.

Even since I owned a smartphone/iphone from back in 2007 I never had the need to charge and listen to headphones at the same time either.
I have no issues so far without a dedicated headphone jack on my 7 Plus.
Im planning on getting the Air Pods hopefully soon if I can find them in stock.
 
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That seems somewhat separate though given that even with the removal of the headphone jack there's still the lightning port that supports wired headphones, so that change hasn't really addressed that part of it. Not to mention that even with the headphone jack wireless headphones have been around for some time and could be used just fine.
Doesn't matter. I never liked wired headphones anyways, and never used them. Whether it's headphone jack or lightning port, never used them and I simply just tossed them out. IT's a thing of past for me. Different strokes for different folks.
 
What can we really judge by a poll to a generally biased group? Might as well do a Windows or MacOS poll too. When MacOS wins, what does that really tell us? Go out into the real world and Windows is still used in about 90% of all computers. A poll asked of this group would almost certainly imply Mac OS is the dominant OS. iOS or Android? We know who would win overwhelmingly here. But Android is increasingly winning out in the rest of the world (unless we bend parameters to "which single phone model" or "which is most profitable" so that our favorite corporation can win(?))

I see all these posts about embracing Bluetooth which is great until you need to connect with anything outside of a computing bubble. For example, I fly a lot and like to watch live television in the seat-back options. How can I watch them on the Airplane using my Bluetooth buds? Does any major Airline offer a Bluetooth connection option?

So how about Lightning (the default because they came with the phone)? Oh yeah, Lightning can't plug directly into anything else either- even into Apple's own (new) Macs.

There is no best option courtesy of this choice to fragment a thoroughly ubiquitous standard that "just works" with pretty much everything. You can't really lean on Bluetooth if you ever need to connect with anything beyond computer-based tech. Lightning is an island- and a proprietary one at that- that has practically zero chance of ever propagating much beyond iDevices. Do we even think it will ever be a jack added to Macs? I doubt Lightning will last even 2-3 more generations of iPhones. Doubt me? Tip up your iPhone and look at the thickness of the jack vs. the "thinness" of the phone edge above & below it. Now think about "thinner" going forward. How many generations of iPhone until Lightning is too thick?

We had it so good before. Those who wanted to embrace either "the future" option were not impeded in any way from going Bluetooth or Lightning. Those who liked almost total ubiquity could go their way too. What did this change actually get us consumers? Nothing. It just complicated our headphone usage no matter which option we try to embrace, added to the accessory load in the bag to cover common bases and/or sucked more money out of our pockets. The "the future" options only really work well if one can pretty much consume all the audio they want from Apple tech or maybe computing tech. Take a step or so out beyond Apple or computing tech and both fail you quickly. But 3.5mm is likely in everything that plays audio. Now where's that dongle?
 
I was very happy to hear the headphone jack going away when the leaks came out
and then once I picked up the phone I was a little irritated the BeatsX were so delayed because I couldn't charge and listen to music

But now that I have the BeatsX I am a happy man
 
What can we really judge by a poll to a generally biased group?

The idea behind the low key poll was to identify if all the complaints by those 'within' the generally biased group (MacRumours) before the launch were warranted by surveying those people in that said group after the item had launched.

I suggest looking elsewhere if you want something more "scientific". (And when you do find it, pease link a post to it below as I would be keen to see the result)
 
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I was very happy to hear the headphone jack going away when the leaks came out
and then once I picked up the phone I was a little irritated the BeatsX were so delayed because I couldn't charge and listen to music

But now that I have the BeatsX I am a happy man
Why the happiness about the removal?
 
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I'm a forward thinker and I'm ready to move on
Glad Apple is making the push
Wireless support was there even with the headphone jack. Doesn't seem like anything was being held back or affected really by the presence of the headphone jack.
 
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The situation is really ******. My phone has one port, my new macbook another port. Since I'm a  fanboy I could buy EarPods and solve the problem. But guess what? They're impossible to buy (at least where I live).
 
What I thought would be an issue really hasn't turned out to be as bad as I thought. I primarily use my AirPods for day to day listening. Additionally, I have Bose SoundLink Bluetooth headphones when I'm traveling. My car has Bluetooth audio, so I stream Spotify when I'm driving (and can still charge my phone at the same time).

I have not even taken the 3.5mm to lightning dongle out of it's resting place in the box yet.
 
You better be looking at Android as Apple has pretty well made up its mind. They screwed over the MBPro and I do not see them going back.

Everyone else is slowly following suit. Apple don't take these decisions lightly so the best advice right now is get used to the dongle or go wireless.
 
Everyone else is slowly following suit. Apple don't take these decisions lightly so the best advice right now is get used to the dongle or go wireless.

Been wireless for years. Have not used the jack for so long . . . .

But when they took away my legacy ports on the MBPro, that was it, back to Windows hardware and there is some nice hardware out there for sure.
 
I've been using blue tooth headphones for years anyway. So no issues here, however when I want to use my selfie stick I do need to pull out the dongle.
 
I'd say 1 out of 15 times I plug the adapter in and press play, I get no sound, like the DAC didn't turn on. Takes me a second to realize it's not working or that my podcast isn't buffering, and is indeed playing. Then I unplug/plug back in and I missed a few lines in the podcast.

The adapter needs to be as reliable as analog at the least.

Been 3 or 4 times I had to actively stop listening to something to charge my phone for 30 minutes or so. It's not that I was listening for 10 hours straight and should "give my ears a rest" as many proponents of losing the jack suggest. It's just that my phone was almost dead when I went to listen and I didn't realize. Happens to me on days I take a lot of phone calls. Calls just kill my battery, especially on the iphone7 which seems to have the weakest cell antenna of any iPhone I've ever owned (3G, 3GS, 4, 5, 5S, 6, 7). I drop 1 out of 4 calls. I lose service on roads I've travelled for years. I lose service in my local grocery store, Target, and Wal-Mart. Go into a big building and no service. Same on my wife's iphone7. As a food photographer, I spend a lot of time in these stores shopping for ingredients, then a lot of time in headphones as I cook/photograph. Not like I live in the middle of nowhere, I can see Walt Disney World's fireworks from my porch. I'd think it was network congestion if it got better at any time in the night. Same on my wife's 7.

To be honest, looking back, I kind of feel like an idiot having upgraded from the 6 to the 7. Only meaningful change was the extra speaker. But my signal sucks and I have no headphone jack.

Frustrations with the jack are definitely short and infrequent, but they're more often than the no frustrations when there was a jack. The change could've been handled better by Apple. Not enough reason to have done it on this specific form factor, seeing as the phone is the same size as it was. They could've used a visually obvious reason to lose the jack (phone is too thin) or major leaps from the use of the Lightning jack...A bigger adapter with a high quality / high resolution DAC inside that obviously couldn't fit in the phone. Even the better DAC option was available on older iPhones, as the headphone jack was never limiting the use of Lightning or especially Bluetooth... I just expected Apple to spin the loss of the jack with a greater focus on audio quality overall. Instead, they only focused on the ease of use of Bluetooth with the AirPods... a product that works the same on older iPhones. They missed a real opportunity to convince people that the Lightning port was the only way to get high resolution audio... even though that's not true at all (3.5mm can push super high res audio just fine), I would've embraced a push into better sound quality and at least got SOMEthing out of the loss of the jack. I was convinced it would happen and with a rollout of a toggle to switch to lossless in Apple Music.
 
The situation is really ******. My phone has one port, my new macbook another port. Since I'm a  fanboy I could buy EarPods and solve the problem. But guess what? They're impossible to buy (at least where I live).

Once you get a pair of the AirPods, they are absolutely worth it. The most recent software update yesterday, improved the treble and the volume on them as well. They sound really good and the charging capabilities are seamless. It seems as far as finding a pair, if they do come in stock quickly, but then they do sell out relatively fast. I would suggest using iStocknow to check availability for Stock to your nearest location.
 
The real options should have been:

1. I still cannot adapt to lack of headphone jack.
2. I have adapted now and do not miss it.
3. Even though I have adapted, I would love to see next iPhone with headphone jack.

Most the options in the poll don't make any sense pertaining to the question asked.
 
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The real options should have been:

1. I still cannot adapt to lack of headphone jack.
2. I have adapted now and do not miss it.
3. Even though I have adapted, I would love to see next iPhone with headphone jack.

Most the options in the poll don't make any sense pertaining to the question asked.

I will take option number 3 on this.
 
Step 1: admit teh problem:
IMG_0263.jpg


I thought it would be a huge issue. But I've recently purchase Apple BeatsX and PXC550 BT headphones. So, the issue has resolved itself. Port wine solves everything!! Happy weekend!
 
The real options should have been:

1. I still cannot adapt to lack of headphone jack.
2. I have adapted now and do not miss it.
3. Even though I have adapted, I would love to see next iPhone with headphone jack.

Most the options in the poll don't make any sense pertaining to the question asked.

The thing about making a good poll is that the options have to be very carefully worded so as not to convey a bias of the poll maker.

Having all of the options be about whether or not you've adapted make it sound like it's your fault if you're still not happy with the lack of a jack. Especially that first option of, "I still cannot adapt..." Why not just say, "I'm still not pleased..."? The former makes it sound like a failure on the user's part.
 
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My experiences:

Generation Y

I have a preference for audio quality over wireless set up

I use bluetooth headphones in the gym, or when running outside, where audio fidelity is not important

I use aux everywhere else; this includes my car (tried bluetooth for a while, but the difference in quality between aux and bluetooth is noticeable), home stereo, taking a ride with friends in Uber/Lyft and trying to play your music, as someone else mentioned here Karoke a couple times

Those situations are not very common, but I'd prefer to have the option when they come up. If I plan on using my wired over-ear headphones at home, I'm mostly set up with my laptop, however an adapter that can be kept with any other number of wires is fine to me - it's just when you're out and about and the standard is still aux connection, that it's annoying. Not a deal breaker, but almost.
 
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