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iPhone 7's Secondary Speaker Holes May Be Purely Cosmetic
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I will not purchase an iPhone 7. I have no plans to purchase an iPhone, from here on out, until wireless headphones become a whole heck of a lot better. There are too many conveniences that a 3.5mm bring to my daily routine.
That may change in the future, but that is NOT the way things work in my life, at this time.
Here's to hoping the SE gets updated with better internals, yet it keeps the same 3.5mm plug. Then both the smugs, and regular consumers can be happy.
You're expressing strong emotions while describing in past tense, things which have not transpired yet. That's like saying "the upcoming Star Wars movie was horrible". But the next iPhone will likely make its debut in a few weeks. Why not wait and actually see what they changed and hear why they think the changes are good, before passing judgement?
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Aw, gee, you'll miss the bit where they introduce the first visitor from another planet then. Everyone else will be telling their grandkids about that in the decades to come.
It's been all downhill since the silly looking iPhone battery case. Maybe even earlier with the camera bulge.
No, no it isn't.
There are not floppy disks in use in every car on the road, there are not floppy disks in use in every hotel room in the world, there are not floppy disks in use in every seat on every plane in the world, there are not thousands upon thousands of low/mid/high quality floppy disks in use daily, by millions of people. But there ARE 3.5mm plugs in use by millions upon millions of people, in all of those situations, and utilizing a myriad of headphones and devices to access them, on a daily basis.
The ONLY thing in common between the two, is that Apple is discontinuing including them on their devices. Apple got rid of the floppy due it being a dying format, Apple is getting rid of the 3.5mm plug to establish more DRM, and to funnel more $$$ into "licensing". The 3.5mm boot is for $$$ only, not to benefit consumers.
Yet the Smugs out there, are gladly accepting diminished functionality. No reasoning with fanbois.
yes, but I believe it’s a C Class, (not CLK), and the exhaust pictured in post number 13 is an aftermarket item.
Or you could stop at the next convenience store that will have a 1/8" that will work perfectly fine.
I was around. I was also around to see that CD burners started to hit acceptable consumer prices within a year or so after that. The difference is also that Apple inconvenienced a comparatively small user base at the time by getting rid of a technology used between machines used for around 3-5 years. Getting rid of the headphone jack makes it a pain to interface with audio devices produced over the last ~30 or more years that could legitimately still be in use.
I'll remove all reservations if the official Lightning->headphone adapter is <$5 so you can have several around the house and one in the glovebox, but I'm betting it's going to be $19.99.
I agree, mind you is that not what a designer is about?
He should be free to submit as many designs as he like, it would then be someone elses job to say, "nice, but it’s unusable”.
It is not about having one or two speakers. It is about drilling holes suggesting that there are two speakers when there is not. This is the opposite of good design (good design is honest).
I regret that I am only allowed to give you one "like" for this - you nailed it - this keynote will be extremely interesting, not so much because they introduce a flying car or a MBP that can travel through space and time (neither of those are likely), but to see exactly what they do with these rumored changes, and how they explain their reasoning. I can pretty much guarantee you their reasoning is not, "we removed the headphone jack because we're idiots" (even though that's a popular line of thought on this forum). They feel there is some benefit to what they have done. I'm willing to believe the headphone jack is likely going to be removed (the tea leaves all seem to indicate that), but what we don't know is why. And I'm quite eager to hear their explanation.
Folks keep bringing up floppy disks, but the more accurate comparison is USB. When the first iMac came out with only USB ports, there was very little support for USB in the industry, and a huge percentage of industry watchers thought they were completely nuts and complained loudly about Apple's poor judgement - in retrospect, I don't think anyone would complain now that we're using USB instead of serial and parallel ports.
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I have an iPhone 6 128 gb, and I might buy the 6s PLUS 128gb while waiting for the 8. But who knows... maybe Apple would surprise us once again and not redesign the 2017 iPhone.
Smoke? If your car is smoking bad enough to impair visibility, you have bigger problems to worry about.
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I was the one that said it "looked like" not was, a CLK55. Why, because the CLK55 uses that exact same setup.
I was looking at that when I was in my phone.
When I looked at it in my desktop, I could see it was a C class with fake AMG badging.
Regardless, it is the same setup as a real AMG CLK55.
The other picture I posted is a factory exhaust taken from a CLK55 for reference.
Introducing, the top ten possible uses for the left speaker grille, that Jony Ive could have seriously considered:
10. Toothpick saver for 5 people
9. Retractable comb
8. Smell detector, Smell-ID
7. Peephole into the iPhone 7 internals
6. Cat claw iPhone security feature
5. Sub-miniature cooling fan for the A10
4. Hair blower
3. Pokemon Go crawling creeper camera
2. Hydrogen filling port and exhaust
And the number one use for the left speaker grille....tat tat tat
1. N O T H I N G
10. Toothpick saver for 5 people
9. Retractable comb
8. Smell detector, Smell-ID
7. Peephole into the iPhone 7 internals
6. Cat claw iPhone security feature
5. Sub-miniature cooling fan for the A10
4. Hair blower
3. Pokemon Go crawling creeper camera
2. Hydrogen filling port and exhaust
And the number one use for the left speaker grille....tat tat tat
1. N O T H I N G
To be fair, he didn't say you were a shill, he said there were more Android fans and shills here than there have been in the past. To me that seems a valid point. There is a huge amount of enthusiasm and energy being put into hating on Apple here - not necessarily by you (again, you weren't called out), but by quite a few. People who seem positively gleeful about Apple's "obvious fast approaching downfall" that they are so certain is going to happen. It's gotten to where it's hard to have a simple discussion of the merits of an article here (the reason for these forums to exist), with having to step around all the snide/self-approving remarks about how Samsung is sooo much better and Timmy is such a buffoon.
The technical specs are actually of less interest to me than the real-world benchmarks on similar apps while performing similar functions. In the end, that's all that matters. Apple has understood this for years, whereas the PC industry and Android seems to have gotten hung up on the specs.
Do you even realize the irony of your statement? You want me to take time out of my trip to find another store that may or may not have a cable I need for a car I only have temporarily, which will cost me money I did not need to spend, in order to do something that my iPhone already does perfectly well with most every other car I own or drive.
I'd rather have you instead in the future stop at a convenience store that has a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter when you find yourself without one. ;-)
For the record, there was only one such store that sold such things within several miles of the location I was in. So even if I wanted to drive around looking for one it would have taken me considerably out of my way. In the end, it simply wasn't that big a deal, as people are making it out to be here in the reverse.
What's acceptable to you? I didn't have to pay a dime extra for the floppy drive built into every PC sold at the time. A USB floppy drive cost $100 -- CD drives cost almost $300. And no you are revising history. Apple inconvenienced everyone who was doing business at the time. And it took several years before the need for the floppy on the corporate level went away, and there was an affordable substitute that was universally included in every PC. Apple didn't even add a writable drive to iMac until 4 years later. I don't even want to think about how many years it took PCs to update to a standard USB port to exchange data with Macs. Bus powered drives were incredibly expensive, so that was a poor substitute, and CD media continued to cost several dollars per disks which could be written only once, and due to buggy technology, often trashed during incorrect burning, or god forbid you forgot to add a file.
And while Apple may leave behind some technology dating back past 10 years that may "legitimately" be used, most people are not using it. And many of the common use cases are being updated on a daily basis. I'd argue most people use their headphones with one device, and possibly two if counting work. The iPhone is primarily used as an audio source without headphones at home and in the car, maybe at work. I'm expecting new Macs to contain a Lightning port. That means one adapter for a non-mac home or work computer, left at work. Most new home stereos have BT built in, but a $20 dongle will solve that on old gear, including a 30+ year old amp. All new cars come with USB & BT, and if that's not available in an older car, there's adapters and dongles for that too. It's not Apple's responsibility to maintain backwards compatibility with all the old hardware out there, merely because it's in widespread use. At least they're not cutting the cord completely -- yet. But that is the future at least with mobile devices.
This is all just like when Apple took away the floppy drive and pushed USB & CDs. You say $300 was a reasonable amount to pay for a huge, buggy external CD drive a customer needed to buy in order to replace the floppy the customer already owned and worked, and I say in that case $200 is not much to pay for a wireless BT headphone that Apple will likely have made substantial improvements on. The benefits are absolutely the same, depending on one's needs. More storage is better only if you need it. But getting rid of wires is always a good thing.
In fact, everyone's been focusing on Lightning to 3.5mm adapters, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say one of the most popular new adapters will be a BT to 3.5mm dongle that doesn't require plugging into the phone at all. So people can use their old headphones with all the benefits of wireless, with the same quality as the headphone jack, if not better. Battery power won't be an issue, because the iPhone can be plugged in separately, and so can the adapter, don't even have to sit next to the phone anymore. Need to plug into an old 3.5mm port? No problem, maybe there's a pass through jack, so the adapter never has to come off to be remembered or get lost. The sky's the limit.
Can't wait to see Jony Ive design video for this one.
"The new speaker holes are... unapologetically cosmetic."
"This is the sort of thing only Apple can do." - Tim Cook
"The new speaker holes are... unapologetically cosmetic."
"This is the sort of thing only Apple can do." - Tim Cook
Well, its not a sub woofer, but it is the speaker that plays the lower frequency sounds where the one on the top only plays higher frequency sound. So in this case, yes it's more of a woofer, the high end is nonexistent on it.
They combine together in music mode and sound pretty decent for a phone. But it's still a phone with tiny drivers. It also has a theater mode that makes it stereo instead and tweaks it more for mid range and vocals. Great for YouTube.
From what I remember the M8 I had sounded a little better but it had two full range front facing speakers. Sounded great but took up a lot of space. I prefer the 10's design in that respect.
No matter what they call it, it's still better than a single down-firing speaker.
If you already have a 6+, you're not really the target market for the upcoming phone; they don't expect that most people upgrade their phone every year, just the way that most people don't but a new car every year. The goal is to have a compelling and up-to-date device for those who are looking to replace an older phone.
"Diminished functionality" -- Rather than ascribing this to the next iPhone, which hasn't even arrived, it seems more accurately applied to the hundred or so MR posters who have let which features or specs Apple does or does not include in a product determine their level of happiness with their life. Ascribing sinister motives to every minor decision, using emotionally laden terms like "irate", "outraged" etc., reveals a level of emotional attachment and disproportionality that's very unhealthy and leads diminished functionality in one's life.
I believe their target audience is anyone that possesses a phone that is doesn't have the specs of the presented product. In fact, that is the premise of ridding contracts of individual accounts from the major carriers, going month to month AND the creation of the payment plans with the option to trade in each year; to release the lock of a large segment of buyers that may otherwise not purchase a newer phone. I purchased my phone Sep 2014 btw.
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If we find out that second set of holes was just cosmetic and Apple could have included a 3.5 mm headphone jack, there will be a LOT of complaints from iPhone fans and Apple could lose a lot of sales of the iPhone 7. After all, Samsung showed you can still keep the 3.5 mm headphone jack and still make the phone meet IP68 dust/moistture protection certification with the Galaxy S7 series and the new Galaxy Note 7.
I've always had a particular dislike for the tactic of making something look like it has two separate smaller drawers when in fact it's one larger drawer with fake detailing on the exterior surface (a line down the middle and two handles).
Well, I got bad news for you. Apple just lost out on this one regarding the BT to 3.5 dongle because a company called Outdoor Tech already has that for the last few years now and I own one seen here:
http://www.outdoortechnology.com/Shop/Adapt/
I happen to have the blue one and guess what? This thing requires RECHARGING. And that means the Apple BT to 3.5 dongle would require. . . .RECHARGING. Does mine work? Sure, but it takes a few moments to search the BT signal from the phone, iMac, or any device playing music, podcast or whatnot. Is it liberating? Sure. Is it reliable? Somewhat due to the limiting battery length it has. If Apple needs to do something like this, it will have to surpass the battery level at this size or smaller, and it may have to add in control scheme seen above to manipulate volume and tracks while away from the device.
All it does is plug in the 3.5 headphone into the dongle and clipped to the belt, shirt or wherever. It does have a microphone on the other size. It still could pick up my voice from a distance but not always since you have to PRESS the middle button to activate the microphone to call up Siri or make regular calls or via Skype, etc.
And this dongle cost me about $40 bucks. Seriously. I'll bet Apple may jack this up to $50 based on their 'premium BS'.
EDIT: oh and by the way, everyone I see walking around here where I live use a 3.5 jack. Even with a Beats headphone. NONE are using wireless or BT. NONE.