Quick Takes: 'Why Hasn't Samsung Ditched the Headphone Jack Yet?'

[theluggage]

Read my post. I did not compare the two. I was speaking of the progression of technology.

Sure, your post says:

I got rid of my floppy discs years ago, and haven't looked back.

...and you go in to describe jacks as a "security blanket" (i.e. something of purely psychological comfort value).
...in a thread about the removal of 3.5mm jacks.

Sure looks like you were drawing a comparison.

I was speaking of the progression of technology.

...generalisation without warrant is still a fallacy. If you want to make that comparison (and if you post X in a thread about Y then yes, you're implicitly making a comparison) then you need to explain how removing audio jacks is an example of the progression of technology.

=========

Going back to the general issue, progression of technology ain't what it used to be: when floppy discs were falling from their peak, personal computer technology was still progressing rapidly, and the inconvenience of giving up an established tech was countered by the fact that the new tech was (a) an order of magnitude more powerful and (b) often substantially cheaper (if only by inflation). Now, the technology is maturing, progress has slowed*, 5-10 year old devices are still useful and the market is saturated. A shakedown of the market is looming. Progression is too often taking the form of juggling things around and putting form ahead of function in order to generate interest. Technically, Lightning headphones give you a nicer connector (although you have to admit that the 3.5" jack is infinitely rotate-able c.f. Lightning's one degree of reversibility) and re-locate the DAC to the headphones. USB-C is just, again, a, nicer connector that combines several pre-existing protocols.

*Sit an early 2011 MacBook Pro alongside a "comparable" (in terms of position in the range) model bought in 2018. Isn't the new one a nice, slimmed down version of the same thing - maybe 50% or so faster, too... Now imagine an original Apple Mac sat alongside an Apple II system. Best you can say is that they've both got a screen and a keyboard... The Mac totally changed the game both in terms of computing power, and in how the user could use that power. Yet those two systems are also only 7 years apart...

(NB: Note how I'm comparing one personal computer with another personal computer and not, say, the evolution of the RS232 serial port with that of the 5.25" floppy disc drive).

 

[Weaselboy]

Quick Takes: the new MacBytes. I really miss those, and it's a shame the old links from that sister site are now dead. I had some saved in my bookmarks and I can't, for the life of me, open them (not even by using the Wayback Machine at archive.org).

Is there any chance you might have a backup of the site and could revive it for historical purposes?

https://web.archive.org/web/*/macbytes.com

You should be able to access some of their old content using the Wayback Machine.

 

[AdonisSMU]

Apple dropped the headphone jack to sell you their overpriced bluetooth headphones. Pretty obvious.

The problem is they weren't overpriced when they released the bluetooth ear buds. They sounded far and away better than any I had previously used and they were like $50-$100 cheaper.
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Not sure Apple is "figuring out" what customers want.

Who in the world wants one type of port on laptops, who wants to carry around dongles (and be pissed off when you don't have one with you), who wants only one port on a laptop, who wants siri to be SO crappy, who wants homepod to be limited to one ecosystem, who wants a mac pro that isn't updated in three years, and who wants a golden watch that is useless in 8 months (maybe all of us if we have 10k to burn a year!

Imaging thinking you need to have separate port for storage, separate port for display, separate but different ports for data transfer, or separate port or audio.

I guess I just prefer have one port that can serve all of these use cases.

 

[InuNacho]

Wireless = more e-waste.
Disposing of wired earbuds at a recycling facility is a pretty straightforward process, it gets shredded and the copper is separated from the other materials in the buds. Wireless is a whole slew of problems. Batteries cannot be properly disposed of in a shredder, chemicals within the batteries adhere and taint the gold and copper within wireless buds during reclamation, and to top it off wireless buds are often extremely hard to open and often scrapped with other batteries but this in turn lowers the value of the li-ion they are recycled with.

 

[itguy06]

They haven't abandoned the headphone jack because it's still useful to most people who don't want to go all in on Apple's proprietary jacks or use an adapter.

This. I use my headphone jack every night as I sleep with headphones as to not disturb my wife. I tried a BT set of headphones once but somehow during sleep I had pressed the button and called a friend at 3am. And I don't need another battery to charge daily.

I still don't get why Gruber and DF get any press. His "journalism" isn't that great and he often comes off as whiney. I gave up a while ago.

 

[FrankieTDouglas]

I still haven't upgraded to a newer phone, one of the reasons specifically because I like and frequently use the headphone jack (I also use this while keeping my plug plugged into power during road trips). I use both, the standard input connection as well as Bluetooth in other situations. It's all about maintaining that choice for whichever solution is the best in any scenario. Apple has removed that.

 

[mig0]

If I could find a bluetooth headset that was decent, easy to use and easy to pair with multiple devices (or cheap enough that I could buy 1 for my phone, 1 for a different device like a tablet) and had no audio lag with video and was easy to charge I'd be ok. But my experience with bluetooth is that there's a definitive lag on youtube and I've not been able to find a solution anywhere. I've had this issue on multiple devices, not just my iphone.

 

[canonical]

Since everyone wants to compare the 3.5 mm audio jack to floppy disks, I will do just that.


There's nothing wrong with Apple defaulting to bluetooth headphones..

Yes there is - (a) it unnecessarily radiates your body with radiation. (b) That radiation is not even next to your head, but inside your head, which by the inverse square law, means it is the worst possible design from a health perspective. And (c) most Bluetooth audio is lossy and uses crappy compression, yielding substandard inferior quality.

 

[fairuz]

I enjoy the headphone jack on my iPhone 6 every day. I'm not going to upgrade unless they add it back. Maybe the new SE.
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CDRs when mature were no more complicated than floppy drives were, became ultimately even cheaper to mass-manufacture, and provided a much improved medium on which to distribute content and software.

Not exactly. Writing data to a CDR is very difficult, cumbersome, and limited. Floppy disks were more comparable to flash drives. I don't remember the state of those when Apple removed the drive.
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They also don't pair up immediately when I turn them on, and I am spoiled enough to not want to deal with turning one on on the receiver and the other on the transmitter, and waiting for the service, etc.

I've also been on a long trip and realized, welp, I forgot to charge the headphones, so that's that until I get to a proper charger again. And this time hope there's room for both chargers when I get where I'm going.

Yeah, this is exactly why Bluetooth is a downgrade. Tech is supposed to get less complicated over time, not more. It's way more complicated than 3.5mm but does the same thing, so that makes it worse. And this crap has been around for a long time without these issues being fixed; nobody bought it until they were forced to.

 

[stewacide]

I've been using iOS since the iPhone g1, and currently own an SE. But as soon as Apple stops selling a "small" iPhone with a headphone jack is when I get the latest Xperia Compact.

Edit -- I'll add I'm far from a troglodyte. I remember thinking optical drives were totally redundant and a detriment in laptops a long while before the Air came out (grudgingly bought a Pro with one and never once used it in the ~6 year life of the machine!). Ditto back when they ditch the floppy and legacy ports for USB.

But 3.5mm jacks simply DO NOT fall into that category. They're incredibly useful, and all replacement tech (regardless of price) carry unforgivable flaws - battery life, quality, sync stability - that simply aren't an issue with a wired connection. This is truly a case of a DON'T FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKE!!!

Additionally, offloading the amp and dac to the headphones themselves, which are so easily broken and need to be replaced regularly, just makes no sense at all. All it does is cost the consumer money when that hardware needs to all be replaces when any part of the headphones go (and likely saddle them with inferior dacs/amps in cheap wireless headphones).

Nothing about this makes any sense at all just stop the nonsense!!!! Who seriously thinks disposing of the wire from your device to your ears is worth such a huge tradeoff in terms of lowered convenience/usability, lowered audio quality (in most cases, certainly for the price), and hugely increased cost?!?!

 

[budafied]

The only thing this comment thread proves is the vocal minority don’t speak for the entire smartphone world.

If they did iPhone sales should have tanked years ago and never recovered. Instead it was Samsung who tanked while Apple soared.

The sales don't prove Apple made the right choice. The sales prove that Apple's decision wasn't bad enough to tank sales.

If they decreased the quality of the front-facing camera, do you think sales would decrease? If not, would you support Apple decided to decrease front-facing camera quality? How about removing the lightning port and going full wireless charging? How about removing Airdrop? etc etc...

 

[ibivibiv]

Ugh, Apple is infuriatingly arrogant in this area. Them ditching the headphone jack and every connector on the MacBook Pro and replacing it with a still rarely used USB-C isn’t like their moves in the past.

When they ditched the optical drive I thought, “I haven’t used a disc in 3 months, this makes sense.”

Still to this day I find myself wishing for a headphone jack 3-5 times a week. I also have a MacBook Pro with usb c and have to use an adapter 2-4 times a DAY.

They don’t even ship usb C with iPhones for goodness sakes.

You sir win all my "thumbs up" I can give. This is NOT like moves in the past. They are WAY too soon. I can't stand the lack of headphone port, and the USB-C move is ridiculous. Exactly ZERO of the things used commonly everyday use that port. They are just being foolish at this point with these moves.

 

[stewacide]

Apple is a "figure out what they're going to want" company.

Yeah... I wanted a totally suck keyboard with a useless OLED touch panel that triggers random actions when I brush against it in order to slow down my typing and create errors that cause be to be ~10% less productive coding... and having to carry dongles and/or special usb-c cables all the ***** time...

I'll tell you what I want Apple... I'd love to switch to a Win10 machine for iOS development.

I've been a Apple super fan since the first West Coast Computer Faire... but from being to envy of people forced to use Windows machines I'm now envying them, being forced to use worse-by-the-year Apple machines

Apple is doing everything possible to alienate the 'taste makers' and 'opinion leaders'. Thankfully, Apple's service 'ecosystem' is pretty much non-existence, so the move to Android should be pretty easy, even sticking with MacOS.

 

[Dozer_Zaibatsu]

I enjoy the headphone jack on my iPhone 6 every day. I'm not going to upgrade unless they add it back. Maybe the new SE.
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Not exactly. Writing data to a CDR is very difficult, cumbersome, and limited. Floppy disks were more comparable to flash drives. I don't remember the state of those when Apple removed the drive.
[doublepost=1521135102][/doublepost]
Yeah, this is exactly why Bluetooth is a downgrade. Tech is supposed to get less complicated over time, not more. It's way more complicated than 3.5mm but does the same thing, so that makes it worse. And this crap has been around for a long time without these issues being fixed; nobody bought it until they were forced to.

I had the very first model of Bondi Blue iMac. My whole college career was on a series of floppies, which I moved on to the new Mac with a USB floppy I bought along with the iMac. I also bought a usb-CD burner that did its thing at a whopping 4x.

Yeah, I had to use Toast software, which was a little kludgy. I honestly cannot remember what floppy disks cost, maybe as little as 50¢ apiece. A CD-R disc, which may have cost as much as $2 at the time, had as much storage as 650 floppy discs. There was simply no comparison. This wasn't just a jump to the future, this was a Buck Rodgers style leap.

The whole justification by the smug, kool-aid snorters that whenever Apple removes a port "It Is A Good Thing Because Remember Floppies" is getting pretty old. Did you all go out and purchase 3D televisions while sneering that the rest of us are going to be left in the stone age as all television will surely be 3D by 2018?

There is NO reason for a redundantly reliable format like 3.5mm audio to go away. (Hint: there is a very practical reason for an audio port to remain analog — can you bluetooth mongers guess what it is?)

And I am STILL hoping to upgrade to a new MacBook this year if they unleash 8th gen quad-cores. I feel like a sucker for the Mac platform for a lot practical reasons. But I am definitely feeling that Apple is aggressively discouraging me from purchasing an iPhone.

 

[fairuz]

There is NO reason for a redundantly reliable format like 3.5mm audio to go away. (Hint: there is a very practical reason for an audio port to remain analog — can you bluetooth mongers guess what it is?)

Heh, cause it's audio, and we don't have digital ears. Every BT headset has to have its own digital-to-analog converter and amp and battery, so that's a huge waste of hardware vs having it all in the phone.

 

[Soccertess]

The problem is they weren't overpriced when they released the bluetooth ear buds. They sounded far and away better than any I had previously used and they were like $50-$100 cheaper.
[doublepost=1521129189][/doublepost]
Imaging thinking you need to have separate port for storage, separate port for display, separate but different ports for data transfer, or separate port or audio.

I guess I just prefer have one port that can serve all of these use cases.

yup, and you prefer to carry around dongles. Personally I want a computer that I don't need to carry around a bag of dongles. I want to be able to walk into an office and hook up to TVs, monitors, and USB keys, etc.

Can't do it with what you suggested without a bag of dongdildos

 

[theluggage]

Not exactly. Writing data to a CDR is very difficult, cumbersome, and limited. Floppy disks were more comparable to flash drives. I don't remember the state of those when Apple removed the drive.

It was never as easy as writing to a floppy, but by 1998, when the iMac came out, it was pretty straightforward*, even though you needed burning software on MacOS 9 - but I think its always been drag & drop in OS X.

Anyway, there was never a single technology that took over from the floppy: email attchments took up much of the slack, then Zip drives for larger files, at least two sizes of Magneto/Optical drives, Syquest cartridges, optically-tracked super-floppies (which also read floppy discs), DAT tape backup drives and a doofus that let you back up your hard drive to VHS tape...

However, CDRs came closest to being the "new floppies" because ~$1 for a blank disc that could hold 600MB of data was an argument-stopper, even if they were a bit of a faff to write. Zip/Syquest/MO/Superfloppies - and even rewritable CDs just cost too much to stick one in the post without a twinge.

*Ah, but I remember the days (~1990) when you had to create your image on an expensive MagOpt disc or Syquest cartridge and send it away to be burned. to CD... then the days (~1993) when you could have your own burner, but you needed a dedicated 1 GB hard drive (1GB!!!) to build the image on - and not just any HD, but a special "A/V" one that could be relied on to deliver a sustained 150KB per second (150KBps!!!) during the burn or you'd create a "coaster*" (which was not a joke when the blanks cost $25 a go - now you'd be able to sell it as a HomePod stand!).

 

[ibivibiv]

yup, and you prefer to carry around dongles. Personally I want a computer that I don't need to carry around a bag of dongles. I want to be able to walk into an office and hook up to TVs, monitors, and USB keys, etc.

Can't do it with what you suggested without a bag of dongdildos

Dude NONE of those things fit the port you are describing. NONE.

yup, and you prefer to carry around dongles. Personally I want a computer that I don't need to carry around a bag of dongles. I want to be able to walk into an office and hook up to TVs, monitors, and USB keys, etc.

Can't do it with what you suggested without a bag of dongdildos

Exactly, the dumb argument of a "universal port" would be great if ANYTHING worked with it. So far literally NOTHING in common use does. Also, I have had firmware issues where the stupid universal port strategy has kept my machine from realizing that I was plugging in my power brick. Gee, thanks Apple for not having a port that my laptop can clearly and easily identify as a power source so you know... maybe my LAPTOP WILL BOOT UP when the battery is dead so I can use it? You know... some basic functionality. I'm not asking for much here.

 

[rmsanger]

Because it’s a terrible idea!

 

[omihek]

Apple dropped the headphone jack to sell you their overpriced bluetooth headphones. Pretty obvious.

Hardly overpriced. My AirPods were worth every penny.

 

[oyabroch!]

What kinda schmuck "article" attempts to make some profound faux-"intellectual" reasoning out of the simple logic that PEOPLE USE 3.5MM HEADPHONES!

Wise guy journo loses, simple sense prevails.

For those arguing for AirPods, I have to confound you with simple logic - it doesn't matter how the signal gets from the phone to the earpiece speakers - YOUR EARS ARE STILL ANALOGUE.

 

[neomorpheus]

>"do what the customer is asking for company”

Good gracious, what a crazy concept!

One that you could say, needs courage to implement!

 

[bopajuice]

Yes, within the context of the article, USB-C is a mess when it comes to audio, which is why we don't yet see iOS devices drop the lightning port for USB-C (and we likely never will).

How is USB C a mess for audio?

I use an M-Audio M-Track 2x2 interface for audio input and output. It uses USB-C and provides 24-bit/192kHz High Resolution audio for Recording and Monitoring. Works great and sound fantastic plugged directly into my Mackie speakers.

Please explain.

 

[Abazigal]

How is USB C a mess for audio?

I use an M-Audio M-Track 2x2 interface for audio input and output. It uses USB-C and provides 24-bit/192kHz High Resolution audio for Recording and Monitoring. Works great and sound fantastic plugged directly into my Mackie speakers.

Please explain.

Have you read the daringfireball article I linked?

 

[oyabroch!]

Beyond you in-crowd, Californian tech obsessed, garageband hipsters, there's a world of ORDINARY PEOPLE, for which the 3.5mm headphone jack has been PERFECTLY FINE since the 70s. Reality smashes you right in the face!