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There is no big picture here. Nothing is stopped by offering the port. You can do all the fancy wireless stuff while still offering the port. That is just simple fact, and arguments from the other side read like cult speak.

It's not that I don't 'see' the bizarre argument you are making, it's that I reject it as a way functional adults should think.
This point about the headphone jack can be debated until the cows come home. The fact is the iphone does not offer one. If you can't discuss this issue without labels then maybe one shouldn't be discussing this issue. It's highly unlikely that apple will do a 360 on the iphone, just like touch ID, it's gone.
 
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You can't force the issue if you still offer the port. that is the basic essence of getting rid of it. Like the optical drives back in the day.

You're describing an abuse. Removing the optical drive allows you to offer a different kind of product, as the optical drive is huge and thick. The headphone jack is not meaningfully thicker than the lightning port in the context of a phone or tablet - those devices will always have to be thicker than X on account of the nature of human hands.

So, Apple gains a small amount of space - space that already plentiful and unoccupied in the iPad. In turn, the customers lose meaningful utility. Over time, the bad will generated will harm Apple.
 
Air Canada forbids using Bluetooth headphones at any phase during a flight on their Dash-8 series birds. So much for using my iPad on my flights.
Why? You can always use the lighting to 3.5 dongle. If Apple replaces the lighting port with USB-C I bet you they make another dongle just for that. No worries. There’ll be a way to connect your headphones.
 
I love it - Apple puts nothing but USB-C ports on the Macbook Pros - it's the future! Next phones arrive - lighting port is the future! New iPads arrive - USB-C is the future!

But hey, at least it's thinner. Thank goodness, that's what I always wanted, a thinner iPad.

Lightning was 2012, C was 2015.
 
Man if you’re not on Apple’s payroll you should be!!!

Ushering in a new world order = axing the headphone jack.

Holy Jesus tap-dancing Christ.

Yeah but usually its to push something that is a decidedly better system. Theres a lot of drawbacks to bluetooth in comparison to wired. Each persons use case will be different, for some wired is a must, for some wireless is a must.

Having a 3.5mm jack gives people the option to use what works best of them. Removing it forces people to use cumbersome solutions to keep using what works best for them. On the iPhone its somewhat justifiable because of space constraints, but on a big tablet, especially a "pro" tablet, it makes no sense.

The bottom line is this:

Apple can remove all the ports they want so long as they have an acceptable substitute for the functionality of the port they removed. The iPhone was one thing, and I supported the removal of the 3.5mm jack in that case.

The iPad is a totally different situation since many people use it for both gaming and audio recording -- hence the "Pro" moniker. Wireless audio is not acceptable in either of those situations. Period.

If Apple removes the headphone jack on the iPad for a key use of the device, without offering an acceptable substitute, then they are essentially acknowledging they no longer wish to support either of those activities on the iPad. Which is fine -- their company, their choice. But that is in effect what they're doing -- alienating valuable customer groups. Period.
 
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Yeah but usually its to push something that is a decidedly better system. Theres a lot of drawbacks to bluetooth in comparison to wired. Each persons use case will be different, for some wired is a must, for some wireless is a must.

I would argue that Bluetooth is better in the areas that matter to Apple, and Apple will likely be able to engineer away the pain points of using wireless headphones.

Having a 3.5mm jack gives people the option to use what works best of them. Removing it forces people to use cumbersome solutions to keep using what works best for them. On the iPhone its somewhat justifiable because of space constraints, but on a big tablet, especially a "pro" tablet, it makes no sense.

There is another option - rethink your workflow so as to take better advantage of the newer options available to you.

Yes, it is more work, but maybe it’s better to just embrace the change and rip the bandaid off and get it over and done with.
 
It has nothing to do with device thickness.

How does Apple put a 12mm deep headphone jack in a device with 6mm or 9 mm bezel?

You don't understand the dimensions of this device. I can't explain it to you, but no one else is confused here.
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Good thing Dash-8 airplanes don’t do long flights. So most of the time a dongle won’t even be needed.

I'm being sarcastic, dude. Get real.
 
You're describing an abuse. Removing the optical drive allows you to offer a different kind of product, as the optical drive is huge and thick. The headphone jack is not meaningfully thicker than the lightning port in the context of a phone or tablet - those devices will always have to be thicker than X on account of the nature of human hands.

So, Apple gains a small amount of space. In turn, the customers lose meaningful utility. Over time, the bad will generated will harm Apple.

People here are arguing even on this thread that making things thinner isn't a useful thing to do. Removing the optical drive didn't make computers more functional. It did make them sexier. If you can't understand that how thin it is for a portable device is a useful metric maybe invest in a Surface or something that you think is better.

The reality is Apple is saving money no matter how small by removing it and they sell devices in record amounts consistently.

If you are a pro you get the dongle to do your job. If you are a mechanic you buy some widget Mercedes sells and is only needed for that brand. However I get the impression some pros around here DJ at their friends bar and work for free beer and a chance to meet chicks.
 
Removing the optical drive allowed for the creation of a different type of computer than that which existed prior. When laptops get thinner (up to a certain point) and lighter (up to a point!) you enable new use cases. It's dual purpose.

Apple is trading customer satisfaction for cash. That kind of thing catches up to you.

Actually, no. I don't suck it up and buy a dongle. I go to a vendor that isn't actively hostile towards me. Don't reply to me again, I've thrown you on my ignore list on account of you not having the intellectual capacity to engage in meaningful discussion - just Apple bootlicking & attacking others.

It is a balance between customer satisfaction and what you call "cash" otherwise known as shareholders. To tell you the truth sometimes I think share-holders such as myself are unappreciated here on MR. We are just cash not even human. LOL
 
No one here has managed to say how you fit an audio jack inside the iPad when the bezels are too narrow to accommodate it.

Why do you need bezels to accommodate it? How do they manage to drill in the ports on iPhone and this design if you required a bezel. Not following the logic.
 
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You're describing an abuse. Removing the optical drive allows you to offer a different kind of product, as the optical drive is huge and thick. The headphone jack is not meaningfully thicker than the lightning port in the context of a phone or tablet - those devices will always have to be thicker than X on account of the nature of human hands.

So, Apple gains a small amount of space - space that already plentiful and unoccupied in the iPad. In turn, the customers lose meaningful utility. Over time, the bad will generated will harm Apple.

But the underlying point is the same - that people adapted. In place of using CD-ROMs, people switched to cloud services to transfer their data, music streaming for entertainment, and companies adapted as well when they saw the demand for such things.

And notice how services such as Dropbox and Spotify aren’t even direct replacements for physical storage media. They are alternatives that address the same need, albeit in a different manner.

Fast forward to today, we are better off than before because of the paradigm shift (not just in technology but also on attitudes and mindsets) brought about by the removal of a key piece of technology.
 
I would argue that Bluetooth is better in the areas that matter to Apple, and Apple will likely be able to engineer away the pain points of using wireless headphones.

There is another option - rethink your workflow so as to take better advantage of the newer options available to you.

I'm tired of so-callbetter options. My BT headphones run out of battery right when I need them, and I always lose track of that freaking dongle. And on a long plane flight, BT will die. Outfitting my kids with BT? No.

Anyway, that just means that this'll probably be the generation that I stop upgrading, which is fine.
 
Why do you need bezels to accommodate it? How do they manage to drill in the ports on iPhone and this design if you required a bezel. Not following the logic.
The jack that the headphone plugs into is a certain height, width and depth behind that hole. Is there room for it, once the display comes so close to the device edge?

The iPhone 6S and iPads until now have had sufficiently large areas to house the jack without running into the display. That may no longer be the case, once you shrink the bezels.

7EC158A0-C7CB-462C-B2DE-B547ED300CA0.jpeg
 
The jack that the headphone plugs into is a certain height, width and depth behind that hole. Is there room for it, once the display comes so close to the device edge?

View attachment 794488

We know there is depth for it as they can make depth as large as they want, bezel or not. Probably could fit in its height too, as that’s barely changed and there is some spare room on current Pads, but more likely they just don’t see need to bother with it anymore.
 
Good. No one uses headphones on an ipad anyway. If you want to use headphones u should just buy the $160 EarPods.
I use the headphone jack every time I fly. EarPods sound good for something wireless, but they don’t sound very good compared to premium wired headphones. Apple is also not making it easy for headphone cable suppliers to make premium cables compatible with lightning.
 
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