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Comment by al2o3cr | Hacker News Reader

" They took out the headphone jack, like tech journalists rumored for years and years, and are now selling you a $9 dongle or forcing you to get Bluetooth earbuds,"

Perhaps as a followup, bullshit.ist could do an article on the difference between "selling an adapter" and "including one in the box" and the sloppy journalistic malpractice that is deliberately confusing the two for the sake of whining...

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The issue is not that they got rid of the headphone jack. The issue is they went with a solution that is not industry standard. In the past, when they got rid of something it was either in decline (e.g. floppy) or something industry standard was taking off (e.g. SSD).

The wired headphones are not industry standard. That leaves you buying expensive bluetooth headphones. For me it s a big problem, because sometimes I unplug my headphones from my phone then plug it into my laptop or into another device. Now we have no solid industry accepted wired headphone connection socket. That is a shame.

The real truth here is Apple makes solid revenue of dongles, wires, docks, and now headphones. By creating their own walled ecosystem for headphones, they gain more revenue. If this wasn't the case, they would have a regular old USB jack at the bottom of the phone. They don't.

Exactly. "Courage" would have been abandoning lightning and becoming more open with a USB-C port.

Or even two USB-C ports, then you could have USB-C headphones.

My phone aside, none of my sound sources or speakers take either Lighting or USB-C. I would be in wired dongle hell either way. But all of my devices take bluetooth and I already use it for everything but my headphones...

Apple does not want you to use wired audio with iPhone 7, that's all there is to it. All wired options will be inconvenient _by design_ because Apple does not want you to use them. Apple wants you to use wireless headphones (over Bluetooth, an industry standard). If you don't want that experience then buy a different phone. That is the situation with iPhone 7. Framing it by quickly dismissing Bluetooth and griping about how inconvenient the wired options are misses the point.

If it's included in the box, they're still selling the adapter: it's just that they're selling it as part of the purchase price of the phone+adapter combination.

the purchase price that is the same as the ihpone 6s was?

Yes, the purchase price which could be $x cheaper.

TANSTAAFL!

Speaking of TANSTAAFL, what's your brilliant plan to fit the headphone jack into the phone body without raising the price of the phone?

>what's your brilliant plan to fit the headphone jack into the phone body without raising the price of the phone?

Good chinese engineering seems enough: http://androidadvices.com/top-5-thinnest-designed-android-sm...

iPhone 7 is 7.1mm thick while the 7 Plus is 7.3mm thick.

And yes, aaaaaall of those have headphone jacks.

Apple is taking you people for fools.

There are in fact at least 22 phones that are substantially thinner than iphones, yet have an audio jack:

http://www.gsmarena.com/results.php3?nThicknessMax=6&chk35mm...

I don't know about your phone, but mine has two other dimensions besides depth. How much internal volume do those take up?

And now I have a tiny adapter I have to keep track of that will get lost, bent, and need replaced, and probably damage the port and I have an extra long fulcrum sticking out into a tiny little shallow port that when pressed will either snap or snap the port internally from it's soldering, requiring a trip to the Apple store for repair.

This is just bad design/engineering based on Apple wanting to sell licensed headphone adapaters/headphones that only work with the iPhone or maybe Mac's in the future.

It's because everyone understands two simple things:

* All dongles get lost

* All Apple lightning/usb cables have horrible build quality and don't last. This will not be the exception, especially since it will be frequently crimped at weird angles.

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