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rusk

I think there's a bunch of pretty decent reasons why this makes sense for apple.

- smaller devices reduce shipping costs en masse

- marketting "thinner" devices (though screen is larger?)

- DRM

- No need to provide expensive native DAC

- Owning the headphones market, similar to how google ended up owning "search"

I'm sure there's a bunch more. It makes good business sense for them regardless of what customers (ahem, "consumers") want and with other manufacturers following suit they'll pretty much have no choice.

I'm looking forward to a portable DAC being among the collection of crap I have to put in my pocket in the morning.

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Shipping costs are already basically irrelevant. So that's an irrelevant benefit, not a decent reason.

(the cost to ship a medium size box is about $10. $10,000 of iPhones easily fit in a medium size box. Shaving some of 0.1% is pretty irrelevant.)

And if they did it in service of "owning the headphones market", that's a really dickish reason.

that's a really dickish reason

Indeed it is. I and many others would agree. But capturing a market and "lock-in" are common, and often-lauded business practices.

But, but... the iPhone 7 still comes with a dongle, so they're still providing the DAC. At least for now.

The rest sounds about right, unfortunately.

The iPhone 7 comes with two DACs, there's one in the earphones too now.

Yeah, but I guess once their 3rd parties get up to speed they won't need to any more ... I think it's more of an increment in a longer term plan.

I thought the dac is built into the dongle?

You are probably correct, but I think that was GP's point - apple are providing the dac .. for now

> - smaller devices reduce shipping costs en masse

If this were their goal removing the headphone jack is the last thing I'd expect they'd look towards. For starters there's the packaging itself which is way larger than the couple millimeters they could maybe shave off the phone itself.

isn't the packaging added later?

I think they're packaged in China and shipped whole from there to the US/destination.

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