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Comment by hanief | Hacker News Reader

Apple is pursuing the wireless future, as simple as that. Be it audio, data transfer, or even power. In the case of headphone jack, they pursue that goal by fixing the bluetooth flaws not by content with what we have right now. Is it a worthy goal to pursue? Time will tell.

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I am not against the future but shouldn't we have the alternative ready before we kill the 'previous' version of something? For me the new wireless headphones are not an option because of lack of hi-fi options and because of the need of charging frequently. If we had the same exact experience (great sound quality for lossless and once a year charging) than I would be more inclined to buy it.

Caring about hi-fi headphone audio and needing to charge frequently while listening to audio is probably a combination of requirements that affects an extremely tiny portion of iPhone users. Also, there’s wireless charging.

But you're part of an insignificant minority.

People charge their phone everyday so it isn't a massive deal to charge your AirPods as well. And the sound quality right now is more than good enough especially given that you're asking people to tradeoff their data usage.

I tend to leave my headphones in my backpack or jacket pocket. (well, actually both, they are so cheap that I have a half dozen sets of earbuds scattered around different places - I have a nice ~$150 set of earbuds at my desk at work, and cheap < $20 sets everywhere else)

If I have to charge them then I have to remember to take them out and plug them in, and also then have to remember to take them out of the charger and take them with me.

I'm not super sensitive to sound quality, but charging is a deal breaker.

What makes you think it is normal to charge your phone every day? I charge mine on average every 4th day when the battery has run down to about 30%-35% (or at around 12 hours of screen time). I use two phones, one for daily use and another for work in the forest/on the farm. The daily phone is a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5 which can last for up to a week on a charge, the work phone a Motorola Defy of around 8 years old which now lasts for around 4 days, it used to last for a week as well. While I might be a bit of an outlier with these devices I don't see charging a phone daily as a norm to be espoused. In the age of "dumb" phones charging the thing once a week was the norm, not the exception. If these devices are to be the go-to for all things digital they should have longer autonomy.

I saw a Samsung ad today, boasting that the battery lasts all day... I was mildly disgusted that's where we're at. There are seriously devices that don't last the day?

Exactly this. People don't realize that almost nobody needs better CPUs in the phones and almost everybody would benefit from higher capacity battery. If batteries were developing at the same pace as CPUs we would have batteries that last for years with a single charge. For me the ideal phone is iPhone 6s that does everything that I have ever wanted to do with a phone, and even more that I do not actually need. The only missing feature is a long lasting battery.

I charge my phone once a day. I have to charge my AirPods many times a day, and often have to play games where I take one out to charge it while relying on the other one, and then swap them later. (Note: I like them so much I tolerate this insanity gladly.)

I’m not really familiar with the DACs in past iphones, but I’d be really surprised if you had any “hi-fi” options available via the 3.5mm jack.

It's not the audio DAC that is the limiting factor for good sound. DAC is old technology that is cheap, efficient and well understood.

3.5mm is de facto hi-fi.

It actually isn’t that easy, like at all. A tiny DAC in a phone amplified to loudspeaker levels is going to sound qualitatively different from a stronger signal out of something built to that spec. Not to mention interference issues in analog signals at low power.

The digital source material is a limiting factor for achievable quality, but so is the DAC that is to translate the source material. Some cheap DACs are not meant to translate specific bit depths and sampling rate, some supply the jack with less output power, some exhibit more crosstalk, some have more limited frequency responses. So yes, second to the source material, it's the DAC that is the limiting factor for good sound.

It's the speakers that is the limiting factor, by an extremely wide margin.

A cheap DAC can produce around 16 bits and 20 kHz. It's not difficult. A pair of $10 earplugs is much more limited in what sound it can physically play.

Actually this is why most of the hifi heads bought iPhones, 6s had the best DAC that you can buy for a reasonable price (less than 1000 USD). I have converted all my collection to ALAC just to be on the Apple platform and be able to listen to lossless on my phone. I also use a decent entry level hifi headphone (Focal Spark - wired) this is where my hearing still be able to identify differences. The entire setup was not too expensive and it had great performance. Now, if I try to have it with the recent iPhone offerings, it will be certainly more expensive and slightly shittier, and I can just convert my entire collection to mp3s because the system does not support it anyways. On the top of that, I was able to listen to my collection on my proper audio system at home before while right now I am not able to connect the phone to the amplifier anymore. So, to summarize, Apple offers my a way more expensive solution that makes me miss out on many aspects of listening lossless music. It is simply not worth it.

Wireless is a terrible thing to base the future on. With wired you don't have to worry about interference or the fact that anyone with the right antenna can send/receive wireless. Of course it isn't always practical to use wired, but I think the majority of connection use cases work perfectly fine with a cable, don't need to be made wireless, and are in fact made worse by the usage of wireless.

You're trusting/hoping that [0] will never happen, or (for WiFi) that [1] will never happen. At least with most Internet usage there are additional layers involved that have their own security which can protect your in flight data, but the firmware on BT/WiFi chipsets doesn't necessarily have that sort of layered security.

I'd call it a dangerous goal.

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/12/16294904/bluetooth-hack-e...

[1] https://www.krackattacks.com/

Unfortunately, low latency Bluetooth codecs are fragmented between AptX, which can achieve 32ms latency but isn’t supported by iOS, and AAC which isn’t generally supported by accessories, especially the low latency variant.

So you’re basically stuck with AirPods or new Beats if you want low latency Bluetooth headphones for an iPhone. And this seems unlikely to change.

They’re also striving for the future where your phone is measurably, obviously thinner than 3.5mm. As in thin-enough-to-wear-on-your-sleeve thin.

It’s a long game, but I think part of their rationale is that we had to get rid of that thing eventually — which is inarguable, IMHO — and so the earlier, the better. If you’re forced to make wireless headphones that don’t suck, you will.

It's like a car manufacturer removing the engine, because "they're striving for an EV future", they just don't know how to build an EV car yet, so now you get one with no engine at all. Shotgun gets a hand crank. Onwards, Mr. Flintstone.

Exactly, this was a logical progression to that future. Want to make a completely wireless device? Take away the things that are easy to do wirelessly. First: audio, then power, next up is...?

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