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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

I love my AirPods. I find them fairly comfortable and the audio quality is fine, perfect for podcasts (theory: the rise of AirPods and rise of podcasts are related).

However, AirPods don't require the removal of the headphone jack! The removal of the headphone jack is still so consumer hostile: it serves zero benefit to anyone apart from bluetooth accessory makers. If Apple really was serious about advancing bluetooth headphones, they would at least license the W1 for the pairing magic to other manufacturers.

Good Bluetooth headphones AND headphone jacks can exist at the same time! Anyone arguing for the removal of headphone jacks aren't grounded in any sort of reality tbh.

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>However, AirPods don't require the removal of the headphone jack! The removal of the headphone jack is still so consumer hostile

This is key. When they removed the disc drive in the macbooks there was a decent argument to be made about more space for other ports (or reduced thickness). But the 3.5 mm headphone jack is literally... 3.5 mm, right? Another commentor even pointed out that the new iphones are thicker than the 6 line. I just dont ubderstand the argument here.

Agree, I love wireless audio and I've used decent bluetooth headphones on and off for a decade now. But that still makes the removal of the headphone jack a disaster and I miss it every day.

Apples user might have become accustomed to the dongle life but it is unbearable. Also, my non-standard dongle have started to glitch and buying a new one costs about 100x more than it is worth. Go figure.

It might have felt better if there was a reason for it. But no, there is absolutely no sane reason to ditch it other than forcing people to buy wireless peripherals. And that is just unacceptable. Too bad alternatives are running out.

This is all also under the assumption that bluetooth is good enough. It isn't.

This is also under the assumption that bluetooth is secure. It isn't.

> This is all also under the assumption that bluetooth is good enough. It isn't.

I don't think that's true. I don't think there's an inherit quality problem with Bluetooth, but it's just that bluetooth is an added cost, so manufacturers cost save on the audio components, or the headphones become expensive.

There are still incompatibility issues in practice.

And even still, you will get something that won't outlast the inbuilt batteries - which makes it absurd to spend money on them. I still use, on a daily basis, my $300 headphones that are a decade old. I can't find any bluetooth headphones fort $3-400 with NC that matches them. And they won't last a decade for sure (whereas my wired ones probably will last several).

> Anyone arguing for the removal of headphone jacks aren't grounded in any sort of reality tbh.

The problem is that there isn’t really a good argument to keep the headphone jack. It’s a redundant port because lightning/usbC and Bluetooth both handle audio. You would need a strong justification to keep it when you could use that space for other stuff in the phone.

No.

What disadvantages come from the removal of a ubiquitous headphone interconnect that's been on our devices for years? iPhone's have gotten thicker since the removal of the headphone jack. Apple's made iPods much thinner than any of the iPhones, and they all had headphone jacks.

There's no problem. It's not redundant if you want to charge your phone and listen to audio at the same time - I have those Bose headphones noice cancelling headphones that everyone travels with. To use them, I need to carry around an adapter which is a pain. When I fly, I have to choose whether to charge my phone or listen to audio.

Look, I love my iPhone X, but I've gotten absolutely nothing out of losing the headphone jack. It's only come at costs.

..although Apple did not use the space for anything else when they removed it from the iPhone 7.

Whats the evidence? Scotty from strange parts actually managed to add a working headphone jack back to the iPhone, in the exact spot where it had been removed!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA

Did you miss the part of the video where he had to cut out parts of the iPhone to get the space needed?

He cut out one piece of plastic relating to barometric pressure, and moved the taptic engine a bit. And all of this was on the 7, so Apple surely had space for a headphone jack on the 7+, right?

Maybe wired headphones are going the way of the DVD drive. But at this point, the change has felt very user-hostile. If they cared about their customers, iPhones would support USB-C and wired headphones.

> so Apple surely had space for a headphone jack on the 7+, right

That’s easily answerable by heading over to iFixIt. You’ll see the Plus models are near identical to the non-Plus in available space, just the Plus has a bigger battery and even more circuitry (do to the dual camera). Apple doesn’t waste any space inside their devices typically.

Technically, even though Lightning does handle audio, the dongle contains its own DAC, so that functionality remains unused.

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