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Comment by PunksATawnyFill | Hacker News Reader

How about decisions like removing the headphone jacks from the company's most popular music players, the very devices with which people are supposed consume the media-centric services that Tim Cook and analysts say are the future of Apple?

For Apple's and consumers' sake, I hope NOT.

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Apple manufactures bluetooth headphones also [0] .. do the math. The really popular Beats headphones for example are made by Apple indirectly. By cutting off the headphone connection, they are encouraging people to buy new products instead of using old and proven technologies.

Apple has done this all the time during their history, eg. look at the whole adapter situation where you just have to buy extra hardware to connect your new device to anything.

[0] "Beats Electronics LLC is a subsidiary of Apple Inc." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beats_Electronics)

> encouraging people to buy new products instead of using old and proven technologies

People who are not stupid are actually encouraged to switch to a competitor who is less anti-consumer.

And this is where whole "ecosystem" comes in. If you switch, you will either have to replace all of your devices, or have inconveniences while using them together.

Or maybe a lot of people don't care and actually prefer wireless headphones? What's with the ad hominem attacks?

If you look at broad consumer trends and attribute them to stupidity, you’re going to have a hard time understanding markets.

This decision was promptly copied by every other major phone manufacturer, for the same reasons Apple made the decision. The 3.5mm jack is obsolete and getting rid of it enables a better, tougher device which is more waterproof.

Its not obselete when 100s of millions of people use it everyday and the replacement is expensive, needs replacing because the batteries die and has poorer sound quality.

No phone is more waterproof with it than without (they all have complex data ports with many connection vs three or four in a jack). No phone has a bigger battery. No phone is tougher.

It allows Apple and others to sell expensice Bluetooth ear buds.

And yes, I do own a pair of airpods.

The iphones have been waterproof since the 7 I think. The 3.5mm connector isn't waterproof, the lightning connector evidently is.

Android phones have been waterproof with 3.5mm jacks, for at least the past 5 years, maybe longer.

I don't know about other manufacturers, but the latest Google Pixel 3a & 3a XL which comes with the 3.5mm jack, aren't waterproof.

https://www.teamandroid.com/2019/05/16/google-pixel-3a-water...

Yes, and other manufacturers make phones that are waterproof. Just one example: Motorola moto x4.

Most milspec phones have been waterproof for a long time. Kyocera has a group of phone models (named Hydro) that are/were waterproof, although they aren't very impressive or popular, and rely on caps with gaskets.

It was also recently reversed by Google for the Pixel 3a. I'm hoping other manufacturers follow suit. It's fine to admit a mistake and many have been made in phone design recently.

It blows my mind how people call things obsolete without replacing all of their functionality. The only reason the 3.5mm jack is considered obsolete is because Apple said so. Literally nobody had any problem with it existing up until the day Apple announced that iphone. If this isn't the definition of sheeple then I don't know what it is.

Acting like I’m the Luddite because I don’t want to breastfeed 25 battery powered peripherals. Next they’ll say MagSafe was obsolete.

The largest non-Apple player in the industry, Samsung, continues to ship flagship phones with a 3.5mm jack and with waterproofing that has been consistently ahead of the iPhone. Samsung Galaxy has been IP68 since the S7 in 2016. Something the iPhone didn't achieve until the XS & XS Max.

The idea that this was about waterproofing is a fabrication.

I guess it's not as super obvious as it sounds, but if you take a look at a 3.5mm audio jack, it's not that hard to imagine creating a hermetically sealed (and therefore waterproof) female plug for that specification.

Far easier than for a USB port, I'd say.

Apple is a trendsetter and nobody can deny that. That doesn’t make the headphone jack an anti feature. I use a 6S to this day when I could get a XS, for the headphone jack and smaller size/weight.

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