Article seems to imply that there is no way to replace the headphone jack because it's soldered to the pcb, but presumably someone with the right equipment could unsolder it and put a new one on?
I'm also a bit confused by that. Surely headphone jacks are usually soldered?
On a lot of laptops, the jack is mounted to the case with a single screw and connected to the motherboard via a short pigtail connector. This eases in repair since you can very easily swap in a new connector without having to do any desoldering.
That's pretty clever - I'd never noticed, despite having been in the guts of a number of machines over the years.
Yes, the headphone jack was emphasised as if it's a big thing - but come on, how else should headphone jacks be attached? On my old PCs the hearphone jacks are soldered on to the motherboard, and can still be replaced by anyone capable of holding a soldering iron; unlike, say, soldered-in RAM chips which can't really be upgraded that way.
I somehow been under impression that most laptop headphone jacks are soldered in.
On previous models, the headphone and microphone jacks were on a small daughterboard which can be replaced without soldering.