iPhone 7 removal of headphone jack: hate it or love it

In My Humble Opinion
201

I think that it’s the wrong time, although hindsight shows that Apple has often been right about when to get rid of legacy connectors in the past. The floppy drive and the DVD drive and the Ethernet port weren’t obsolete when Apple started shipping devices without them (and at least the Ethernet port still isn’t if you want lots of network speed), but they were clearly on the way out as far as general usage. Wifi worked well. The internet was fast enough that you didn’t need CDs, etc.

My worry is that, well, Bluetooth sucks. I have a pair of Bluetooth headphones and a variety of Bluetooth car connectivity things, and they’re all awkward and failure-prone.

And iPhone/iPod specific logic in 3rd party devices often sucks too.

It continually amazes me how bad the bluetooth/iPod config is in cars. I rented two different cars in the last week, and this was the Bluetooth audio process for the more functional of the two:

  1. “Media” button
  2. “Ok” on screen that says no devices are connected.
  3. “Bluetooth” button
  4. “Ok” on screen that says no Bluetooth devices are connected.
  5. “Select Bluetooh Source” button
  6. Pick my phone from a list of phones.

Every. Fucking. Time. I started the car.

Oh, and also, apparently they decided that changing the volume should start playing music from the iPhone’s music library. So, trying to use the car’s audio system for directions led to this awesome loop:

Baby starts crying -> can’t hear directions -> turn up volume -> music starts blasting -> baby cries louder.

The other one we couldn’t ever get to work reliably. It would work for a while and then just… stop working.

My other worry is that dongles on mobile devices are much more cumbersome than on laptops. I use a Lightning->Ethernet dongle for network when I’m sitting at my desk. But that’s fine, it just stays at my desk, because if I’m somewhere else, there isn’t going to be Ethernet to plug into anyway. But if my preferred headphones need a dongle, I have to carry the damn thing with me everywhere.

I’m due for a new phone, and it’s going to be a 6S or an SE (not sure yet if I want to pay $100 for more screen). I’m still a huge Apple fan, but this doesn’t bode well.

202

So you agree with him that Apple will make more money off $9 replacement dongles than off $35 airbuds? Ok then.

Someone will.

Erm, what? Having the adapter enables exactly that.

203

Go back and look up all the hand ringing and whining on this board when Apple had the balls to change their power/data transfer jack after only 11 years.

Oh the humanity!

Personally I only use BT headsets with my phone I don’t care.
Since I regularly see BT headsets starting at $10 buying an extra one isn’t going to change my lifestyle.

204

What’s your point here?

Will they work reliably or will Apple nobble them, as it does with third party lightning cables?

I’m sure you know what he meant.

205

Wow. Looking at the photos, your iPhone will be propped to near vertical, supported ONLY BY THE LIGHTNING JACK.

One random jiggle and you’ve trashed your dock or maybe even the phone itself. What an amazingly BAD design.

206

You’d think that. But it works quite well. I’m not quite convinced it’s great for iPads, though.

207

I think you miss Mama Zappa’s point. No doubt it works but how strong is it? Surely one clumsy move with something moderately heavy and it’s going to snap off the connector or damage the socket?

Looks to me like the epitome of style over practicality.

208

Well, I’m not about to drop something heavy on it but it’s pretty sturdy. I’ve had this thing for a year (two, even?) and use it every day without any issues.

209

I’m guessing your household doesn’t include toddlers or cats.

210

It doesn’t. But if it did I probably wouldn’t want my iPhone standing in a dock on my nightstand anyway, because even if the docking is 100% secure the fall off of the nightstand could be problematic.

211

I’ve used a dock like that for a couple of years now, never a problem. I have a cat and a kid.

Edit: it’s attached to a whole radio, though, so more difficult I assume to tip over.

212

Except, of course, if you’ve got a car that disables pairing if the car is in motion.

213

Interesting in light of this thread, iPhone 7 sales are allegedly far greater than expected - despite its lack of a jack. Though actual sales data hasn’t been released yet by Apple.

http://bgr.com/2016/09/28/iphone-7-sales-q4-2016-q1-2017/

214

I don’t use iPhones any more. If I did, I probably would’ve talked myself into “well I don’t need one that much anyway” / “I can just use the adapter, get Lightning or Bluetooth ones” in order to justify the sacrifice for the awesome new features - it might have even swung round to a “love it” if I was in an unconditionally loving everything they do kind of mood (I have been one of those). In my view though they’ve been lacking in the awesome new features department lately.

From the perspective of the other side, I find it a poor decision and take a more cynical view of Apple’s motivations for removing it and am sceptical about their claims there’s no room for one. Retrospectively, I realise that the number of these sacrifices has added up over the years!
However, though this is pure speculation based only on how they all seem to copy each other, I expect the big name Android phones to do exactly the same thing next year.

215

I didn’t say that. I was chiding sweaty for not understanding the product, and thinking that airbud sales were going to be “sneaky” profit for Apple. There’s nothing sneaky about it. As for me, I’m entirely unimpressed with the little AUX-lightning adapter. I need to use it in my car, and I know that it’s going to snap in half by year’s end. I’ll probably just get a bluetooth-AUX dongle, so I can charge at the same time.

216

I currently have a 64 GB iPhone 5s that I got on sale ($200 off) right before the iPhone 6 came out two years ago. However, I’ve been nearly out of free memory on the phone over the last month or so, so I decided to look at the new iPhones.

I’d pretty much decided that I would go with a new iPhone 6s, hoping to get a sale like I did the previous time. I figured it would be a nice upgrade, and would still have the headphone jack. And indeed, I found that the iPhone 6s is currently on sale for $200 off, with a retail price of $650.

However, the iPhone 7 with the same amount of memory (128 GB) was only $100 more. The kicker, however, was that Verizon was offering a $400 trade-in credit for my old iPhone 5s. The bottom line price for the new iPhone 7 would be just $350. I’ve never traded a phone in before, but it occurred to me that I’ve never actually used any of my old devices again, so why not?

So…it looks like I will learn to live without a headphone jack. :wink:

217

I have 4/5 sets of regular headphones, a waterproof phone with headphone jack, removable battery and expandable memory. I could use BT anything if I wanted to, and actually often connect my phone to BT speakers at home, but the lack of wires plus having to charge another thing puts me off a phone with no headphone jack.

218

Here you go, a $10 solution on Kickstarter. Soon there will be tons of stuff like this.

219

Engadget also enga(d)ging in this speculation based on the way USB C is going: USB-C's new audio spec could get rid of your headphone jack
Going to be saying “called it” sooner than I thought…

220

And precious little of it (if any) will be licensed by Apple and will be subject to suddenly being incompatible.