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Capitalism: Intel and Apple insist on removing 3.5mm audio connector
  • 38 Replies sorted by
  • sohussohus

    This is called progress. There was nothing wrong with 35mm either. Stop pushing 4k gear if you are against it! Nothing wrong with removing a 100 year old connection, it served its purpose. The future is wireless. I have a Bose BT headphone and the quality is quite good.

    Progress is painful in the short term and convenient in the long-term.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    We have different understanding of progress.

    Your version is closer to "maximization of capitalists profits".

  • robertGLrobertGL

    I think progress peaked with red book audio and frozen pizza

  • sohussohus

    I am not a fan of manufacuters artificially limiting their products, like most camera companies do, nor do I like planned obsolence, which almost all manufacturers do, neither do I like incremental planned updates to maximize return on R&D... but dropping a 100 year old connection for something better (in the long-term) is fine to me. Apple can force manufacturers to really get quality products out.

    Last time I checked my latest videocamera does not have Firewire 400 anymore. Capitalism!

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    It's great when progress happens because a superior standard emerges and people naturally gravitate to it because it offers them tangible benefits and eventually, a smaller number of people are obligated to migrate as well as the outdated technology becomes unavailable.

    It's less ideal when "progress" happens because a company decides to use near-monopolistic powers to retire an existing standard in favor of their own standard which not only doesn't offer a tangible benefit to consumers, but in a number of measurable ways offers reduced benefits.

  • sohussohus

    Since when does Apple own Bluetooth standard? Lightning is just a stopgap measure. Real push is wireless People said the same with floppy, optical drives. Next step after phones are wearable devices. Where will you put the 3.5mm Jack on your smart glasses? Use common sense!

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Next step after phones are wearable devices. Where will you put the 3.5mm Jack on your smart glasses?

    For now this step failed miserably.

    Unfortunately creators did not account for vision nature and limits.

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    Floppy drives had fallen out of popular use, mostly, at the time they were retired in favor of optical drives. Optical drives had fallen out of popular use when they started to vanish.

    3.5mm wired headphones are still the most popular and using a pair of lightning headphones (or a lightning - 3.5mm adapter) offers no real benefits that most people will notice or care about, especially given that most people will buy inexpensive headphones with cheap DACs similar to (or worse than) the one that used to be in their phone. Bluetooth headphones offer reduced convenience as they need to be paired and their batteries die. When the batteries die, most bluetooth headphones become wired headphones again, except now with a power cable. Unless there is a major quantum leap in battery storage capacity coming in the near future, they suffer numerous drawbacks vs analog wired headphones.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    More guys coming

    http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/15809/usb-audio-device-class-3.0-corporations-want-get-rid-of-analog-connectors

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Not only Apple discontinued all iPhones with a headphone jack, they now won't even bundle in a lightning-to-3.5mm adapter like it did last year.

    Nice news.

    Very interesting how even companies with extreme margins want to get slightly more (yes, only reason they remove connector is to save around $2).

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Samsung also will remove headphone jack on almost all of his phones

    image

    Adapter.

    People in industry tell that wireless headphones are most profitable products now for major vendors.
    So, cutting the 3.5mm jack is important.

    I think we can expect new proprietary wireless headphone interfaces within 1-2 years, so headphones will work only with your current company phones.

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  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Talked to one quite large blogger on how it works from his side.

    All manufacturers who provide smartphones with removed jacks ask (very carefully) to avoid any mention of this issue. In their internal surveys 90% people had been against it. But as management want to sell extremely profitable wireless earbuds ($150 one brand model cost to manufacture is around $15-20), they do not care.

    Marketing department later check transcription of all reviews and mark any questionable parts, including this one.

    If you will keep pushing 3.5mm jack agenda your sample will first start to delay, if you didn't get message, this delay can rise to infinity.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    And this is reason why they did this

    image

    image

    Of course, numbers outside US are all wrong for TWS (where Xiaomi sells much more of them than Apple).

    But idea is simple - it is smartphone manufacturers who now own very profitable market.

    All influencers and bloggers have now specific lines and instructions to push premium TWS earbuds.

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