Companies aren't benevolent, they're here to make money.
They could have added the port, it's been done by third parties, they just chose not to because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They could've added an extra quarter inch to the bottom of the device to the upsettedness of no one and tossed it in. A 2nd lightning/USB-C jack would've been a good compromise!
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
Companies aren't benevolent, they're here to make money.
They could have added the port, it's been done by third parties, they just chose not to because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They could've added an extra quarter inch to the bottom of the device to the upsettedness of no one and tossed it in. A 2nd lightning/USB-C jack would've been a good compromise!
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
nah I'm willing to change vendors over this one
the replacement introduces more inconveniences than my current solution, the phones cost more money than they did previously, and they're charging an extra $150-$200 for some additional hardware so I can listen to my phone the way I used to
I had the nexus 4 and nexus 6p, but unless the 3.5mm jack comes back I doubt I'll get a pixel phone
Companies aren't benevolent, they're here to make money.
They could have added the port, it's been done by third parties, they just chose not to because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They could've added an extra quarter inch to the bottom of the device to the upsettedness of no one and tossed it in. A 2nd lightning/USB-C jack would've been a good compromise!
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
nah I'm willing to change vendors over this one
the replacement introduces more inconveniences than my current solution, the phones cost more money than they did previously, and they're charging an extra $150-$200 for some additional hardware so I can listen to my phone the way I used to
I had the nexus 4 and nexus 6p, but unless the 3.5mm jack comes back I doubt I'll get a pixel phone
I just hope my 5x survives long enough for me to find out if the jack comes back.
Companies aren't benevolent, they're here to make money.
They could have added the port, it's been done by third parties, they just chose not to because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They could've added an extra quarter inch to the bottom of the device to the upsettedness of no one and tossed it in. A 2nd lightning/USB-C jack would've been a good compromise!
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
Counterpoint: The 3.5mm headphone jack isn't some kind of dead standard or retro feature or throwback option, it's still what everyone's fucking headphones use and taking the port off is a blatant cash grab/attempt to lock consumers into a given vendor's hardware/software ecosystem and it's complete bullshit. Fuck all companies.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
I would say it isn't an attempt to lock someone in, I mean, Bluetooth is an open standard, and any Bluetooth headphone will work on anything.
I would say it isn't an attempt to lock someone in, I mean, Bluetooth is an open standard, and any Bluetooth headphone will work on anything.
Sort of; this article explains it like for real but when it's Apple and Google doing it and they make the OS then their headphones can do stuff that competitors can't and poof, you're locked into their accessories if you want the full feature set. Plus having to pay them for a stupid dongle in order to use wired headphones and yeah it's not expensive but it's not nothing and right now I can pay exactly nothing extra to use any goddamn headphones I want.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I would never recommend that anyone else read The Big U unless they're a Step
notice it is companies that will get direct profits from the sales of wireless headphones that are making the shift.
I can't speak for Google, but Apple includes a Lightning -> 3.5mm headphone adapter in the box with new iPhones.
I really don't understand the angst regarding this issue. I've had a nice pair of Shure ear plug headphones. When I got my iPhone 7, I plugged the Lightning dongle onto their jack. It's been there ever since. It doesn't really change the subjective experience of using wired headphones at all. I suppose I lost the ability to recharge my phone while listening to it with headphones, but if Apple is going to solve that problem, I'd rather have them add a second Lightning port to the iPhone and not a 3.5mm jack.
I also have some AirPods. They're great for what they are, and I certainly didn't buy them to avoid putting a dongle on my Shures.
Perhaps Apple and Google could have fitted a 3.5mm headphone jack into their latest phones and they didn't because they're incompetent or evil. But... I kind of doubt they chose not to solely in order to drive the sales of their wireless headphones and dongles. AirPods would be selling great even if the latest iPhones had 3.5mm jacks because they're a great product, and Apple's profit, if any, on their $9 Lightning adapters is utterly insignificant to their business. And while I don't know for sure yet, I similarly expect that the latest Google phones will include a USB->3.5mm headphone adapter in the box, and that their new headphones will also be a worthy product in their own right and more than just a dongle-avoidance alternative to wired headphones.
You recognize that I look at your post and I look at your av and I rub my chin in a thoughtful manner.
I would say it isn't an attempt to lock someone in, I mean, Bluetooth is an open standard, and any Bluetooth headphone will work on anything.
Sort of; this article explains it like for real but when it's Apple and Google doing it and they make the OS then their headphones can do stuff that competitors can't and poof, you're locked into their accessories if you want the full feature set. Plus having to pay them for a stupid dongle in order to use wired headphones and yeah it's not expensive but it's not nothing and right now I can pay exactly nothing extra to use any goddamn headphones I want.
Sure, that might be true. But your headphones didn't have those features either, so it is kind of unfair to compare apples with oranges. If you want those features, buy the expensive thing! If not, buy the cheap thing.
IS bluetooth an open standard? you have to pay license fees to include bluetooth shit in your product.
is that patent licensing or licensing to say you're bluetooth? (or both?)
patent licensing seems fun because you can be "open" until it turns out there was a related patent, and then suddenly you're not. and by fun I mean the opposite of fun
End on
I wish that someway, somehow, that I could save every one of us
I would say it isn't an attempt to lock someone in, I mean, Bluetooth is an open standard, and any Bluetooth headphone will work on anything.
Sort of; this article explains it like for real but when it's Apple and Google doing it and they make the OS then their headphones can do stuff that competitors can't and poof, you're locked into their accessories if you want the full feature set. Plus having to pay them for a stupid dongle in order to use wired headphones and yeah it's not expensive but it's not nothing and right now I can pay exactly nothing extra to use any goddamn headphones I want.
Sure, that might be true. But your headphones didn't have those features either, so it is kind of unfair to compare apples with oranges. If you want those features, buy the expensive thing! If not, buy the cheap thing.
No but if the argument is "is removing the headphone jack a move to lock you into a given ecosystem" then I think the answer is absolutely yes.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
I would say it isn't an attempt to lock someone in, I mean, Bluetooth is an open standard, and any Bluetooth headphone will work on anything.
Sort of; this article explains it like for real but when it's Apple and Google doing it and they make the OS then their headphones can do stuff that competitors can't and poof, you're locked into their accessories if you want the full feature set. Plus having to pay them for a stupid dongle in order to use wired headphones and yeah it's not expensive but it's not nothing and right now I can pay exactly nothing extra to use any goddamn headphones I want.
Sure, that might be true. But your headphones didn't have those features either, so it is kind of unfair to compare apples with oranges. If you want those features, buy the expensive thing! If not, buy the cheap thing.
No but if the argument is "is removing the headphone jack a move to lock you into a given ecosystem" then I think the answer is absolutely yes.
Yeah. And if you think the W1 (or W2, W3, and so on) will ever appear outside of an Apple or Beats product, you're probably going to be waiting a long time.
And Google's equivalent look super-duper stupid as well.
IS bluetooth an open standard? you have to pay license fees to include bluetooth shit in your product.
is that patent licensing or licensing to say you're bluetooth? (or both?)
patent licensing seems fun because you can be "open" until it turns out there was a related patent, and then suddenly you're not. and by fun I mean the opposite of fun
Companies aren't benevolent, they're here to make money.
They could have added the port, it's been done by third parties, they just chose not to because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They could've added an extra quarter inch to the bottom of the device to the upsettedness of no one and tossed it in. A 2nd lightning/USB-C jack would've been a good compromise!
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
Counterpoint: The 3.5mm headphone jack isn't some kind of dead standard or retro feature or throwback option, it's still what everyone's fucking headphones use and taking the port off is a blatant cash grab/attempt to lock consumers into a given vendor's hardware/software ecosystem and it's complete bullshit. Fuck all companies.
Counter-counterpoint: the 3.5mm headphone jack is big, analog, specialized, and not nearly as good at its purpose (audio out) as Lightning or USB. In addition to analog audio, both Lightning and USB allow digital audio out for vastly improved sound quality when plugged into an external DAC.
And I just don't see how it's a cash grab. As I said, I have a nice pair of Shures that I dearly love. I've had them so long I don't remember when I bought them or what model they are. They're probably 7 or 8 years old, though. I didn't spend a dime to get them to work with my iPhone 7, and if they last another 8 years, I doubt I'll have to spend any significant money to get them to work with whatever the latest iPhone is then.
Analog audio out is now part of the USB Audio Device standard. Pretty much any wired headphone set with a traditional analog jack is going to work with USB and USB-like ports for the foreseeable future, using only a simple adapter. Until USB is gone, your wired headphones are going to work.
If it were a space issue, they could have moved to the 2.5mm audio jack standard 10 years ago with Nokia. If it were just a dongle attached to the only headphones I have and I never use them on other things that don't need the dongle, I wouldn't mind so much either. If bluetooth worked smoothly for me I'd be keen to explore its possibilities. None of those things are the case though, so when a tech company calls it courageous to irritate me, I'm gonna get irritated.
Bluetooth experience with my iphone and car stereo - I'm listening to a podcast in the car, I park, do some shopping, get back into the car to head off, iphone starts autoplaying music. Get irritated, switch it to podcast. Go to another stop, get out, back in.. phone autoplays music, get more irritated. Rince and repeat 4 times. Then do it the reverse way next time I'm listening to music in the car. And these are the default apple apps for both music and podcasts, so it's not an API issue. It's probably something along the lines of it being 'helpful' and trying to remember what I was listening to in the car yesterday, but that's never useful, and cannot be disabled.
Bluetooth experience on a plane: "Turn off all the transmitters on your devices now" ... oh.
Like.. maybe it'd work if I shelled out a pile of money on a set of bluetooth headphones, but I'm not going to do that because I don't trust it. Now we're back in dongle town. My iphone is my work phone, which means I'm tethering wirelessly to it all day. Got a sudden long phone call because some excrement has hit the rotationally actuating air circulation device? Hope I got some battery in there, cos otherwise I'm cradling a phone in your shoulder while dangling a portable power brick from it! Oh, I can spend A$50/$60 on a dongle to get back to where I was on the old device? Yay! More cable stuff to lose in my work bag!
I realise I'm being melodramatic and reductionist about it, but that's irritation for you. Also, the complaints about cost are partially because they are grossly over-inflated. Beats' highest profit margin is on their bluetooth headphones, and they're already overpriced for anything they make. Dongles and accessories make huge profits against their manufacturing costs - sure, a $9 dongle isn't a huge cost individually to me, but $8.91 in profit across all your customers adds up.
Analogue is out - fine. Give me a single, equivalent, wired digital standard to move to. Mean time I'm going to listen to vinyl records via the 6.5mm headphone jack on my amp.
I would say it isn't an attempt to lock someone in, I mean, Bluetooth is an open standard, and any Bluetooth headphone will work on anything.
Sort of; this article explains it like for real but when it's Apple and Google doing it and they make the OS then their headphones can do stuff that competitors can't and poof, you're locked into their accessories if you want the full feature set. Plus having to pay them for a stupid dongle in order to use wired headphones and yeah it's not expensive but it's not nothing and right now I can pay exactly nothing extra to use any goddamn headphones I want.
For The Verge, that's kind of a dumb article.
-It mentions that BlueTooth sucks, but it doesn't really acknowledge how that's pretty much the only driver of non-standard wireless headphone features. Google's fast pairing or the Apple W1 chip wouldn't exist if BT weren't terrible. The contrapositive to this is USB. USB is not terrible and audio over USB has worked fine for years. It's fully supported by every major platform, mobile or otherwise, that's likely to have an audio device plugged into it as well as zillions of third parties. No platform vendor ever had to spend money building custom silicon to make up for the deficiencies of the USB spec, so... they didn't.
-The part about how Google Assistant over Google Buds only works with Google headphones seems laughable: "But all of that stuff is part of Google’s platform, not Bluetooth: it goes away when you use these headphones with something other than Android or a Pixel." Of course Google Assistant requires Android. Assistant is running on the phone, not the headphones. They do say that the Buds won't drive Assistant on an iPhone, but I bet Google fixes that before too long. Their iOS apps usually achieve as much feature parity with the Android versions as they can manage.
Anyway, I find The Verge's case for platform balkanization at the headphone level to be unconvincing. The analog headphone jack has begun its descent into obsolescence, but support for it has been baked into the USB Audio spec, ensuring that wired headphones (+ dongle) are going work fine for years if not decades to come. BlueTooth sucks and platform vendors are dealing with it. There's not yet a pair of headphones that can run Google Assistant onboard. Those things, even all together, do not a Walled Garden grow.
notice it is companies that will get direct profits from the sales of wireless headphones that are making the shift.
I can't speak for Google, but Apple includes a Lightning -> 3.5mm headphone adapter in the box with new iPhones.
I really don't understand the angst regarding this issue. I've had a nice pair of Shure ear plug headphones. When I got my iPhone 7, I plugged the Lightning dongle onto their jack. It's been there ever since. It doesn't really change the subjective experience of using wired headphones at all. I suppose I lost the ability to recharge my phone while listening to it with headphones, but if Apple is going to solve that problem, I'd rather have them add a second Lightning port to the iPhone and not a 3.5mm jack.
I also have some AirPods. They're great for what they are, and I certainly didn't buy them to avoid putting a dongle on my Shures.
Perhaps Apple and Google could have fitted a 3.5mm headphone jack into their latest phones and they didn't because they're incompetent or evil. But... I kind of doubt they chose not to solely in order to drive the sales of their wireless headphones and dongles. AirPods would be selling great even if the latest iPhones had 3.5mm jacks because they're a great product, and Apple's profit, if any, on their $9 Lightning adapters is utterly insignificant to their business. And while I don't know for sure yet, I similarly expect that the latest Google phones will include a USB->3.5mm headphone adapter in the box, and that their new headphones will also be a worthy product in their own right and more than just a dongle-avoidance alternative to wired headphones.
You recognize that I look at your post and I look at your av and I rub my chin in a thoughtful manner.
As you should! I make my living coding for Apple platforms and devices. I also have a great deal of respect for Google and their many works, and I have friends at both companies.
Companies aren't benevolent, they're here to make money.
They could have added the port, it's been done by third parties, they just chose not to because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They could've added an extra quarter inch to the bottom of the device to the upsettedness of no one and tossed it in. A 2nd lightning/USB-C jack would've been a good compromise!
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
Counterpoint: The 3.5mm headphone jack isn't some kind of dead standard or retro feature or throwback option, it's still what everyone's fucking headphones use and taking the port off is a blatant cash grab/attempt to lock consumers into a given vendor's hardware/software ecosystem and it's complete bullshit. Fuck all companies.
Counter-counterpoint: the 3.5mm headphone jack is big, analog, specialized, and not nearly as good at its purpose (audio out) as Lightning or USB. In addition to analog audio, both Lightning and USB allow digital audio out for vastly improved sound quality when plugged into an external DAC.
And I just don't see how it's a cash grab. As I said, I have a nice pair of Shures that I dearly love. I've had them so long I don't remember when I bought them or what model they are. They're probably 7 or 8 years old, though. I didn't spend a dime to get them to work with my iPhone 7, and if they last another 8 years, I doubt I'll have to spend any significant money to get them to work with whatever the latest iPhone is then.
Analog audio out is now part of the USB Audio Device standard. Pretty much any wired headphone set with a traditional analog jack is going to work with USB and USB-like ports for the foreseeable future, using only a simple adapter. Until USB is gone, your wired headphones are going to work.
Err I would argue that 3.5mm headphone jacks are the standard and this is just a shameless cash grab.
Running bluetooth headphones all day drains battery way faster than wired headphones. This on top of all the other apps I use (games, navigation apps etc) means..I need to carry a power pack with me to make sure my phone isn't out all day.
Currently I could leave the house at midday, be out all day then go on a night out and have enough battery to last until I get home. I really doubt if that will be the case if I use wireless headphones.
And yes I know, they're going to release a dongle. Having to add an attachment to give me the same level of functionality I had on a previous model of phone isn't a step forward.
Three and a half hours of train commute a day. Bluetooth music streaming and internet/games. My phone is still at around 40% battery by bed time. Even if I forget to charge the headphones overnight, I still get through two days.
Everyone's use case is different, and some people are pickier than others. And the endless combination of phones and headphones are going to have different results.
Maybe Google and Apple exerting some influence is a good thing. But I'm an unabashed Bluetooth lover. (Note: I am not telling people to suck it up over lack of 3.5mm jack. If you need a jack, buy a phone with a jack.)
Number One Tricky
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Librarian's ghostLibrarian, Ghostbuster, and TimSporkRegistered Userregular
If Apple had been like, "We are removing the headphone jack. By doing so we increased battery life by X-hours!"
I would have been fine with it.
Saying it was "courageous" was the biggest head up their own ass thing. And this is coming from someone who just bought an Apple Watch.
Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
Does it even matter that apple said it's courageous.
I mean we all know it isn't, it's just marketing bullshit for, we wanted to get rid of it. It's no more full of crap than the rest of the marketing crap.
also the thinner the phones get and the more bezel you remove, the more fragile the all-glass device gets
which means you need a fatter case to adequately absorb shock
Which is one thing people overlook when they praise the S8 design. Most cases for that phone have the sides cut off. Which, for a klutz like me always dropping my phone, seems ripe for me to crack a screen.
also the thinner the phones get and the more bezel you remove, the more fragile the all-glass device gets
which means you need a fatter case to adequately absorb shock
Which is one thing people overlook when they praise the S8 design. Most cases for that phone have the sides cut off. Which, for a klutz like me always dropping my phone, seems ripe for me to crack a screen.
The glass is more resilient in general but dropping on an edge like that will probably still shatter if you hit something with enough hardness, especially if it's a ceramic tile.
Just like those ultra thin borders on monitors, I had no idea what the appeal was. Sure it's a neat thing, I guess, but I'd rather have a more stable design in general.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
I put a pelican voyager case on the 8 plus and I just wish the phone were naturally this shape/size. Feels good and strawng
As for the 3.5, the other reason it sucks is the universal nature of it - i thought there were things that utilized that port that the lightning cable can now bar? Like, monitors etc?
Three and a half hours of train commute a day. Bluetooth music streaming and internet/games. My phone is still at around 40% battery by bed time. Even if I forget to charge the headphones overnight, I still get through two days.
Everyone's use case is different, and some people are pickier than others. And the endless combination of phones and headphones are going to have different results.
Maybe Google and Apple exerting some influence is a good thing. But I'm an unabashed Bluetooth lover. (Note: I am not telling people to suck it up over lack of 3.5mm jack. If you need a jack, buy a phone with a jack.)
Three and a half hours of train commute a day. Bluetooth music streaming and internet/games. My phone is still at around 40% battery by bed time. Even if I forget to charge the headphones overnight, I still get through two days.
Everyone's use case is different, and some people are pickier than others. And the endless combination of phones and headphones are going to have different results.
Maybe Google and Apple exerting some influence is a good thing. But I'm an unabashed Bluetooth lover. (Note: I am not telling people to suck it up over lack of 3.5mm jack. If you need a jack, buy a phone with a jack.)
What phone do you have that lasts that long?
Also, what bluetooth headset. I'm suddenly reminded of the $400 bluetooth headset story from earlier in this thread...
Posts
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/10/the-cases-for-and-against-claims-kaspersky-helped-steal-secret-nsa-secrets/
Bloomberg also recently posted two separate articles about the Equifax breach that were both filled with errors.
Oh, absolutely. I'm not saying Apple or Google were right (or wrong) to remove the 3.5mm jack, just that I don't understand the extreme amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth that's still ongoing because they did. Everyone has always wanted hardware vendors to include more ports, but the 3.5mm audio jack seems a pretty odd hill to die on in that ancient war.
Do it, cell phone makers.
Of course it would probably be $2,000, just cuz.
nah I'm willing to change vendors over this one
the replacement introduces more inconveniences than my current solution, the phones cost more money than they did previously, and they're charging an extra $150-$200 for some additional hardware so I can listen to my phone the way I used to
I had the nexus 4 and nexus 6p, but unless the 3.5mm jack comes back I doubt I'll get a pixel phone
I just hope my 5x survives long enough for me to find out if the jack comes back.
Counterpoint: The 3.5mm headphone jack isn't some kind of dead standard or retro feature or throwback option, it's still what everyone's fucking headphones use and taking the port off is a blatant cash grab/attempt to lock consumers into a given vendor's hardware/software ecosystem and it's complete bullshit. Fuck all companies.
Satans..... hints.....
Sort of; this article explains it like for real but when it's Apple and Google doing it and they make the OS then their headphones can do stuff that competitors can't and poof, you're locked into their accessories if you want the full feature set. Plus having to pay them for a stupid dongle in order to use wired headphones and yeah it's not expensive but it's not nothing and right now I can pay exactly nothing extra to use any goddamn headphones I want.
You recognize that I look at your post and I look at your av and I rub my chin in a thoughtful manner.
Sure, that might be true. But your headphones didn't have those features either, so it is kind of unfair to compare apples with oranges. If you want those features, buy the expensive thing! If not, buy the cheap thing.
Satans..... hints.....
I'm gonna guess the rest of this post was intended to be "henson completionist" and yeah. It's not good.
Read Zodiac though.
is that patent licensing or licensing to say you're bluetooth? (or both?)
patent licensing seems fun because you can be "open" until it turns out there was a related patent, and then suddenly you're not. and by fun I mean the opposite of fun
No but if the argument is "is removing the headphone jack a move to lock you into a given ecosystem" then I think the answer is absolutely yes.
You are correct on both points.
Yeah. And if you think the W1 (or W2, W3, and so on) will ever appear outside of an Apple or Beats product, you're probably going to be waiting a long time.
And Google's equivalent look super-duper stupid as well.
I guess it's to use their trademarks IE the bluetooth logo and such, not to actually use and replicate the designs outlined in their patents. https://www.bluetooth.com/develop-with-bluetooth/qualification-listing/do-i-need-to-list-qualify-my-product
Counter-counterpoint: the 3.5mm headphone jack is big, analog, specialized, and not nearly as good at its purpose (audio out) as Lightning or USB. In addition to analog audio, both Lightning and USB allow digital audio out for vastly improved sound quality when plugged into an external DAC.
And I just don't see how it's a cash grab. As I said, I have a nice pair of Shures that I dearly love. I've had them so long I don't remember when I bought them or what model they are. They're probably 7 or 8 years old, though. I didn't spend a dime to get them to work with my iPhone 7, and if they last another 8 years, I doubt I'll have to spend any significant money to get them to work with whatever the latest iPhone is then.
Analog audio out is now part of the USB Audio Device standard. Pretty much any wired headphone set with a traditional analog jack is going to work with USB and USB-like ports for the foreseeable future, using only a simple adapter. Until USB is gone, your wired headphones are going to work.
Bluetooth experience with my iphone and car stereo - I'm listening to a podcast in the car, I park, do some shopping, get back into the car to head off, iphone starts autoplaying music. Get irritated, switch it to podcast. Go to another stop, get out, back in.. phone autoplays music, get more irritated. Rince and repeat 4 times. Then do it the reverse way next time I'm listening to music in the car. And these are the default apple apps for both music and podcasts, so it's not an API issue. It's probably something along the lines of it being 'helpful' and trying to remember what I was listening to in the car yesterday, but that's never useful, and cannot be disabled.
Bluetooth experience on a plane: "Turn off all the transmitters on your devices now" ... oh.
Like.. maybe it'd work if I shelled out a pile of money on a set of bluetooth headphones, but I'm not going to do that because I don't trust it. Now we're back in dongle town. My iphone is my work phone, which means I'm tethering wirelessly to it all day. Got a sudden long phone call because some excrement has hit the rotationally actuating air circulation device? Hope I got some battery in there, cos otherwise I'm cradling a phone in your shoulder while dangling a portable power brick from it! Oh, I can spend A$50/$60 on a dongle to get back to where I was on the old device? Yay! More cable stuff to lose in my work bag!
I realise I'm being melodramatic and reductionist about it, but that's irritation for you. Also, the complaints about cost are partially because they are grossly over-inflated. Beats' highest profit margin is on their bluetooth headphones, and they're already overpriced for anything they make. Dongles and accessories make huge profits against their manufacturing costs - sure, a $9 dongle isn't a huge cost individually to me, but $8.91 in profit across all your customers adds up.
Analogue is out - fine. Give me a single, equivalent, wired digital standard to move to. Mean time I'm going to listen to vinyl records via the 6.5mm headphone jack on my amp.
For The Verge, that's kind of a dumb article.
-It mentions that BlueTooth sucks, but it doesn't really acknowledge how that's pretty much the only driver of non-standard wireless headphone features. Google's fast pairing or the Apple W1 chip wouldn't exist if BT weren't terrible. The contrapositive to this is USB. USB is not terrible and audio over USB has worked fine for years. It's fully supported by every major platform, mobile or otherwise, that's likely to have an audio device plugged into it as well as zillions of third parties. No platform vendor ever had to spend money building custom silicon to make up for the deficiencies of the USB spec, so... they didn't.
-The part about how Google Assistant over Google Buds only works with Google headphones seems laughable: "But all of that stuff is part of Google’s platform, not Bluetooth: it goes away when you use these headphones with something other than Android or a Pixel." Of course Google Assistant requires Android. Assistant is running on the phone, not the headphones. They do say that the Buds won't drive Assistant on an iPhone, but I bet Google fixes that before too long. Their iOS apps usually achieve as much feature parity with the Android versions as they can manage.
Anyway, I find The Verge's case for platform balkanization at the headphone level to be unconvincing. The analog headphone jack has begun its descent into obsolescence, but support for it has been baked into the USB Audio spec, ensuring that wired headphones (+ dongle) are going work fine for years if not decades to come. BlueTooth sucks and platform vendors are dealing with it. There's not yet a pair of headphones that can run Google Assistant onboard. Those things, even all together, do not a Walled Garden grow.
As you should! I make my living coding for Apple platforms and devices. I also have a great deal of respect for Google and their many works, and I have friends at both companies.
I am totally OK with owning my biases.
Err I would argue that 3.5mm headphone jacks are the standard and this is just a shameless cash grab.
Running bluetooth headphones all day drains battery way faster than wired headphones. This on top of all the other apps I use (games, navigation apps etc) means..I need to carry a power pack with me to make sure my phone isn't out all day.
Currently I could leave the house at midday, be out all day then go on a night out and have enough battery to last until I get home. I really doubt if that will be the case if I use wireless headphones.
And yes I know, they're going to release a dongle. Having to add an attachment to give me the same level of functionality I had on a previous model of phone isn't a step forward.
I don't get how anyone can defend it.
Until battery life improves (for phone and for Bluetooth headphones), it's a step backwards.
I do have a pair of Bluetooth headphones I use for the gym. I'll do an experiment tomorrow and see how general use affects my battery.
Everyone's use case is different, and some people are pickier than others. And the endless combination of phones and headphones are going to have different results.
Maybe Google and Apple exerting some influence is a good thing. But I'm an unabashed Bluetooth lover. (Note: I am not telling people to suck it up over lack of 3.5mm jack. If you need a jack, buy a phone with a jack.)
I would have been fine with it.
Saying it was "courageous" was the biggest head up their own ass thing. And this is coming from someone who just bought an Apple Watch.
I mean we all know it isn't, it's just marketing bullshit for, we wanted to get rid of it. It's no more full of crap than the rest of the marketing crap.
Satans..... hints.....
Personally I only really use wired to make calls now, because headsets suck for that.
Not only that, they keep making the battery pack thinner.
Give me a big fat phone with some crazy battery life so I don't need to charge it every 6 hours.
which means you need a fatter case to adequately absorb shock
Which is one thing people overlook when they praise the S8 design. Most cases for that phone have the sides cut off. Which, for a klutz like me always dropping my phone, seems ripe for me to crack a screen.
The glass is more resilient in general but dropping on an edge like that will probably still shatter if you hit something with enough hardness, especially if it's a ceramic tile.
Just like those ultra thin borders on monitors, I had no idea what the appeal was. Sure it's a neat thing, I guess, but I'd rather have a more stable design in general.
As for the 3.5, the other reason it sucks is the universal nature of it - i thought there were things that utilized that port that the lightning cable can now bar? Like, monitors etc?
What phone do you have that lasts that long?
Also, what bluetooth headset. I'm suddenly reminded of the $400 bluetooth headset story from earlier in this thread...
I can't see my phone lasting on 1 charge.
I wonder how that white keyboard is gonna hold up in the long run though. They say it's stain resistant, but who knows.