Another dongle to loose. Tons of headphones obsoleted. Can't charge while listening. Laggy audio. more batteries in the world. They're ok with a bulge for the camera but not headphones? I work in a lab and a phone with headphones is standard equipment on the commute and work (for at least part of the day).
I would seriously move off iOS if I was making music with it. If only iOS devices were made by other manufacturers... (I know I know....)
on the plus side minimum memory had been bumped.
This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack.
The other possibility is that the headphone jack makes water resistance that much more difficult. Maybe they think it's worth it?
Personally, I'm going to hold on to the 6s for as long as it's usable and then consider my options.
The funny thing is, they made a huge deal about catering to runners in the watch presentation. In the offseason I run about 20 to 30 miles per week, and I can tell you bluetooth headphones suck for running. They fall out easily as soon as I start sweating. Also, during training season the headphones will run out of juice if I don't remember to plug them in. They also drain the phone's battery - on a 30 minute run that's no problem, but on a 2-hour run that sucks. The best earphones are over the head, light-weight ones I can tuck under my cap whcih keeps them in place.
Oh well, maybe on the 8 they have a change of heart. And if they don't... there's always OpenMoko
Edit: In previous version I accidentally said Samsung Headphones.
I mean, Apple's justification is that they are being courageous in pushing the world towards their vision of the future, which is wireless. Ignoring, for the moment whether this is a valid vision, how does a courageous move towards this future involve bundling not one, but 2 wired options with the phone?
I'm fairly certain I would have been unhappy with the decision to drop the headphone jack no matter what, but couching it as courage has taken me from unhappiness to screw them.
https://www.amazon.com/Nike-HJ020-headphones-Discontinued-Ma...
For bicycling, I am mainly on bike paths but when I have to enter traffic for a bit, I would never, ever ride with any kind of ear bud or closed headphones. The Flite design has gentle pressure pushing the phones against my ears, for a very open design that keeps me aware of what is happening around me. They are very stable, resting on the back of my neck, even while running. I don't remember them every falling off from exercise.
The original Flite headphones were somewhat overpriced, and lasted about a year before they failed. The Chinese clones moved in and the price collapsed. I bought a batch of ten knockoffs for $17 a few years ago, and they still last a year or so.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=sport+headphones+behind+...
http://www.consumerreports.org/smartphones/samsung-galaxy-s7...
http://www.jlabaudio.com/products/epic2-bluetooth-wireless-s...
Not sure if you've seen or tried these.
http://www.plantronics.com/us/product/backbeat-fit (cheaper on Amazon).
Just another option to add to the list.
[1] - https://www.amazon.com/Motorola-SF600-Wireless-Sports-Headph...
I'll never use the lighting dongle and I don't use corded buds/headphones now so I will literally not feel a difference in that respect. I only listen to audiobooks, podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify on the phone, so I'm not exactly getting the greatest audio I could be anyway.
However, having increased dust and water protection are something I'm very happy to get if it improves the longevity of the device. I don't really care too much about it getting that much thinner either, but I'm happy with making the phone more physically robust if they can.
I can't imagine iPhone line continue this way for next 5-10 years. They need to get into something new fast. VR, AR etc.
People say they want lots of battery life, but slimmer devices consistently outsell thicker ones.
The camera bump on the 6S is ~1mm high. 30% more battery capacity in that amount of space seems optimistic.
I guess if they make battery last 30% longer, then you won't be forced to change a phone in 2-3 years when battery starts deteriorating and it is bad for business.
Edit: More like in the 80s.
With that said, I don't actually disagree with taking the headphone jack out. I do think there needs to be a more universal replacement than what they are suggesting though.
It's mostly the fact that it was replaced with the lightning port that gets to me more than anything else. If it was something like USB-C, I'd feel more comfortable since that should be more widely available in time.
Too afraid to test it myself though.
I'm guessing that the average consumer has no idea what an f-stop is, or that having a maximum lens aperture of f/1.8 is any better than f/5.6 or f/16. And the people who do know probably also know that for a lens and sensor that are maybe a quarter of an inch wide, a bump in the maximum aperture is not going to make the camera perform anywhere near a dedicated camera, so the focus on that detail is a bit odd to me.
This looks like another method to lock in the consumer to their eco system and or squeeze that extra buck out of them. Not so much about shrinking in size or technology.
IMO this is nothing more than selling and controlling peripherals that can play with iphone and drm.
Edit: Why the heck am I being downvoted for this? I'm not even expressing an opinion as to whether I think the jack should have been removed or not.
Must be magic, if Apple hasn't trademarked that already.
All in all. I'll wait a year for 7s to replace my 6s if nothing else worthy and working out of the box comes out.
>This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack.
I hate that they removed the 3.5 but if you assume that people are using a case then camera wart does not really make the phone any thicker.
So tired of this argument in defence of the wart, people use a case because of the wart and then this is used to justify the wart "everyone uses a case"
Wouldn't surprise me if iPhone 9 was wireless only. Somehow.
what annoys me more is that most advancements are only for the 'plus' size model. that's the easy way out of the tech race, and I was just hoping that they brought feature parity with an updated SE model
so far I see no good replacement for my 5s except the previous year SE, but I'm not the one to spend that money on two year old hardware.
The animation when loading the page made that bulge almost phallic. That phone appears like an erection, growing up and up...
It's almost certainly only in my mind though.
I recall Apple having a patent on a manufacturing process to bond a small aluminum region around the headphone jack to a case made of something harder, so maybe the headphone jack was causing problems in advancing case materials?
If an opening for a 3.5mm jack was an issue for some future design, so would all of the other holes (esp. the lightning port).
If you are talking about their new wireless headphones, It will probably have some delay but probably not even close to bluetooth. They could just modulate that same bytestream to some ghz radio frequency without adding anything remotely as over engineered and cumbersome as a bluetooth stack. I'm pretty sure those airpods are not bluetooth compatible.
Edit: From the official product page:
> Connections
> AirPods: Bluetooth
What about encryption?
Not to mention that Bluetooth doesn't use PCM because of battery life constraints (more radio traffic == more energy used), I doubt that Apple's protocol is uncompressed.
Apple's tech specs list them as bluetooth.
Seems to me it's a solved problem for most devices.
They do provide the lightening-to-jack adapter in the box for free.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2016/09/what-to-look-for-at-wedne...
The adapter that comes in the box is the proverbial drug dealer's "first one" that's always free.
Imagine getting a $4 royalty on every pair of iPhone-compatible headphones that's sold in the world. That's worth a lot of free adapters in the short run.
Just as a first-order estimate: Forbes says that annual worldwide sales of headphones are $300M. If the average price of headphones is around 20 bucks (taking into account there are a small number of very expensive headphones but also a lot of cheap ones, that's probably high), that's something in the neighborhood of 15M pairs sold per year. If half of those become Lightning-connector equipped, that's $30M/year in revenue (on costs of zero!) going to Apple.
The connector could make the phone substantially worse as a phone and it still might be worthwhile. There doesn't need to be a compelling technical reason.
[1]: http://www.forbes.com/sites/theopriestley/2016/01/11/apple-d...
The risks are so staggering that I would think they must genuinely believe that the jack connector is so technically obsolete that it makes the iPhone worse than the iPhone will be without it. I just can't fathom Tim Cook (or anyone) betting 100 billions for $30M/year. Of course I can be completely wrong.
[1] http://www.statista.com/statistics/263402/apples-iphone-reve...
2- do you seriously think a company with a $515B market cap is doing this solely for the financial reason of adding a $30M/yr revenue stream? If Apple TV was considered "a hobby" for years the wired headphone market is... I don't even know. A momentary flash of color?
Can't the reason be exactly what Apple said? Wired headphones using an analog connection kind of suck. wired headphones with a smart connection are a little better because power and noise cancellation or other "smarts" don't have to all be bolted on to the earphones, but honestly still kind of crappy because of wires.
Clearly Apple thinks that wireless audio is the future but today wireless kind of sucks as well (pairing, moving between devices). Apple thinks it can make that better. So if in their view that is the future why would they waste energy and time and space on a 2nd dedicated IO port for audio?
Hopefully with the improved power features of the new CPU, the amount of time when you want to simultaneously listen and charge is reduced.
(Sarcasm)
You're conflating the switch to a proprietary jack with the introduction of wireless AirPods. Those are separate things. You can still use 100% of existing wired headphones with the iPhone 7, just with an adapter, which is a tradeoff that gets you some great other features like the new camera system.[1] The bundled wired headphones and any wireless headphones don't require an adapter. If you don't like wireless headphones, you don't have to use them.
> I would seriously move off iOS if I was making music with it.
Why? That comment seems unsupported by your reaction to this headphone jack change.
[1] https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczkowski/inside-iphone-7-why-...
It's a shame they're discontinuing the line, the build quality of this phone is immensely good, it shows me the quality Android phones _should_ have.
Is iOS used as a platform in professional music making? Is that really a thing?
Check out the list of compatible apps on their website, companies like Ableton, Korg, Yamaha, and countless indie devs take this seriously, and really, we all should.
Courage is running into a burning building to save a family. Courage is going to war for your country knowing you might die. Courage is being more afraid than you've ever been in your life and doing the right thing anyway.
To call throwing an age-old standard into the toilet while shoving vendor lock-in down people's throats "courage" is offensive. Shame on Apple.
Based on my experience (which is worth next to nothing), people don't really care about the thickness of their phone. Most people I know end up throwing it in a hideous Otterbox (or similarly gigantic case) anyway. Who's going to notice an extra millimeter matter then?
If you shell out for the AirPods, you can.
Though I definitely agree - I'm pretty sad to see the headphone jack go.
Which will need charging themselves.
Now I have to choose between being concerned about either my phone's battery or my headphones' battery.
Besides, you can charge your phone and your AirPods at the same time, you just need to have two outlets (or two USB ports) and two cables.
Can you explain this?
I'm also worried about the potential for consumer-hostile DRM on audio playback, especially since it looks like they're introducing their own proprietary wireless protocol.
Or just break open the phone and solder a fucking 3.5mm jack into it.
> I would seriously move off iOS
Memories of all the feature phones I had with adaptors tells me they will break all the damn time. Kids have a happy habit of losing small things - adaptors and bluetooth earbuds.
So that's 3 sales lost here - not buying 7's for the kids. They can put up with the iPhones they have, buy themselves (slim chance), or switch to Android. That's my popularity shot for a few days.
That didn't even occur to me! Holy crap, what a design flaw. I'm glad I'm not an iUser today
This is a complete deal breaker for me. I was confident that apple was going to unveil two models, one which had the headphone jack and one which didn't.
Lenovo at least had the good sense to offer at least one model that still had the headphone jack, as they were introducing a similar model which did not.
I'm so disappointed in apple.
Many people have the micro usb cable for charging, and iPhone users use the lightning charger.
Only issue for me is you can't listen to music via headphone and charge at the same time.
Audio latency used to be a HUGE advantage for IOS vs Android. It was their biggest USP in my opinion. Android has been improving but it's still not there yet. If the next ipad has this it will be the end for musicians using IOS.
This is huge.
Apple doesn't want everyone to switch to lightning. They are banking that bluetooth will eventually be the 90% even 99% standard among consumers. I tend to agree.
This seems backwards. Only reason to buy Apple phones is the superior hardware. As far as the OS goes, Android (and the google services backing it... especially Google Now) have completely surpassed it and continue to increase the gap every day. Increasingly, Google is treating the mobile devices as just a conduit to access their cloud services (including their far superior machine intelligence backing it). While Apple continues to treat the iPhone as a beautiful device with mediocre cloud services backing the hardware.
Don't believe me? Imagine if you Google stopped creating apps for the iPhone. How big a catastrophe would that be for Apple management? Now imagine Apple ceased to exist. Would the Android ecosystem be affected in any way?
For example, I rooted my phone to find out if any wake locks were draining my battery. It didn't show anything. Looked at the battery usage screen, it didn't show the culprit. Eventually I had to do a science experiment on my phone and disable all background processing and then switch on apps one by one to see the battery life change.
I finally found it was my carrier's generic usage app that was killing my battery. The app was installed from the app store on my unlocked device, so it wasn't carrier pre-installed crapware that caused this.
On iOS, I've never had to do this because app developers are not able to drain your battery like that.
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Camera software speed and quality has never been matched for me on iOS. Maybe motorola gets to iOS's camera speed. The software also makes getting good photos a lot easier with things like detecting your hand shake with the accelerometer and taking the photo when you're still in the moment.
Siri has better locked screen and in car voice interaction for me compared to android when I tried with android OS 5
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If google disappeared, you would basically get china and other companies would fill in the gap.
The series of caveats there tells a tale of it's own. Google Now is so far ahead of Siri, there's simply no comparison... starting with the basic magic of automatic contextual updates and notifications without even asking ("Your flight has been delayed by 30 minutes", "Heavy traffic on 101. Leave in 10 minutes to reach your meeting on time" etc.)
Add to that almost perfect voice recognition with any accents in the world, automatic language recognition etc and all that backed up by Google search engine. Sorry, calling out Siri as a Apple's superior cloud service is simply not credible at this point.
https://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how-to-see-whats-kil...
The incoherence of that response (China is not a company) should be a clue.
While this is a usage pattern familiar to HN'ers the average user doesn't care too much about cloud services.
Average users care more about things like camera, battery, music, playing games and overall ease of use.
The only critical Google service for iPhone users is search (and maybe Youtube). Both are available from the browser.
Umm don't know which world you're living in but Google Now/Search, Photos, Maps/Waze, Youtube, Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, Drive.. etc. Pretty much every smartphone in the world is running one or more of those services on a daily basis.
Care to name one Apple cloud service that's so indispensable to that many users? Or perhaps, even just to iOS users?
I don't think the disappearance of Youtube app in it's current form would make any difference.