Buzzfeed: Inside iPhone 7: Why Apple Killed The Headphone Jack

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Jeffrey

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/johnpaczko...adphone-jack?utm_term=.fwjmoX1o5L#.hunDmvomEZ

For Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, the iPhone’s 3.5-millimeter audio jack has felt something like the last months of an ill-fated if amicable relationship: familiar and comfortable, but ultimately an impediment to a better life ahead. “We’ve got this 50-year-old connector — just a hole filled with air — and it’s just sitting there taking up space, really valuable space,” he says.

...

“It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” Riccio says. “It was fighting for space with camera technologies and processors and battery life. And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s crazy to keep it around.”


A tentpole feature of the new iPhones are improved camera systems that are larger than the cameras in the devices that preceded them. The iPhone 7 now has the optical image stabilization feature previously reserved for its larger Plus siblings. And the iPhone 7 Plus has two complete camera systems side by side — one with a fixed wide-angle lens, the other with a 2x zoom telephoto lens. At the top of both devices is something called the “driver ledge” — a small printed circuit board that drives the iPhone’s display and its backlight. Historically, Apple placed it there to accommodate improvements in battery capacity, where it was out of the way. But according to Riccio, the driver ledge interfered with the iPhone 7 line’s new larger camera systems, so Apple moved the ledge lower in both devices. But there, it interfered with other components, particularly the audio jack.
So the company’s engineers tried removing the jack.
In doing so, they discovered a few things. First, it was easier to install the “Taptic Engine” that drives the iPhone 7’s new pressure-sensitive home button, which, like the trackpads on Apple’s latest MacBook, uses vibrating haptic sensations to simulate the feeling of a click — without actually clicking. (Did we mention that Apple killed the physical home button too?) Taptic Engine vibrations will also be used to deliver feeling specific notifications — hitting the end of a scrolled page, for example. And because Apple has given developers an API for it, an awful lot of other stuff as well — particularly in games.

...

Second, there was an unforeseen opportunity to increase battery life. So the battery in the iPhone 7 is 14% bigger than the one in its predecessor, and in the iPhone 7 Plus, it’s 5% bigger. In terms of real-world performance gains, that’s about an additional two hours and one hour, respectively. Not bad.
Even better, removing the audio jack also eliminated a key point of ingress that Riccio says helped the new iPhone finally meet the IP7 water resistance spec Apple has been after for years (resistant when immersed under 1 meter of water for 30 minutes).

...

Schiller thinks it’s a silly argument. “The idea that there’s some ulterior motive behind this move, or that it will usher in some new form of content management, it simply isn’t true,” he says. “We are removing the audio jack because we have developed a better way to deliver audio. It has nothing to do with content management or DRM — that’s pure, paranoid conspiracy theory.”

...

“Remember, we’ve been through this many times before,” says Schiller. “We got rid of parallel ports, the serial bus, floppy drives, physical keyboards on phones — do you miss the physical keyboards on your phone? … At some point — some point soon, I think — we’re all going to look back at the furor over the headphone jack and wonder what the big deal was.”


A lot more in the piece pimping those airpods and more.

TLDR: Headphone jack was removed for new camera stuff, haptic feedback home button, remaining space was filled with a bit more battery. Don't expect any flagship iphone to have a headphone jack ever again. Oh god please buy Airpods.
 
He makes some good points. I really don't get the "outrage" over its removal. The only good argument I've heard is that you can't charge and listen at the same time but I'm sure there will be adapters for that. When you are buying a $900 phone I don't get the opposition of buying a $20 adapter.
 
pr machine in full effect here

think i'll be keeping my 6 plus for a while now, maybe until the 6s actually gets a decent price drop
 
They basically removed something I use everyday and replaced it with shit I don't care about. Good job. Gonna have to start looking into Android I guess. And before anyone asks, listening to my headphones while my phone is charging is something I do a lot.
 
The problem with the comparison to other removals is that there isn't a better standard. This isn't something that was naturally on its way out.

Bluetooth headphones are worse in every single way except for lack-of-cable.
 
*buys a headphone company*
*kills industry headphone standard*

This is the only conspiracy theory I kinda believe. I know it was mostly for Beats Music but some part of me has a feeling Tim Cook was worried about profits.
 
“We do understand that this might be a difficult transition for some people who love their wired headphones,” says Schiller. “But the transition is inevitable. You’ve got to do it at some point. Sooner or later the headphone jack is going away. There are just too many reasons aligned against it sticking around any longer. There’s a little bit of pain in every transition, but we can’t let that stop us from making it. If we did, we’d never make any progress at all. The question we ask ourselves when making transitions like these is, have we done all the right things to mitigate it and to explain it and to make what’s on the other side so good that everyone is happy with the change? We think we’ve done that.”
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Honestly though, this situation wouldn't be nearly as ridiculous if they actually packaged the phones with the Bluetooth ones in addition to the adapter instead of selling them at that absurd price.

It'd still be bad. Just not AS bad.
 
Just imagine if Samsung did this on the Galaxy line, and Apple kept the headphone jack.

Stupid decision to force proprietary.
 
Honestly though, this situation wouldn't be nearly as ridiculous if they actually packaged the phones with the Bluetooth ones in addition to the adapter instead of selling them at that absurd price.

That would likely defeat the entire purpose of them removing the headphone jack in the first place.
 
Just imagine if Samsung did this on the Galaxy line, and Apple kept the headphone jack.

Stupid decision to force proprietary.

No one would bat an eye. Just like no one has said next to anything about their phones literally exploding.
 
My Sony Xperia Z3C is already smaller, have two days worth of battery life, is water resistant, all while having a headphone jack. And came out years ago.

I don't understand his points.
 
No one would bat an eye. Just like no one has said next to anything about their phones literally exploding.

Uhhh, I think people are actually pretty perturbed about that. And Moto actually removed the headphone jack from one of their latest phones, and people were pretty pissed.

Stupid decisions are stupid decisions regardless of who made them.
 
Even better, removing the audio jack also eliminated a key point of ingress that Riccio says helped the new iPhone finally meet the IP7 water resistance spec Apple has been after for years (resistant when immersed under 1 meter of water for 30 minutes).

...

Schiller thinks it’s a silly argument. “The idea that there’s some ulterior motive behind this move, or that it will usher in some new form of content management, it simply isn’t true,” he says. “We are removing the audio jack because we have developed a better way to deliver audio. It has nothing to do with content management or DRM — that’s pure, paranoid conspiracy theory.”

...

“Remember, we’ve been through this many times before,” says Schiller. “We got rid of parallel ports, the serial bus, floppy drives, physical keyboards on phones — do you miss the physical keyboards on your phone? … At some point — some point soon, I think — we’re all going to look back at the furor over the headphone jack and wonder what the big deal was.”


Oh FUCK YOU.
the sad shit is that people will eat this shit up. Jesus fucking Christ will people eat this shit up. Everyone gonna have poopy mouths and think they're eating chocolate.

1. There are already water resistant phones WITH headphone jacks.
2. DRM and Content management may or may not be an issue, but don't act like you aren't trying to force people into buying $250 + over-expensive-for-what-you-get wireless beats, air-pods, and new adapters (look at the fucking macbook. $80 dongle? FFS)
3. The reason those other things (for the most part) were ditched was because of convenience of sale or of use. Making older tech harder to use via a dongle and making it less convenient so you can't charge and listen is 100% forced obsolescence. Floppies stopped being prevalent because higher capacity storage that was easier to deal with came along.

FFS...


fuck
 
Absolute stupidity. Good to see them getting roasted over this. Apple shouldn't be forever immune to real criticism.

It's a cynical and money-grubbing move. Just be up-front about it. The PR spin to justify the unneeded is really unattractive.
 
People are being deliberately obtuse in regards to this.

Oh wait, I mean "courage". Lol, I saw that on the Internet and I said it again.
 
Apple has probably done a good deal of market research on this, and I'm hoping they would discuss it.

They probably know usage statistics on the headphone jack, and they probably know how many users would be likely to abandon any phone that didn't have a headphone jack. While they want to claim they're courageous innovators, I'm sure that at the end of the day this was a fairly calculated business decision. According to their triangulation, the number of people they'll lose is worth pushing new standards forward.
 
The problem with removing it is, Bluetooth is yet another standard that just about 20+ years in the making too so unless a new standard is being created, there is no such thing progress, especially if that progress doesn't allow you to charge your phone and listen at the same time.

They talk about the removal as if they pushed us forward when they didn't completely commit to really moving us forward. It's so stupid.
 
I'm okay with it. It's time for progress.

See, shit like this is what i was saying a few posts back.

What progress? Stuff we can already do? Forcing a still valid, low cost, and highly convenience standard away? Its like you didn't even think this through

What is progressive about a dumb dongle?
 
I'm actually surprised Apple included the dongle. I expected it to be sold separately for $15.
 
Quit worrying about the jack, it had to go. Start worrying about lightening and proprietary bullshit. USB is a fine successor.
 
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