[kj01a]

>willing to bet that within a decade you HAPPILY buy a phone without a headphone jack

Are you saying that because you think there will be a better alternative to the 3.5mm jack a decade from now? What does that have to do with what Apple is doing now?

[syntheticnature]

I figure it's being said (as someone who both agrees with the statement and is irritated at headphone jack removal) be cause the trend has tilted that way. Apple has merely joined other manufacturers in demonstrating that headphone jack users are actually a niche market.

I suppose I realized this when I saw folks at a former employer's manufacturing department all buying $100 BT headphones... because that meant they could set their phone down and not worry about yanking it off the lab bench.

[Can_Not]

> because that meant they could set their phone down

Now instead they have to worry about:

- charging stations

- how the headphones identify themselves to the computer

- skype and/or Windows arbitrarily refusing to acknowledge them as headphones during calls

- DRM

- more than 20$ on average price increase

- Security and privacy

[syntheticnature]

They took the tradeoff. Mind you, a number of these things Did Not Matter to them -- they weren't pairing them with the computers, just their phones. I said manufacturing -- they had a bunch of old 'beater' desktops that were over five years old for running device programmers and the like.

It would likely have taken me a full workday to get them up to speed on any security/privacy issues.

As for DRM, not only do I think they wouldn't care so long as their music played, but I'm with everyone who sees no difference between a remote DAC and a local one. (Heck, these folks in manufacturing could easily have disassembled the headphones and put in an analog output at the appropriate point, they had the relevant rework skills -- and that would not trip any phone-internal tamper sensors.)

[melling]

There's already an alternative: USB-C

Apple wasn't the first company to ditch it, or even the second...

http://www.androidcentral.com/moto-z-doesnt-have-headphone-j...

[zingmars]

That's not really a better alternative, now is it.

Now your headphones must come with all the electronics required for USB-C and their own seperate DACs. This means they're going to be slightly more expensive without any actual improvement over your 3.5mm headphones. Not to mention all of those threats of DRM and whatnot looming around. So with that in mind, why would I possibly want to make the move to USB-C?

[SysArchitect]

Why are there threats of DRM with the DAC moved to the cable instead of the DAC sitting inside the phone (where arguably it has more control over the DAC than if it is sitting in-line on a cable)?

[u02sgb]

Because you remove the "analogue hole" in the DRM scheme of the 3.5mm jack.

[duaneb]

It forgot to improve on the 3.5mm jack!

But thank god I have a thinner phone, I was really having issues sliding it under doors.

[archagon]

Terrible idea. Your USB-C headphones will become obsolete when the next USB standard inevitably comes out. Meanwhile, 3.5mm will still be kicking.

[elicash]

It had to do with the comment I was replying to.