[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.)