[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.)