[jancsika]

Sure, with your 3.0+ devices you never need to think about speed, as you say.

But how often do you really need to never think about speed?

Apple is an enormous company with the best engineers in the business. So I trust they are delivering exactly what we never need in this case.

[Arainach]

Presumably the same product team that decided we didn't need a headphone jack, as we could just buy more overpriced and profitable dongles and cables.

If this was any other company they would be lambasted. Budget Android phones do USB-C 3.0 and have for years.

[turquoisevar]

> If this was any other company they would be lambasted.

I’m sorry, are we still talking about Apple here?

The very same Apple that gets lambasted no matter what they do because it makes for great clickbait and fuel for fandroids?

They very same Apple that got lambasted for being the first to fully embrace USB-C on their 12” MacBook back in 2015 and now is being lambasted for being the last to adopt USB-C on their phone lineup.

I shudder to think what other companies go through if your definition’s threshold for being “lambasted” is so high.

[pmx]

> Presumably the same product team that decided we didn't need a headphone jack, as we could just buy more overpriced and profitable dongles and cables.

They were right. I haven't missed the headphone jack once. Bluetooth earphones are cheap and easy to come by, if you want premium sound you can buy an expensive set. The headphone jack was outdated and not needed. If you REALLY want a wired set, a dongle is <£10 from apple or <£5 from amazon. This is a stupid complaint.

[sleepybrett]

People with crazy ass multi-hundred (or thousand) dollar headphones complaining about a fucking $8 dongle will never cease to amuse me.

I actually wonder if they wanted to get rid of the headphone jack not because of the space it took up (which is significant for the number of connections) but for help with 'water-proofing'.

I also feel like one of the main reasons for at least the design of the lightning connector was multi-faceted. At the time their obvious other choice would have been micro usb B, which is a terrible connector that fails often, especially in cases where it is heavily used. It would have been a support nightmare for them. The design of lightning being a thicker 'core' type connector rather than the flimsy core of a micro usb B or even usb C probably made it easier to make water resistant and cut down on hardware support concerning the connector. I know that on the few occasions when I was having problems with cable connections to an ipad or iphone i'd grab a pair of tweezers and find some lint in the female side of the connetor.

[Arainach]

A dongle that I have to carry everywhere, that is trivial to lose, and that blocks charging my device unless I buy an even more expensive and awkwardly shaped/sized dongle - a real winner.

[turquoisevar]

Great hypothetical, now I’m wondering what your real life experience is like.

[brokenmachine]

My Samsung S10 5G has a headphone jack and is waterproof.

There is no way in hell my next phone won't have a headphone jack either.

Bluetooth is a low audio quality latency filled shitshow, not to mention two more things to charge, and dongles are crap.

[turquoisevar]

I guess that’ll be your last Samsung then, considering they too dropped the headphone jack after mocking Apple for doing so.

[brokenmachine]

Unfortunately yes, it will be.

I like Samsung hardware but I can't go without the headphone jack.

I like large phones, so I'll probably end up with an Asus ROG phone, but they're slightly chunkier than I'd like, and I'm not really a fan of the "gaming" aesthetic.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

> The headphone jack was outdated and not needed.

By you. People with existing setups and sometimes expensive headphones would disagree. And the whole donglemania is ridiculous - especially models with only Thunderbolt ports are practically unusable without a hub.

[paulmd]

> especially models with only Thunderbolt ports are practically unusable without a hub.

"come on now, USB-C is the future, why won't apple implement it!?"

"no, not like that"

[sleepybrett]

It's an 8 dollar dongle. Get over it already.

[freedude]

I don't have to charge my wired headphones. They just work.

[sleepybrett]

The dongle is $8. I bought one attached it to my headphones with a little length of silicone band and never thought about it again.

[paulmd]

> Budget Android phones do USB-C 3.0 and have for years.

Some do. Not every one, certainly, if that was your implication.

[hdjjhhvvhga]

It's difficult to detect sarcasm these day so please excuse me if I misunderstood your comment. But Apple is notorious for extorting disproportionate money for features that cost much less in competing products, such as memory and disk storage, and also for straight anti-customer behavior such as making most key parts irreplaceable by users so they have to stick with whatever specs they got. The only thing "I trust Apple with" is that they do their best to maximize profits.

[lazide]

The cope is amazing.

[93po]

While accurate there’s probably a nicer and more productive way to say this

[lazide]

Sometimes the flavor is so strong and original, all that one can do is burst out in amazement. I am merely human, after all.

[saghm]

> But how often do you really need to never think about speed?

I've read this a few times and I can't figure out what this is supposed to mean. What are you trying to ask here?

[jancsika]

It was a troll.

Suppose I've already sunk my money into a "special" thing and find out it lacks some bog standard goodness. Perhaps it was even designed to lack this goodness. I might reflexively ask, "Does anyone actually need that goodness?" in a desperate attempt to save face and prevent myself from feeling like a goober.

Above, my face-saving sentence was written to seem so reflexive and thoughtless that the query ends up sounding absurd. I mean, technically, it is at least coherent to ask whether the time saved by not having to deal with a particular class of problems is ever necessary, in any sense from remaining employed to the survival of the human species. In any case, it's also a red herring.

Above, someone called this face-saving tactic a "cope" which I've never heard but now love. :)

[seanmcdirmid]

I haven't used a USB/lighting cable for data transfer for a very very long time. Maybe 2011? It has been at least 10 years.