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0 pointsBahamut8y ago0 comments

Disclaimer: I work for Apple, but for less than a year and not for a consumer product.

I always suspected it was to push headphone tech further to a long term better experience - it has been a ripe target for the trend of eliminating the pains of wires. This trend has already dominated video games controllers, and is quite present with computers as well. Headphones are a logical target long overdue for improvement - the hassle of wires, and even a physical hazard in some edge cases (I have my own tale) should in an ideal situation be something eliminated.

I think the theory that it was done so Apple could sell more bluetooth headphones is not how the company thinks - headphone accessory sales are a drop in the bucket financially. I think the decision to remove the port was made beforehand, and the company then invested in creating more bluetooth headphones as a response to that decision, not to drive it.

Of course, I could be wrong, but the emotional conclusion that I’ve seen in multiple places doesn’t seem to have a compelling explanation as to why the headphone jack was removed. The company prioritizes UX in general and acts in response to the implications of the UX, not chase money and think of the UX second.

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KingMob8y ago

In the past, when Apple removed certain hardware (floppies, CD drives) early, there was a clearly superior successor ready, and they were just ahead of the curve.

But the headphone jack didn't have a clearly superior successor, and from what I hear, still doesn't. The overall UX (and sound quality) of Bluetooth is worse, not better; it's tough to beat the utter simplicity of plugging in a headphone jack.

The only thing gained is no wires (and maybe some easier water-proofing, not sure). This is such a sideways move, it always struck me as a sign that Apple couldn't maintain Jobs's vision without him.

umanwizard8y ago

Not discounting your experience, just giving another data point: I dramatically prefer the experience of AirPods to any other in-ear headphones I’ve used. I’m not enough of an audiophile to notice the quality difference, and I love the comfort of not having an annoying wire.

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imtringued8y ago

Then maybe they should first start by making it good enough before forcing it onto other people?

Right now bluetooth is not an obvious improvement over wired headphones. You have lower audio quality and significant latency unless you spend a significant amount of money, time and have the right technical knowledge to even be able to choose a proper headphone.

These problems don't even exist for wired headphones. Even if you buy the crappiest wired headphone off alibaba you won't find headphones with 500ms latency like your average bluetooth headphone has.

Do you really think the average users know what an "aptX" is and that there are several versions of those of which only the "aptX low latency" version is worth using?

Then on top of that your bluetooth adapter needs to support that same version of aptX too.

Apple may compensate for the delay by delaying video too but for that's merely a hack. It just shows that bluetooth adds more problems that need to be worked around.

It's not an incremental improvement over wired heaphones, it's merely a tradeoff and for me the tradeoff is not worth it.

cm21878y ago

I personally feel that having to deal with batteries to charge all the time is way more of a hassle than cables.

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