I still can't get over the headphone jack. Apple does have a good record of abandoning technologies at the right time (floppies, CDs, Flash, etc) but the biggest difference is that those technologies were all on the downward slope of their popularity when Apple made the move and all had solid replacements available at the time. The headphone jack is just as popular today as it has ever been and it is still more convenient and dependable than wireless headphones for most people in most situations. Maybe that changes soon or maybe AirPods solve this for iOS users (they by design can't be a universal solution) but I can't help but feel that Apple is jumping the gun on dropping the jack. Although as an iPhone user, I hope I'm wrong.
Side note, I think it is hilarious that Apple can't get the AirPods to ship at the same time as the iPhone. Anyone who buys the new phone on release is going to be stuck with the crappy lightning headphones for at least a month and a half.
Another dongle to loose. Tons of headphones obsoleted. Can't charge while listening. Laggy audio. more batteries in the world. They're ok with a bulge for the camera but not headphones? I work in a lab and a phone with headphones is standard equipment on the commute and work (for at least part of the day).
I would seriously move off iOS if I was making music with it. If only iOS devices were made by other manufacturers... (I know I know....)
> They're ok with a bulge for the camera but not headphones?
This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack.
The other possibility is that the headphone jack makes water resistance that much more difficult. Maybe they think it's worth it?
In addition to the Galaxy being water resistant with a standard audio jack, the watch has a speaker that expels water automatically from the air cavity. That's a brilliant piece of engineering, so one can't help but wonder if the headphone jack preventing water resistance is truly an engineering problem or simply a (ridiculous) business decision.
Personally, I'm going to hold on to the 6s for as long as it's usable and then consider my options.
The funny thing is, they made a huge deal about catering to runners in the watch presentation. In the offseason I run about 20 to 30 miles per week, and I can tell you bluetooth headphones suck for running. They fall out easily as soon as I start sweating. Also, during training season the headphones will run out of juice if I don't remember to plug them in. They also drain the phone's battery - on a 30 minute run that's no problem, but on a 2-hour run that sucks. The best earphones are over the head, light-weight ones I can tuck under my cap whcih keeps them in place.
Oh well, maybe on the 8 they have a change of heart. And if they don't... there's always OpenMoko
Also a runner. My choice for headphones are commodity (<$10) Philips with over-the-ear loops to hold them in place. Because I sweat a lot, they rarely last more than a few months, so cheap matters. (I have nicer Bose headphones for non-running.) Bluetooth phones that cost 5x as much? out of the question.
Edit: In previous version I accidentally said Samsung Headphones.
Personally, I could never run with corded headphones again. I've used Motorola S8/S9 forever. Get last gen for $30-40, and they've held up to years of sweat.
I agree, I used to go through a few pairs of cheap headphones a month when marathon training, but once I stopped buying the $10 variety (wired and bluetooth, you can get OK ones on Amazon for $20) and got closer to the $100 range, I've had those for more than a year. Definitely a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get what you pay for.
I've probably spent a hundred bucks on fifteen pairs of Philips over the years. And they're cheap enough that I can keep a pair in my bag, a pair in my house, and a pair in my car. Most of my listening is podcasts. They sound fine for that.
In contrast, I only have one pair of noise canceling Bose headphones which cost 3x as much as all the Philips put together. They sound great and are wonderful for the train to work, but they were also very expensive and I don't run with them.
They meant that you said your headphones don't last long and it could be because they were so cheap in the first place (not saying I agree or disagree without knowing which model you mean)
Likewise, I've spent ~$100 on three sets of the Motorola Bluetooth headphones I mentioned, and still haven't taken the last one out of the shrinkwrap. The other two are going strong after years of use.
Headphones are a very personal product, from fit to use case, which explains why many people are having strong reactions here. All we each have are anecdotes. Meanwhile, design and tech march on.
Based on overwhelming sales of some high end active-wear Bluetooth headphones eg Beoplay H5 it's clear that not everyone aligns with your experiences/choices.
> Because I sweat a lot, they rarely last more than a few months
I find it's the wire that goes first, probably from all the twisting and tangling that happens day to day. At 5x the cost I could see wireless ones being cheaper, long term.
I still wouldn't want to muck about with batteries, etc though.
It's a really good idea to invest in headphones that have a detachable cable, if you are rough with them at all(basically any travel or commute situation). Then the point of failure becomes the internal connection, which mostly rests on build quality and how much you drop it.
Have you ever seen any earphones (IEMs) with detachable cables? I could see them being produced with short cables to the Y split and then plugging in another cable to the phone.
This would be perfect for me - headphone cables and wheelchair wheels do not mix.
I've had wires go on me as well, but for me it's more typically the housing for the earbuds themselves - they come apart - or the electronics inside - they just stop working.
Also a runner. When you are saying headphones you are refering to earphones which always fall of for me aswell, actual headphones have never been an issue for me though. Loving my $25 cheap chinese bluetooth headphones. And no I don't need to have great sound quality when i run due to heavy breathing anyway.
I vastly prefer bluetooth for working out, but I am incredibly sceptic about the sound quality from that lightning adapter.
Yea, Sound quality likewise isn't an issue for me when running, but I do sweat much more than the average runner. The loop headphones really work well for me.
I use over-the-head earphones, which can be tightly placed under a hat. No issues of slipping out whatsoever. TBH, they sound tinny and low-quality but like you it's not an issue since the wind and body movement affect the sound anyway, and I know they'll be trashed rather quickly.
On Amazon. But I also wasn't looking very hard, because for music I have proper headphones, and during my commute I prefer not to block both ears in any case. Discovering the existence of wireless stereo earbuds, and whatever sense I have of their price range, was really just a side effect of looking for something I could stick in one ear and play podcasts through.
Millions of dollars in airpod sales. It's really as simple as that.
I mean, Apple's justification is that they are being courageous in pushing the world towards their vision of the future, which is wireless. Ignoring, for the moment whether this is a valid vision, how does a courageous move towards this future involve bundling not one, but 2 wired options with the phone?
I'm fairly certain I would have been unhappy with the decision to drop the headphone jack no matter what, but couching it as courage has taken me from unhappiness to screw them.
Pains me to say this but the whole "courage" speech honestly felt like the reality distortion field has gone into meltdown at Apple.
All I wanted was them to tell me what great benefit that space in the case being free brought me, be it more battery, waterproofing, more processing power. But what did I get? I got told they were doing it because they hate wires and it's a courageous thing to do, like I'm supposed to applaud them for that. No solid justification for it at all.
For years I have used my headphones in my iPhone on the way to work then as soon as I get to work I plug them into my laptop.
Now I have a choice of:
- switching over the BT (gonna be fun pairing and unpairing when I arrive and leave work)
- using my same headphones and carrying a dongle having the dongle rattling around my desk during the day, then taking the dongle with me for the trip home
- buying two pairs of headphones with one that ONLY works with the iPhone
> Now I have a choice of: - switching over the BT (gonna be fun pairing and unpairing when I arrive and leave work)
Sounds like you didn't actually watch the video. 1) AirPods don't use Bluetooth. 2) Connecting them is super simple; just hold them close to the device and tap OK. And you only have to do it once per family of devices associated via iCloud.
Do you think airpods will reach millions in sales? Yeah, Apple is high end, but it's also kind of a commodity or generic for a smartphone. The lowest end Apple products sell in way higher volumes than the higher end stuff. Especially since they're not included with any product, I think there's a good chance that the AirPods fall into the same niche as in-ear headphones (which I'm surprised Apple still sells).
At $159, they only need to sell 15000 to reach $2mm in sales.
Unless you thought I meant units. I definitely think millions of units is possible, if Apple continues selling hundreds of millions of iPhones. But it's not just AirPods sales. Apple makes a few dollars with every lightning device that is sold. So essentially, even if those hundreds of millions of iPhone devices don't lead to sales of millions of Airpods, they will lead to sales of 10s of millions of Lightning headphones. Which means tens of millions of free dollars for Apple.
Here's the other thing though. If Apple does not expect to sell millions of Airpods, then the whole "Courage, because the future is wireless" justification falls apart, because if not even 1% of the headphones being sold are Airpods, it's likely the future is not wireless.
I'm always suspicious about harmful effects of all these electromagnetic waves around us, and with Apple forcing everyone to use Bluetooth headphones, I'm even more concerned.
Researchers have not come to a definite conclusion about how much EM waves can be related to diseases, but they haven't denied it either. And one thing is obvious: long-term exposure to EM radiation cannot be good, no matter how much low-power it is.
Apple (and other Bluetooth headphone companies) are building on a presumption that EM waves are not harmful, and even if they are, lawyers can easily close the case for Apple.
with Apple forcing everyone to use Bluetooth headphones
forcing you by including wired headphones in the box and wired headphone adapters in the box and not even having the bluetooth headphones available at release date? That kind of forcing?
long-term exposure to EM radiation cannot be good, no matter how much low-power it is.
You realise that wires radiate E/M as well, right? And that light is 'electromagnetic waves'? and that radiant heat is too?
I have studied various articles on this issue. Your claim that light and heat are EM waves as well, doesn't mean that they're dangerous, cause we've been under their effect for millions of years and nothing happened (or we got used to it). But artificial sources of radiation are much more powerful and unfortunately, they mostly use directional antenna, as opposed to omnidirectional sunlight.
Yes, Apple has included those wired headphones, too. But don't forget that the focus henceforth is on "wireless" headphones, about which I wrote my concerns.
You can ignore the facts and go on and just "trust" these companies, or you can read for yourself and realize that not every new technology is inherently good for your health.
If you're worried about the health effects of bluetooth headphones, then presumably you're also worried about the signals sent/received by the mobile phones themselves.
The power in the signal between the phone and the nearby base-station/cell-tower is going to be orders of magnitude larger than between the phone and any bluetooth headset.
I don't think anyone is arguing that using bluetooth headphones is 'good for your health', just that it's 'not bad for your health'. I'm not aware of any mainstream studies that have shown adverse effects from exposure to 'normal' levels of radio waves of the type produced by consumer products. I am open to being proven wrong though!
As someone who is working to overcome a long-term fatigue/auto-immune illness and therefore has to be somewhat cautious about these things...
I often listen to audio on my iPhone through wired headphones as I'm going to sleep (either relaxing ambient sounds, or podcasts).
When I do this, I put the iPhone on Airplane Mode to disable all radio transmissions. I also keep any other radio transmitting devices well clear of the bed (this is commonly recommended for people who have impaired sleep, which I do).
On any occasion when I neglect to enable Airplane Mode before falling asleep, I awake feeling significantly less refreshed in the morning (or even awake in the early hours of the morning feeling terrible).
Given this, the prospect of having to switch to Bluetooth headphones while I sleep is at least somewhat unappealing. Bluetooth may not be as powerful and disruptive to brain waves as cellphone transmissions, but when sleep is already impaired, you want to avoid anything at all that will make it any harder than it already is.
So, I'll be sticking with wired headphones and keeping all transmissions turned off when I sleep.
I'm not aware of any mainstream studies that have shown adverse effects from exposure to 'normal' levels of radio waves of the type produced by consumer products. I am open to being proven wrong though!
Studies of these kinds of effects are notoriously hard to do accurately, as they usually study a random sample of "average" people, but don't/can't take into account increased sensitivities of people who fall outside the norm due to illness or other factors.
Anecdotal evidence is often sneered at by those who pride themselves on being only persuaded by "data" and "evidence". But those of us who fall outside the populations represented by the samples usually included in mainstream studies learn the hard way that anecdotal evidence is the only way for us to figure out what is good or bad for our day-to-day wellbeing.
I think you aren't helped by the studies that have been done on people who have self-diagnosed 'hyper-sensitivity', that have shown that they can't reliably detect EMFs.
This leads people to think that this means that no-one can be effected, whereas it could be that the self-diagnosed simply have a large false-positive (a high-proportion of people that while believing to, do not have any hypersensitivity).
It also doesn't help that there have been no proposed mechanism by which EMF could act on the CNS/body. It also doesn't help that usually the signals complained about are orders of magnitudes smaller to other signals that people might just not be aware of/think about, like TV/Radio transmissions.
You're right that it's not very easy being in the fringes, here's hoping you get better.
Before answering further, please ask yourself what's more important to you: feeling "right" about something on which you have a pre-determined belief, or listening to and fully considering the experiences of someone who has a strong personal incentive to understand this issue more thoroughly than most people do.
I haven't diagnosed myself with "EMF hypersensitivity", or hypersensitivity to anything else (I'm not a voluntary gluten-avoider, or heavy consumer of organic kale or chia seeds or any other faddish "superfoods").
I'm surrounded by EMF all day from the iPhone in my pocket, the Wi-Fi enabled laptop on my lap, and the Bluetooth sound system in my car, not to mention all the incidental EMF that you mention. And I don't have any belief that any of it is a major problem, any more than the full-gluten bread and pasta I eat, the red meat I enjoy, or the red wine and beer I drink - all in moderation of course.
Over the 10+ years I've been dealing with this illness, I've tried living with and without all of these and many other things, and have developed a very good sense of what my body tolerates well and what it doesn't.
One thing I know very well is that my sleep is of lower quality when I have a transmitting cellphone right beside my head all night.
And whilst I don't need lab studies to convince myself, for your benefit I can point to some studies [1] and a perfectly plausible mechanism for why this is the case, which is that the phone transmissions alter brain waves (i.e., Alpha, Beta, Theta, Delta), which play a significant role in sleep quality. (Speaking of which, I've personally had good success improving my sleep by entraining my brainwaves through the use of binaural beats [2] – indeed this is one of the very reasons I use the headphones while sleeping in the first place.)
Whether this will also be the case with Bluetooth, I don't know - I'm open-minded either way. As I've always done, at some point I'll experiment and go with what enables me to sleep and feel my best. But in the short term I'll stick with what has been working well for me up till now.
You're right that it's not very easy being in the fringes, here's hoping you get better.
Made all the more difficult when your conversations on the topic so often tend towards patronising misappropriations of science to dismiss your experiences.
But for what it's worth, my health (and sleep) is the best it's been in at least 5 years, and continuing to improve at an increasing rate, thanks.
My apologies if my reply came across as patronising/dismissive, it wasn't my intent.
I wasn't trying to lump you into the group of people self-diagnosed with 'EM hypersensitivity', but explain why some people find it hard to believe when people profess to having issues with mobile phones/wifi etc. If there are a vocal majority of people who make claims that can't be backed up, the minority of people who have valid claims will suffer.
My original comment back up the chain was to a comment that looked logically inconsistent regarding bluetooth power output vs. a mobile phone overall. Yours was perfectly reasonable.
I had read about that mobile-phone/brainwave study before, and I'm sure that given time we'll understand more about how EMFs do interact (however subtly) with the body. It is worth noting that I think bluetooth power output is many orders of magnitudes lower than having your phone communicating with a tower.
Lastly, have you looked into getting a femtocell for your flat/house? Could help reduce the power output of your phone overall when you're at home.
The whole issue is very complex, that's for sure. The extent to which these kinds of "illnesses" or "sensitivities", in myself or others, are "all in the mind" or "imaginary" is something I've considered and researched very heavily, and found it to be applicable to a significant degree.
But to someone who is in distress/pain/fatigue, the retort - whether from a doctor, a well-intentioned layperson or an insensitive asshole - that "it's all in your mind" or a "placebo/nocebo", is unhelpful and simplistic, particularly if you accept that the mind and body are all one entity anyway.
And then there is the reality, that you acknowledge, that certain effects are too subtle to be observed with current measurement technologies and diagnostic methods, inevitably leading to both false positives and false negatives.
In my case, the key to getting well has been to address all aspects, including diet, environment, and mind/emotions - the latter of which has had the most significant effect. Which puts me in a position to say "yes, in fact it probably really is the placebo effect, and I've used it to recover from having really terrible health to having great health", to which the next standard response from curmudgeonly skeptics is "the placebo effect doesn't actually change anything about your health, it only makes you feel better" - as if feeling well and being well are independent phenomena.
So, in my case you chuckle to yourself as you realise you're having an unwinnable argument with people who are more interested in feeling smart that achieving any good, and get on with doing what works for you.
As for the "femtocell", thanks for the tip, I hadn't heard of it. But really, as I said in the previous comment, EMF in my environment is really not an issue I worry about, I only take care to avoid having a transmitting phone right next to my head as I sleep - given that good sleep is the most critical factor in overcoming fatigue.
I have a hyperhypersensitive relative, to the point of living with candles in the forest. And I consider her sick, just because like you said, it's hard separating feeling well and being well and there are a lot of serious research indicating that mind and body affect each other in ways we currently can't measure/imagine.
That said, my relative is very one-sided and wont acknowledge the mind part and is firmly convinced that it's only the physical phenomenon of em-waves that creates the physical reactions.
This person is old and uneducated so suggesting experiments is out of the question. However you seem like a scientifically aware person. So my question is, have you tested your ability? You said that you sleep bad when you know that you have a active phone beside your bed. Have you tried getting someone to place the phone in an shoebox either off or on for some weeks? It wouldn't be a double blind study so it wouldn't be super valuable but if that other person is scientifically minded it would be cool if you could get 100% coverage over a month. 10 days on, 10 days bad sleep.
Hey there, thanks for the generous sentiments and well-intentioned question.
That kind of trial isn't something I'd consider to be particularly valuable, as the whole issue of sleep quality and overall health is too complex for it to be possible to isolate one factor like this.
I should point out that at the times when I've experienced poor sleep with the phone on, I haven't been aware of it until I woke up the next day. It's been a case of waking up feeling less well rested, thinking "shit, why do I feel so terrible?", then reaching for my phone that had been sitting on the pillow next to my head and realising that it was turned on. So it is somewhat blind, without being scientific.
I certainly don't claim this experience as clear evidence that "cellphones impair sleep" – it's just one factor among several that seem to make a difference in my case.
It's this complexity that makes these kinds of illnesses so hard to understand and overcome. For me, good, refreshing sleep has been hard to achieve for many years, even with the phone turned off (though mercifully it's getting much better lately, as is my overall health and happiness).
And I know other factors make a difference too - what I ate/drank that day, what time I got to bed/sleep, what kind of exercise/activity I did that day, what my emotional state had been that day. Any one or combination of these factors on any given day could cause worse sleep than normal, so it would be very difficult to isolate the phone being on or off as a standalone factor.
Given all this, I'm perfectly open to the possibility that the phone being on or off is actually not a factor at all.
But given that (a) there is some established evidence that cellphone transmissions alter brain waves, and (b) it takes close enough to zero time/effort to turn off the phone's transmissions before going to sleep (as well as preventing interruptions from any calls or alerts that may happen during the night), I'm content to keep up the practice of keeping transmissions turned off when I sleep.
By the way, if you want a somewhat-scientifically based explanation that may help you understand what's going on with your relative, I'd recommend reading The Biology of Belief by Bruce Lipton. He has some colorful ideas and is easily dismissed by curmudgeonly skeptics, but his approach has solid scientific basis, and it's only by following the principles he recommends that I've been able to start enjoying such good health lately.
That aside, I wish you all the best for your relative's wellbeing.
I carry it in my back pocket turned on without any apparent problems.
I'm not averse to having a cellphone or other transmitting devices close to my body for extended periods of the day; it's having it right next to my head/brain for the entire 8 hours I'm trying to get good quality sleep that I'm more cautious.
Actually, so far all articifial sources of EM are way less powerful (like, way) than the sun which is of course the most prevalent source of radiated light and heat on the surface of this planet.
BTW, it is completely ridiculous to think the Sun is more dangerous than manmade wireless devices.
Plus, how come there weren't reports of people (self)diagnosed with "hyper-sensitivity" to EM waves, before the "wireless age"? By your claim, billions of people who lived before us must have been felt similar effects on their body, but as far as I know, they were fine.
You've studied various articles on this issue, so I'm wondering if you could educate me on the difference between directional and omnidirectional electromagnetic radiation? I wasn't aware there was a difference.
Directional antenna (e.g. satellite dish) broadcasts power in some specific directions (space angles) around the antenna (which are called main-lobes). This is to increase the chance of picking up the signals at the receiver (which is also pointed at the transmitter antenna).
Omnidirectional antenna on the other hand, transmits information in all directions (kind of like a sphere around the antenna). The transmitted power per surface is identical at a certain distance, and for the same input power, power density of an omnidirectional antenna is less than that of a directional one.
Complete omnidirectional antenna doesn't exist in practice, but sources like the Sun and wireless modems (some of them) come close to this definition. BTS towers on the other hand, make use of directivity methods to further cover the area, which is why you see something called SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) on your smartphone's box. In layman's term, SAR measures how much EM power your body-flesh absorbs because of your phone, and as you might guess, the less SAR, the better.
It's the same as the difference between a laser/spotlight and a point source/diffuse light - aka absolutely nothing biologically or physically if the intensities are the same at the point of measurement.
If you mean power, then talk about power, not unidirectional/omnidirectional, unless there is some aspect of the unidirectional emission that you believe, or have evidence to suggest is different from an omnidirectional emission.
I have Omnidirectional antenna's that put out power at about 46 dB, and directional antennas that do likewise at -24 dB.
You could have replied to that effect to begin. HN is a better place when people are charitable in their interpretations of comments and kind in their replies.
Sure - I was genuinely curious. I'm not an RF engineer, and haven't really studied this topic, other than to know my company has Omnidirectional and directional antennas. I was curious as to whether there might be some sort of phase-alignment or other type of behavior that might be happening with the directional antennas, unrelated to the power/duty cycle. My question with regards to education was truly genuine.
I can get a little indignant (I'm working on it, I really am), over the tendency of some HN commenters to exhibit belligerent skepticism in response to people sharing sincerely-considered views or insights regarding yet-to-be-settled matters in health/medicine/science.
In that state, I mistook your comment as being sarcastic, which I now realise it wasn't. Please accept my sincere apologies.
I run and bicycle on alternate days in gross humidity, and I have been using the "resting on the back of the neck" design of the Philips/Nike Flite Sport headphone for ten years:
For bicycling, I am mainly on bike paths but when I have to enter traffic for a bit, I would never, ever ride with any kind of ear bud or closed headphones. The Flite design has gentle pressure pushing the phones against my ears, for a very open design that keeps me aware of what is happening around me. They are very stable, resting on the back of my neck, even while running. I don't remember them every falling off from exercise.
The original Flite headphones were somewhat overpriced, and lasted about a year before they failed. The Chinese clones moved in and the price collapsed. I bought a batch of ten knockoffs for $17 a few years ago, and they still last a year or so.
100%. I've a new little one as well, and dropped my phone within a month of birth. Only I was actually reading it at the time, and yes, it went in the toilet. :)
I was about to recommend these. I have had them for about a year and they are awesome. Reviewers on Amazon seem to have hit/miss reviews with BT connectivity, but given my experience with the iPhone 6s, I wonder if it was something with the other peoples phones and not the headphones.
My connectivity has been fine while running, and always surprises me in the gym. I leave my phone in my gym bag now and range is no problem if I'm super setting exercises and moving to different equipment. These are my first and only pair of BT headphones, and they spoiled me to the point where I'll never go back to wired for exercising.
Thanks for the recommendation. However, pretty much anything over the ear is prone to slipping out for me. Probably has to do with the way my ears are anatomically constructed combined with excessive sweating. Gross, I know, but that's how it is.
Besides, no BT headset would relieve the battery problems.
But now I just wear them all the time, as they're so convenient. Can take calls on them, they have a remote on them, they also just scrunch up in to a pocket. Battery lasts at least all day, for me, anyway.
I've been using the same headphones (Backbeat Fit) for the past year (purchase was based on Wirecutter's review http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/best-wireless-exercise-head...) and absolutely adore them. Solid eight hour battery, even a year after purchase.
The issue I had with these is that they're just not very loud.
And as they don't enclose the ear canal (which could be a good thing for maintaining awareness of ones surroundings) it can leave them ineffective for anything other than very quiet environments.
I'm not a Bluetooth headphone user but how does the Bluetooth affect the iPhone's battery? Also, carrying two cheap sets of headphones around doesn't sound more convenient than just using wired headphones. Is the wire really that much of a problem?
Apple's posted stats are 50 hours audio playback on the 6S over wire, 40 hours audio playback on the 7 over Bluetooth. I can attest that on my 7 the bluetooth can run down the battery a bit, but nowhere near as much as wifi, cellular or screen. How much battery drain you see in practice is probably affected by which headset you're using, what standards and codecs it supports, and if the iPhone can (presumably) burst AAC audio to the headset or not. I really should get around to reading a book on the bluetooth spec to better understand this stuff, though.
What bugs me about the iPhone 7 is that I expected if Apple was removing the headphone jack that they would add USB type C and Bluetooth 5 instead of the same-old lightning port and 4.2. In fact, it looks like there's more than one model of iPhone again, and the 6S' support for both CDMA and GSM appears to be a fluke, or they couldn't do it in time with the new antenna design. Unless I'm reading the iPhone LTE specs page incorrectly...
> carrying two cheap sets of headphones around doesn't sound more convenient than just using wired headphones
I actually carry three: the one I use every day, the spare for that one, and the other one that's more comfortable but lacks the volume for use during my commute.
This is not a big deal if you carry a satchel or purse or backpack or pretty much anything bigger than the pockets in your clothing; all three of them, plus charge cables and manuals, fit in a hard-sided case that's about the size of a can of Skoal, and which very conveniently came with the first Bluetooth earpiece I bought. If I didn't have such a preference for entirely in-ear monaural models, they'd take up a little more space, but only a little.
It's totally doable and not even inconvenient - this latter, in particular, not something which can fairly be said of wires.
LG tones are bulky in the sense that you're essentially wearing an unfashionable necklace, but it has a decent sound quality (for bluetooth), a larger battery, and are in-ear. Might want to check them out down the line.
I haven't tried that one specifically, but neckbands on wireless earbuds have always been too heavy and caused problems in the gym. If you lean back they can fall off you and then pull out the earbuds. So, that large battery isn't all good.
LG tones are bulky in the sense that you're essentially wearing an unfashionable necklace
Hmm. Interesting.
If Apple wants to continue pushing into the jewelry and personal-accessory business, this suggests an obvious direction. They tend to be good at making unfashionable things fashionable.
There were rumors about them being Bluetooth+ - proprietary extensions on top - and since they claimed to eliminate transmission delays, I was curious if the rumors were true.
I've been using the Plantronics Backbeat Fit for this purpose, and have been pleasantly surprised at the level of comfort / sound quality / battery life and the fact that they actually stay in.
I don't have an iPhone, I've not experienced BT drain; I've used my phone for 4-5 hours on BT headsets and maybe seen an extra 5% of battery go down, which is fine since I use less than a 50% charge per day.
The only time I've noticed BT drain was with Android phones. My Nexus 5 was horrible about random things spinning out of control and killing the phones battery. My current iPhone does not seem to have any of the same issues.
I have a Plantronics BackBeat Pro. Not the smallest headphones in the world (make me look like a Cyberman) but the battery lasts for 24h -- I've never had it run out on me. And the audio is great :).
Or riding. I love my Trekz Titanium and would replace them in a heartbeat if something happened to them. My brother bought the Bluez and is ecstatic about them for running in NYC.
For the water resistance, from what I understand there are many ways to waterproof using lots of chemicals that likely don't live up to Apple's environmental standards; perhaps it has to do with this (along with many many other factors).
I really can't understand why anyone would consider it a good trade-off. For a bit extra slimness, sacrifice first a good battery and now the headphone jack? I don't get it. Do a few millimetres in thickness make the slightest bit of difference to anyone? On the other hand probably the single most prevalent complaint people have about modern smartphones is the short battery life. They could easily extend the battery by a good 30% or more by making it as thick as the camera bump. Bam, better battery, no ugly camera hump, space to spare for the 3.5mm jack. But no, let's sacrifice all that for a few fractions of a millimetre -.- I swear I don't get it.
I think it's a great trade off. I use exclusively Bluetooth audio with my phone- the gym, the car, the motorcycle, walking around... If I want great sounding audio I have a stereo and a set of nice cans and speakers at home and in my office.
I'll never use the lighting dongle and I don't use corded buds/headphones now so I will literally not feel a difference in that respect. I only listen to audiobooks, podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify on the phone, so I'm not exactly getting the greatest audio I could be anyway.
However, having increased dust and water protection are something I'm very happy to get if it improves the longevity of the device. I don't really care too much about it getting that much thinner either, but I'm happy with making the phone more physically robust if they can.
> I have a stereo and a set of nice cans and speakers at home and in my office
Moreover, if you want to play a song from your phone through your stereo and want the best sound possible, you'd use a digital connection versus an analog one.
You don't need to remove the headphonr jack to get water resistance. Look at Android phones like the Galaxy S5 (3 years old, water resistance with headphone jack, SD card slot and removable battery.
And what about the battery life? Don't you care about that either? Or do you even recognize it's a critical issue for many people? It just sounds like you're desperately defending an Apple product at all costs.
I don't have any issues with the battery life of my 6S+, and I'm not sure there are any other phones with a substantially better battery life on the market. I know there are a number of Android models that claim 24+ hour battery life, and so does the 6S+. I do know that a number of Android models ship w/ a 3,700 mAh battery while the 6S+ ships with only 2,950 mAh, but the real world usage claims have them in the same ballpark.
My last Android (Samsung Galaxy Nexus) had AWFUL battery life (3,700 mAh battery, btw) and I had a couple of spare batteries with me at all times. My iPhone 6S+ gets me from 0500 to bedtime nearly every night without a charge throughout the day. According to the release notes I should expect another hour of battery life with the iPhone 7, so it's not like they took things away and decreased the battery life.
For me, and that's all that matters in MY buying decisions, better durability and extended battery life at the cost of a port that I have never used on this phone are an unequivocal upgrade.
You're right, I just grabbed one of my old extended batteries it was only 2,100 mAh. Either way I couldn't get 6 hours out of it and it was awful, just not quite as awful as I gave it credit for.
> However, having increased dust and water protection are something I'm very happy to get if it improves the longevity of the device.
Really? How long do you keep your phones for? 2 years, tops? I've never damaged a phone I've owned, let alone rendered one unusable because of either dust or water.
This will have no appreciable effect on the life of the product for me.
"In all my experience, I have never been in any accident... or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort." -- E. J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic
I'm less worried about icebergs and more worried about 3 kids under four, dropping it in a puddle (I live in the Pacific Northwest), and just dropping it in general.
I almost feel that they are at the end of the smartphone innovation. Its going to go similar to PC where people don't need to upgrade every year. Thats why Apple started the whole Subscription model to feel secure. But they need to innovate fast if they want to keep their customer base. I seriously don't need faster iPhone at this point. I am pretty happy with my 6. Slim factor is also not that important anymore.
I can't imagine iPhone line continue this way for next 5-10 years. They need to get into something new fast. VR, AR etc.
Warren Buffett didn't make the decision to make those AAPL share purchases, 2 of his lieutenants did. They have autonomy in managing $9B (or maybe it was a combined $18B? ) portion of Berkshire Hathaway's investment.
I keep hearing people say they're going to make cars next. This sounds completely absurd to me, but I said the same thing about them making watches, and look how that turned out.
The millimeter matters when people are buying the phone, the battery life and other complaints only matter once the person has already paid for the phone, so Apple doesn't care.
People say they want lots of battery life, but slimmer devices consistently outsell thicker ones.
This. When you're in a store, a thin phone feels nice in your hand. It feels new and sleek. You can't judge battery life in the store -- you need to research that separately.
The problem with that hypothesis is that a non-trivial number of iPhone customers (that I anecdotely know) tend to upgrade every few years, not every iteration. If a device is "good enough" to last 2+ years, I'd say Apple is doing a decent enough job at keeping their users happy.
I wonder if there is any scope for increased battery life by disabling animations / GPU or switching to a messaging system different to Obj-C (ie, string lookups)?
That makes it even crazier to me. Wouldn't it be better to not have a bump? The bump on my 6S always makes me nervous when laying it down. I would feel much better about it if it were completely flat rather than the camera of all things sticking out and being the major point of contact with the surface it's on.
I've been using the same leather Apple case for 2 years (6/6S) and it looks like crap at this point, but it's protected my phone from numerous 3-6' drops onto hard surfaces. Without the case, I'm certain the corners would be dented and the screen likely cracked. Definitely a fan of the Apple case!
Seems like a pretty accurate estimation, to me. The phone itself is 7.3mm thick, which means the case would be at least 1+mm on each side. Let's be generous and say the battery's 3mm thick now. Adding another 1mm would be a 33% capacity improvement.
Even if the new iPhone were double the weight, that's still only 376 grams. I don't understand why phones need to be lighter. I myself prefer to use something that feels solid and significant.
I don't get the slimness either. I had no issue with my old N900 being twice as thick as my current android (and I loved physical keyboard on it too).
I guess if they make battery last 30% longer, then you won't be forced to change a phone in 2-3 years when battery starts deteriorating and it is bad for business.
Of course thinness makes a difference. As a result of how thin they are, a sturdy case is a mandatory accessory. Whether it makes a positive difference is another matter altogether.
Not quite waterproof. I tried taking some underwater photos with mine (had a feeling it would be a bad idea) and the camera stopped working. There are also a couple dead spots in the touch screen. However the rest of the phone works.
I had a 20$ water resistant portable tape player in the 90s with many more holes, buttons and mechanical parts than the iPhone and I could dunk it in water no trouble.
The water resistant argument is weak at best. I've had water resistant android phones for years without extra bulk. The problem is solved, all Apple had to do is look.
With that said, I don't actually disagree with taking the headphone jack out. I do think there needs to be a more universal replacement than what they are suggesting though.
It's mostly the fact that it was replaced with the lightning port that gets to me more than anything else. If it was something like USB-C, I'd feel more comfortable since that should be more widely available in time.
> The software platform Apple has built is unrivaled.
Not really true anymore. Android (while drinking Google Koolaid) is an amazing platform. I bet for most users (in terms of apps and basic phone features), there is really no justification to get an iPhone over an Android.
Android (while drinking Google Koolaid) is an amazing platform.
Android's great. You just have to spend an incredible amount of time researching the gigantic ecosystem and all the permutations of hardware and software to figure out which phone actually has the combination of good/responsive enough hardware, support for things you want to do, and comes with a recent version of the OS and magic proprietary Google bits. Then once you've put in the time doing that, the ecosystem has moved on and the phone that would have been correct to buy when you started now isn't and will probably never be updated again, because in the Android world anything that's been on the market more than three weeks is an ancient obsolete toy.
I don't understand why more people don't want to join that ecosystem!
Anecdotal, but my parents (in their late 50s and are not very good with technology) recently went from flip phones to Androids and are already using "OK Google" and a bunch of apps.
Android is approachable and slick now a days (and yes I remember when it was utter crap :) )
Agreed. I was staunchly anti-Android until I was given a Nexus 6P last year and alternated between it and my 6S for a couple of months before finally ditching the 6S altogether. A lot of it comes down to personal preference of course, but I found the Android system to be more intuitive and overall a better experience (by a whisker).
As an ex-Android user and ex-QA guy for some of the Android software: by the "things work as they should (i.e. as you expect them to work), without lags or bugs that can drive you mad".
One of my ex-collegues is now working for one of the android-phone manufactures and by his words the whole process of creating the the new device is basically trying make shit work good enough to pass Google's tests (something is going wrong with hardware? fuck it, we'll fix it in software later), then releasing a bunch of patches, then new phone, because nobody will ever invest their time into makeing the currect device to work with new Google's test. It just won't.
There are no redeeming qualities for Android. From a sloppy, disjointed user experience to an incredibly shady app store, Android doesn't compare to iOS.
That's not to say iOS doesn't have issues. It certainly does, but in terms of comparability it's not even a contest.
Luckily for Android many people really don't care about design.
I spent several months with an iPhone 6 earlier this year, and I came down with the opposite view.
I found Apple's flat UI design to be very awkward, especially things like the decision to use text labels with hidden bounding boxes as "buttons".
Apps tended to have inconsistent UI language, and I frequently found myself surprised by UI interactions that weren't discoverable, like the speed setting in Pocket Casts. It was a flat element - if you tapped it, it would toggle between preset values, but if you long-pressed it, it would pop up a weird slider. But there's no feedback from the UI.
On Android, I find that UI elements are much more likely to provide visual feedback - tapping elements produces an animation, long-pressable elements show proggessive animation, etc. For example, the Pocket Casts app on Android's speed setting actively animates when touched, and pulls up a standard settings dialog with intuitive sliders and checkboxes.
And I can't tell you how many times I would attempt to open an app link only to have it open in a web browser with a giant banner telling me to install the app I already have.
Still feel Apple completely dropped the ball with iOS7, just ambiguous tappable text labels everywhere... now we're at a point where it's been there so long without fixing they just take it for granted that it "works" when it's really poor.
Spent 10 minutes on the phone to my mom once trying to find out how to search in the app store. She couldn't see the search box… turns out it's because 2 months ago she searched for BBC iPlayer and the search text still read "BBC iPlayer" in light grey with a tiny light grey magnifying glass next to it. Doesn't even look like a search box.
I use both every day (work+personal phones), and I come down on the opposite side. My Android does everything I want out of a pocket computer, and the iPhone doesn't. If I don't like the UX of one app, the next one I try will almost certainly be better.
I like multiple app stores, and multiple vendors to buy apps from. I like downloading program source and building an apk from it. I like having a terminal app and a file manager. I like running an ssh server to get files on/off the phone. I like using the phone as an oversized USB flash drive, and not having to install a vendor's software to do it (and not caring which OS I'm booted into at the time).
iOS is pretty, well-thought-out, performant, predictable, and the best ecosystem on it isn't produced by a tarted-up advertising firm. It has a lot to recommend it...but I'll still take the tangled nest of features over the carefully pruned garden, because I don't always agree with the decisions of the gardener, and I like to have other options.
> My Android does everything I want out of a pocket computer, and the iPhone doesn't.
That's very reasonable. Conversely, my iPhone does everything I want out of a pocket phone, and the Androids I've tried have not.
A sysadmin buddy of mine thinks it's awesome that, when a process spins out of control and pegs his phone's CPU, he can drop right into a root shell and kill it from top. I think it's awesome that in five years and two iPhone models, that's not something I've ever needed to think about doing. Different strokes.
If what you are looking for is a pocket phone, then neither Android nor iPhones are catering to you, as phone functionality are an increasing small subset of the functionalities being worked on or improved on smartphones. People who seek out pocket phones are usually looking at some recent generation feature phones, which despite being a niche market, have been improving technologically and have gotten pretty nice.
In that case I suppose I am very fortunate that my smartphone satisfies my requirements so well!
("Phone" is perhaps an oversimplification of those. But "pocket effective and reliable communication and navigation device" has all the grace of a two-ton truck hitting a Jersey wall.)
I agree the app store isn't "vetted" like the iOS app store, but some would call that a feature (quicker to get apps out the door / rely on "crowdsourced" user ratings and comments to become educated on quality).
As for your comment on user experience/design, I realize we're entering the realm of subjectivity here. All I can say is the latest Androids are _beautiful_ with Material Design.
What is your stance on Swift, might I ask? I personally wasn't too fond of the emulator performance and general tooling when I last did dev work on Android.
The problem with cameras is that the limits are set by physics. The bigger your lens, the better the resolution. If only Apple could figure out a way to miniaturize visible light.
I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking that if they made the phone a little bit thicker to make if flush, we could get some crazy battery life (and a headphone jack).
This race to thin phones with unusable battery life reminds me to the race to more and more mega pixels in digital cameras with unusable low exposition quality some years ago. It's just about the buzz, it just hinders the technology in order to be able to tell a more catchy number to consumers.
I would happily go with a 33% thicker iPhone with great battery life and a headphone jack and I doubt that most of the people would notice the difference in size.
Right, I feel like we're back in the days before iPhone when so many different companies were coming out with lame gimmicks to sell their flip phones and sliders that were all virtually identical. Maybe we're stuck here until wearable tech becomes more of a reality?
This option is already available to you: buy an aftermarket case/battery combo. I see these around all the time. The beauty of Apple selling millions of iPhone is there is a viable market for whatever accessory you may want.
People put up with all kinds of crap when it's the best option available. They're OK with it until something better comes along. In this case, a smartphone with a day of battery life trumps a flip phone with a week of battery life just because it can do so much more. You know what trumps a smartphone with X battery life? One with X+1 battery life, as long as it still fits comfortably in a trouser pocket. With the behemoth-screened phablets that are common these days, I think it's reasonable to make them a little thicker and a little more useful.
My phone's about 3 years old now. Even when it was new, I couldn't use it indiscriminately and expect a full day of charge. If I want to have it available for critical purposes like emergency calls, it's literally not usable in the way that I'd like to use it. I don't think that it's even remotely unreasonable to advocate for better battery life, and I think it's only a slight exaggeration to call current phone battery life "unusable".
Considering that only Apple phones run iOS, and there's only one Apple phone per physical device size bracket a generation, people don't really have a choice.
At least in the iPhone ecosystem it's not so much best option available, it's the only option available.
There's no immediate danger of people not buying iPhones because they want better battery life, so Apple doesn't even have to try harder than an average show of effort.
It doesn't negate the argument (even if it was hyperbole). I took an iPhone 5S out on a car trip yesterday across L.A., and forgot the car charger but hey it was fully charged. Used it for navigation for about 20 minutes total, and maybe 10 minutes total of phone calls. Checked email maybe 5 times. By about 8PM, the battery was at 2%, and I still needed to drive home. So the phone was unusable to me if I wanted to have ability to make an emergency call. And if the battery had gone down another 2%, the phone would have been entirely unusable.
My iPhone 2G had better battery life than this given similar usage patterns. Sure you can cite LTE vs. 2G and processor ability etc, but battery life made the modern(-ish) phone less useful to me under what I consider are not that strenuous of conditions. This is a real problem, and battery life will definitely be a major consideration to the next phone I buy.
> All these gimmicks and breakthroughs don't mean shit, make a phone that lasts 3 days and that will be a game changer.
Oh, I completely agree with that. It's more that I have an iPhone 5S that I replaced the battery in and it lasts for about 24 hours with my usage patterns -- would I love more? Heck yes I would! A phone not making it through from morning to evening though implies that it's likely a dying battery, as the iPhone 5S should last longer than that.
How many of these people have to consciously adapt their usage to make sure their phones still have juice at the end of the day? Yes, I can work with a phone where I look at the battery level and think "ok, better not do X now", but it would be better if I could always use it when I want to.
True but I'm not actually sure the smaller SE size is so bad--I'm not sure I actually need all this real estate. In fact, as I look to switch to an android phone because of this headphone nonsense, I'm actually finding my new problem is not being able to find a phone small enough!
Maybe I'll regret it but my next phone (and last iPhone) might be an SE.
FWIW, I switched from an iPhone 4 to a Z3 Compact because it was the only decent "small" phone available. But a 4.6 inch screen is not actually "compact", as far as I'm concerned. I switched back to iPhones for the SE, which isn't that much physically smaller, but is a lot more usable nonetheless.
It turns out the important dimensions are the overall width (for being able to hold it one handed) and the screen height (to reach everywhere with your thumb), and the iPhone SE's top and bottom bezels don't screw up either of those.
With the Z3C you can hold it one handed, but you can't use it effectively unless you have gigantic hands. Making a phone fit in one hand isn't enough; if the entire face is covered with screen then it still takes two hands to operate it.
Yep, the Sony Z3 compact did this a couple of years ago and was amazing. Top notch waterproof, superb battery, headphone jack, magnetic charger, SD card. Just one of those phones that really managed to hit the spot.
Oddly enough, the main complaint I had about it was that because it was so flush and shiny, it slid around too much on a table. Had to put a protective film on which was a bit more grippy.
And after marketing it as an underwater camera, they later backpedaled and said "waterproofing was tested in a standby state under laboratory conditions, do not attempt to use the phone underwater"?
> You mean those stupid plastic flaps with the gaskets that came unglued and prevented the flaps from even closing properly?
This. Girlfriend had that phone. The device and their after-sales service was completely garbage. Sony failed to repair the unplugging flaps, even after multiple service attempts. And every single time, they did complete factory reset on the phone to replace the flaps (!!!).
Then they didn't go and make the mistake of trying to slim too much for the next gen in the Z4 compact. The thing has incremental improvements on all the features you mentioned and battery life is just as good as it was before.
This was something that confused me a bit too. On their product page they mention twice (once as a bold headline) that the maximum aperture of the camera is f/1.8. Why?
I'm guessing that the average consumer has no idea what an f-stop is, or that having a maximum lens aperture of f/1.8 is any better than f/5.6 or f/16. And the people who do know probably also know that for a lens and sensor that are maybe a quarter of an inch wide, a bump in the maximum aperture is not going to make the camera perform anywhere near a dedicated camera, so the focus on that detail is a bit odd to me.
The iPhone is apparently the phone of choice for photographers, who know what an f stop is. I believe that spec is for them, everyone wants their f/1.2 L lens or whatever. Look at all of Apple's recent iPhone ads; they are all about the photos you can take (if you are willing to re-edit them in Photoshop to remove all the denoise and compression artifacts, which they even mention in the ads with a white-on-white disclaimer).
Small sensors are getting better. I am shocked at how good the image quality is on my RX100 (with a "one inch" sensor; one inch refers to the size of vacuum tube that would contain such a sensor if it were 1960 or something, no dimension is anywhere near one inch). I'm not going to give up 4x5 for it, but it's way better than a phone.
That said, the camera bump is ugly. Why can't they use a telephoto design (your 500mm SLR lens isn't 500mm long, remember).
The photo quality is - strange. It's not truly sharp or clean, especially in the far distance, and there's an odd softness and a hint of waxy sheen to it.
It's a look Nikon used to have ten or so years ago, and to me it suggests over-aggressive noise removal.
To be fair it's very good for a tiny camera, and amazing considering the state of the art ten years ago.
But I wonder if it's starting to fall into uncanny valley: the closer it gets to pro performance, the more obvious it becomes that it's not there yet.
They are, but they will also hit a physical wall at some point (if not already), and you'll continue trading "natural" dynamic range and low noise for software interpolated dynamic range and smoothing, which as others have noted, starts looking like Madame Tussaud's museum.
Then again, if Apple really wanted to impress me with their camera skills they would have to develop a medium format mirrorless digital camera for less than $5k. One can dream, I suppose.
Basically, pixels are so small these days that even tiny amount of camera motion is going to blur a point of light between two pixels. I'm not sure how much that matters, but I think it does. So you can't make the sensors small and increase the detail you get. 20MP is the best you are going to do with full-frame, much less APS-C or 1" or iPhone size. Maybe image stabilization fixes all of this.
I took some photos on an airplane of a lightning storm today with a 1" sensor camera. ISO 5000, .5 second exposure hand-held, and they're pretty sharp. Not portfolio sharp, but good enough for some Internet Points probably. My iPhone did not do well, however. (I tried that first, then realized, hey I have a better camera with me.)
It's a great point from a marketing perspective. Something users don't understand but can pretend too - I need this because it's got a f/1.8 camera, way better than the Samsung f/5.6 [I made that up]. What's super good is that it looks so technical, it looks like something that real cameras have about them too. Marketing fluff, yay.
Just like megapixels. The general public has this notion of "more megapixels is better". They don't understand that there's more to a camera than megapixels: F stops, low light performance, etc. I've actually met people who know 1080p "Full HD" is 1920x1080 but had no idea that it's only two megapixels.
It will perform better than f/2.2 of the old phone. I know several professional photographers who often carry the iPhone when they don't need all their equipment. Its not that hard to take good photos with it, especially with enough light
"This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack."
This looks like another method to lock in the consumer to their eco system and or squeeze that extra buck out of them. Not so much about shrinking in size or technology.
IMO this is nothing more than selling and controlling peripherals that can play with iphone and drm.
What I read a while ago is the removal of the headphone jack lets them put in another speaker there. I bet that's a big part of how they're able to get 2x louder speakers with higher dynamic range, and, while they didn't mention this, it's possible they might get a bit of stereo when the phone is held in portrait this way.
Edit: Why the heck am I being downvoted for this? I'm not even expressing an opinion as to whether I think the jack should have been removed or not.
Come on. There are plenty of phones with two speakers and a headphone jack. This is the cry of people who desperately want to love a company unconditionally, even when they screw up.
I find it interesting how hard people are trying to find some reason for Apple's decision to remove the headphone jack, aside from the very obvious one: they're going to make a shitload of money by forcing everyone to buy new headphones.
Apple gets royalties from the production of Lightning connectors, which they certainly don't from standard 1/8th-inch TRS jacks. So therefore, they have a very obvious and vested interest in killing off standardized connectors and pushing everything to proprietary connectors, for which they receive royalties, whenever possible.
So including the $9 adapter in the box is just a token gesture so they can pretend to care about legacy things?
I dunno - if they were really in this for making you buy new headphones, they'd not bundle the adapter, like they did in the past when they switched from 30-pin to lightening.
They included that adapter this year but is it going to be there next year? Is the next phone going to have the Lightning wired headphone, too? Apple's like the empire. They _will_ be altering the deal.
This is how I see it. There's no mention of Airpods using bluetooth, I'm betting that W1 chip is using a proprietary wireless protocol that keeps other manufacturers from easily/cheaply creating wireless headphones or using these wireless headphones on other devices.
I really don't see it. People can still buy Bluetooth headphones from any company and there's no Apple tax on those. I realize a lot of people here have different experiences, but among my friends, virtually everyone has switched to Bluetooth anyway except for listening at home or in the office. Not having a cord is just so freeing.
Not to mention the point made elsewhere in this thread that they bundle the adapter for people who still prefer wired.
I think there's some sample bias going on, because I basically don't know anyone who uses wireless headphones, except for Bluetooth earpieces that are increasingly socially unacceptable for use anywhere other than in a car. Gym? Cheap wired headphones. Work? Good wired headphones (or headset). Etc.
I even own a pair of wireless Bluetooth headphones (nice onces, Sony's) but it's a pain in the ass to keep them charged and deal with pairing/unpairing them to various devices, or connecting to the wrong device when I want to use them with something else, or get them to work with various laptops' shitty Bluetooth drivers, when I can just use a pair of decent wired headphones and stick them into the ubiquitous 1/8" jack and move on with my life.
The latter set of annoyances are of course what Apple are intending to solve with the W1/AirPods -- intelligent switching between all iCloud devices without re-pairing.
I personally favor Bluetooth headphones even with all the annoyance because as bad as it is, cords are even worse.
For those who feel differently, I suspect they'll either use the bundled earpods or just leave the lightning adapter attached to their best pair of headphones and move on with their lives. Maybe I'm wrong and everyone except me is rotating five pairs of headphones between six different devices on a regular basis, but it seems like just another case of piling on to resist change.
> aside from the very obvious one: they're going to make a shitload of money by forcing everyone to buy new headphones
You obviously have no idea how Apple works. Apple would never in a million years make a user-hostile decision like this simply to collect royalties. They hold user experience to be sacred, and the fact that they're making this move now means they think that, at least in the long term, this will provide for a better overall user experience, despite the pain of the transition.
Everybody complained when Apple ditched the 30pin connector for Lightning too, basically all of the same arguments here (e.g. "Apple just wants everybody to buy new accessories"), but it turned out to be the right move. Making this argument again over the headphone port just means you don't know Apple and you don't know history.
I have no comment on how Apple actually works or doesn't work but I admire the marketing acumen of a company when a random internet user can argue so passionately about eternal goodness of the company. Especially a company that's about as secretive in it's actual operations as nation-state level intelligence agencies.
In fairness, Apple mostly has an image of being "the company random cranky internet commenters accuse of horrible things, which later turns out not to have done the horrible things the cranky internet commenters accused them of".
This is a repetitive cycle. See it happening right in this thread with the "Apple invented a proprietary wireless protocol to DRM all the music, close the analog hole and make you license their tech" stuff. When... it's just Bluetooth. Same thing happened when they put the microphone and volume controls in the iPhone earbuds; people said it was a way to insert a secret "DRM chip" and force only Apple-approved headphones to be able to listen to music.
So if nothing else, the weight of history is against your "just did this to charge people money" argument. Plus, y'know, the adapter's literally included in the box.
Who's talking about goodness? I'm talking about the values that Apple has, and how your claim is a gross violation of those values. I didn't say Apple was "good", however you want to define that. User experience is but one facet of the whole, though it's an important one. And if you're trying to dismiss my arguments on the ground that I'm a "random internet user", then you have to dismiss literally every single comment made in this thread, or any HN thread, including yours.
No, the MacBook did not switch to a single USB-C port simply to sell dongles. That really makes no sense at all. Dongles are not a major revenue source for Apple. And Apple's never shipped HDMI adaptors with their products, or DVI adaptors, or anything like that. Most people don't need them. And the new USB-C Macbook isn't the first computer that would need an HDMI dongle; I think the Mac Mini is the only computer Apple has shipped with an HDMI port in a long time. It seems kind of absurd here that you're claiming the move to USB-C is somehow Tim Cook being greedy, even though one of the most common complaints about Apple is how they're using Lightning instead of USB-C. Either USB-C is a good idea or it's a bad one, you can't have it both ways. And if they didn't remove ports from the MacBook, it would still have Mini DisplayPort rather than HDMI.
Also, FWIW, I just checked Monoprice and the HDMI dongle costs $35. And Apple's own dongle (which is $79) includes more than just HDMI (it has a USB port as well, and a USB-C charging port).
Oh shit, you're right. I never look at that side of my MBP, I totally thought they'd moved to Thunderbolt-only. I'm actually really surprised it still has HDMI.
Still, I think the last non-USB-C Macbook didn't have HDMI either.
I genuinely thought this comment was sarcastic at first. I completely agree that Apple is highly focused on user experience and keeping you as a customer long term rather than making a quick buck, but I have to say, I hope I don't come across as this fanatical when talking about Apple with my friends. :p
They moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone for a reason (I'm not sure offhand what the specific reason was, but there was one). They can't just move it back to the top.
> This is the cry of people who desperately want to love a company unconditionally
Insulting people is not how you win arguments.
Edit: Seriously guys, what's with the downvotes? I feel like I'm being brigaded at this point.
> They moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone for a reason
I seem to recall hearing that was because people most often carry their phones upside-down in their pockets, in order more quickly to bring them up to viewing position when retrieving them. (Think about it: Your hand goes fingers-down into your pocket, but viewing position has the top of the phone alongside your fingertips, so if you pocket your phone upside-down, you don't have to rotate it around the Z axis to get it into position before you can use it.)
No idea whether that's actually the case, or whether instead it was something to do with easier component placement or the like. But as far as just-so stories go, it's not a bad one.
A lot of early android phones had this, it was much nicer. If your holding the phone in your hand you just put your arm down and slide it in your pocket. With the headphone jack on top you have to turn the phone around every time you put it in/take it out.
Of course apple and their legion will claim it as an innovation.
It is much nicer. That may be why Apple copied it, which is something I've observed them to do on a fairly regular basis. I really appreciate the efforts of Android users in vetting stuff like that; it's a lot nicer as an iPhone owner not to have to worry quite so much about new ideas turning out bad, because a lot of the time they've been well put through their paces before Apple takes a look at them.
Do we really need that last sentence? Is this perhaps not already divisive enough a subject for anyone?
They moved the headphone jack to the bottom of the phone because most people put their phone in their pocket upside down, so it's a more natural place to put it.
I never heard of people putting their phones in their pockets upside down until a few weeks ago. I have always put it right side up and it is more naturally of a movement to pull it out of my pocket that way.
I knew one person who carried his phone in his pocket right-side up. When the switch happened, he was surprised to learn everyone else stores it upside down.
Then he realized why they do it, and now I know zero people who store it right-side up.
> it is more naturally of a movement to pull it out of my pocket that way.
How is that more natural than simply landing your hand on the phone in the position that it will be holding it? I'm having trouble seeing this as a matter of opinion.
1.) Start with the phone in your left pocket with the screen facing outwards.
2.) Reach into your pocket with your left hand.
3.) Grab the phone by edges near the top between your thumb and middle finger.
4.) Lift upward while rotating your wrist counter-clockwise. The phone should swivel between your two fingers while coming to rest right side up in the palm of your hand.
It is an entirely fluid motion that does not require flipping the phone over since pulling it out upside down results in the screen facing away into the palm of your hand.
Carrying your phone in your pocket with the screen facing outwards seems like asking for a broken screen. I, and I suspect a great number of others, pocket my phone with the screen in towards my leg and the phone upside down. As soon as I put my hand in my pocket, the phone is in my hand in the same orientation as if I were holding and using it.
Frivolously? Just because you don't know why they made a change doesn't make it frivolous. Other people have said it's because people tend to store their phones in their pocket upside-down (I know I do) and so it's nicer that way. This may be the reason, or they may have wanted to put other stuff at the top of the phone and the headphone jack was in the way. If it was just because of the phone being upside-down in your pocket, they've still put other stuff where the jack was (there's no empty space in the phone), and whatever they put there may or may not be able to be relocated (for example, it's possible that the extra space there is used for camera-related hardware).
Take a breath. I know we all tend to get exercised over anything to do with Apple, but there's no need to be rude to anyone, and that sort of behavior isn't really worthy of you in any case.
You're right. I was just annoyed because I felt like they were being rude to me, and also making the exact same dismissive comment that someone else already made. What I posted was actually much tamer than what I originally wanted to post, but you're absolutely right, I should have refrained entirely.
I wonder what the stereo width and image is like. Would you have to have your face right next to the phone to notice the stereo? With such a small device, being slightly out of alignment with the device will mean the difference between good stereo image and muddy mono-ish audio.
In the keynote they showed stereo in the landscape configuration. They didn't talk about the portrait configuration. This is why I'm guessing that they might have stereo in portrait too, instead of stating it as fact.
To be clear, it's not a new speaker in the top as in an additional speaker. They are just now pushing sound out of the already present speaker at the top of the phone that you listen to when having a call
The Galaxy Note 7's S pen is considerably bigger than a head phone jack, yet the phone is water proof even with the pen removed from it's slot, so my guess is that can't be it. Assuming, of course, that anything Samsung can do to water proof a phone, Apple can too.
Never used a Samsung Note 7 but does anything in the pen holder connect inside the phone or is it just a hole surrounded in plastic? With a headphone jack there are a lot (at least 3?) of connections that have to pass into the phone which could complicate the waterproofing.
Yeah that's what I really don't understand about all the focus on the waterproofing of the 3.5mm jack. The Lightning port is still there and that has to be at least as hard to waterproof as a 3.5mm jack right? Did Apple design the Lightning port to be waterproof from the outset? If so how did they do it and can they apply that to the 3.5mm port?
I hadn't thought of that to be honest, and I've never used one either, but from review videos, it seems that the phone detects when you pull the S pen out, so I'd guess there's some kind of connection.
Having the camera bulge sells more cases. (Who wants to lay their lens directly on a dirty surface when it sticks out more than the rest of the phone?)
I do. I don't care really. It's supposed to be made out of the material high-end watches are made so little chance of scratches. Sapphire and all that.
All in all. I'll wait a year for 7s to replace my 6s if nothing else worthy and working out of the box comes out.
> > They're ok with a bulge for the camera but not headphones?
>This confuses me too. The camera wart is ridiculous, and I bet if they made the device just that slight bit thicker they'd have room to retain the 3.5mm jack.
I hate that they removed the 3.5 but if you assume that people are using a case then camera wart does not really make the phone any thicker.
So tired of this argument in defence of the wart, people use a case because of the wart and then this is used to justify the wart "everyone uses a case"
Also the 2.5mm jack is available. This used to be standard on Nokia ~10 years back til they were forced to come in line with everyone else on the 3.5mm. And bringing this in would annoy some but you'd still have the jack and could easily stick an adapter on the existing 3.5mm cables.
A headphone jack can't make much of a difference, I have a Galaxy S5 which is rated IP67, the same rating as the iPhone 7. It has a flap that covers the microUSB connector, the back panel has rubber seams, yet the headphone jack looks like any other.
The bulge isn't as noticeable when you have the phone in a case. I think they just considered the 3.5mm jack a waste of space since it's primary use was doing something you could do with the lightning port.
yeah I specifically abandoned ship from android for the camera bump, it just irks me that a phone at rest is balancing on optics.
what annoys me more is that most advancements are only for the 'plus' size model. that's the easy way out of the tech race, and I was just hoping that they brought feature parity with an updated SE model
so far I see no good replacement for my 5s except the previous year SE, but I'm not the one to spend that money on two year old hardware.
Removing the jack removes a large hole from the side of the device. In future models we could see scratch-resistant casing made of ceramic or some sort of amorphous alloy.
I recall Apple having a patent on a manufacturing process to bond a small aluminum region around the headphone jack to a case made of something harder, so maybe the headphone jack was causing problems in advancing case materials?
The lag is what I'm curious about. Given the lag I experience while streaming Bluetooth from my iPhone to my car, I'm expecting to see about the same amount of lag. Which is annoying because it's definitely a worse experience than a cable.
I'm not defending the the removal of the headphone by any means, but you are unlikely to experience any lag with the lightning cable. It's just a pcm bytestream getting out of the phone into a dac in the headphones. The latency won't be any different than what already is.
If you are talking about their new wireless headphones, It will probably have some delay but probably not even close to bluetooth. They could just modulate that same bytestream to some ghz radio frequency without adding anything remotely as over engineered and cumbersome as a bluetooth stack. I'm pretty sure those airpods are not bluetooth compatible.
I didn't catch that the AirPods aren't Bluetooth. I wonder if that was designed based on problems with Bluetooth or more to get tighter integration with Siri. Perhaps they needed it to sync pairings over iCloud.
> If you are talking about their new wireless headphones, It will probably have some delay but probably not even close to bluetooth. They could just modulate that same bytestream to some ghz radio frequency without adding anything remotely as over engineered and cumbersome as a bluetooth stack. I'm pretty sure those airpods are not bluetooth compatible.
What about encryption?
Not to mention that Bluetooth doesn't use PCM because of battery life constraints (more radio traffic == more energy used), I doubt that Apple's protocol is uncompressed.
There is no encryption AFAIK, and there wouldn't need to be any compression. Even today, you can connect a regular USB DAC / headphone amp to the iPhone via the USB camera connector dongle and use that. Any device that follows the USB audio standard is supported (depending on power draw, of course).
If you look at how old Bluetooth is, it wouldn't be surprising if a new system could be much more efficient. Uncompressed audio isn't high bandwidth by today's standards.
Bluetooth 4.0 is completely unrelated to Bluetooth 3 but for the name. It was a separate standard developed by Nokia and brought wholesale to the Bluetooth SIG and they effectively told them that's what 4.0 would be ^_^
Yes, it will have some lossless compression and encryption for sure. But I'm pretty sure it's a much simpler stack than bluetooth. Even the use case is different, they just want to send audio from your pocket to your ears and I trust their engineers to do that the smart way.
My car lags something fierce -- like a whole second or more. But my regular bluetooth headphones doesn't lag at all when connected to my phone or tablet. I even bluetooth-tether my tablet to my phone for Netflix and then listen over bluetooth.
Seems to me it's a solved problem for most devices.
Bluetooth audio lag does depend on the buffer size of the audio device. My car also has a two second lag when playing through Bluetooth, but my Bluetooth headphones have nearly no perceptible lag at all.
I have the Bose QC35s - there is zero lag when using them... however my car's bluetooth (seems a common thing) lags at least 1.5 seconds which is frustrating.
Jason Snell "joked on Twitter last week that it’ll cost $19 if Apple’s sort of sorry, $29 if it’s not sorry, and if it’s free in the box then Apple’s really afraid of consumer backlash."
Apple gets reportedly $4 per connector [1] for each 3rd-party device that uses a Lightning connector -- and that's with their new, kinder/gentler licensing scheme.
The adapter that comes in the box is the proverbial drug dealer's "first one" that's always free.
Imagine getting a $4 royalty on every pair of iPhone-compatible headphones that's sold in the world. That's worth a lot of free adapters in the short run.
Just as a first-order estimate: Forbes says that annual worldwide sales of headphones are $300M. If the average price of headphones is around 20 bucks (taking into account there are a small number of very expensive headphones but also a lot of cheap ones, that's probably high), that's something in the neighborhood of 15M pairs sold per year. If half of those become Lightning-connector equipped, that's $30M/year in revenue (on costs of zero!) going to Apple.
The connector could make the phone substantially worse as a phone and it still might be worthwhile. There doesn't need to be a compelling technical reason.
iPhones sales are over 100 billion dollars a year [1]. If this change makes the iPhone substantially worse to the point of losing even 1% of the would-be buyers, Apple will lose over a billion dollars in revenue.
The risks are so staggering that I would think they must genuinely believe that the jack connector is so technically obsolete that it makes the iPhone worse than the iPhone will be without it. I just can't fathom Tim Cook (or anyone) betting 100 billions for $30M/year. Of course I can be completely wrong.
Yeah but by the same logic what if 1% of iPhone users buy a second pair of headphones, even third party ones.
Tim Cook's Apple is all about grabbing extra small amounts of cash from users. e.g MacBook being unable to use USB devices or HDMI displays without a $90 dongle
Apple isn't betting 100 billion. Some portion of users use headphones, I have no idea what percentage of users that is, but it isn't everyone. Apple would know this figure though.
The adapter in the box isn't free, it's "free". You're still shelling out hundreds of dollars for the box, and the adapter is merely part of the bill-of-materials.
1- You are assuming the wired headphone market has a strong growth future. That's could be reasonable but is by no means certain
2- do you seriously think a company with a $515B market cap is doing this solely for the financial reason of adding a $30M/yr revenue stream? If Apple TV was considered "a hobby" for years the wired headphone market is... I don't even know. A momentary flash of color?
Can't the reason be exactly what Apple said? Wired headphones using an analog connection kind of suck. wired headphones with a smart connection are a little better because power and noise cancellation or other "smarts" don't have to all be bolted on to the earphones, but honestly still kind of crappy because of wires.
Clearly Apple thinks that wireless audio is the future but today wireless kind of sucks as well (pairing, moving between devices). Apple thinks it can make that better. So if in their view that is the future why would they waste energy and time and space on a 2nd dedicated IO port for audio?
OK. Mine aren't. I already carry a small bag over my shoulder on the way to and from work; it has a spare battery in case I somehow need it (unusual, since I fully charge my phone every night while I'm asleep), plus my Kindle, sunglasses, and other daily useful things. My pockets tend to be used for keys and phone.
I carry it regardless. I carry it because I have a commute of almost an hour and a half, much of it on a train, and I like having my Kindle and my sunglasses and other things, but don't carry my laptop to/from the office (thus no laptop bag). So I have a small shoulder bag that I put stuff in and bring with me.
So any time I'm going to be out long enough to have to theoretically carry full kit for my phone (in a hypothetical multiple-dongle world), I'm also going to have that bag with me, or some equivalent object for carrying things (i.e., extended outings not involving going to work), and not have to stuff everything in my pockets.
Apparently this is weird enough to be downvoted into negative-score territory.
Out of interest, is there a noticeable difference between the USA and Europe for bag use? Here in the UK, a bag is sensible and I could imagine going to work without one (for my lunch, spare USB cable, iPad etc).
I had never thought of it being a significant cultural difference.
Often enough, actually, when I'm driving. My car has a stereo-USB connection that works very well most of the time, allowing me to charge my phone and cycle through my music collection. Its charging speed is slow though, going only at maybe what, 500mA, 1A if I'm lucky? It takes even longer if I'm using Google Maps. To counteract this problem, I've recently started using a power converter, that I normally have for charging my laptop, to charge my phone because it offers a 2.1A USB port that works a LOT better for me.
Why does this matter? Because I can still have my phone's audio going to the car by way of an AUX cable.
I had an old iPod that was unlistenable while it was charging, because noise from the charger leaked into the audio. I tried again recently with an Android phone and found the same problem to a lesser degree. Nice to hear that people are able to do this without trouble.
I do that quite frequently. When I take a road trip, generally I have my phone plugged in, doing the navigation, and providing music. I use the headphone jack to connect to my car's audio system (no Bluetooth) and a 12V to USB adapter for power.
very often, it's a great way to dj to an arbitrary device, plug 3.5mm aux cable and charger, apply shuffle, enjoy music. i would hate to drain my battery playing music with my phone when it's sitting next to an outlet and is only incapable of charging due to poor design decisions.
maybe they'll make a lightning hub/splitter so you can do both?
My own setup for a while now, when playing music for long periods, has been to connect the phone to charge using the lightning cable, and then connect to a (wireless) Bluetooth speaker which itself is also plugged in and charging using its own USB cable connected to a USB charger. It has much the same effect as having a "charging dock", but just requires two powered USB ports rather than a custom piece of equipment.
This setup is becoming more and more similar. My own system is my iPhone just plugged into whatever Lightning cable I want (laptop, bedside left, bedside right), with either Bluetooth or Spotify Connect to the Amazon Echo on my shelf.
This is the wireless future they're talking about. We shouldn't have to have a device to charge and listen through at the same time. We should charge wired and listen "wirelessly" (even if the audio device is wired for power).
-Listening to the environment while PC Gaming using a Windows PC
-Listening to records using my stereo
-Listening to music while working on my Macbook Pro
-Listening to music while being mobile w/ iPhone 6
-Listening to music while driving in my car (audio jack works faster with less interruptions then USB)
The big win of 3.3mm audio jack is they work with all these different systems and use-cases. There is nothing to lose, nothing to think about. Plug and Play. Dead simple. Dumb analog.
Now to fully cover all my uses cases I have 2 more things to carry around with me full time, and not lose. Not a simplification, buying a Nexus. Steve Jobs is dead.
100% agree. I carry a pair of Apple earbuds with me to use interchangeably with my phone and my Mac laptop. The new lightning headphones that come in the box won't be compatible with my laptop, so I'll either need to use the old earbuds with a phone adapter or the new earbuds with a laptop adapter or I need to carry around both sets of earbuds with me.
That said, their vision for the world to go 100% wireless is absolutely right. However, I don't think their execution is great in this area. Their AirPods don't hold a long enough charge quite yet and they are highly susceptible to being lost. Also, while I think Bluetooth has many many problems, I wish Apple spent time improving that standard instead of introducing their own standard.
The AirPods are bluetooth. I think that has been a point of confusion. Also, 5 hrs may not seem like much but 24 hours w/ the case is a lot more than comparable bluetooth earbuds. And I really love the idea of a battery case: extend battery life, no connector on headphones, keeping them in the case may make it harder to lose them.
Thanks for clarifying the point about the bluetooth - this definitely got buried for me. The case is a good stopgap for improving battery life, but I still think they need to last 10 hours on a single charge to be really useful. For instance, 5 hours won't be enough for a plane trip if you include the time it takes to get to the airport/arrive at your destination. If they can just last a little bit longer, I'd be more on board with the change.
For the record, I was being facetious on purpose to show how ridiculous this is.
But more to your point, the adapter would belong with the phone not with the headphones. There are potentially N number of headphones, and one phone for which the adapter will be used. So the adapter being carried with the phone instead of N adapters for N headsets makes more sense.
While that's unfortunate for you, I'd be willing to bet most iphone consumers just use the included earbuds for their phone, and don't really have any other use for headphones. Keep in mind that you, and even most HN readers, are not necessarily examples of the average iphone consumers.
A valid point, but nonetheless owning a second pair of ear buds is not a high bar. Ear buds are sold by nearly every corner gas station, grocery store, and 711. Typically for <$20 regardless of region.
The primary issue is interchangeability. In the event you leave your earbuds at home. Borrowing a friend's, or purchasing an additional set is a simple. This is nolonger a simple solution.
Except it's still a simple solution for two reasons: 1) if you get the phone you get an adapter to let you use all 3.5mm headphones 2) many many many other people will have the same phone, so you'll be able to borrow their headphones.
The camera bulge bothers me on every phone. The lens always ends up wearing after some daily use. Why would you want that to be the contact point on any device?
> Another dongle to loose. Tons of headphones obsoleted. Can't charge while listening.
You're conflating the switch to a proprietary jack with the introduction of wireless AirPods. Those are separate things. You can still use 100% of existing wired headphones with the iPhone 7, just with an adapter, which is a tradeoff that gets you some great other features like the new camera system.[1] The bundled wired headphones and any wireless headphones don't require an adapter. If you don't like wireless headphones, you don't have to use them.
> I would seriously move off iOS if I was making music with it.
Why? That comment seems unsupported by your reaction to this headphone jack change.
Anyone serious about making music on iOS already has an external audio interface. Not to say dropping the port is well timed, but it's not a major issue for most pro iOS musicians.
Bulging camera -> broken glass. For two years I've been using a Galaxy S5 with bulging camera and twice I have broken the camera glass needing replacing, it's the first thing to hit the surface when i rest the phone on a table and takes a lot of stress. Of course I could be more careful. It has also scratched and so there's more lens flare, but I'm tired of replacing it. My wife's iPhone with flush camera is much less of a problem.
Anecdotally, my Nexus 5x has a large, central bulge for it's camera and the sapphire glass doesn't even have any scratches on it after almost a year with no protector over any part of the phone.
It's a shame they're discontinuing the line, the build quality of this phone is immensely good, it shows me the quality Android phones _should_ have.
I hate the camera bulge, but I've had an iPhone 6 since they first day they were available, and the camera lens is still in pristine shape with no case, and no particularly special care.
Don't you think this move isn't anything other than Apple now has another set of accessories to sell at a premium? Dongle lost: buy another one. Tons of headphones obsolete: no problem, Apple and Beats are going to be rolling out dozens that are compatible. $$$
Check out the list of compatible apps on their website, companies like Ableton, Korg, Yamaha, and countless indie devs take this seriously, and really, we all should.
I'm not easily offended, but that use of the word made me cringe.
Courage is running into a burning building to save a family. Courage is going to war for your country knowing you might die. Courage is being more afraid than you've ever been in your life and doing the right thing anyway.
To call throwing an age-old standard into the toilet while shoving vendor lock-in down people's throats "courage" is offensive. Shame on Apple.
If the goal is strictly to minimize thickness, then it probably would've been less hassle to develop a slightly thinner case than to remove the 3.5mm jack.
Based on my experience (which is worth next to nothing), people don't really care about the thickness of their phone. Most people I know end up throwing it in a hideous Otterbox (or similarly gigantic case) anyway. Who's going to notice an extra millimeter matter then?
The AirPods come with a charge case that holds 24 hours of juice. If you manage to end up in a scenario where your phone is out of power, your AirPods are out of power, and the AirPod case is out of power, that would be a fairly impressive bit of poor planning.
Besides, you can charge your phone and your AirPods at the same time, you just need to have two outlets (or two USB ports) and two cables.
I would want to actually use the device(s) to make calls, send messages and listen to music - not just carry them around flat and useless in my pocket.
> that would be a fairly impressive bit of poor planning
Murphy's Law in this case means that the best outcome is to remove the possibility of poor planning by not having to juggle multiple devices that require you to plan your charging schedules around in the first place.
iOS is used by lots of musicians. Musicians use lots of headphone cables to connect music equipment. Even if they use lightning, they now can't use an iPhone for some music app while performing, output the audio, and charge it at the same time.
I was not aware people were using mobile phone apps for live performances (or any serious music production actually). Laptops are common, but using an actual iPhone for a live performance seems unusual. Is this really a common thing? Unless you are referring to playing music during a party or something? I guess I'm out of touch, lol.
iOS is incredible with its amount of music making apps, and I'm not talking about mixing existing songs. There are synthesizers of many different types (sampler, rompler, additive, subtractive, FM, granular), traditional samplers, loopers, drum machines, live input, etc.
That's cool. I guess there's no reason why things wouldn't naturally progress towards that. Phones are now powerful enough.
My only experience with creating music electronically was with Fruity Loops back in the day, so that's what I had in my head. I figured it would be hard to manipulate something like that on such a small screen.
The iPad does seem more suited, as the other comment mentioned.
I use Magellan with my iPad as it is cheaper than buying a Nord. Interestingly I can use Beyerdynamic headphones with my iPad, whilst having a USB keyboard plugged into it. This will not be possible with this iPhone.
I'm against the move, but undoubtedly we'll soon have a breakout device like the MacBook has for having HDMI, audio in/out, and power all through the one port.
I've switched entirely to Bluetooth headphones, but I'm with you - there are plenty of downsides to wireless headsets even with lossless audio protocols like aptx. And water resistance is still possible - my Z5C can be used in pouring rain and it still has a 3.5mm jack.
I'm also worried about the potential for consumer-hostile DRM on audio playback, especially since it looks like they're introducing their own proprietary wireless protocol.
Attach your headphones to the dongle and leave it there. If you have more than one set, I'm sure Anker will make these for $4.99 a piece and you can buy a bunch.
Unfortunately only one of my devices has a lightening conveyor on it but I'd like to use those headphones for more than one device... Apple flubbed here no question about it, hopefully they bring back the jack with the iPhone 7s/8 . Meanwhile I guess I'll stick with my iPhone 6s
It's an accounting decision. Apple can make millions replacing lost and broken genuine Apple Lightning to 3.5 adaptors. Probably at £30 a time. They probably reckon on selling a ton of airpods too.
Memories of all the feature phones I had with adaptors tells me they will break all the damn time. Kids have a happy habit of losing small things - adaptors and bluetooth earbuds.
So that's 3 sales lost here - not buying 7's for the kids. They can put up with the iPhones they have, buy themselves (slim chance), or switch to Android. That's my popularity shot for a few days.
Would a dongle be that bad?
Back in the Walkman days there was a dongle that acted as a remote control. It made it very easy to skip songs, change volume, etc.
Another improvement to this functionality would be a likely movement away from the current situation with non-standard signalling sent across the analogue connection. Right now you can get headphones with integrated remotes to pause/resume and control the volume, but the signals are not shared between android/iphone let alone desktop operating systems.
> Can't charge while listening. [ using a standard cable]
This is a complete deal breaker for me. I was confident that apple was going to unveil two models, one which had the headphone jack and one which didn't.
Lenovo at least had the good sense to offer at least one model that still had the headphone jack, as they were introducing a similar model which did not.
>I would seriously move off iOS if I was making music with it.
Audio latency used to be a HUGE advantage for IOS vs Android. It was their biggest USP in my opinion. Android has been improving but it's still not there yet. If the next ipad has this it will be the end for musicians using IOS.
I kind of doubt Apple would retain legacy support for the iPad just because they have the space. If they are pushing a lightning/wireless future, they are probably planning to deploy/force that future on their entire device line.
The difference between camera and headphones is that the latter consume useful space inside and extra lenses for camera do not. Probably it also has to do something with new waterproof feature (different design of case, more holes to secure etc).
iPhone 7 camera was improved, but additional components add to its thickness much more than to width and height. Jack consumes width and height, that are big enough for one extra chip, for example.
Apple doesn't want everyone to switch to lightning. They are banking that bluetooth will eventually be the 90% even 99% standard among consumers. I tend to agree.
The case provides 24 hours of battery life. If you're in a situation where your case has no battery life at all and your airpods have no battery life at all, they take 15 minutes to charge.
"If only iOS devices were made by other manufacturers"
This seems backwards. Only reason to buy Apple phones is the superior hardware. As far as the OS goes, Android (and the google services backing it... especially Google Now) have completely surpassed it and continue to increase the gap every day. Increasingly, Google is treating the mobile devices as just a conduit to access their cloud services (including their far superior machine intelligence backing it). While Apple continues to treat the iPhone as a beautiful device with mediocre cloud services backing the hardware.
Don't believe me? Imagine if you Google stopped creating apps for the iPhone. How big a catastrophe would that be for Apple management? Now imagine Apple ceased to exist. Would the Android ecosystem be affected in any way?
I had an android phone a year ago. Battery life management is pretty horrible. It's really hard to figure out which apps are draining your battery a lot in the background.
For example, I rooted my phone to find out if any wake locks were draining my battery. It didn't show anything. Looked at the battery usage screen, it didn't show the culprit. Eventually I had to do a science experiment on my phone and disable all background processing and then switch on apps one by one to see the battery life change.
I finally found it was my carrier's generic usage app that was killing my battery. The app was installed from the app store on my unlocked device, so it wasn't carrier pre-installed crapware that caused this.
On iOS, I've never had to do this because app developers are not able to drain your battery like that.
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Camera software speed and quality has never been matched for me on iOS. Maybe motorola gets to iOS's camera speed. The software also makes getting good photos a lot easier with things like detecting your hand shake with the accelerometer and taking the photo when you're still in the moment.
Siri has better locked screen and in car voice interaction for me compared to android when I tried with android OS 5
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If google disappeared, you would basically get china and other companies would fill in the gap.
"Siri has better locked screen and in car voice interaction for me compared to android when I tried with android OS 5"
The series of caveats there tells a tale of it's own. Google Now is so far ahead of Siri, there's simply no comparison... starting with the basic magic of automatic contextual updates and notifications without even asking ("Your flight has been delayed by 30 minutes", "Heavy traffic on 101. Leave in 10 minutes to reach your meeting on time" etc.)
Add to that almost perfect voice recognition with any accents in the world, automatic language recognition etc and all that backed up by Google search engine. Sorry, calling out Siri as a Apple's superior cloud service is simply not credible at this point.
The technical engine behind it is better, but the UX for using it on a locked phone isn't good. All of my issues are solvable by android, they aren't technically hard. But it's still an issue after all of these years.
For me, I only use voice in a car and some other basic cases, since it fails on the locked phone case for me, it's not that useful.
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My basic issues with android:
1. A battery monitor that just works(tm) without playing science experiment. An OS that clamps down on apps to prevent it becoming an issue in the first place.
2. Faster & better camera software, quickly accessible from a locked screen, quick to start, helps me take photos without me realizing it.
3. A voice interface that works well when the screen is locked or occupied by another app, where it easily does things like:
a) Send & speak text messages
b) Control my music / podcasts
c) Change my GPS navigation.
4. An OS that really tries in security. Android is not as secure as iOS, as evidenced by the prices of jailbreaks.
5. An OS that will get updates on devices for years to come. Windows has being doing it for decades despite having similar hardware fragmentation, why can't android do it?
"The technical engine behind it is better, but the UX for using it on a locked phone isn't good"
The OK Google thing on completely locked device has been working on Moto phones (and later Nexus devices) way before hands-free "Hey Siri" thing became generally usable on untethered iPhone 6s last year (at long last).
And calling the incredible functionality of Google Now as "better technical engine" is quite an understatement. If iOS had this service integrated behind it, the entire world would be plastered with TV ads 24x7 calling out this "Magical" experience. Instead Apple's best effort is Siri, which works so well that this entire subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Siri/) is mostly devoted to Siri's hilarious fuck-ups. That's the reason you don't really see much marketing about Siri anymore. Instead the focus has shifted mostly on hardwares... especially the camera (which is indeed amazing).
The difference is you don't have to play science experiment because you can clearly see what the cause is and how to shut it off. The android battery monitor is ineffective in comparison in my experience.
In china google play services don't really work due to the GFW, so everything is replaced with some local chinese equivalent. You have android without the google parts for the most part.
"While this is a usage pattern familiar to HN'ers the average user doesn't care too much about cloud services"
Umm don't know which world you're living in but Google Now/Search, Photos, Maps/Waze, Youtube, Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, Drive.. etc. Pretty much every smartphone in the world is running one or more of those services on a daily basis.
Care to name one Apple cloud service that's so indispensable to that many users? Or perhaps, even just to iOS users?
Umm don't know which world you're living in but Google Now/Search, Photos, Maps/Waze, Youtube, Gmail, Calendar, Hangouts, Drive.. etc. Pretty much every smartphone in the world is running one or more of those services on a daily basis.
I never said they weren't running one or more of those services. Of course they are. I said that aside from Search and Youtube they weren't critical.
But I also wasn't aware we're calling basic web search, email and other web applications that have been around for a decade or more "cloud services". When did that happen? I guess by that definition (everything is a cloud service!) then you're certainly right - cloud services are indeed very popular.
I'm particularly fond of IMAP "Cloud Email" or as it used to be called "email". That's a good one. There's also "Cloud Messaging" (I've been calling it "texting" but I guess I'm pretty old school).
>Care to name one Apple cloud service that's so indispensable to that many users? Or perhaps, even just to iOS users?
I'm not sure why you're trying to make this an Apple vs Google thing. That's not at all what I intended. But re-reading your original comment I see thats exactly the kind of thing you were trying to stir up. I'm not interested in that type of discussion. Not even a little bit. Goodbye.
Android doesn't have three-clicks on headphones for going back one track. That's not superior by any means. I use both (Android for personal, iPhone for work) and I definitely prefer iOS. Android is cool, I can do a lot with it, but it's always buggier.
Which Google applications are actually used on the iOS? The only one I have installed is Youtube and only because the mobile version of the website is even worse than the app.
I don't think the disappearance of Youtube app in it's current form would make any difference.
Inbox (for Gmail) is the best email client in my mind. Particularly combined with Googles auto-filtering/sorting of non-important messages and notifying on-screen only when I receive important emails
To be fair to Apple, I think they have a good point. Digital connectors are superior in almost every way (space use, port flexibility, sound quality, even cable integrity). I admire them for ripping off the bandaid, like they did previously with disk drives and parrallel ports. Someone needs to lead the way to abandon legacy, and Apple can do that far more effectively than others (e.g. Motorola has also abandoned headphone jacks with their Moto Z line).
One thing I cannot get over though, is that they chose their own propietary, you-have-to-pay-Apple-for-a-license, cannot-use-them-with-anything-else Lightning 'standard'. USB Type C is the standard for this stuff now, and any trivial technical merits Lightning might have over USB Type C don't weigh up against the universal nature of USB Type C. The sheer arrogance.
Digital connectors the future? I'm on board with that. Propietary connectors? Fuck that.
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think that the audio jack is one of the few cases where an analog port is good because if the signal in not already analog it must be converted to analog via a DAC. If the DAC isn't in the phone, it has to be in the headphones. So, not only do you need to worry about the quality of the headphones, you have to worry about the quality of the DAC, and the DAC needs power. Seems like a few good reasons to not ditch the audio jack for now, especially if you care about audio quality. Also, those that care about audio quality probably have several expensive sets of headphones that are now incompatible with new Apple phones.
The corollary is that you have to worry about the DAC in the phone if you have an analog jack, and they're not good. So with digital only, you have the option of buying a good off board DAC (if you care), or otherwise selecting digital headphones at a price point you like.
All that said, I'm struggling to see the good side of Apple's decision to remove the 3.5mm jack. It'll make the phone worse in daily use for me - I won't be able to sit at my desk all day and charge my phone while listening to my existing, good headphones.
The DAC in the iPhone is as good as any external DAC you can buy, when it comes to human perceivable sound quality. Any other claims are audiophile BS and placebo.
There are valid product reasons for moving away from the 3.5mm jack though, like adding a power line that allows you to make active noise-canceling headphones that don't require their own battery, or outputting to more than two (stereo) speakers over a single cable.
There are also ways to do Active Noise Cancelling without an external battery and without a new cable. I had an old Sony laptop that did ANR with software on the laptop and mics on the earpieces wired back into the laptop. Also the connector was backward compatible with a standard 3.5mm. They just used a 3.5mm connector with extra conductors on it like this one:
https://www.amazon.com/Connectronics-TRRS-Conductor-Metal-Au...
I had one of those tiny Sony Vaio's that did the same - great idea and tech but did you ever use it in comparison to the state of the art from Bose etc? It was night and day - the Sony was barely better than normal ear buds on an aeroplane...
I agree, I remember it being very poor compared to my Bose aviation headset. Still was a cool proof of concept. I imagine with the right software/hardware it could work just as well as external ANR
Here's the thing though - you have to have a DAC in the phone anyway because the phone needs to have a speaker built in. Now, it might be nice for some people to be able to get an external DAC in addition, but that should already be possible with something like USB OTG.
Nice external DACs connected to phones is nothing new - USB OTG has been around forever, and even back in the "iPod Connector" days digital IO pins were available. Lightning does not provide anything new in this regard - and certainly nothing more than Lightning + 3.5mm ever did.
The problem with external DACs is that they don't easily fit in your pocket and cost a pretty penny. Cheap headphones will get even worse and good ones will get more expensive for including a good DAC.
There are no winners in this game except for Apple, which can push more licenses and proprietary accessories.
> The corollary is that you have to worry about the DAC in the phone if you have an analog jack, and they're not good. So with digital only, you have the option of buying a good off board DAC (if you care), or otherwise selecting digital headphones at a price point you like.
You could already connect an off-board DAC to the iPhone pre-iPhone 7
my wife has a dock that does this with her iphone SE. it doesn't use the 3.5mm jack, just lightning. So I'm speculating it's not a limitation of the lightning connector per se, but that of the dongle.
The DAC is better placed in the headphone than the phone, because otherwise you get bad sound quality when you use high-end ($100) headphones with a low-end ($100) smartphone. I was able to clearly make out the difference compared to plugging in the same headphones into an iPhone.
Put differently, when the DAC is in the phone, you need to worry about two things in order to get good sound quality — the quality of the headphones and the quality of the phone. With a DAC in the headphone, you worry about only one.
Except they only gave you one port, so you can't even do something as benign as charge your phone and listen to fucking music at the same time.
> sound quality,
I challenge you to prove that one, I'm sure sound quality is indistinguishable. If it's good enough for every sound engineer ever it's good enough for me.
> even cable integrity)
Again, is that even true? You can knock out a cheap headphone cable that works perfectly, whereas lightning devices are always crazy expensive.
Regarding cable integrity. Am I the only person to have had headphones pop in my ears due to (un)plugging the cable or causing some kind of friction at the connector?
I assume that issue disappears with the new plug.
Oh, and your complaint about charging the phone while listening, that's the Apple way they've always removed options to have a cleaner design. The superior Apple solution is to buy their pricey iPhone dock with headphone jack hidden in the back and charge and listen at the same time. Not a fanboy, just adding that Apple has addressed your complaint by making more money off of you ;)
It wasn't even the point of my post, but I'll bite: a digital cable means you no longer have to rely on the form factor/budget constrained DAC included in the device itself and can go for DACs of your own choice. That doesn't necessarily imply improved audio quality, but it means you have more control over your audio quality.
A digital cable can also do error handling and correction, meaning damage to the cable does not have the same impact as it does on analog cables.
Yeah, you only have one port. But that's not a restriction of digital ports but of Apple's implementation, I fully expect Android phones with two or more USB Type C ports to be released. As you can see from my post I'm not a fan of Apple's implementation at all (despite the fact that it'd be merely a nuisance for me).
> a digital cable means you no longer have to rely on the form factor/budget constrained DAC included in the device itself and can go for DACs of your own choice. That doesn't necessarily imply improved audio quality, but it means you have more control over your audio quality.
That's nothing new though. Those have been available for years. Some quick examples:
I've put multiple pairs of earbuds through the washer and the dryer and they work just as well (and are cleaner!) as they did before. I don't see that happening with AirPods.
The thing is, we already have a lightning port. It's a thing that exists. We could already have lightning headphones and the current headphone jack. Together.
Digital doesn't make up for the fact that we're moving from a near-universal standard headphone jack to a proprietary port. One that, mind you, is flat vs. round. The design of the headphone jack is superior. You can plug it in at any angle, and rotate it while plugged in. Now people are stuck with a flat cable that will just twist up during movement.
I'm more than a little shocked and disappointed that more people on HN don't care about avoiding proprietary formats. Most people here _make_ stuff. Open formats allow you to more easily make interoperable stuff.
I don't want a world what I have Apple, Samsung, HTC, LG headphone connectors.
I think it's a case of self-selection bias at work here. People who avoid proprietary formats are more likely to simply avoid iPhone/Apple threads altogether, so you simply won't hear them chiming in as much.
I completely agree. If they're going to get on their high horse about being brave they should have done this with USB-C. Now their phones will either never go USB-C or it will take 5 years before they do it otherwise all of those lightning headphones you just bought are now useless.
It's not a chicken and egg problem, every iPhone for years has a Lightning port and yet almost no one buys any Lightning accessories other than charging cables. For headphones it offers no advantage and an obvious limitation.
If Apple didn't remove the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 do you think any large number of people would intentionally buy Lightning headphones?
> Digital connectors are superior in almost every way
You don't know the first thing about noise or the transmogrification of noise at all do you?
> don't weigh up against the universal nature of USB Type C. The sheer arrogance.
Agreed. History is just coming to the downward part of a sine wave again... rejection of standards (see messagaing/storage/networking) and aggressive attempts at monopoly despite lack of convergence on singular solutions.
I just bought a Moto X, and I'm glad I did because the Moto Z looks like its replacement. A standard headphone jack is a basic requirement for me, anybody who doesn't have one won't get my money.
> the biggest difference is that those technologies were all on the downward slope of their popularity when Apple made the move
Were any of them? MacBook Air released in 2008. DVD media sales rose YOY 2005 => 2009. Flash video did not decrease in popularity pre-iPhone, it decreased because of the iPhone.
> The headphone jack is just as popular today as it has ever been
"DVDs are as popular today as they have ever been" - someone in 2008
> they by design can't be a universal solution
They've been explicitly designed to be as close to a universal solution as is possible. Pair them with one of your Apple devices and that pairing is synced to all others. Instead of unplugging your cable from your phone to your Mac you simply start doing something on your Mac and the audio source switches.
If the Airpods did not require power and were simply completely wireless they'd be the perfect solution. Apple is betting that battery advances will mean that the utility of these headphones (no wire, built in sensors) massively outweighs the cons (require power). Right now they only benefit "a lot" of people.
Even if the headphone jack were dying out (which IMO is not the case, but anyway), one has to admit that replacing it by a proprietary system like Lightning is a bad idea. Now, I get their goal is pushing toward the use of wireless, but they'll have to explain themselves as to how they're planning on pulling that off when the only official wireless alternative they offer is a $159 pair of earphones as opposed to their wired alternative which is literally more than 4x cheaper.
The headphone jack was not dying out up until yesterday. As of today, it is. In the next five years a whole bunch of phone manufacturers are going to do the same thing.
You're going to absolutely shit yourself when Apple removes the lightning port from the iPhone 10.
> one has to admit that replacing it by a proprietary system like Lightning is a bad idea
Apple's view: we've replaced it with wireless. Use Bluetooth or Apple W1-enabled headphones. It is much better for many reasons. If you can't use them for some reason, use the Lightning headphones we shipped in the box If you can't use them, use the 3.5mm=>Lightning adapter we shipped in the box.
> the only official wireless alternative they offer is a $159 pair of headphones
The only official laptops they offer start at $700. Apple is a premium brand. As of today the complete range of choices Apple enables you to make on headphones, right out of the box:
1. Wired lightning headphones
2. Wired 3.5mm headphones via lightning dongle
3. Any pair of bluetooth headphones
4. Any pair of Apple W1-enabled wireless headphones
If you don't want to spend $159 on a pair of bluetooth headphones then you can go ahead and buy some cheaper ones!
suuuuure 3.5mm is dying. Just as uUsb is dead. Seriously, though, it's an well-established standard with design that has withstood the test of time. It is not dying today. Nor tomorrow.
>> the biggest difference is that those technologies were all on the downward slope of their popularity when Apple made the move
> Were any of them? MacBook Air released in 2008. DVD media sales rose YOY 2005 => 2009. Flash video did not decrease in popularity pre-iPhone, it decreased because of the iPhone.
And yet most people still need to buy external DVD/Blu-Ray drives. It's been 7 years, and not having DVD drives built into Mac hardware is still incredibly inconvenient.
>> The headphone jack is just as popular today as it has ever been
> "DVDs are as popular today as they have ever been" - someone in 2008
I'm sure someone said that, but I think most people were already moving on to Blu-Ray.
> And yet most people still need to buy external DVD/Blu-ray drives.
I don't agree with you on that point, and that's coming from someone who has a computer which came with a DVD drive. I've literally used it maybe, what, twice since I got it? And honestly I can't find an example off the top of my head of a mac-owning friend of mine who'd complain about not having a optical drive on their machine.
DVD media sales don't mean much because most of those would be watched on home entertainment centers, not MacBook.
My ~5 year old laptop came with a blue ray drive. It has never held a blue ray disc and only once held a DVD. I wish other manufacturers were quicker to follow suite.
You've said "most people" twice here and I think it's wrong both times.
No, most people who buy Mac laptops and iMacs do _not_ buy an external DVD or Blu Ray drive. Apple is not shifting Macs:Drives in a 2:1 ratio or anything even approaching that.
> I think most people were already moving on to Blu-Ray
In 2008 Blu Ray vs HD-DVD was only just coming to an end. It's extraordinary to claim that "most people" [who had a DVD drive] were transitioning over to Blu Ray. If anything, I'd argue that a huge chunk of people who had DVD players flat-out have not transitioned to BR at all. Either way "most people" is an insane number.
I'm not sure most Mac owners are buying external DVD drives. Do you have any reason for believing that?
It's possible my experience isn't representative but I do know hundreds of Mac owners and DVD drives aren't very evident. Nor are any discs, generally. It seems to be a very networked subculture.
As someone that has been using noise cancelling wireless headphones for 3 years, sorry I can't relate.
I'm considerate of the price premium this represents, and how Apple's new buds unfortunately only offer 5 hours of charge. But I just want you to know there is another perspective.
Given your usage patterns, what sort of battery performance do you normally expect from wireless earbuds? 5hrs with a 24hr+ charging case seems decently long to someone who only uses wired earbuds.
>"DVDs are as popular today as they have ever been" - someone in 2008
What percentage of motor vehicles had a DVD player in 2008, vs what percentage of motor vehicles have an aux port today?
A car is not something you can just go out and upgrade. Try getting a dealership to install a factory bluetooth system in your 2010 chevy - let me know how it goes. Keep in mind Apple is decidedly against, on a cultural level, aftermarket customization, so some off the shelf, bestbuy radio head unit is not an acceptable apple-like solution.
>They've been explicitly designed to be as close to a universal solution as is possible.
Oh thats great news, then they must have covered these extremely common cases, right?
How about all my friends cars? Will i be able to play a song after my friend by virtue of this magical universal airpod system? (oh right, as long as i remember to carry my handy-dandy headphone dongle in my pocket at all times everywhere i go, ill be able to do what ive done for years without carrying anything!)
When i get into my car and bluetooth doesnt connect before i take it out of park, how will this system magically connect my phone so i can listen to music on my drive? (again, as long as ive got my trusty headphone dongle on me, all things are solved. It Just Works TM)
And those lightning headphones i just bought for my new iphone, how do i plug them into my mac, which doesnt have a lightning port? How about my PC? my android tablet? my ipod nano from years ago i use for working out? (yet another dongle of course! any true minimalist would swoon over the idea of having to keep track of several dongles with their mobile device - minimalism is apple design cue of choice afterall)
Besides all that, what is the latency on these airpods headphones? Movies are largely unwatchable over bluetooth because of the audio lag - has this been fixed? How about battery life? I use bluetooth headphones all day in my office, i generally connect them to my mac, because otherwise i end up with a dead phone battery near the end of the day - how does airpods resolve this issue?
Basically, what about this system is BETTER than what i currently have access to. To defend the removing of the headphone jack, surely you can come up with at least one feature that wasnt possible on phones with the headphone jack? I mean its not even any thinner....
Why does it need to be a factory Bluetooth system? DIN-standard decks have had a rich aftermarket for half a century at least, and have always offered more features than factory decks.
A Bluetooth+USB+AUX deck from a brand like Pioneer or Alpine is about $100USD.
Yes, it sucks to spend more money, but you also get Bluetooth calling, proper audio format support (does your Chevy so OGG?) and even support for apps like Pandora sometimes.
Worth getting _without_ even having an iPhone, for me at least.
>Why does it need to be a factory Bluetooth system?
Why do i need to get RAM upgrades from Apple? Storage upgrades? CPU? battery?
Why cant i just get a third party magsafe charger?
Because Apple's ethos says that you do it right the first time or you live with the consequences (or live with our prices for upgrades) - the equivalent of which would be insisting on a factory bluetooth system rather than getting a third party device.
Of course there are numerous benefits to going with third party/aftermarket devices. If Apple is counting on its users doing that, then it represents a major cultural shift from Apple.
I think your analogy to DVDs doesn't work because DVDs were never really about software. They were and, to the extent they still exist, are about multimedia in your living room. They began to decline because of Blu-ray, not because software suddenly became digitally packaged.
Second, DVDs were and are an inferior technology with a better alternative in every category of use. Yet when it comes to headphones, I own a pair of very expensive monitors that I use with lots of different devices. Am I supposed to just ignore that investment in the name of an Apple branded phone? There's nothing wrong with them at all and they far outperform a $150 pair of bluetooth "AirPods".
Regarding your statement about the Bluetooth being a universal solution, you're offering a red herring. Bluetooth was always available, so if someone wanted that, they'd have used it already. The issue here is the port itself and in this case, that means adapting all hardware not just to a new plug, but to a PROPRIETARY plug that won't work on my PC, digital piano, stereo amplifier, car auxillary port, or any of the other music producing devices I own. That's insanity.
And to say it was about "Courage". No, we all understand that it's a way for them to make more money selling their horrible headphones and licensing lightning to headphone makers.
That "courage" bit may be the most pretentious and ridiculous thing I've heard Apple say to date, and that's clearing some high bars. They're a consumer electronics company, not doctors without borders.
While from a financial standpoint this would make sense, most of the guys making the executive decisions at Apple are design focused and oriented. Dropping the headphone jack differentiates Apple even more from its competition, makes the phone sleeker, helps with water proofing, makes the wireless headphones more appealing (which not only act as headphones but also communication devices). This was much more than just a financial move for Apple, and in my opinion it looks to be a smart one.
For me i estimate my iphone use as:
80% Music 8% Calling 8% email 2% browsing 2% other stuff
With that in mind removing the 3.5 jack does not make the phone sleeker you need to see the adapter as a part of the iPhone as the phone is mostly useless without it.
The word sleek is unrelated to size, it refers to having an elegant, streamlined shape of design. Removing the 3.5mm jack does allow for a more sleek design.
This is what I'm talking about. I don't really use my phone to play music that much (although it is definitely a non-zero amount). The dealbreaker for me is that they've made a device that doesn't lay flat without a case. Although, since it has that ugly bump on the back, it's not like I'd want to have the phone outside a case anyway.
Actually, it's not really about appearances for me. It's just that it wouldn't sit flat. Like a table with 1 leg that's an inch longer than the others at a shitty diner.
Apple permanently lost their "sleek" cred when they introduced the camera bump on iPhone 6. No way in hell Steve Jobs would have released that monstrosity.
It's only smart on one hand (for the reasons you mention). On the other hand users will be pissed off at losing the convenience (yes, convenience) of plug and play headphones, along with the many other reasons why wired > wireless.
It may be a smart move in the end, but it's not obviously so at this point.
I saw it more as a push to eliminate the cord from headphones entirely. I personally hate the cord, but I hate charging bluetooth headphones even more. I hope eliminating the jack will result in better wireless headphones, but I'm not super confident that it will.
Apple of all companies knows that a dongle isn't a viable long term solution for a problem like that. They included it to ease the transition, not as a replacement.
I won't even touch a USB ethernet dongle for laptops, let alone a dongle for my iphone.
The headphone connector is already pressed close to breaking point in my pocket, I can't have something even bigger sticking out of the phone in a tight pocket.
So use wireless headphones, or get a pair of lightning headphones.
It's not really clear to me what the issue is, though, since the dongle can just be treated as an extension to the headphone cable. If anything, it should be harder to break, because the headphone jack part is on a flexible cable, and the part that's attached to the phone is the fairly durable Lightning connector (whereas 3.5mm male connectors are often somewhat flimsy).
> since the dongle can just be treated as an extension to the headphone cable
When in use, sure.
When not in use, then it becomes an extra item to carry / keep around.
> the fairly durable Lightning connector (whereas 3.5mm male connectors are often somewhat flimsy)
Citation needed. Actually, since the 3.5mm port is deeper, and the 3.5mm jack thicker, physics says the same amount of force would be better spread out via 3.5 connections than via a shorter, thinner connection as Lightning.
> When not in use, then it becomes an extra item to carry / keep around.
When not in use, why not just keep it attached to the headphones?
> Citation needed.
Uhh, personal experience? I've certainly bent my share of 3.5mm plugs, but I've yet to hear of anyone actually bending their lightning cable plug.
> […] physics says the same amount of force would be better spread out via 3.5 connections […]
This is a specious argument. Physics does not say this at all, because you haven't defined the materials you're working with. If the lightning connector and the 3.5mm plug are made out of the same material, and the 3.5mm plug is completely solid, then you could make this argument. But in my experience 3.5mm plugs are not made out of material that's as durable as the material lightning cable plugs are made from, and 3.5mm plugs also often give the impression of being hollow inside. Sure, you can probably make an extremely durable plug, and I'd guess that more expensive headphones probably have more durable plugs than cheaper headphones, but regardless I don't think you really have to worry about bending your lightning connectors.
> Uhh, personal experience? I've certainly bent my share of 3.5mm plugs, but I've yet to hear of anyone actually bending their lightning cable plug.
And in personal experience, I have never once damaged a 3.5mm plug, despite extreme rough use (and I mean the "extreme"). Can't say I have bent / never bent a lightning plug though, since I've never used an iPhone.
I wasn't worried; I was making the argument that the lightning connector is more durable (in my experience) than 3.5mm, hence anyone who's satisfied with the durability of a 3.5mm plug (as you seem to be) would have no problems with the durability of the lightning plug. If you're not worried about this, why did you try and argue against it?
By that logic, I'm not worried either. I just don't agree with your belief that the lightning plug is more durable than 3.5mm. My disagreement with your belief was the argument I was making.
Except that it is a non flexible extension that sticks out, in addition of the jack itself which already sticks out.
I won't go wireless. The last thing I want is another battery to manage, and I do care about music quality. I always saw the iphone as an ipod with internet. I stashed a spare iphone 6s so I don't need to change my habits for another 1-3 years. Then I guess I will have to learn how to use my phone again by switching to Android.
I'd be curious if the 6s starts trading at a premium to the 7. That was the case of the Galaxy Tab 1 at one point, bigger screen, better battery, looks like people preferred it to the Galaxy Tab 2.
A headphone male connector is already a non-flexible thing that sticks out. I don't see how the lightning adaptor is any different in that regard. It's a bit of non-flexible stuff that sticks out, attached to a flexible cable. The biggest difference is the cable then has another short non-flexible bit in it, but nobody complained about having short non-flexible portions of cable when headphones started including volume controls on the cable (it's just on a different part of the cable).
> I do care about music quality
It seems that AirPods aren't bluetooth but are instead something else. I'd expect the audio quality to be better than bluetooth. But I guess we have to wait until people have actually tried them out to determine how good it is.
> Then I guess I will have to learn how to use my phone again by switching to Android.
I do not believe for a second that you're going to actually change platforms simply to have an audio jack without a dongle. I bet in 1–3 years you're going to realize that there's a plethora of lightning headphones to choose from, along with an adaptor that lets you use headphones and charge simultaneously, and you'll stop thinking about this change as a problem.
You see the prices on lightning headphones? Cheapest one Apple offers is $150. Searching for best cheap bluetooth headphones finds a bunch clustered around $100.
I lose headphones like crazy, and I'm not an audiophile, so my average spend on headphones is under $20
Up until today there's been minimal demand for Lightning headphones. Once the iPhone 7 is released I'd expect cheap Lightning headphones to be pretty common, just like you can find both Lightning and Micro-USB charging cables near the cash register at pharmacies today.
I use (and keep) my headphones for years and I am an audiophile. This is a non-starter for me as well. I don't want to buy new $200 headphones after Apple inevitably obsoletes lighting and Bluetooth leaves a lot to be desired in terms of lag, pairing, charging, and audio quality.
But forcing a $200 purchase is. Your parent already has good headphones they like, has had them for years, and none of those headphones needs replacing because they broke down or are obsoleted. The $200 purchase your parent mentions is because of Apple obsoleting something.
>Also $200 isn't that expensive when talking about headphones
It absolutely is. Is it more common now than a few years ago? Yep. But it's still expensive, especially when there are excellent options below $50 and serviceable ones around $4-5.
Clearly, though my every day pair are HD650s for home/office work. Well worth the $300, but also not something I plan on ever upgrading or replacing. $200 headphones are a luxury item and, I believe, objectively expensive.
If they provide excellent sound over BT, maybe they're worth the $200 (160?), but they'd still be expensive.
The Motorola S305's are some of the best Bluetooth headphones I've ever owned and they're usually ~$20-25. Comfortable, good battery life, decent enough audio quality, build quality that lasted 3 years. After that time the foam pads started falling apart, so I ordered another pair a few weeks ago.
There are other similar models around the same price. You don't have to spend $100+ to get similar audio quality to $20 headphones that happen to have Bluetooth as well. Bluetooth chips are stupid cheap these days, pairing that with a small battery really doesn't add much to the cost of normal cheap headphone equipment and you'll find plenty of pairs <$40.
I thought they might replace the headphone jack with a USB-C connector. Then they could do the same thing on the MacBook and it'd have two USB-C ports.
But instead they chose Lightning, so now we have iPhone headphones and Android headphones.
Apple gets a lot of (semi-rightful) flak for going their own way and developing their own tech, protocols, and connectors, but in many cases they were legitimately first and the 'standard' option came later.
-- Lightning pre-dates USB type-C, which fulfill the same usability goal
-- AirPlay pre-dates Miracast
-- Metal pre-dates Vulkan
In some cases, Apple's product was later adopted as the standard:
-- The mini-DisplayPort was their custom connector but later adopted as an official standard
-- the MOV format was adopted for the ISO base container format (MPEG-4 Part 12), which forms the base of MPEG-4 Part 14, commonly known as the 'MP4 container'.
In some cases, they did develop custom tech where open ones existed:
-- ALAC is fairly close in implementation details to FLAC, which pre-dates it.
-- Apple's 'HTTP Live Streaming' came well-after MPEG standard ways of doing HTTP streaming, and is roughly contemporaneous with Adobe's and Microsoft's proprietary ways of adaptive streaming. Later, DASH was developed as a vendor-neutral alternative, and is now the preferred way of doing adaptive streaming via HTTP.
I don't believe that Apple is any more proprietary than a lot of other companies. It's just that they're a tempting target, because they dictate their ecosystem so strongly, and it certainly doesn't help that they ship a lot of locked-down, premium devices.
But blatantly user-hostile changes like removing the headphone jack won't earn them any goodwill.
They are. They're moving to Bluetooth. If you don't want those then you can get a Lightning adaptor.
Edit: no they're not, I was skimming the news too hard. Oops. Well I guess they're trying to fix the Bluetooth latency everyone is complaining about with their existing stuff then.
In a few years I'm sure Apple will find a wireless charging solution they like, and then they'll drop the Lightning connector as well. I cannot even begin to imagine the hue and cry that one's gonna cause.
They're not moving to Bluetooth. They're packaging Lightning headphones in the box and announced their own wireless earbuds that are not Bluetooth.
Update: as noted below, they do use Bluetooth though that's not in the marketing pitch. They don't promise compatibility outside of Apple devices though so who knows if it's based on a standard profile.
I guess there's no way to know for sure right now, but it seems like the Airpods probably do in fact run over Bluetooth since they'll work with existing iPhones and Macs. Maybe they're using Wifi and building on top of Airdrop, but that seems like excessive power consumption for tiny headphones. I'd bet they're using Bluetooth 4.x + some proprietary magic to get them to pair super easily.
"Right on their website", but not in any of their marketing materials or during the presentation. It will be interesting to see if they work at all with non-Apple devices.
Update: CNET is providing a little more on this, looks like they will be compatible (but without any buttons on them, it may not be a great experience):
> They all work with Apple's new proprietary W1 chip that's being described as a custom chip that uses ultra low-power Blueooth and keeps the two earbuds in sync. CNET reporter Shara Tibken spoke to Apple reps who confirmed the headphones will work with other Bluetooth devices, not just the new iPhones
Are there any restrictions about advertising something as "Bluetooth" if it doesn't follow the spec, and thus have compatibility with devices other than Apple?
There is an open standard; it's the analog headphone jack. </sarcasm>
But there is no 'other' open standard yet, although Intel and other vendors are pondering it [1].
This doesn't mean that HDMI or DisplayPort can't be shoehorned to do it and you can't carry those over the USB type-C plug, but they're meant for other things. This type of 'let's invent one that meets our needs slightly better than the 5 others' is what leads to standards proliferating (and I'll avoid linking the xkcd).
The current 4-pole headphone jack used in mobile phones is hardly a standard. At least both iOS and Android use their own flavour when doing anything more complex than play/pause.
USB audio has existed for decades and can be used with type-C like any other USB class. Intel's thing may provide improvements but it's hardly necessary.
This is correct, it's called 'Audio Device Class', specs here [1][2]. It's said that the new enhancements that Intel is pondering add power-management features to this spec, but I can't find much documentation on it, other than rumours.
It's not a very good one. Audio quality sucks and bluetooth has a lot of issues. But if you want to use it, Apple's always supported Bluetooth headphones.
I was limiting my comparison to wired audio interconnects.
It may be that from many people's point of view, the user experience is comparable and/or better. But it's accomplished using a fundamentally different mechanism. I wanted better apples; even if some oranges are tasty too.
What about HFS then? And HFS on OSX as the primary option? I think that's the one that's probably caused me the most grief.
Apple's NIH syndrome is exceedingly strong...and I say this being an Apple product guy.
The shit-show that has been owning a 6 Plus, the rapidly declining quality of OSX & its applications and now this has me quickly looking for the door.
Edit: And they're pushing iCloud hard now...to the point that I don't sign into it on my devices anymore. iOS nags me to create an iCloud Backup _every day_ and when the setting was (accidentally) automatic, a single backup filled all of my free iCloud storage space...which caused iOS to nag me into paying for more iCloud storage. I simply cannot stop it from sending push notifications.
Vulkan was announced first. Apple was even a part of the effort. Then they went off and did their own thing and withdrew from Vulkan and announced Metal.
As I see it, Apple took Vulkan ideas. Of course it was faster for them to create Metal because they didn't have to care about cross-platform and multi-party support.
No it wasn't. Khronos' own slides on Vulkan disprove this (slide 6) [1], saying they began the effort in June 2014. Apple announced Mantle to the public that month.
In the same presentation as you linked, on slide 9, you can see Apple was a part of the Vulkan effort. The subsequently withdrew from Vulkan, before releasing Metal.
WWDC 2014 in June had the 'Zen Garden' demo running Unreal 4 on the Metal API [1], and it was released to the app store in September [2]. In a different session, CryEngine was shown running Metal on an iPad [3]. That's two high-profile game engines already using the API. A limited release perhaps, but I count that as a significant head-start, all the while Khronos was just organizing glNext.
For clarity, 'usability goal' I was referring to is plug-into-slot-blindly-with-your-eyes-closed.
I used the word 'usability' to attempt to imply UX, and I was deliberately avoiding commenting on speed, features, DRM, and the like, because those aren't delivered by USB type-C, which is only the plug. As you imply, those points are addressed by the jump from USB 2 to USB 3.0 or the type-C-compatible USB 3.1.
>> Later, DASH was developed as a vendor-neutral alternative, and is now the preferred way of doing adaptive streaming via HTTP.
Source? The entire industry as far as I can tell still uses HLS as the only mobile streaming tech, whether within or beyond the Apple ecosystem. HLS won. If DASH is going to take over, I haven't seen any evidence of that yet, and don't expect to in the near future.
My iPad 3 is pretty much "the Reflec Beat machine" and while it does have a timing adjustment option it only moves the moment in time that it uses for judgement. If I delay it to compensate for wireless earbuds then it will be visually delayed too past the judge line. Sure they can compensate for this with more options but I like sane defaults. I have never had to touch this slider because zero is already perfect, and in games with separate audio and visual lag compensation options I'm never confident that I've gotten it accurate. This isn't something you should have to ask the user to do. https://i.imgur.com/qU2TEP5.jpg
I've pretty much given up rhythm gaming on mobile platforms. There's always going to be too much overhead and too many unknown variables.
Only games that I think have ever gotten this right (insofar as lag correction can be "right") is the Rock Band series, which has auto lag compensation via a photosensor and mic on the guitars.
I imagine the best rhythm game experiences will remain on crappy PCs running Windows XP Embedded for a while.
Some silly stuff happens with bluetooth headphones such as my PS3 bluetooth headset being unable to hear music played from the iPhone but they work fine for calls.
We could have a world where Vulkan was the one stop shop graphics API anywhere. Instead, we are in this situation where everything but Apple products supports / will support it.
Metal was done [1] even before the Khronos Group issued a call to develop a next-gen low-overhead API [2] which became Vulkan. It helped that AMD basically donated Mantle so they were able to turn around in a year. Apple understandably was in no appetite to use DX12, and then-AMD-specific Mantle could not be construed as any more than a tech demo and/or an attempt to eke out more performance from their cards.
It makes the old OpenGL/DirectX situation look great by comparison, doesn't it? Now there's three competing modern graphics APIs, and none works on every platform. At least OpenGL worked everywhere, if poorly.
Aren't Vulkan, Direct X 12 and Metal much closer than Direct X pre 12 and Open GL ever were? The three are derived (at least in philosophy) from AMD's Mantle, not like Direct X pre 12 and Open GL that are (or at least were) very different beast.
I only ever programmed with OpenGL 1.3 and 1.4, so my knowledge is not very up-to-date to say the least...
Porting complexity is still non-trivial, and then you need people who understand multiple bare metal APIs.
The architectures are all based off Mantle, but OpenGL 3.3 and DX10 were very similar in their hay day, and porting was still fairly limited (you can still partially blame the horrible adoption of the 3.x series that took so long to take off).
Consoles have always been a special case, though. For one thing, the entire API is usually under NDA, so a different graphics system is the least of your problems.
It's the same problem as with USB C, Vulkan is predated by Apples own standard and you can't change it without hurting someone. Apple made the decision that they would rather save their own customers unnecessary pain.
You can't change it from one day to another, but Apple has all the power to add Vulkan as alternative interface to the same hardware, in addition to the Metal API. They can do this at any time, now or in the future, without inflicting pain on anyone.
Eventually Metal won't be used anymore since there's no point in using the less portable API with the same capabilities. Finally, once use of Metal is low enough, discontinue it in a new iOS/macOS update.
Upgrades with parallel maintenance and deprecation timelines are well understood, and very feasible for a company with Apple's engineering prowess. There's really no argument other than continued lock-in to stick with Metal only.
The pain is going to be that very few video games will be ported to OSX / iOS unless they dramatically increase their market size to justify the heavy cost to port to Metal just for those systems. If Apple cared about customers in this case, it would be an obvious choice to use Vulkan to pressure developers into using the industry standard rather than the Microsoft only product they are using predominantly now.
Or the 4 engines that most games are made in will just add a metal layer. Or you use something like https://moltengl.com/ to make a direct opengl -> metal wrapper.
I never got to the point you are at because I could never get over the USB jack.
It took 30 fucking years and a lot of blood sweat and tears but finally finally there is a global, universal, cheap and simple charging standard that just works. You can find a USB port anywhere and there are extra cables everywhere and life is just slightly better all around.
I've washed my micro-usb cable in the laundry more times than I can count, and it still works absolutely fine. I'm not sure how these cables are broken by normal use.
You're in the minority. Normal people don't break cables. The latest Apple cables still have the cheap rubber sleeve peel away, but you can rip it off entirely and have the metal-coated cable last years without the wire fraying. If you're actually fraying the wire itself, you are treating your phone extremely poorly. I am not gentle with my equipment, and I've never had an Apple cable fall apart to the point of needing replacement.
Anecdotally I know many, many people who complain about regularly breaking cables, both Apple and non-Apple. Myself included. You ought to give data not anecdotal experience if you want to claim what "most" people do.
I'm talking about the ability to walk off an airplane, in any country in the world, and having forgotten both my charging cable and my charger, I can find a plain old USB port somewhere[1] and someone (possibly my hotel) can hand me a plain old USB cable and I can charge my (device).
To be honest, if you walk off an airplane, almost anywhere you will be able to buy a missing cable you may have misplaced to charge any popular hardware at most for the price of a lunch or two.
Also, hotels have cables.
Yes, there are parts of the world where the above does not hold, but did you really mean ANY country in the world?
What the fuck is wrong with people in these comments? You're not the only one ranting about "lost cables". Are there really this many people who are so incompetent in life that they're losing their cables every other week? Feel free to bash the lack of standards; but please stop talking about some theoretical scenario that 99.99% of users never encounter. If you're going to lose your cable, you may as well leave behind your wallet, keys, phone, and the lint that was in your pocket to boot. May as well leave your brain behind on the plane too, if you're so incapable of holding onto your personal property.
When people talk about whether a cable is "standard" or not, they are drawing distinctions between different types of cable. By your definition every cable is standard, or at least every cable that can connect to two models by the same manufacturer. That's a useless definition. People don't mean that, they mean something adopted by ISO/IEEE or similarly available for anyone to use with a lot of adopters.
No, a "standard" means something that's well-defined that multiple parties can implement. Something that only one manufacturer can use is not a standard because nobody else can do it. Lightning is a standard, other people can and do make lightning cables and accessories, it's just a proprietary standard and AIUI requires you to be part of the Made For iPhone program.
That's actually an interesting point. Is it true, though? AFAIK you have to actually be a member of the MFi program to see its terms (and the terms are under NDA), so I don't know what the exact restrictions are. I'm certainly not aware of any non-Apple devices with a lightning port on them, but I'm struggling to think of who would actually make such a device. The only reason I can think of for this is if you want to make a wireless device that charges over a lightning cable, but it's almost certainly a lot cheaper for such a device to just charge over USB instead of trying to charge over lightning anyway, and the only reason to want lightning is if you want your users to be able to charge your device with the same cable they use to charge their iPhone, but nobody seems to care about that sort of thing.
Which is to say, this may very well be true, but the lack of third-party devices with lightning ports can also easily be explained as just nobody wants to do that.
So your phone has a USB type A socket in it? Or are you misrepresenting how you have one eternal ageless never-deprecated never-changing way to connect your phone to things?
I don't think removing the headphone jack is going to be as big a deal as everyone here makes it out to be. I have a pair of bluetooth headphones I use for the gym and I love them. In fact all the headphones I see at the gym anymore are wireless. The only thing I hate is having to charge them. If battery technology keeps improving there will be no advantage to wired headphones. Even from a sound quality perspective there are some very nice sounding bluetooth headphones out there, and I suspect that will only continue to improve. The only thing I really use wired headphones for anymore is as monitors when I'm playing in the band, and that's only because our monitor setup is wired. If I could find a good wireless IEM setup I would be in heaven.
I see this as the direction the market is headed anyway. Apple has just moved to embrace it early.
1. Removing the headphones is not what people are complaining but unable to charge the phone and use wired headphones is one thing people are complaining about.
2. USD 160 for a AirPod! thats too much and the design really is not up to the mark
Yes, and consider that you can buy an Amazon Echo for $179 ($129 at Lowes)that comes with a subwoofer, WiFi and Bluetooth, seven microphones, an AI and a sense of humor.
A pair of rigid plastic Bluetooth headphones that are easily damaged or lost for $159 is consumer price gouging. You do the math.
Talking of the rigidity of the shells on Apple headphones in general, they aren't designed for everyone's ears. I have fairly small ear canals and those things physically hurt to use. I much prefer a nice pair of Philips with gel caps.
Plus the cord to me is actually a good thing ZIMHO, it provides some weight and also helps me stop losing the things.
Courage my ass, it's them simply trying to milk more $$$ from people who can feel more superior from buying salvation at no matter what the cost. :-)
1. Do we know for sure you won't be able to do that? I seem to remember that being a complaint about the USB-C port on the new MacBooks but you can get an adapter that allows you to do both. I suspect there will be similar adapters for the iPhone.
2. $160 might be too much for the AirPods, but I don't know that anyone can really know that yet. Whether they are worth that or not really depends on the functionality and sound quality, and I haven't really seen any reviews on that yet. What I do know is that $160 is really on the low end as far as good headphones go. My Jaybirds were $150 when I got them and my ATH-M50xs were also around $150.
> I don't think removing the headphone jack is going to be as big a deal as everyone here makes it out to be.
> I have a pair of bluetooth headphones I use for the gym and I love them.
Yeah, that's why you don't see it as a problem. The majority of people still use corded headphones, some of which are high-quality, pricey investments that you don't just want to stop using. If you end up misplacing that little dongle, you can't listen to music privately until it's replaced. Seems like a downgrade in functionality, with almost no improvement, considering you are already using your bluetooth headphones effectively.
> The majority of people still use corded headphones, some of which are high-quality, pricey investments that you don't just want to stop using.
The vast majority of people I see in public use the standard Apple earbuds. I suspect that the percentage of people with expensive cans is very low, and that most people that buy the iPhone 7 will continue to use the stock lightning earbuds.
Are people really using high-end headphones on the go with their iPhones? I have some very nice corded cans, but they require a headphone amp to really sound good, so they only get used at home.
How much do you listen for charging to be an issue? I have the beats solo 2 and I change them like once a week for half an hour. Hardly an inconvenience and I listen to them almost every day.
I just don't get the supports of this. I have a pair of bluetooth headphone and of course normal corded. Bluetooth sucks! It's buggy as hell. You have to constantly get it to re-sync with your device. Interference constantly makes the signal get crappy.
Ever been on a call with your fancy blue tooth headset while someone turned on a microwave near by? I have, that shit stops working!
I'm all for moving forward with an all digital solution, but blue tooth just doesn't cut it 100% of the time.
This. Bluetooth just sucks. I recently tried out 3 of the top rated bluetooth headsets on Amazon after giving up a couple years ago. It still just sucks and is not reliable. Battery life is terrible if you want headphones you can use all day while at work or commuting (won't even come close to making it through the day with smaller headphones).
This is just a terrible decision IMO. OTOH I'm a diehard Nexus guy so I guess I really don't care :)
Which bluetooth headphones did you try? I have the following two and they work perfectly.
- Plantronics Backbeat Go
- Jabra Pulse
Both worked perfectly paired with my Surface Pro as well as my Nexus 6P. I also had a Nexus 6 prior to that and it paired to that device with no issues whatsoever as well.
Plantronics seem to have simply mastered bluetooth. The backbeat pro pairs easily with everything I've tried, long enough range to leave my phone at my desk all day, connects to work + personal at the same time, and are pretty good headphones to boot.
Given that headphones are purely analog devices, I'm not sure an all-digital solution really makes sense. You have to put the DAC+amplifier somewhere, and it seems just wasteful to incorporate it into each and every pair of headphones.
That, and you'll wind up with at best, something that performs equally well to the traditional analog output jack. Is that really worth mangling years of standards and backwards compatibility for?
They're pricey (~ 450 USD), but I recommend the Sennheiser Momentum bluetooth wireless [1]. Great sound for music (aptX) and phone calls, comfortable, solid noise cancellation. You can still use them corded if you want too.
I suspect they are, they've said that the AirPods work with Macs and iPads, which as far as we know don't have any special radio hardware except the standard Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.
To me, the biggest problem with this move is that you can't charge the device and listen to music with corded headphones at the same time. Unless there is some option I am unaware of.
In any case, I just decided to replace my iPhone 5 with an iPhone 6s, which I should be able to find on sale.
Bluetooth is ok in general, but I hate to have one more battery to keep an eye on.
Macbook, iPhone, Apple Watch, AirPods. That's already three different charging mechanisms for the devices you are likely to carry when traveling.
I would be very happy if they could even just add one extra USB port to Macbook USB-C charger so that you could charge the laptop and phone with the same charger.
Given that you get a lightning to audio jack converter right in the box it's pretty much the only significant objection IMHO. Converter cables aren't ideal, but hardly a ragequit issue. I wonder if third party charge/jack splitter cables are possible?
I'm still going to buy an iPhone; just not the 7. Since I generally keep my phones for three years, I will have plenty of time to see how this plays out in the market.
I guess Apple's solution is to always buy more stuff. I could easily see "needing" to now have three docks and 2 adapters. One dock at home office to listen/charge when working at home all day, one for work office for same reason and one in the car for long road trips / commuting (no BT in my car, just aux). Maybe I could get away with one adapter if I leave it connected to my headphones... But I can't be expected to reasonable carry around docks with me or even to consistently remember them when I hop into the car. I already know it would be a matter of time before winding up in a situation where I would not have an adapter on me, or needing to charge. Basically this is an anti-consumer move, there is zero benefit to consumers and actually makes everyone's lives more inconvenient.
It's strange because I don't need any of this stuff right now with my iPhone 6+, it was a solved problem. Never before, after a new Apple release have I felt that what I have now is more desirable than the newer version.
We've had bluetooth audio in cars for many many years now. The most compelling argument for needing an aux cable is if you're renting a car (since rentals usually skip most of the options, such as bluetooth audio). And with the headphone jack being removed, it's only a matter of time before some 3rd party comes out with an adaptor cable that includes a charge port so you can do both at the same time.
> there is zero benefit to consumers
Completely untrue. Just because you don't care about the various benefits doesn't mean there is zero benefit. If there was zero benefit, Apple wouldn't do it. More than any other company I know, Apple cares deeply about user experience, and they're dropping the headphone jack because they think it's holding back the product.
The most obvious benefit I can think of is dropping the headphone jack let them put a second speaker in where the jack was, which is probably what let them get 2x louder speakers.
I am not sure if I agree with the floppy being abandoned at the right time. This was at a time where the cloud would be emailing something to yourself, no USB drives, and CD writers that were expensive, and burnt a coaster half the time.
Also back then Apple had a minuscule market share, so they did not really kill it. It just made most people have to buy an external floppy drive. Yes the floppy did have to go, but USB sticks needed to come first, and they were not there yet. There really wasn't any other alternative for say saving your work at school and going home.
You're not alone and I would expand this distinction to not only factor in popularity but functionality as well. CDs phasing out floppy disks may have been done in part for DRM purposes but the advantage was at least clear; 700MB is a hell of a lot more than 1.44MB. With the iPhone 7, Apple is taking away a time-tested feature in favor of alternatives which do not present clear advantages. Bluetooth headphones are annoying to pair and tend to have connectivity issues in conditions like rain. Lightning headphones are expensive and prohibitive. Dongles suck. As for AirPods, I'm not getting the sense that they provide much more in the way of functionality or sound than any traditional, run-of-the-mill pair of headphones. They certainly won't sound as good as my Audio Technica ATH-M50x. What do I have to be excited for?
I know it's hackneyed to glorify Steve Jobs but he always seemed to have his eye on the ball when it came to tech. Macintosh is the obvious example but if you look at his work at NeXT or building products like WebObjects, you see a CEO who predicted the resurgence of distributing computing and the overall dominance of networking in software. With the iPhone, Apple's move to phase out the physical keyboard on mobile devices was done to put content front and center - a design informed by Jobs' vision of a portable "post-PC" device that would act as the source of most of our media consumption.
What is the removal of the 3.5MM jack informed by? Trivial product metrics like thickness and water-resistance? A cynical attempt to make money from licensing proprietary standards? Or maybe Apple is going through the motions, asserting its reputation as a "gatekeeper" that dictates which standards should be left in the past.
Whatever the case may be, the iPhone 7 is not a compelling product. As an iPhone user, my next smartphone will most likely be an Android.
I would be interested to know how often those jacks fail and need warranty replacement. For whatever reason I seem to break them easily and have moved to Bluetooth to avoid this. The design puts the strain on the socket rather than the jack. There may well be a small minority who regularly need repairs because of this.
Does it matter in this case? If the remaining headphone users stick with whatever headphones come packaged with their phone for free, then they still wouldn't be using the audio jack with the iPhone 7, as the iPhone 7 comes packaged with lightning headphones.
How many headphones are people even buying? I have a drawer full of headphones I have collected over the years. Not at all surprising people would only be buying wireless headphones, but it does not mean they are more commonly used.
Depends on what you mean. I have two pairs of headphones at any given time. One is a high quality over ear set for work/transit/home. The second is a "beater" cheap pair I bought at CVS that I wear when working out or walking. I lose the beater pair all the time, but don't care because they are cheap.
Well, for anyone else who like me can't get the Apple earbuds to stay in my fucked up ear (cauliflower ear, from wrestling), I bought these Bluetooth earbuds a month ago and now use them all the time: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01GDIUA8Y/
At $45 they're not the cheapest but they've got pretty good sound quality and work well from a physical standpoint
Apple's profits are on the downward slope, and their new acquisition of Beats along with them changing the headphone interface that's been in use for decades gives them great opportunity for revenue -- selling people premium upgraded headphones while instantly forcing all their devoted fans to upgrade. That has got to be worth $50-200 a user.
As far as traditional headphones go, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Unfortunately, Apple knows we've hit Peak Smartphone, and they are running out of grown opportunities, so this is simply an attempt to create more growth where it doesn't otherwise exist.
It's mostly milking their customers and the industry.
Maybe, but it wasn't at all to the same degree. Floppies were verging on uselessness in 1998. Capacities hadn't increased in a decade, while code and data sizes were growing exponentially. Floppies could barely fit anything useful anymore. A wide variety of replacements were available, with Zip, Jazz, Bernoulli, CD-RW, and others all competing. There was no standardization, so the replacements kind of sucked. Removable data storage was just a complete mess at the time, so eliminating the most standardized but vastly least capable option wasn't that big of a deal.
With audio connectors, it's not like that at all. For wired connections, there's one universal standard that works great. There's no analogous situation to being unable to fit your massive bloated Word documents onto a 1.44MB floppy disk. Moving past the floppy disk solved a bunch of serious problems, while moving past the headphone jack isn't solving any problems.
Wireless headphones that just work are seriously really nice. Once you use them, you wonder why all headphones aren't wireless.
Removing the headphone jack forces people to solve the wireless headphone problems: pairing, latency, and charging.
I'm not convinced apple isn't timing this well, but I see what they're getting at and I think it may be more like these past example than people are saying.
I believe that Apple collected anonymous usage data of how often the headphone jacks were used on their iPhones and determined that it would be safe to remove - even with a vocal group that would complain.
Whenever you install or upgrade to a new OS, Apple prompts users if they'd like to send the anonymous usage data and I feel the headphone jack would be an important data point they've been researching.
Does anyone know if aptX support has arrived in the iPhone for bluetooth devices? I have been increasingly using devices like the Sony SBH80, or SBH54 and they work seamlessly for the most part already between my phone and laptop. I don't think the headphone thing has been thought thru but their wireless jump to the W1 seems to be at least in part bluetooth 4.x based which itself is a far superior technology to even BT 3.0 that many devices today have.
The other problem I've run into is having a phone and headset with the same version of bluetooth.
Bluetooth audio, once high quality enough through codecs like aptX will become like wifi, we will wonder why we were tethered with wires to begin with. Bluetooth 5.0 appears to have taken a big step towards the audio quality issue resolution. I've previously owned the Sony MW600 and SBH52 bluetooth receivers for the past 5-7 years. As the tech improves it's going to become more viable and is in line with Apple's generally wireless strategy between Macbook, iPad, iPhone, etc.
Very good question. It's basically incomprehensible why Apple doesn't support the codec in iOS, especially since the other issue that replacing wired headphones with Bt is that the sound quality is inferior - even with aptX support.
I'm very surprised that I have seen almost no mention of the fact that Apple didn't just remove an "outdated" interface and inconvenience their customers, they also simultaneously reduced the quality of their audio experience.
I'm looking forward to learning about the W1 chip and what is different than existing technologies. If they've truly pushed things forward it would be great, instead of simply making sure to put all the highest available specs and capabilities in both device and headphones
a good record of abandoning technologies at the right time (floppies, CDs, Flash, etc) but the biggest difference is that those technologies were all on the downward slope of their popularity when Apple made the move
I seem to remember commenters on "social media" (or at least their precursors) being just as confused over all of those changes. (With the possible exception of less outcry over optical drives going away.) It seems like there's always some supporters and always some detractors when Apple does something like this.
Maybe that changes soon or maybe AirPods solve this for iOS users (they by design can't be a universal solution)
There's an Apple pattern, where they support a less popular but more capable existing standard or come up with something superior to a standard, which spurs the development of an even better universal standard. It's high time that someone developed wireless headphones that weren't as much of a compromise as they generally are.
Honestly I'm glad they're moving towards wireless. I replace way more headphones than I care to admit just from them wearing out with normal use. It's usually just the wire itself that is worn out, the earpieces are almost always in good condition. The only thing I worry about is losing the AirPods, but they seem like a step in the right direction.
I've had the same Sennheiser HD25 for 12 years and use them almost every day. I've replaced the ear pads twice, but I've never had to replace the cable (which is easily replaced).
It's a bad move from Apple to remove the jack. I dislike wireless headphones as you can't quickly move them from iphone to macbook, they need charging and they'll always have some form of lag.
>I dislike wireless headphones as you can't quickly move them from iphone to macbook, they need charging and they'll always have some form of lag.
According to apple there will be a continuity style handoff mechanism with the airpods(and it sounds like the new bluetooth beats headphones). Assuming it works well, it will actually be easier to move from iPhone, to Macbook, to iPad, to apple watch. Just start using/playing music on the other device and it'll switch over.
Who knows how good the implementation will be, especially at first, but it's clearly a problem they're aware of and trying to address.
I use earbuds for hours a day, and replace them at least once a year at a cost of $10 or less. So earPods cost about a decade's worth of wired earbuds.
Besides, wireless earbuds that only last for 5 hours would be completely useless to me, since I often listen to music all day while hiking. I can't imagine I'm the only one who dislikes having ever more things that need to be frequently charged: wireless mice, "smart" watches, now earbuds. I'm pretty happy with my digital watch that lasts several years on a battery, and my cheap headphones that don't need to charge, and won't get lost when they fall out of my ears. Sorry, but not everything can or should be wireless.
Yes it is. Port complexity is real, especially with analog ports, and relative to what you can do with physical space in a phone package the space required for any port is significant.
While I decry the drive towards "1mm slimmer!" do consider that the 3mm jack is probably around 10% battery capacity in space usage on most devices. You might not be able to perfectly reclaim the space, but still, I would always prefer to just use a wireless headset with 5%+ more battery.
The space argument would have been a lot more compelling if they hadn't added stereo speakers. I feel like I might have grudgingly accepted it, but with that addition it just feels like they're screwing with me.
Well, here I was typing up a sarcastic reply about how Apple is congenitally incapable of selling anything with a price tag under $20, but they already have the thing on their store, and it's $9:
But, seriously, it comes with the territory. Some people are okay with it. Some people are not. Both are fine. I don't really understand why it gets so far up people's noses either way.
At the core, it might be the same thing as with the outrage over Twitter changing the star icon ("favorite") to a heart icon ("like"). These changes remind people that they're not really in control of the product they're using, they're bound by the decisions of an enterprise who's only acting in their interest if these happen to align with the enterprise's own interests.
Perhaps Apple could sell some kind of wire to attach to the AirPods to keep them safe. The other end of the safety wire could plug into the phone's lightning port, for extra safety.
It's so easy to replace cables for headphones though? Even if the cables aren't detachable (and they are in many good headsets), it's a trivial soldering job.
The telling thing for me was Phil had to defend the headphone idea with three different arguments, along with an inflammatory photo of a switchboard. When Steve Jobs deleted the floppy drive, he simply declared that floppies had no future.
I might be convinced of that when they improve the battery technology. No company on the planet except for Apple can say "wireless is the future" and charge $159 for buds that last 5 hours.
The battery in my jaws neckband earphones should last 13 hours.
Btw a neckband should have been the ideal form factor for this - comfortable, great battery life, doesn't require expensive tech like earpods , hard to lose, buttons.
I work in an office with a lot of 2.4 GHZ wifi going on - bluetooth anything (including keyboard and mouse) doesn't work worth a damned in that environment.
Wireless is a poor substitute for wired in most real-world usecases. Wireless gives you: unpredictable performance, latency, contention for available frequencies, and having to deal with batteries.
I think it's OK for wifi, only because most of the time the bandwidth of wifi is greater than the bandwidth of your ISP. But I think that's a problem with the state of ISPs, not a blessing of wifi.
My issue with this is there are wireless headphones today, you don't need to remove the headphone jack to support them. It's a step back for no compelling reason.
Another of Apple's core tenets is "milk those cows [customers] for all they've got". They couldn't care less about any other market segment than the pure luxury status-seeker segment.
Most, if not all of the previous tech they abandoned seemed too early at the time. It forced those who were making products for Apple to follow their lead. Apple has always tried to reduce clutter with design, and a lot of that times it means getting rid of something that doesn't seem like it need to be removed, e.g. limited ports, no removable micro sd for iPhone, wireless devices and accessories, removing drives, soldering in laptop parts. There is a population of people that absolutely despise Apple for doing this. This seems like a classic 80/20 situation where the 80% don't have the need for a headphone jack or are willing to use wireless headphones and be fine with that. While the 20% are upset because like many of the replies below people have specific use cases for why they need it.
It is more likely that we will see other manufacturers drop the headphone jack as well because Apple did. Again, most people will be fine with that. Bluetooth headphones and ear pieces have already been around for awhile. You also have to think about Apple's purchase of Beats Audio.
With that said I will concede that I am also a bit bummed about them removing the port now as well, but I have learned that Apple is incredibly stubborn when it comes to listening to their consumers about these decisions, and you just have to abide, or buy something else.
That that said, I have a few of them and pretty much never use them because the extra battery life hassles aren't worth it relative to just plugging into the audio source.
Apple has lost a few sales in my house because they failed to support one thing or another. My wife is an apple user, but I can never get over the lack of sd/pci/whatever slots, or frequently things like bluray playback... When shopping for a new device.
As far as headphone jacks? Probably just another reason for me not to buy an idevice, I have a fairly large collection of bluetooth headphones, because of some work I was doing with A2DP a few years ago, but I pretty much use wired headphones because I've had the headphone battery die before the phone/etc way to often, and frankly when it comes to comfort (while sitting at my desk), or fit when running I stick to certain headphones not because they have cables but because they are better in the given use case.
> Side note, I think it is hilarious that Apple can't get the AirPods to ship at the same time as the iPhone. Anyone who buys the new phone on release is going to be stuck with the crappy lightning headphones for at least a month and a half.
Why? The phone comes with an adapter. Any headphones that worked with previous iPhones will work with the iPhone 7 via the adapter. People will just continue to use the headphones they already have.
Because ditching the 3.5 mm jack is a fairly big deal and you'd think they would show you how well it works to encourage people to buy in to their idea and included them as standard.
You can complain about this, but I have recently bought two pairs of headphones, LG tones and JayBirds, and they are both bluetooth. I really do not see myself going back to wired headphones ever again, so this move is pretty timely.
I myself have about a thousand dollars invested in high-end headphones and earbuds (Sony DJ cans, Extreme Isolation EX-29 for the open office, Sennheiser earbuds for the commute) that I have no intention of replacing or buying a dongle for.
There are no bad DACs anymore and there haven't been for a decade. You'll probably be getting slightly better analog environment since the DAC isn't near the antenna and CPU as well!
That's a key benefit of this change. Ditch the legacy analog port that is wasting space. Allow consumers to use a DAC that meets their quality standards, be it a cheap one in the dongle, one built into headphones with a lightning connector, or an external / improved DAC dongle.
This may be a case where the European Union antitrust authorities mandate that Apple do something different. This seems to be a textbook case of monopoly status in one domain being used to exert a monopoly in another (headphones).
I'd love to see how a claim with the antitrust authorities will hold up about Apple having an (iPhone) monopoly and abusing that somehow to get a monopoly in the headphone space, which is served by a bajillion manufacturers already providing many wireless and some lightning headphones. Don't forget Apple is also shipping the adapter that keeps all those minijack devices working.
No matter how many times people want to try this, Apple doesn't have a monopoly when it comes to the mobile/smartphone (hardware) space.
Pros for wired: better fidelity, no batteries to charge, lighter weight, more headphones to choose from, cheaper headphone options, no adapters to lose, can listen to music while charging.
Another pro for wireless is that you get more space inside the phone, which means more room for chips, batteries, etc. And you have to consider things like headphone jack make it harder for your phone to be waterproof since that's one more place you have to figure out how to seal.
> the biggest difference is that those technologies were all on the downward slope of their popularity when Apple made the move and all had solid replacements available at the time
Was that downward slope clear at the time Apple made the changes, though? I remember "no Flash on iPhone" being a major complaint of many pundits.
Dropping the DVD drive was also a pretty big thing at the time as there wasn't even a 'similar' alternative (another type of removable media the industry had switched to. In the past it seems when they drop technology it real does make the changeover period quicker. This time I'm not so sure it will but at the end of the day I don't think it matters. Most people use the headphones that come with their iPhone and they will continue to. Not to mention Beats has 60-80% of the headphone market share depending on who you believe so with Beats + EarPods + AirPods most people are covered.
"Most" people do a lot of things, but that doesn't mean that use of proprietary patent protected communication standards doesn't really hurt innovation and customers in the long term.
I think it would have been a better transition if they had shipped the AirPods a year before removing it from the phone. Many people have been using bluetooth headphones for awhile, but Apple didn't offer anything until today.
Let's say I go with AirPods. The presentation just showed initial pairing and focused on the phone. It seems to work with iphone 5 and forward, which is great, but does it work with my older laptop? What about non-Apple bluetooth devices? It would be also be a nice little perk to have it work with AppleTV for watching TV at night. Traditional bluetooth sucks when switching between devices (in addition to pairing). It would be nice if they could prove to everyone that was a solved problem (and prove the lighting earpods aren't just a stopgap) before ditching the headphone jack.
USB is a good counterexample, though. They started pushing USB for all peripherals before anybody else, and before there was a good market for peripherals that supported it. The market emerged soon thereafter, though, and other companies were ditching their parallel ports, etc., within a year or two.
Not really; people who had preconceived notions of what they thought Apple would do were reporting this. And those people were wrong, and perhaps their preconceived notions are in need of revision.
"Considering all these amenities, the most shocking part of the iMac isn’t what it offers, but what it lacks. The iMac has no floppy drive, which might be forgivable if there were a Zip drive or other removable-media option, but there isn’t.
And most dramatically, this new consumer offering has no SCSI port, no standard serial ports, and no ADB ports. Apple has opted to replace these familiar connections with USB, a high-speed serial architecture that has suffered from slow adoption on the Wintel platform despite its technical advantages (see the sidebar “USB: Ready for Prime Time?”). Currently, no USB devices exist for the Mac."
I don't think Apple jumped the gun, they hold the gun. Being a tech giant has its advantages, one being that you can push people into modifying their behaviour to adapt to your new products.
There will always be initial 'outrage' but that is nothing new. Apple have no doubt made a calculated decision, weighed up the pros and cons and determine this is the best course of action moving forward.
The iPhone6S series isn't going anywhere anytime soon and it's certainly still serviceable as a device, it didn't die today with the release of the iPhone7. If people are concerned, hold off on the purchase, do the research and make an informed decision for your own needs.
Your comment implies they are replacing the jack with wireless earbuds, but that's not what happened. They are doing two things:
1. Switching to a proprietary connector for wired headphones.
2. Releasing improved wireless headphones as an optional add-on.
So you still get "convenient and dependable" wired headphones supplied with the phone. And you get an adapter for using 3rd party wired headphones, so you are not "stuck with the crappy lightning headphones." Wired headphones, whether existing ones from 3rd parties or the upcoming ones from Apple, are unaffected.
As for whether Apple is Really Wrong This Time in requiring an adapter for 3rd party wired headphones... Putting aside how utterly vindicated they've been every time they've done this in history... According to Apple this was to enable major iPhone 7 features like the improved camera.[1] Was that worth requiring an adapter for certain cases, cases which will probably diminish over time as more 3rd party headphones go wireless? I'd say it seems in the ballpark of the sorts of tradeoff decisions they've made in the past.
Meh, I hate cords, so I've been using bluetooth headphones for years. Just a matter of finding good quality ones. I do think it's dumb to get rid of the headphone jack though. The waterproofing I think they could overcome, and it's not like they could get rid of the DAC processor. It's about space inside the case and thinness, but I think a thicker phone without a dumb camera bump and with outrageously long battery life would be more impressive, IMO.
Does Apple prohibit to include audio sockets in case accessories?
Some kind o flush T-Type bottom dock for angled jacks and with pass-through charging lightning capabilities should be a a no-brainer then.
Otherwise a Bluetooth receiver with extended battery life to wired headphones seems more robust and practical to me anyway. Otherwise I never use headphones when on the go, so I cant really talk about that use case in practice.
> Side note, I think it is hilarious that Apple can't get the AirPods to ship at the same time as the iPhone. Anyone who buys the new phone on release is going to be stuck with the crappy lightning headphones for at least a month and a half.
There are other vendors that make Lightning headphones (Philips, JBL...) and plenty of wireless headphones in the market.
I think they are really shooting themselves in the foot if they don't open up and license the W1 chip to any manufacturer that wants it. If the only way forward is to buy poor quality AirPods (I'm assuming that they audio quality, like with the EarPods, is 'okay', but not great considering the price) or even more overpriced Beats, then this is a really user hostile move.
Yes, you could use Bluetooth, but I'm guessing (hoping...) Apple has done some work to make the stream quality sound better and the connection process more stable. If they were to freely license that technology, people could buy great sounding headphones, with an improved UX, from any company they chose too. Now, it just seems like Apple's "courageous" way forward is all about pushing you to high margin Beats and EarPods.
Yeah. Apple is not incompetent as far as headphone design goes - the EarPods have a surprisingly good soundstage and are very well balanced. They're also very light and pretty comfortable for most people. They don't isolate, but isolation is not really the use-case IMHO.
Forced adoption is a factor to be considered in their strategy. In the United States, 13 states and DC have standing laws forbidding the use of cell phones in "hand-held" mode while driving. [1] In other words, you can talk with it, but not on your ear.
To ensure compliance, most manufacturers include cheapy bud and microphone wired headset kits in their boxes.
By virtue of their control of 12% or so of the phone market, Apple is putting a lot of Lightning headsets into the stream, and making a bet that a lot of those people in the ecosystem will upgrade to the pods.
They probably deleted the jack so they can sell more airpods and beats wireless headphones. This technology delete doesn't strike me as an improvement, but rather a a way of coercing clients to spend more on accessories sold by Apple and subsidiaries.
For me the awesome / scary / new best practise was the Tim Cook must have asked "how many people use headphones, whilst charging" and they could tell him, to the user, to the minute, to the location.
Floppy drives were still going strong when Apple killed them, as were CDs. Apple briefly made a candy iMac that had neither a floppy drive nor a CD drive nor any other kind of removable drive...I always wondered what you were supposed to do if you had hard drive problems...Target Disk Mode, I guess, if you had another Mac.
Apple wants to make a thinner phone and eliminate wires. If you want to use different headphones than the ones that come with...well, do so. Are AirPods the most advanced headphones ever to come with a music device? They're usually pretty bad.
Apple may make more money on people having to replace an easy to use headphone conveter for $99. The original android spec for 1.0 based on the HTC g1 reference device had a hardeware keyboard like Blackberry but it had all digital audio. You needed a micro usb to 8th inch convertor which was really easy to lose. After the lessons learned with the g1, subsequent Android phones added in the 8th inch audio jack and lost the hardware keyboard. There's a reason why the 8th inch is such a big deal its a standard that goes back to the 1880s.
How long before that headphone to lightening dongle will break the lightening port? A broken lightening port, Apple has told me, is "unfixable" and they wanted me to replace the entire phone.
I am troubled too but here's why I think this makes sense.
Phones will continue to get thinner and thinner. Apple have looked ahead and said, in the future when this thing gets thin enough there won't be any space for any adapters. The main competitor for use of the Lightning port is charging (as we can see from all the comments), but what if come iPhone 8 they will introduced simple wireless charging. Suddenly the need for any port then would come into question and pave the way for a significant further reductions in phone thickness.
I've seen some articles about the reliability of lightning connectors — I've certainly had a few of them "wear out" (i.e. no longer consistently make good contact with the phone's socket) but so far all of our many devices with lightning ports still have well-behaved ports (and this includes an iPhone 5 that is used mercilessly by one of my daughters). Overall, I like the lightning connector as a port, but not so much as a cable.
That said, I've had an iPhone headphone socket fail owing to pocket lint. (It was fixed at the Genius bar for no charge.) I've been told that pocket lint being forced into iPhones sometimes leads to more serious internal damage.
Besides that:
1) How often do you use headphones with your iPhone? I use my iPhone as a small sound system or a wireless source for my car far more often than I use wired headphones (basically, on planes). As I understand it, Apple has greatly improved the iPhone's speakers. (The 12.9" iPad Pro has ridiculously good audio.)
2) Have you gotten over Apple ditching serial ports in favor of ADB, ditching SCSI in favor of IDE (which was a technical regression at the time), ditching ADB in favor of USB, ditching the floppy drive, switching from round laptop power connections to magsafe, not supporting Flash, going from magsafe to magsafe2 and providing $10 converters, switching from the horrid old iPod adapter to the lightning port?
3) If you have one really nice set of headphones you use with your iPhone, just keep the adapter on it. (And if your cable is replaceable, which is the case with all the mid- and high- end headphones I've owned, you can presumably get a lightning-compatible replacement.)
If you have several — the adapters are $9 each.
If you have a ton of different crappy headphones that you use with your iPhone… Why?
4) I really hate dealing with headphone cables. Usually they get tangled unless I carefully spool them back into their case (in the case of Apple's earpods or whatever they're called). If I were paid $5/h for the time I've spent untangling or spooling headphone cables, I would be able to buy all the lightning adapters I'll ever need. If the wireless headphones live up to Apple's claims, I'll be pretty happy.
I purchased a bluetooth receiver for my car last year since I already had a headphone size cord to plugin to my phone. The same thing could be used for your now obsolete headphones. Although all I could find was the refurbished version. https://www.amazon.com/Etekcity-Bluetooth-NFC-Enabled-Certif...
Now you just have to carry your phone plus a bluetooth receiver to plug into!
There is still the adapter so i don't really get the hate. Moving to digital has a lot of potential in the long run and personally i am very happy with my bluetooth headphones.
My hope is that this will help push towards a better bluetooth. If a lot more people are paring headphones daily the market will demand better pairing. (I hope)
Yeah, but Apple isn't using Bluetooth for the AirPods (they've already been quoted in the press as saying their technology is more battery efficient than Bluetooth). Do we really want everyone moving away from a wireless standard and implementing their own custom pairing solutions like Apple did, that will only work when the producing companies for the accessory and the host match?
It really depends on how one primarily listens to music on their phone.
There are a LOT of people who listen to music on their phone while working out. Having a cable dangling, disconnecting or having the phone fall while you are working out is pretty annoying as well. Bluetooth headphones were never a perfect option, but the new phone and wireless chip very well could be.
I switched back to wired headphones after going through several (different) pairs of bluetooth headphones that could seem to cope with the sweat overload for more than a month or two before dying.
The cord is a bit of a pain, but the cost of the bluetooth headphones was more so!
> (floppies, CDs, Flash, etc) but the biggest difference is that those technologies were all on the downward slope of their popularity when
I remember the lack of Flash support on iOS being fairly controversial at the time. IMHO, it was the combination of lack of iOS support + iOS usage skyrocketing that killed Flash; not that iOS dropped Flash because it was already dying.
I've tried a number of bluetooth headphones, none of them have had the sound quality of wired. Songs would skip, quality was not great. Are there bluetooth headphones that don't skip nowadays?
Yes. I am extremely happy with the beats solo 2 wireless. No surprise, that they are working well with an iPhone. As they support AAC over bluetooth, they offer quality audio - bluetooth headphones which don't do indeed sound bad on IOS devices.
Oh, okay. Folks, most of usaphp's friends are buying bluetooth headphones. We can all stop worrying and complaining about this—disregard the large portion of the population that isn't or doesn't have them.
I personally have the opposite opinion - I did not like the headphone jack and I am considering iPhone 7 because it does not have it.
I was never sure if the jack is all the way in or it is halfway in. Sometimes the audio would disappear, and I would find out the headphones have slowly came off; but not all the way out, just enough to distort the sound.
I see it as a ploy to move people up the ladder to the airpods. Though it's an expensive proposition, I for one will happily ditch the wired headphones for the wireless counterpart. However, what I really dread is losing the airpods and, I can't even imagine what my 3 YO will turn them into :).
Perhaps a global perspective might help - from what I see in this international city the switch to wireless headphones and earplugs is well underway. I've been unwired for 2-3 years now.
AliExpress can deliver you a decent set of Bluetooth headphones for $50-$100, or earpieces for $12.
I think it's a gamble, yes. I personally hate cords. I'm always getting entangled in my cord in the gym and I'm looking forward to something wireless. My gut feeling is, in another 5 years, we won't ever believe we put up with wired headphones.
If it's really Airpods or bust, they just added $160 onto the price of the phone. I don't think they mentioned any third parties other than Beats.. I guess because they own Beats.. but if the choices are Apple and Beats then the price is going to be ridiculous.
Out of curiosity, what is it about Apple's lightning-to-3.5mm adapter that people find so much more repulsive than the 1/4"-to-3.5mm adapter that so many better-than-cheap-earbud headphones come with these days?
A very, very common scenario for me was to listen to music in my 2009 car (on long drives) through AUX cable, while still charging the phone through a car charger. It seems that time is gone now.
As for the AirPods: $159 for something that i will most likely lose within the first 3 months? Nope, not buying it. Also, the battery life will be probably be cut in half after 2 years usage or so.
I suspect the lack of jack is a question of advertising / creation of a new environment to force people keep their Bluetooth on. Would that be among the reasons why Apple made that choice?
To me the biggest difference between this and the examples you mentioned (floppies, CDs, Flash) is Lightning is a proprietary connector, not an upcoming industry standard.
The future is an upcoming industry standard. Bluetooth. This year I believe is the first year we're seeing fully wireless earbuds, last year or two wired bluetooth earbuds were becoming more popular.
Both in the historical examples and now the technology is more expensive and has some drawbacks, however they're much more practical(other than charging, which apple is betting will improve and that 4 hours of playback with 24 hours of recharge in the case will be acceptable).
You know, with all the people who are supposedly going to lose Airpods, it seems to me like you could just about bend down and pick a pair up off the ground if you lose your own!
But the lightening port is a closed standard, as opposed to USB. It would have made much more sense here if Apple had used USB-C instead of lightening.
Apple really can't change ports again. I think they're really going to push for wireless. When they get wireless charging they'll remove the lightening port.
I also suspect that's one of two reasons that Apple hasn't shown an inclination to move to USB-C for devices that currently have Lightning ports -- the switch from the 30-pin dock connector to Lightning caused an awful lot of screaming. It's kind of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation from a PR perspective: people are beating them up here on HN for pushing Lightning audio, but if they'd announced they were moving from Lightning to USB-C and dropping the analog headphone jack? They don't have that much Courage™.
The second reason is that the physical USB-C connector is thicker than the Lightning connector. Not by much, but it really is; in fact, it's about as thick as...a 3.5mm headphone jack. Right then. (This is also why the wildcard option of putting both a Lightning connector and a USB connector on the phone was a non-starter.)
I know there's an argument to be made that it's all about the Benjamins, that Apple just wants licensing money and maybe to wave around the DRM boogeyman. Maybe, but I honestly think that's more of a happy bonus for them than an overriding consideration. They're control freaks who don't like to share with others, but they're regularly on board with non-proprietary standards when they think that's what makes a better product. Remember, they were one of the first major companies out of the gate with a USB-C (only!) computer, and Apple was involved with the design of the USB-C connector.
I don't think that changes the point. The parent is saying that there's a difference between dropping a universal standard in favor of a closed standard.
There's a legacy connector in every box. All your legacy headphones still work. Apple didn't want to add an additional port and they can't exactly switch to usb-c at this point. In 3 years when all other phone makers drop the headphone jack for usb-c, can we get a lightning to usb-c?
And the parent is making a wrong assumption. Apple is not pushing lightning as the new audio standard. That's just a stopgap for people who insist or have the use case for wired headphones. The audio standard they're replacing it with is Bluetooth.
The cynic in me sees this as a further attempt at lock-in.
As you mentioned, when the other technologies were abandoned, a suitable replacement existed that was widely in use regardless of platform. With the headphones, buying a set for an iPhone will now no longer work with other non-Apple devices (at least, at the moment -- are they licensing this to others and are any others interested in lightning headphones?).
I have two friends, recently, who destroyed their iPhone 6 (toilet and cement drop) and opted to purchase a higher-end Android device as a replacement (slightly less expensive with slightly better specs and they liked my phone when I let them play with it). Had they owned a pair of $200 "pretend" high-end headphones[0] that would have only worked with an iPhone, I doubt they would have been so quick to switch. I guess that could work the other way -- preventing Android users from switching to Apple, except it's resolved by a dongle on the Apple side without loss of perceived quality.
Wireless isn't a suitable replacement, either. Every time I see a new set of excellent Bluetooth wireless headphones, I think of the drawer full of the previous BT headphone/headset devices I'd bought and the several that aren't there because I've lost them. Usually something fell off of the device or the battery stopped holding a charge as long as the phone (when I remembered to charge those, too). The AirPods are small so they end up in the pocket opposite my phone with other things[1], most likely, my keys. They appear durable enough to survive in that environment, but it'll take about a week before I pull my keys out (I've only got 3 keys and a couple of rings), one snags on a ring and falls onto the ground without me noticing. Welp, I'm done, off to the drawer you go, mono-Pods.
I lose wired headphones much less frequently. They're usually plugged into my phone (and recent phones hold them tight) and wrapped inconspicuously around my neck. If I pocket them and they snag on my keys, I notice. But the best part is if I lose them, I can find a pair that suites my needs for $15 or less. Something tells me the Lightning headphones aren't going to be that cheap for a long time[2].
[0] "Pretend" high-end headphones refers to the likes of "Beats by Dre" and many others that are little more than the "Air Jordans" of headphones. You pay five times the price of similarly capable headphones because it's got a logo of a perceived "bad ass" on it.
[1] Because, at least where I live, wearing them in your ears when your not using them is going to get you labeled a "Douche Bag" pretty quickly.
[2] A quick search yielded several with the "basic features" I'd be looking for at around USD$50.00. Yikes.
Can you point me to one? I've tried nearly a dozen of Chinese clones and they all suck compared to apple's. I hate to pay $30 for headphones but ended up going back to apple.
I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that cameras are nice and so are Retina displays but what we'd really like to see is a big splashy page about whatever's new with the Secure Enclave Processor in the 7.
Not because there's anything wrong with the 6! Ivan Krstic's talk about Apple platform security at Black Hat was probably the best talk of the whole event. Nobody is delivering seamlessly integrated chipset-up-through-application security the way Apple is. Forget about in mobile devices; I mean, in computing, period.
It's probably in vain but I keep hoping that Apple will decide to enter the two-factor auth market with something like the U2F design where the Secure Enclave could sign challenges. It'd be really nice if there was an Apple ID-for-the-web to go along with Apple Pay.
I'm also really excited about this. A lot of people have been distracted by a single issue and are missing some really nice features of this phone.
Beyond the secure enclave, if the haptic home button is anything like the new trackpads, it'll be an amazing feature. One less moving part to break. And the cameras...wow. Finally decent depth of field on the camera that's always in my pocket.
Verge is giving the haptic buttons a big thumbs down:
"Another thing I tried: the new home button, which uses a "taptic engine" to give you physical feedback when you press it — it's pressure sensitive too, so it can tell if you really mean to press it or just tap it. And it's awful. On a MacBook trackpad, you get this uncanny feeling that you're actually hitting a button. On the iPhone, the whole bottom of the phone just sort of "kicks." It's not bad haptics like you remember, with weird vibration, it's just a new kind of bad haptics. It doesn't feel like a button at all. It's a bummer."
The Verge is not a source to be taken seriously on any Apple matters. Remember, this is a news website who's Editor-In-Chief had a temper tantrum on twitter after being called out on his poor criticism [1].
If it was praise, I would take it with a grain of salt, but the verge has typically been very apple biased in their reporting.
Generally I just try and steer clear of it these days.
Hopefully anandtech put something out in a while.
Finally decent depth of field on the camera that's always in my pocket.
Recently I upgraded to the Samsung Galaxy S7. It was about $400 and it has an incredible camera; far better than my old iPhone 5s, and it looks substantially better than the iPhone 6/6s photos I have seen. Plus, it has a headphone jack, microSD support (so nice to be able to upgrade), and a really beautiful screen. Yes, Samsung installed some bloatware but some of it is actually useful (their UI for toggling radios is quite good) Android Kit-Kat is solid. To me, this was Android's first reasonable phone.
I had an S2, an S3, and an S4. After trying each one for a month, I reverted to the respective iPhone. Trust me I've tried. I'm sure the S7 is great, and maybe it is the first "reasonable" phone from Samsung, but I have yet to use an iPhone that I didn't like. I have used 3 Samsung phones that were laggy and loaded up with garbage apps.
That's weird, my work phone is a Samsung S7 Edge and my personal phone is an iPhone 6S. The photos on the iPhone look so much better.
The photos on the S7 look like they have been edited with a filter, like on Instagram. The colors don't look like the colors I see when I'm looking at the thing I try to capture. The iPhone does a better job at that.
You know it's not very helpful to come into a thread about thing X and say "Well I bought thing Y and I like it a lot." This thread is about thing X. (This goes for people coming into an iPhone thread to endorse their Android phone as well as vice versa.)
The grand-parent implied that DoF phone cameras aren't available, but they are. That was my main point. The other stuff was because, well, I was frankly surprised at how good the new Android phones are. I suspect that a lot of iPhone users might not care about Android hardware enough even to consider that it might be competitive. And yet, it is.
I think it is absolutely valuable to talk about products in the context of their environment. It happens all the time with software products here; someone will say "Slack makes this change" and people will say, "oh we use X because of Y feature".
Sorry, my comment was ambiguous. I meant "simulate a shallow depth of field". As you noticed, all smartphone cameras naturally have a very deep depth of field.
Seriously? It's theoretically impossible with a such small camera. When you shoot a portrait of someone at 1.5 meters from the camera, is the background blurred (if the background is let's say 4 meters behind the subject)?
You're right. From 1.5 meters away, there is only a slight blurring of the background. I was mostly referring to the insane bokeh I see in macro photos I take.
Yes, I known what "bokeh" is :-) This is why I was surprised you could get bokeh at a normal range with your smartphone. For macro photos, even with a smartphone, it's inevitable. Thanks for the link to the article.
I guess this is pedantic, but clearly the haptic actuator is itself a moving part.
I take your meaning though, and that there is reason to hope it will work better than the mechanical button. And even if the feedback were to fail, the button might keep working.
I am right there with you on this one. I scoured the product pages as soon as they went live on apple.com, looking for any new information on security features. Couldn't find anything.
Does SEP not allow peripherals (e.g. the radio module) direct memory access anymore? That would be a very tangible thing indeed wouldn't it; and if it does not then the radio etc. firmware is still super unsafe.
I'm not even upset about the headphone jack. Whatever. I'm really upset because you won't be able to do the following:
1.) Audio+GPS+Charging in non-Bluetooth Car.
2.) Listening to music at desk and still have enough charge for the Audio+GPS for the drive home.
3.) No more listening to music/audiobooks as I fall asleep because in the morning the iPhone won't be charged for my desk usage the next day unless I wake up and plug it back in during my sleep.
They can do whatever they want with the headphone jack, but pretending like we don't need to plug the phone in!! Thats daft.
I can do this with iPhone 6 already. And could do with iPhone 5. In a 2013 model year car. There is an USB port in my car, connect lightning cable and thats it: phone is charging, music is playing.
But then you have to rely on the car's data USB port supplying enough current to charge the phone while the audio + GPS are draining the battery. That's not always a sure bet, depending on the particular car's specs.
Other phones have separate ports for power and audio out, so they can charge from the cigarette lighter with more power while still playing audio and GPS through the speakers.
Does sending audio through a cable really take that much power that a USB-compliant port won't also charge at the same time? Sounds like a problem with the car, not with the port. Just because it's running over the same cable doesn't mean it's automatically half the bandwidth.
Sending audio is not what consumes the power. The screen is on if you're using it for directions and the radio is constantly going on and to ping GPS and cell towers for location.
But that's not unique to the iPhone 7 or even to the iPhone. Literally any phone is going to need the screen on and ping the towers for GPS. Even if you're playing music over the headphone jack and charging from the USB port, you'll have the same issue. So what's the point?
The point is with the cigarette lighter you can choose an adapter that provides a sufficient amount of power. The cigarette outlet is rated for 5A at 12V which is plenty to amply charge the phone no matter what if you buy a decent adapter.
The current output of the USB port can vary from less than 1A to up to 2.4A at 5V which is not as much power. Some are so low that they're unable to charge the phone while its doing all those things. Since the iPhone 7 uses only one port for both power and audio/data out you're stuck with whatever the car manufacturer happened to provide in the USB port.
Let's face it, providing a robust USB port is not high on the priority list for car manufacturers. They probably have an intern throw that in as an afterthought and the primary purpose for it is transferring data, not power since every other device besides the iPhone has a separate port to provide power and doesn't usually rely on the USB.
I have 2x Dodge Caravans 2005, and a 2000 Miata. Luckly the vans have AUX ports along with the mid-vehicle 6 disk dvd player. No usb, bluetooth, or tape deck.
There should be some sort of y-cable adapter which allows you to listen to music and charge the phone at the same time? But I am not sure if that is actually tech ically possible.
For a cleaner solution (and if you also need a cigarette lighter to USB adapter), there's this from Griffin, but it's out of stock and unclear whether it's discontinued: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NCF0LHC
I've never had anything but a terrible experience with Bluetooth, and I'm definitely never using Bluetooth to connect my phone to a rental car, so I imagine I'll be using the above system for a long time to come.
I just have a bluetooth car device that jacks into the Aux port. It also gives you tactile buttons for bt audio control. With a two-usb port cig. port charger, one powers the bluetooth audio, the other my charger.
Plugging an iPhone 8 into my car was my biggest worry but it looks like some type of BT adapter (that I never knew existed until today) will work just fine for me.
> 3.) No more listening to music/audiobooks as I fall asleep because in the morning the iPhone won't be charged for my desk usage the next day unless I wake up and plug it back in during my sleep.
Can you really sleep with earbuds in? In that use case, I use the device's speaker.
My wife won't let me sleep with the speaker, so I've adapted to have 1 earbud in depending on which side I want to sleep on. It eventually falls out and tomorrow I seek to the last place I remember in the book and repeat ;)
The SleepPhones seems interesting... I hadn't seen them before. Just curious if you use the wired or wireless version?
I'm a big fan of SimplyNoise / SimplyRain, and also have a little one-line bash script colored noise generator that I use these days [0]. ASMR seems like a similar idea.
You can already do #1. I've been using one of these [1] plus an Apple 30-pin dock to lightning converter for years. It's been worth it just because there's only one thing to plug into the phone, and it allows you to route your cables nicely if you want.
Yes, I do this too, and it angers me because it proves that this datapath is possible to build. Double-dongle sucks, but it works. I marvel at how backwards apple can be when it wants to be. I wonder if this new headphone dongle they announced can be hacked to do charging.
My car doesn't have aux, so I've been achieving it with a Bluetooth FM transmitter. It's not ideal with occasional FM interference when traveling, but it's also ≤ $50 vs replacing the head unit, etc. And it works in every car.
> No more listening to music/audiobooks as I fall asleep because in the morning the iPhone won't be charged for my desk usage the next day unless I wake up and plug it back in during my sleep.
Well you could get a standalone charger and a spare battery-- oh wait, no, they got rid of that too.
The simple solution for that would be a special charger with a Y-cable so one can plug the headphones in there when the device is charging. No extra adapters that can be lost. Just include a charger with a y-cable thingie in the iPhone package and they would be done. You buy the phone, you get the new headset with the new connector including a charger that allows to still plug in the headset.
If that will not be the case I don't know why Apple cannot think of such a simple solution.
you sleep with headphones? Not trying to be a dick here... I would like to do the same, but I'd fall asleep with headphones and roll over or something and send my phone flying.
Yes, I have the lightning cable come up in the middle of the bed and place the phone between my wife and I's pillows. I then route the headphone wire around my pillow and up the top so that when I fall asleep and it falls out it will be pulled back behind the pillow and I won't sleep on it. If I roll over i switch ears (only 1 ear in).
Ha, that wouldn't fly with my wife. I occasionally get in trouble for reading silently in bed because I apparently breathe differently while focusing on something.
My solution to similar problem: I just work or browse at night (made possible by f.lux) for an hour while wife goes to sleep; I am tired and don't browse in bed anymore (using melatonin as needed).
We sleep with lights out. Kids can complicate this scenario :)
In addition to the question of cars which don't have it, software quality a huge problem and cars don't get software updates.
I've rented a fair number of cars while traveling in the last year and hit a number of problems:
* Everything Ford makes has a bug where the car's computer will lock for a minute or two and either crash / decide the phone doesn't exist or display a blocking modal dialog telling you that you have too many tracks on your phone if you connect it using USB. I have ~11K tracks (iTunes Match) and that's apparently more than they tested with. Toyota had a similar failure with USB.
* Bluetooth is more miss than hit: pairing is usually buried in the UI, slow, and reconnects are unreliable so you might have to try a couple of times before anything connects.
* None of the cars have a UI designed for more than a handful of tracks so while you can get something to play eventually, the experience is terrible.
* Not everyone supplies enough power to charge over USB or does so inconsistently, so you may arrive with 10% battery if you used the GPS.
100% of vehicles with AUX in lines work perfectly every time without any fussing. I want something like Bluetooth to work but there's this massive market failure where almost nobody seems to have a QA team or a support process where updates actually happen (BMW suggested that a friend buy a newer car to fix their bugs). I'll give Subaru an honorable mention for having reliable software but they desperately need to hire some UX specialists.
>* Everything Ford makes has a bug where the car's computer will lock for a minute or two and either crash / decide the phone doesn't exist or display a blocking modal dialog telling you that you have too many tracks on your phone if you connect it using USB. I have ~11K tracks (iTunes Match) and that's apparently more than they tested with. Toyota had a similar failure with USB.
>* Bluetooth is more miss than hit: pairing is usually buried in the UI, slow, and reconnects are unreliable so you might have to try a couple of times before anything connects.
Bluetooth pairing seems to work just fine on my family's Ford Fiesta 2016 (using the simpler version of Ford Audio). Once done for the first time, it only takes a few seconds after I turn the key and they're working together. Occasionally sound cuts off for a sec or two if I have the phone in my pocket but I blame it on my ole' Galaxy S3 and CyanogenMod drivers.
Have you tried it with USB? That's what I had all of the failures with but I've heard that was a problem with the older Microsoft stack they reportedly weren't happy with. The cars I rented were either 2014 or 2015 model years.
I have not tried it, but honestly, I wouldn't want to. Creating a playlist would be extremely tedious navigating through dozens of albums with such an interface.
The funny thing is that updating the radio on a 20-year old car is cheap, but updating the radio on a 10-year-old can be prohibitely expensive, given the audio systems have been increasinly integrated.
1. Most cars are Bluetooth enabled, and many old ones have aftermarket systems that are.
2. Most people listen to music at their desk with their computers
3. That does seem a bit of an issue, but part of the point of the AirPods
I just ad the Bluetooth convo with a friend and there seems to be this assumption that "most cars that people buy have bluetooth" but it just doesn't stand up very well when you look at what cars offer bluetooth in their base trim.
yes, there are 11 pages but if you click on say Dodge and filter by 2016 you'll find only 3 high end vehicles with base trim on bluetooth. This means people actually need to choose Bluetooth which sounds crazy to us why they wouldn't but most people have no idea.
My computer belongs to my employer, my iPhone/iPod/whatever belongs to me. I think my employer would be a little pissed if I filled the 256GB SSD with nothing but my music.
I'm continually underwhelmed with the reliability of the bluetooth in my car and others I've used recently. Annoying pairing process, random disconnects, arbitrary limits on the number of paired devices...I usually just use an aux cable.
I actually completely agree with this, it has been a pain in the ass from my experience as well. The after market stereos are almost always better though.
>> 2.) Listening to music at desk and still have enough charge for the Audio+GPS for the drive home.
If you're at a desk you probably have a computer. Why not listen on that? Most people are using streaming services so it's only a matter of logging into Spotify's website or iTunes and you have access to all your music.
>> 3.) No more listening to music/audiobooks as I fall asleep because in the morning the iPhone won't be charged for my desk usage the next day unless I wake up and plug it back in during my sleep.
I fall asleep to podcasts every night - I have never, ever had my phone plugged into a charger whilst doing that. The main reason is safety (I'm just not comfortably with a charging battery next to my head while I sleep). But the other reason is that it's totally unnecessary thanks to the sleep feature built in to the iPhone (in the clock app). I've go to bed with about 60% battery, wake up with around 40% and then connect it to my laptop when I get to work.
Not all of us can access streaming services from work or install iTunes. I can technically access streaming services, but seems the corporate proxy server makes it impossible to use them effectively.
It could be related to increased moderator diligence in culling Apple threads today. Previously, the front page would become clogged the days new models were announced. # of upvotes on single threads is not particularly useful absent more context/ information.
Likely also related to the fact that this is arguably the first time than an iPhone release has removed a feature. The highest top-level comment in this thread is about the removal of the headphone jack, and that subthread alone has 644 comments.
I somehow expected a ton of conversation around the new A10 Fusion chip. After 340+ comments I couldn't find any mention of it (I just did a page search for A10, A10 Fusion). Apple were already ahead with their per-core performance but seems like they have widened the gap even further this time with their version of the big.LITTLE arrangement. Wonder how Qualcomm's next chips will be. From what I heard, 820 will be the last custom chip they will do and from now on the CPU will be just the reference ARM chips and they will focus on the GPU and better integration of radios on the chip. Someone with more knowledge (about Apple's and Qualcomm's chip) please fill in.
I would be surprised if Qualcomm only did reference designs after the 820. They were forced to switch to the reference 64 bit ARM design after Apple leapfrogged mobile chipmakers and it really hurt them. They had a lot of trouble with the big.LITTLE architecture and power management which led to 810 power issues which somewhat led to Samsung dropping them for the S6.
With the 820 Qualcomm was able to make their own custom cores (I think they went with 2 or 4 instead of 8) and generally overcome the 810 trainwreck. Qualcomm's ability to integrate the radio, GPU, DSP, crypto chip and some other things with a custom CPU into a true SOC is really a massive advantage within mobile and I expect them to build on that with more custom designs.
One last note about big.LITTLE. It seems like a panacea - just move all the big jobs to the big processors and the little ones to the little processors, yay! But this is much, much harder in practice. Doing this wrong leads to disastrous UX, screen tears because rendering shifts off of the big cores being one prime example. Process scheduling is already very tough and current schedulers are the result of many years of experimentation and heuristic best practices. Of course Apple controls the whole stack (i.e. they don't need to worry about where Kernel maintainers want to go with the schedulers) and I'm sure they have some amazing engineers working on Darwin so maybe they were able to overcome problems here. If you can schedule correctly it does seem like a big power savings win. But (and I may be behind the times here) that is a big if...
Well at least for screen renders you can make sure render threads stay on the big cores and with GCD you can use thread priorities to determine what to put on which core. iOS has concepts of active/inactive and is mostly a one-app-at-a-time os. They also have a well defined background processing modes and extension API. With all of this structure, I don't think it will be as hard as we think it will be.
Even I feel that by not doing custom designs they will be consumed by lower priced competition like Mediatek. This piece of info was by someone who claimed works/worked at Qualcomm so I didn't dismiss it initially. We will probably know about it by end of the year.
Right now I'm sure you are correct, I have a 6+ and it's performance is fine, but things change. OS and application demands are only going to increase, the new architecture may well provide higher power efficiency and thus better battery life. Finally we don't know what other hardware tricks the processor and it's supporting chipset implement. In the last few processor cycles Apple has been adding hardware functionality to support specific device features such as security, image processing audio signal processing and motion/position tracking so it's not all just about the raw performance.
It's water resistant but water damage isn't covered under warranty? How can you have it both ways like that?
"Water resistance IP67 under IEC standard 60529. Liquid damage not covered under warranty."
How does one make such a big deal of it being water resistant (Product film: 1m 35s; "...to make this the first water resistant iPhone") but not cover liquid damage under warranty?
Probably because it's water resistant not water proof. You can't put it 50m under water for a few days and then complain it's damaged. I guess if they are saying it's water resistant they have tested pretty extensively and can guarantee that under the conditions they say it will not get damaged. Not great that the customer has to place their trust in the company regarding that though.
That's precisely why it's spec ip67. It allows them to have their phone independently verified while still leaving the customer on the hook for damage.
Yes, it's unfortunate that if its damages under 50m it's your word versus their word.
All I really care about is rain. It's the only reason I am concerned with getting drenched in a rainstorm as an adult. The contents of my wallet will survive, but I am worried about relaxing and walking at a slow pace in a thunderstorm that soaks me through and through - all because of my phone.
A water resistant rating that indicates I should be fine walking home slowly and enjoying getting drenched, instead of speed walking to save my electronic device, is all I am asking for. If the risk of destroying my phone because I like to stroll through the rain just dropped to < 0.1%, that is good enough for me.
The series 1 watch had the same caveats but proved very water resistant in practice. To make stronger promises you need to understand how the seals age and how the device behaves in lots of situations, or you need to over-engineer it with bulky seals and other compromises. You also need to understand and deal with extremely tight manufacturing tolerances.
If Apple said the iPhone was waterproof people would take it scuba diving then post YouTube videos showing how "crapp" the new iPhone is, then we'd have watergate (lol) all over the tech press.
Much like Trump/Hillary, people don't hold anyone else to the same high standard they hold Apple to. (If Trump manages to not vomit on himself at the first debate he'll be declared the winner by the media. )
For reference, I took my supposedly not-shower-proof Apple Watch diving to 30 feet and it was fine. I could even use the touchscreen and heart rate monitor underwater to some extent.
They're not saying the glass is unbreakable, they say it's strong. Water resistant sounds entirely different from 'should survive small splashes' and doesn't add anything if it's not actually watertight. I already use my android phone in the rain, covering it as well as I can, and take the risk. Or hope it survives when splashing water over it. That works, so the next step is actually being watertight.
Fwiw, the main Dutch tech news site just headlined with "waterdichte iphone", literally "water tight". Yeah, legally they make no promises but they definitely know what impression it gives.
But glass has some base-level strength you can rely on. Imagine if there was a chance of the glass shattering while you hold the phone gently in one hand, and the warranty excluded the glass.
But in the field, anything can mess that up, e.g. pressure applied to a small point.
If I drop my phone on the ground screen first, I have an idea that it might not break, but it might break. If it doesn't, I'm happy it survived, and if it does I don't go out and sue Apple.
Same if my phone gets hit in a rain storm by a bunch of drops of water.
The point is: If you don't abuse your phone by dropping it on the ground, you know the warranty protects you. If you gently splash your phone, it's very possible it could break because it was defectively sealed, but the warranty won't help. Lots of products that are supposedly water resistant to X degree have not lived up to their labels. They should not be claiming any level of water resistance if they're going to categorically exclude water damage. It's one thing to say it is more likely to survive a splash than previous phones. But they're making a very specific claim that a certain amount of water is safe. That claim should have teeth.
Double standard. They shouldn't claim any amount of breakage resistance if they are going to categorically exclude trauma damage from their warranty. There is plenty of precedence for best effort claims backed by laboratory testing but that don't actually have teeth in warranties (car crash testing).
But the warranty does cover the screen just exploding out of nowhere. The key difference is with a screen there has to be trauma to exclude it from warranty. With water, even laying it super-gently under one inch for thirty seconds is not covered, when it's supposed to be safe for thirty minutes at five feet.
Car crash standards are okay, because the car always crumples, and they don't make promises like "you can crash a car at up to X pressure and the crash will not penetrate and cause damage". If a company was parading third-party lab results showing an immunity to 10mph collisions vs. walls, their warranty has no place excluding 5mph collisions vs. walls.
> How does one make such a big deal of it being water resistant (Product film: 1m 35s; "...to make this the first water resistant iPhone") but not cover liquid damage under warranty?
If you brought in a water damaged phone how would you prove that you didn't exceed the rated coverage?
I guess it's because IP67 means it's only "protected against the effect of immersion between 15cm and 1m" so it's not really 100% water resistant (nothing is, I guess).
They used the word "courage" during the keynote. I would say the actual words are "lock in" and "licensing fees". I would have been ok with USB-C because at least those will be able to move between machines.
The adapter is useless for me since it doesn't allow power to be supplied so my long drives are now problematic. I guess I'll have to take that into account on buying the next car.
I'm disappointed by how boring the two-camera solution in the 7 Plus is. I was really hoping they were going show something interesting, like fusion of the two sensors through computational photography into one, with better low-light performance and less noise through downsampling. Or take +1 & -1 exposures simultaneously for a greater dynamic range.
Instead we got a button to switch from one lens to the other, for a 2x optical zoom. That's it. 99% of the time that second sensor and lens will do absolutely zilch. The computational bokeh appears to only use the 56mm lens for the actual photo, and the other lens to capture a depth map to compute the fake bokeh. This is hardly any better than the existing fake bokeh solutions shown many times before on Androids, Nokias and in iOS apps over the years that do the same, except it's a bit faster. The whole thing feels like just another checkbox feature, with very little actual value.
The two photos they showed to demonstrate the depth of field effect looked absolutely terrible. The edge of the mask was extremely blurry. It looked like something you could create in a photo editing app in a few seconds by just drawing over the background with a blur brush.
That is pretty much exactly what's happening, minus the manual brushing.
A depth map and face recognition is used to locate the foreground subject and a heavy blur filter is applied to the background layer. For the same reason we don't have software today that does perfect (or even halfway decent) automatic masking of faces, the edges become a blurry mess. You don't get any of the beautiful out-of-focus point of light scattering, because the lenses are incapable of capturing it.
I'm sure they tried to do something fancier with computational photography but probably ran out of time for the release. I'm confident they are going to deliver this in the typical S update next year or even as an OTA.
Well, it's official - Apple has failed again! Doomed I tell you, doomed! Forget the performance enhancements, better battery life, fantastic new cameras, etc, etc - I have to use a new earbud cable. Plus, Jony Ive is going around putting super glue in all the old iPhone audio jacks, so I can't even use my existing earbuds with my existing iPhone. Plus, Apple is charging me $0.00 for the adapter so that I can use my ratty old earbuds with my new phone. Doomed, I tell you.
Oh gee you sure saw right through those people. Definitely true that that only possibilities are "every decision is correct" and "utter doomed failure". I'm glad you were here to remove all nuance.
I must say, I'm a bit shocked at the price. I wouldn't have expected Apple to sell a paperclip for under $19. Their Lightning to USB cable, which seems like it must be strictly simpler than this adapter (no DAC!) costs $19.
I don't think this cable contains a DAC. I would imagine they use some pins of the Lightning connector to transport Analog audio. They still need a DAC for the speaker and such.
How small are DACs? I was surprised that the new Lightning earbuds basically look identical to the current ones besides the jack. Do they definitely have a DAC built in or is it still in the phone body?
You can always buy a new iPhone 7 for another free adapter.
Joking aside, I think most people won't notice as the new EarPods connect to the Lightning. That is what I mostly see people with iPhones around having.
I wonder how much the publicity angle plays into their decisions on retiring interfaces? Looking at this one, they've had thousands of articles and comments written over a headphone jack. Would the phone's release receive quite the same level of coverage had they left it unchanged?
The premiere of the next mbp next year:
"And... We listened to you. We've been hearing that you are upset about not being able to use the same headphones for your computer and iphone 7. We fixed that. We've removed the 3.5mm jack from the new mbp. It's magical."
Oh also, lighting port. For everything. Not USB3, lightning. FUCKYOUEXTERNALMONITORS.
But in all seriousness, if they make the port count any lower, the MacBook Pro will cease to be a laptop. It will become an iPad without a touchscreen.
But the iPad Pro is a pro device. The Macbook isn't. They do have a Macbook pro device, it's call the Macbook Pro, and it has a (relative to Apple's other offerings) ton of ports. 2x USB3, 2x Thunderbolt, 3.5mm, SD card, and HDMI.
1. Most of the use cases being discussed here are irrelevant for the average iPhone user. Charging and listening at the same time is not a thing for most users. I know there are perfectly reasonable scenarios where it is useful, but most people don't care. Regarding battery life: personally, I use my iPhone quite a lot, often with bluetooth headphones, and I have had to charge it only once or twice during the daytime in the last two years. If you play a lot of games, or use GPS intensively for a few hours, then battery life could be an issue. For the average consumer, I don't think it will be a major concern.
2. OTOH, in the last few years headphones have become a very, very big market. They are a huge status symbol for teenagers and early 20-somethings. If you've saved a lot of money to afford a pair in that stage of life, the headphone jack is a big deal. It's not going to be "cool" to carry around an adapter all the time, and regardless people will hear "no headphone jack" and be annoyed. That demographic seems key to me in maintaining Apple's market lead over the long term, i.e. trend-setting young people.
Overall, I actually think that (2) will be a very big issue. Whilst I am of the opinion that wires are horrible in general, Apple may have misread its market here.
>It's not going to be "cool" to carry around an adapter all the time
Let's be honest. You seen the adapter? It's not very thick and basically just a little bit of cable. Why do people make a big deal about "carrying around an adapter"? You connect it to the headphone and then you roll the headphone cable up just like before only this time there is an extra two inches of the adapter cable in there. How is carrying around that thing even an issue? If you want to keep your old headphones and use a new phone you just have to keep the adapter on your headphone cable all the time.
you just have to keep the adapter on your headphone cable all the time.
I don't think it's unreasonable to say that people connect to more than a single pair of headphones with their phone. That puts you back into dongle carrying territory.
Sometimes I walk to work without bringing headphones, then use the pair I leave at the office.
I have an Aux cable on the stereo in my living room that my friends occasionally use. Should they make sure to always bring headphones to the bar? They're not planning to listen to music at the bar, but at least they can convince themselves they didn't lug a fucking dongle around all evening just to play music pregaming at my place.
> Charging and listening is not a thing for most users
Many people nowadays don't have a computer -- especially in that big Asia demographic that Apple so loves. If your phone is the only device you own that is capable of playing music, then charging while you listen is often obligatory.
Feels to me like Apple has gone to far in designing the iPhone for a particular kind of luxury buyer (who can afford Beats or $159 earbuds) instead of targeting the mass market.
> Many people nowadays don't have a computer especially in that big Asia demographic that Apple so loves.
Many people use battery packs, in fact, on a recent trip to Tokyo, I bet almost everyone had a battery pack - it was commonplace to see a little USB wire coming out of the bag and into the phone. And also, many of them used headphones - that would turn out bad when competing for the same power - and strangely, almost everyone had an iPhone 6, so, I don't see how they will manage with the 7. There are so many iPhones in Tokyo that it feels like the Nokia of the 2000's.
Even as someone who uses bluetooth headphones 100% of the time, I'm still pretty unhappy with this as they don't even support the industry standard for high quality bluetooth audio: apt-x (or if they did, I must've missed it somehow).
Most support AAC though, which is in the Bluetooth standard somewhere. At least when connected to the iPhone that sounds as good as apt-X, even on really good headphones.
I've run into this issue a few times with headphones that do:
- apt-X only
- apt-X + AAC
- AAC only
- neither
and as long as it supports AAC it sounds good with Apple devices. Sadly, manufacturers don't really put it on the label so it's hard to know.
Has anyone done a real test between iOS and Android on BT headset quality as it relates to apt-x?
Seems that the only issue might be latency, though newer BT headsets I found have pretty decent response times.
All the cool kids already have Bluetooth headphones, and the ones that don't soon will. There is nothing cool about having a wire dangling around. I don't think they misread the market at all. It is time to move to Bluetooth.
Maybe not where you live but I have definitely seen people in that game range use headphone brands as a status symbol in the same way they use cell phone brands as a status symbol.
The high-gloss finish of the Jet Black iPhone 7 is
achieved through a precision nine-step anodization and
polishing process. Its surface is equally as hard as
other anodized Apple products; however, its high shine
may show fine micro-abrasions with use. If you are
concerned about this, we suggest you use one of the many
cases available to protect your iPhone.[1]
Same. It reminds me of the "brassing" you see on well-used cameras that have a black finish over metal. The coating wears off in a distinctive way with heavy use.
I put an Apple case on my iPhone 6 when I got it and recently took it off and the side screen swipes work a lot better. It was clearly designed to be used without a case, so it's strange that they sell them. Oh yeah, they make 20,000% profit on each one :P
I just worry about scratches though because I always sell my phones when I'm done with them.
I used to take that approach, then I shattered a Galaxy S, then a Galaxy S4 (twice!), a Sony Xperia Z3, and an iPhone 6. I now accept the bulk and hope it will preserve the contents of my credit card better.
I don't know about the iPhone Upgrade Program, but T-Mobile's JUMP plan doesn't give a crap about the condition of the body of the phone as it is usually replaced when refurbished for sale as a pre-owned device or use as a Like-New Replacement. As long as it powers on, doesn't have a cracked screen and has no water damage they'll happily take it (replacing the body is cheap in most cases, so why care).
Agreed. The case for having a case is when you want to keep resale value as high as possible, but even now that's not such an issue if you do the upgrade program where you automatically get a new phone every year and basically lease it.
What are you doing where it's unusable with a single charge? Most days I get by fine or mostly fine with my phone and I'm a pretty heavy user (music, web browsing, fb/twitter/instagram).
I had to get an external usb battery but only use that when I know I'll be busy a full day with more than usual usage (which is still quite a bit). Example being a full day of work (commute in and out) plus a sportsball game at night or similar where I'm seriously out all day.
I break my screen far too often not to use a case with a raised edge, so it can't survive a fall. I'm too clumsy to not have one. Nothing to do with jewelry.
This is strange: you buy a jet-black phone so that it looks slick. Then you buy a case and change its appearance because scratches might show? Weird logic.
Reminds me of the first iPod Touch generations with the mirror finish metallic backs. They would get scratched the moment you took the device out of the box.
Can the 3.5mm to Lightning adapters be legally produced without paying royalties to Apple for using the Lightning connector?
On a related note: I wonder if one reason for eliminating the jack is to close that open interface which some devices like the "Square" were using. I'm not sure how much of an impact this has though; it was just a thought.
I hadn't thought about the Square with the loss of the headphone jack, that's an interesting change. Can the Square device be adapted to use the Lightning connection? Maybe Bluetooth?
Bluetooth sure. It was already using modulated audio like a modem over the analog jack. You can pair using bluetooth and continue to speak audio, with maybe lowered bandwidth to robustly survive the subband codec -- the mandatory base codec.
But I don't know what kinds of OS-level permissions go into allowing apps to pair with bluetooth devices on iOS.
My concern was basically about Apple being able to prohibit manufacturers from making hardware that they don't explicitly approve. (I don't know if they can or can't.)
Electrically it'll work, but mechanically it'll suck. Right now you hold the phone in one hand and swipe the card with the other. With this adapter, you'd need three hands: phone, reader, card. Or find a place to put the phone down while you run the operation.
For something like a card reader, you really want a device that plugs straight into the phone. If Square isn't able to build a Lightning reader just because Apple controls the port, that would be kind of irritating.
Alas, no. There are third-party NFC terminals which work with iPhones, though, so you could at least do it that way. Square has one, which talks to the receiving phone over Bluetooth.
Pretty sure that the adapter would work just as well (I don't know anything about the readers, but assume they are just encoding the CC info as an analog signal and listening to it over the microphone port... I wonder how easily they might be snooped via EMI).
Even if the electrical functionality doesn't change, the mechanical functionality has. With a flexible cable between, it will be far more cumbersome to hold the phone and reader, while swiping a card.
Yeah, you're right. I bet it would work anywhere you grabbed the analog signal from. You could probably even repurpose a set of bluetooth headphones for it.
Feeling pretty disillusioned by another iPhone and
iOS update. The 3.5mm coupled with lightning instead of USB-C just look like obvious traps for lock in with no real gain (5hr of playback time?!)
iOS still continues its march of adding minor features that should be in regular OTA updates and packing them up with some serious marketing hype. There's barely any improvement here and most of the features are already well implemented in Android / Google Apps or Facebook Messenger.
Yup. I remember the original iPhone/iPad announcements where many features were fairly innovative. Now applauded feature announcements are for features already out on Android phones.
Show me an Android phone that will provide the hassle-free experience Apple promises with those AirPods. That's the most innovative part of this event for me.
So I just bought some backbeat fit headphones, which use bluetooth. To get them working with my Android phone I:
- pressed the on button on the headphones
- pressed the pair button on my phone
I mean, bar special hooks Apple can have because they don't give a fuck about standards, I really don't see how that is hard.
Same experience with my 6P and my el cheapo Bluetooth gym headphones. Turned headphones on, hit pair, good to go. Apple has done "hassle-free" very well historically, but that doesn't mean that other vendors are incapable of it.
Which is the same with pairing to an iPhone. I hit "pair" on the headset, click the headset name on the Bluetooth screen, the headset says "connected" and boom done.
The real hassle is in my car, which unfortunately this doesn't solve. Toyota's system isn't the best. I have to hit a button then say "pair audio". Wait no, it's "pair audio player". No... wait it's "pair bluetooth"... ah I'll get the manual. Okay, got the phrase right. Now I have to press the button again and say "confirm". Now it asks me what I want to call my audio player. That's fine. Hit button again and say "confirm". Now I have to decide if I'm pairing from the car or from the audio player? I have no idea what that means. From the car I guess? Hit button again and say confirm. Okay now it's searching... but my phone says pairing failed. Okay, now it's kicked me out and I get to start over again. Let's pair from the phone this time. Nope, that failed too. Let's pair from the car again? Hey it worked!
And in between every button press, there is an ear-splitting beep that can't be adjusted with the volume controls in the car. And even then, I can only store three phones in memory, and it remembered both of my failed attempts plus my wife's phone that I paired for her. So to try a third time, I have to remove one of them... so it asks "which audio player do you want to remove?" then it lists all of them... "Player 1: iPhone". "Player 2: iPhone". "Player 3: iPhone". Fantastic.
Most of the time I just use the USB cable, except when I updated to iOS 10 and it started saying Error: 5 randomly during a song.
Pairing a headset with a phone is the easiest thing in the world, and it happens to be the "problem" that Apple solved. But the real problem is pairing with dumb "smart" devices that unfortunately are everywhere.
I was trying to place emphasis on the regularity not the cost of an upgrade. Packaging up what seems like relatively trivial features into a major OS release isn't really progress.
I don't see how it makes much a difference if new features comes once a year or once a month. Being part of a "major release" doesn't invalidate anything.
iOS 10 notifications are a royal pain in the ass compared to those prior. Particularly from the standpoint of dismissing with minimal interaction. You must be more intentional now to get rid of them.
Ways to dismiss notifications haven't changed much. Banner notification? Swipe up on it. Lock screen notifications? Swipe one way to open and the other to clear. Notification centre? Use 'x' to clear by day or force press 'x' to get 'clear all' option. If anything it's slightly easier to get rid of them than before.
Actually, under 10, since the first beta, you must make contact with the banner notification itself and then swipe up. Prior to 10, this was unnecessary, and a quick flick up from outside the notification toward the top of the screen would dismiss. I appreciate an instruction guide for dismissal, but it is unnecessary, and doesn't respond to my point. I know how to dismiss.
I haven't noticed, always assumed you had to make contact with the thing you're swiping away which kind of makes sense. You point was that notifications are now more difficult to dismiss which I have noticed. If your point is based on having to make contact with the item you are dismissing it's quite weak. Is there something else they've changed that you're referring to and I have noticed in the betas?
This is a Nice Device. You can read my other comments lamenting the headphone jack, this comment isn't about that.
The screen is beautiful. The two cameras are a clever trick that I hope work as well as advertised -- and their cameras have been historically very good. Splash resistance is overdue, but appreciated.
But A10 is a bit of a disappointment [1][2], only as powerful as the A9X. Do they have any new hardware encode/decode blocks at least?
With A9 they were having yield issues and had to different traces being manufactured by two different fabs to enhance capacity. What do we know on the chip front?
A9 is amazingly fast - benches like twice as fast as every other phone out there. With Apple's great SSD it's a pretty powerful package for a phone. Instead they have lower power consumption now which I think is a fair call.
I found the WhatsApp integration the most intriguing part of the announcement. By allowing calls from WhatsApp to also be received, I am assuming they are making the native calling/iMessaging API available to any iOS application.
While messaging with iMessage, Facebook messenger, WhatsApp, etc. can be done over WiFi only, calling is traditionally reliant on a cellular provider. The new iPhone only requires a WiFi network, and with the proliferation of WiFi and the first city-wide networks (e.g. Barcelona), it is possible that in the next decade all communication will be done over the Internet.
Also, during a recent trip to Japan I saw an $120 SIM card that gives unlimited Internet access for a year. This works out to $10/month, which is far less than what I pay for Verizon. So in a way this new iPhone may eventually cause cellular networks to primarily become providers of remote Internet access, as telephony shifts to the apps that the local people use to connect with each other.
I went with a Japanese friend to a store called Nojima, which seemed to be the Best Buy equivalent for Japan. There was an entire wall of prepaid SIM cards, and there was a promotion for two 6-month SIM cards for 12,000 yen. I wouldn't have been able to find it had I not been with a Japanese native.
I got a 1 month SIM card for 2,200 yen ($22) which still works out to far less than what I pay Verizon. The network name on the top of my iPhone said "docomo".
Nope, only FaceTime had the ability to show native call interface.
Previously, WhatsApp showed you a notification when you get an incoming call (if app closed / minimized).
Seems iOS 10 is allowing apps to take over the screen for calls (just like they did on iOS 9 with reply via notification which was only available on iMessage)
I'm really curious about these. I wear hearing aids and these things seem damn close in a lot of respects, except about $5000 cheaper. The hearing aid industry has seen a lot of pressure from consumer electronics (which is great) and I hope this only increases that pressure.
I could totally envision v2 of these having better battery life and being able to "enhance" hearing the same way a hearing aid does. Also, more people using these will hopefully reduce the stigma some see with wearing hearing aids.
Especially if it falls out of your ear. I've always had trouble getting the EarPods to stay in my ear while running. I had to loop the wire above and around my ear; I can't do that with the AirPods.
I have the same problem and use the loop method as well. I have tried quite a few headsets and like them the best though. I think the real reason why they fall out is the weight of the wire lightly tugging the bottom of the ear bud. I'm hoping the lack of wires will solve that issue...
I listen to music most while on the bike, even in-ear earbuds just randomly fall out of my ears very often. I can't imagine finding one of these if they were to fall out of my ear during fall.
Lack of awareness? How about having a radio in the car or, worse, (hands free) calling? Or even having excited conversations with three others in the car, that surely gets your attentiveness down way more than music on a bike.
My town is very bike friendly, and my 4 mile commute to work is 90% dedicated bike roads, but I still wouldn't bike without the ability to adequately hear things around me. Every once in awhile I come upon a cyclist with headphones or ear buds, riding in the center of the lane, and when they fail to hear my call to them that I'm on their left, I pass them in the available space and they almost always end up getting spooked. Same thing with runners and headphones.
It allows you to hear things around you. It's similar to holding a speaker aside your ear (but not blocking it). You hear the music, but still hear other things too. I use it while cycling to listen to audio books. Works fantastic and I lose no situational awareness.
I recently paid $350+ for Bose wireless noise cancelling headphones, the problem with over the ear headphones is that I can't wear them for a long time while I work for example, my head become hot and I want to hear what is around. I like the weight of the regular iphone headphones, I can wear them indefinitely, I am pretty sure case will be the same with AirPods, so I think the price is justified.
If you want a really comfortable set of headphones (not earbuds) that sound good and don't block your hearing, consider the Sennheiser HD 558.
They're circumaural, so they sit comfortably on the sides of your head rather than mashing your pinnae flat, and their velour pads are nicely breathable; they also mass only a quarter kilogram (260g), and they're an open-back design so that ambient noise is merely reduced rather than totally occluded. (Also, unlike closed-back and especially noise-canceling headphones, they do not produce a constant pressure on your eardrums, which has been suggested to cause hearing loss and certainly plays a role in listening fatigue.) Their reproduction is quite good as well, with a surprisingly flat frequency response for the price range; if that suits you, you're good to go, and if you prefer otherwise, they won't interfere with you EQing your music to your heart's content.
Depending on where you find them, they run anywhere from $100 (Amazon Prime) to $180 (MSRP), so they're considerably less expensive than your QC15s, too. I really can't recommend them favorably enough.
One thing to note about open circumaural headphones is that everyone around you can almost certainly hear what you're listening to. I work in an open office and like to listen to rather offensive comedy podcasts, so they're a no-go for me.
But I will say that Sennheiser is one of my favorite companies. I've purchased 5 different items from them over the past 7 years or so (HD 555, RS 180, MM 550-X, CS 686G, and the GAME ONE headset) and they all still work to this day with fantastic audio quality. I broke the MM 550-X, out of warranty and totally my own fault, and they still replaced them with a brand new set.
> noise-canceling headphones, they do not produce a constant pressure on your eardrums, which has been suggested to cause hearing loss and certainly plays a role in listening fatigue.
Are you saying that the feeling of pressure will stretch the eardrum or something?
I think that or something like it would have to be the mechanism. I don't really know a lot about research in that area, but I know I'm not the only one who finds that closed-back headphones produce earache after a few hours, and noise-canceling ones in less time than that.
I do the same with my 558s, and not all that uncommonly also wear them to bed, because while I may want to fall asleep to Beethoven, I doubt my neighbors do.
I've been told that from an audio standpoint, the only difference between the 558s and the 598s is the bit of foam stuck to the inside of each can on the former. Supposedly removing this foam improves audio quality, although having done this with my home pair but not my work pair, I can't say I have noticed any difference other than perhaps that ambient sound is a little easier to hear without it. I also haven't noticed any difference between my 558s and a pair of 598s I once had the opportunity to try, thanks to a former manager who had a real thing about one-upmanship. So I'm not sure quite what you get for the extra $50 other than style. (Though the 598s are very stylish!)
Buy a better set of headphones (i'm not a Bose fan). I used to have problems with my ears sweating, or my head hurting after wearing a pair of closed headphones. About 20 years ago I sprung for a pair of HD545, which were light, open, and the foam/felt surfaces never resulted in discomfort. I could wear those headphones for 12 hours straight.
I've since moved on to other headphones, but I always consider if the headphone is to tight, heavy, or the ear cushions are cheap pleather that makes my head sweat.
Did you get over the ear (couldn't tell by your post).
The QC20 have been amazing, and have longer than apple's 5 hours battery life. The wireless QC20 will be out soon, and they're rated at 10 hours I think (maybe 8, can't find the article now).
I don't suspect they'll be able to do wireless active noise cancelling, so the argument for the lightning port supporting active noise cancelling functionality is weird... do you want people to go wireless, or not? My first reaction is that that was a poor justification.
I got the in-ear Bose noise earphones for that reason -- I didn't think I could wear headphones all day without my ears and head getting hot. The earphones are great, really makes it possible to work at home with toddlers screaming downstairs.
Open back headphones are the solution to your ears getting hot.
It was a big discovery for me, as 16 hour days in the lab with studio headphones once resulted in a blocked ear canal, from ear wax melting & reflowing! Weird & gross, I know.
Honest question: why would you buy noise cancelling headphones for situations when you want to hear what is around? Did you buy them for other use cases and also decide to use them at work?
Noise cancelling works very good when you don't listen to music, like when I need to concentrate at work but still want to hear relatively loud noises around me (like toddler calling door bell).
It's in the exact same price range as comparable wireless earbuds, like the Jaybird X2
You're just comparing them to shitty wired $5 chinese earbuds from Amazon in your head. $160 isn't even expensive for earbuds in general, more like lower mid-range.
I don't want a Jaybird so that's not a winning argument for why I would want these.
I'm comparing them to my $90 noise cancelling over ear headphones that, while yes no exactly top tier, don't require their own charging infrastructure and have much better audio quality than stock apple.
I may as well have an entirely separate MP3 player that costs me a good bit less than $160 than deal with this BS.
Just because you personally don't like wireless headphone doesn't mean Apple's overpricing theirs.
Most pure wireless headphones cost more than $150. Are you the target audience? Probably not, but for people who are looking for that type of solution Apple's pricing is very reasonable.
Maybe he's suggesting that headphones are headphones and $150 is too much for what is probably a pretty mediocre pair in terms of audio quality and ease of use.
But the Jaybird are attached to each other so you don't loose them that easily and they work on any phone. Do the Apple wireless AirPods work on any phone? or only devices that pay the W1 licensing fee?
I'm guessing they're using standard bluetooth if paired with something standard, but use something Apple-proprietary when pairing and listening when possible. (NFC-like operation and their own audio codecs on top of bluetooth)
The only other company putting up a serious effort in the same niche is aiming at $150 (and releasing a month later than the AirPods) [1], so there's probably some lower bound here set by the complications of the hardware/R&D to seamlessly connect two separate earbuds through your head and to the phone.
It's a very reasonable price point and completely in line with the competition like Jaybird, Beats or similar. I was in the market for good wireless earbud-style headphones recently to use in the gym and all of the decent options were between $120 and $200.
I ended up going for the Jaybird X2 which is about $150.
did not see any mention of if they will have lossless audio or not (important if Apple really wants to have their technology replace wired for also higher end headphones)
Also no mention of standby time that I could hear, only 5 hours listening, but no idea if just having them on (in case of infrequent phone calls) would use up the battery as fast or not
Their product page mentions "high-quality AAC audio", so I'm assuming all audio output is converted (if necessary) to AAC. http://www.apple.com/airpods/
I disagree because to the layman that can easily listen to anything on a 25$ pair of earphones that's a lot. And here we are talking about at least 80% of the population.
As a side note, they're noise-canceling and also work as a (non-bluetooth) headset. I was expecting them to find a solution when you lose them, which is the first gripe people will have with them. Even if it's something along the lines of "come to the store, you'll get new ones for free, but we'll deactivate the old ones".
The Airpods aren't actually noise cancelling. A pity, I was watching out for that. The noise-cancelling they do is for the microphones, which is what you expect for any headset device.
I currently have a pair of Bose QC20 (their in-ear noise-cancelling earbuds). I'm pretty happy with them, but they were really expensive at $250. If Apple's were noise-cancelling and able to compete with Bose's tech (they're rated the best [1]), they'd be a deal.
But as it is, they're not.
Maybe a firmware update, maybe they're negotiating tech/patents with Bose, maybe the next iteration...
I'd personally settle for an in-ear[1] version of AirPods. I'm not sold on noise cancelling, but I do need something to keep the music in and background noise out, and rubber-tipped in-ears do that quite well. Honestly, I'm confused as to why Apple makes earbuds without rubber tips at all, let alone at a $160 price point.
I've tried using EarPods on a plane before (where my ancient Sennheiser earbuds get 95% of their use) and I couldn't find a comfortable volume setting -- loud enough to hear clearly over the engines is painful (and probably just audible to the person sitting next to me).
The AirPods sound like a great idea on paper -- very small size, charging case, potentially less flakey than a typical Bluetooth device -- but since they're nothing more than wireless EarPods, I can't think of a use for them myself.
This is happening to me on Android (Chrome); the page completely freezes and can't be scrolled for 3-5 seconds. I assumed it was my phone reflowing or something, but I feel like it shouldn't be that bad, and if it's also happening on MBA, it really shouldn't be that bad
Something is wrong. I just collapsed the top thread (733 comments) and it was almost instant. I'm running Firefox 48 on OS X Mavericks on a non-retina MB Pro. NoScript is loaded but ycombinator whitelisted.
Honestly if you had an iPhone 6 why would you upgrade? Better battery life is cool, and it being waterproof is novel. However, its basically the same phone for the end consumer.
They specifically made comparisons to the A8 chip (in the 6 and 6+) during the event and emphasized the speed increase. Apple knows their true problem is getting old iPhone users to upgrade.
Also, did you see the event? Not the same phone at all.
Wide color, awesome new camera and dropping it in the toilet might be enough.
It would be interesting to know if they were just reimplmenting Android's View OnPaint and doing it in 2D land or getting an OpenGL context and drawing it 2D in there. I wonder what the battery differences would be like.
Naive question: do faster cores perform slower tasks with more efficiency? In other words, if a game uses 80% of the old processor, but only 50% of the new one, is there an impact on the battery life just by being a faster CPU?
Yes. Especially with multiple cores, gets more work done quicker and the core can shutdown. The core can also scale down where it is presumably more efficient.
For me the waterproofing is a killer feature that I've been waiting for a while. I use my phone out and about in the west of scotland, which is not the driest place in the world, so having this will be very handy.
well with this waterproofing probably back to an iPhone :)
Security+convenience+waterproofing are the key characteristics for me and the iPhone hits those fairly well (now).
I've tried various androids but from what I've seen of their security/update policies the only way to get a good level is either use a nexus device or manage OS patches/upgrades yourself, even there I think that Android is still some way behind iOS on the security front.
had one of those, it broke, had a moto G 3rd gen, but I kind of like my security and outside of Nexus or a load of hassle, I'm not getting that on android.
That said, the new home button sounds very interesting (I say that both as a developer and end-user), and the new camera will be a very welcome addition. And battery life improvement on top that? Perfect.
It is an iterative improvement for sure, but I don't see why that's a bad thing.
Apple convinced me to upgrade from my 4S by intentionally slowing it down with every subsequent iOS update. I wouldn't have bought the 6S if I could put an older iOS on the 4S.
> Like there's some code there that says if running on 4S then run slow?
Yes. It was fast and I was extremely happy with it when I bought it. After the update, its slow.
To spell it out - One code path is fast, one code path is slow. They chose to force the latter upon us, as part of an intentional decision. I wish I could go back to the previous iOS version which was not slow, but Apple, intentionally block that with their DRM. Things which were instantaneous are now sluggish, ruining my experience after spending like 700 dollars. I could have gotten the same experience with an under-powered android phone for $50. Thanks Apple.
>I feel sorry for you.
How sorry do you feel? I mean .. thanks for being condescending and all, but I was just curious.
The other answer as robryan mentioned is that there's one codebase and apple engineers develop on the latest devices, which from apple's benchmarks are at least 50% faster than the previous generation, so if you're on a 4S, that's 4 generations behind the 6S, which apple engineers are probably testing iOS 10 on.
Geekgench puts the 4S at 282 and the 6S at 2389 on single core performance.
> Higher scores are better, with double the score indicating double the performance.
The 4S was fast when I bought it. It is no longer fast and I have no way of restoring it. Apple intentionally designed newer features where older devices would be woefully under-powered and intentionally made it so that you cannot rollback to a previous iOS build which was fast.
All you've done is agree with me. What was your point?
> You really beleive that was intentional? Like there's some code there that says if running on 4S then run slow?
You:
> To spell it out - One code path is fast, one code path is slow
Intentionally designing new features for new devices and potentially screwing over old devices is _way_ different than having checks that say if (iPhone4S) { sleep(300) }
-------
The solution as the other poster replied is to not update your phone past 1 major version, even if apple lets you. The other solution is that Apple magically makes your processor 8x faster in a software update. At this point I don't even know what you're expecting.
In my experience, this is because major iOS upgrades tend to come out at the same time as new phones, and installing one major iOS version as an upgrade over the previous creates issues, especially if you've not set up a phone a new in a few years, whether it's a new phone or not. After installing a major iOS version upgrade, if you erase your phone without restoring the backup, the performance will feel new again, and battery life almost always improves.
This will be the first year I pass on upgrading on the 2-year cycle. I'm happy with my iPhone 6. I don't do much on it besides photos and texting. Although the camera in the 7 is nice, the 7 Plus seems to have gotten the most love in the camera department and I don't want a phone that big.
I have a 6+ and I can't answer that question. I'll probably sit this one out and see if the 7s is more compelling (or if my 6+ is less compelling by then).
I can't blame Apple for it. I think they've reached feature saturation. The stuff is just Good Enough now.
iOS 9 seems to have fixed some of it, but my 6+ still lags on occasion - the 6s+ seems to have fixed it and I feel like I should have waited the extra month but my Xperia Z3's screen got smashed and I needed a replacement device and my Android issues saw no end. I will probably upgrade just for the performance improvements alone, sucks that I'm losing a headphone jack but outside of the car I never need to charge + use the headphone port simultaneously so I think I'll survive with the dumb dongle.
You're right, performance is a reason to upgrade. I'm satisfied with mine, but it could be better. Whenever I use my wife's 6s+ I'm mildly shocked at how much smoother and more responsive it is. I don't think it's enough to get me to pay $769+ to upgrade, but it's still a potential reason to.
The headphone thing annoys me enormously, but it probably won't be a factor here.
Wide color is actually the one thing that sticks out as a quality-of-life improvement that might be worth it. Lack of 3.5mm is a very hard price to pay, though. I'll probably still wait and see what's coming for next year's 10th anniversary of the iPhone.
It comes in beautiful glossy black! I really don't like the "space grey" (6 was a bit better than 6s), and the other colors don't look all that pretty either. Call me shallow, but if I spend 870€ on a phone, I want it to be pretty...
Totally agree. I've purchased a new phone in even numbered years going back quite a while but I'll be passing this year especially with a bigger redesign rumored to be coming next year for the 10th anniversary.
They looked astonishing lame all throughout by constantly having to tell the viewer how glorious and awesome everything was. If they can't just tell us what the feature is and let us be amazed by the feature itself, then whatever they're saying just isn't that great. I don't care how many transistors are in a processor, it's trivia. I don't care what a marvel of engineering the W1 is. I don't even care that they dug out their childhood rock polishers to make the new case shiny.
That part of the presentation was awful and had me rolling my eyes. "Oh, I wonder what Pokemon it's going to be inside this egg... Pikachu!" <halfhearted claps>
They could have made it funny by having the worst Pokemon appear. Or having it run away. Very poor showmanship.
Apple keynotes used to have like a 30+ minute section devoted to games and other third party apps. Or the time where they demoed a remote-control car on stage (and it failed horrifically).
It might not be cool or interesting, but it's fairly standard 'Apple'.
If you watched it live, that keynote actually had the car fail for at least a couple of minutes while the makers tried to fix it. I'm sure the videos they have published now edited that lag.
Their third-party demos are almost always really weak. I don't really understand why they keep having them. I think these events would be quite a bit improved if Apple just stuck to Apple.
I'm seriously not comfortable with getting audio through a digital port that has an authentication chip built in. That's HDCP and DRM for music waiting to burst into life.
They look ok in my opinion, but as soon as I take like 5 steps when I go running, I may as well kiss them and $160 goodbye as the damn thing(s) will just fall right out of my ears.
I can't see them catching on, but then again I thought walking around with giant headphones looked odd but people seem to be happy walking around with giant Beats headphones on.
It does look like you've shoved a cigarette in your ear.
Once it becomes widely adopted I doubt this will be much of a social issue. The value they provide is real. It's not some gimmicky thing. Tangled wires are extremely annoying and happens nearly every day I use them. Plus the wire gets in the way going jogging or caught on something with normal usage, etc etc. Lots of benefits to having wireless headphones.
Talking to yourself with a non obvious headset will always be awkward looking though.
The social issue thing is real and it's an interesting quandary.
I think my personal beef with them is when I interact with someone wearing an earpiece, it makes me think (rightly or wrongly) that they are happy to interact with me BUT at any moment a ping from their earpiece will be by default more important.
Maybe it's (perhaps in part) my own issue though.
On the other hand I can see the value in it, especially if Siri's abilities improve, and if speech recognition improves also.
Maybe I'm just old fashioned and in time this will built into our social fabric (I think back to the late 1980s and early 1990s when walking around with a handheld cell phone seemed incredibly dickish)
I never have the tangled wire issue.
1. You can either wrap it around in the box it came in
or
2. wound it in a circle and it stays as is.(That is how I put in in my laptop bag)
This would be a thing in both ears, and a very unobtrusive thing at that. So maybe not as jackass-ish as the usual standard.
And that's maybe not wholly something I understand anyway, but sort of feel bad about regardless. I mean, I do wear one [1] during my commute so I can listen to podcasts without wires all over the place, and I'm really hoping iOS 10's speech recognition via crappy mics is good enough that I can integrate voice control into my exocortex. Does that suffice to make me an asshole? Or does it require that I use it to have loud conversations about business things? Or what? I'm not all that sure I grasp the nuance here.
What are they going to do with the 3.5mm audio jacks on Macs? So Apple removes the 3.5mm audio jack from the phone & adds a lightening port to the mac?
It makes me imagine how nice it would have been to ditch both the 3.5mm & lightening port & replace it with a USB-C port across product lines.
Obviously that would have been even more drastic in many ways, but I can't help but think that they have painted themselves into a strange corner.
I wouldn't mind a lighting port instead of the 3.5 mm jack on my mac. My last macbook, the 3.5mm jack was the one thing that failed, surprisingly. It had a tiny switch inside to go between optical and electrical, and that switch would get stuck in the optical position. Basically I couldn't use headphones half the time.
Cool - more dongles, adaptors + what not to carry around and lose and then pay apple another $40 for each time. I say this writing on my Thunderbolt display that has since been rendered obsolete if I ever want a new macbook
I ask as my 2012 MBP non-retina needs replacing at some point (I think I'll shove as SSD in first, to get 3 more years life) but where do we go from here?
I submitted the URL for archival as have a lot of other people done, but what I found strange is that there are archived versions of "page not found" results going all the way back to 2014.
Meanwhile, nobody has attempted to archive links for iPhone 8.
I guess maybe the IA crawlers found links to the page from elsewhere. Links made either by mistake or by someone making a joke about the release of iPhone 7 back in 2014 and betting on people not actually following the link. I dunno.
I have a design issue with AirPods. When my earphones (with wire) fall off (and it happens when you're running or doing some other similar activity), I know for sure, that me or someone else accidentally won't crush them, because the wires often prevent them from falling on the floor. I don't know how the current design of AirPods would prevent that.
I don't use in-ear because they've always fallen very easily from my ears, and I always feel like its the wires that are pulling them off.
I imagine these new ones would stay better because the lack of weight from the wires. I'm not excited about them though, I don't use headphones outside, and at home I don't need new ones.
I have a kickstarter idea: make a lanyard that's just a rope with small silicone rings on both ends. Fix the airpods to the rings, put it on the back of your neck, done! They are not going to fall on the floor.
AirPods is certainly not for running bc it's loose and no water resist at all. But you are right even in daily usage, it could fall off and go no where.
2.4Ghz is super congested. 802.11g is. Bluetooth is. Even your microwave is on 2.4GHz. If everybody starts to use Bluetooth headphones all the time, I fear it's gonna make it totally unusable.
There are tons of call center farms with people packed very closesly using Bluetooth headsets (and have been for a decade) and there doesn't seem to be an issue
Yes, they are likely DECT, my last job we used Plantronics CS500 headsets which are in fact DECT. Though, regardless of the protocol used (DECT 6.0 uses 1.9GHz) congestion is always an issue with that many devices in close proximity, especially at the range I can take DECT headsets - in fact, this is why I bought a CS500 for home use along with the EHS adapter for my Polycom Soundpoint IP 335, it's nice that I can be on a conference call for work and go out to the garage to grab something quick without having to carry my phone in my pocket.
Sensor size. Depth of field is based on (1) sensor size (you want big), (2) aperture (you want a low number, i.e. big opening), (3) focus distance to nearest subject, and (4) focal length (I think...).
So on a full frame sensor camera, shooting someone's portrait with an 80mm will give you very shallow DoF, on a sensor the size of an iPhone, it's probably close to infinite.
Sensor size doesn't really have an effect - it's about focal length. The reason sensor size seems to have an effect is because for the same field of view with a bigger sensor, you have a longer focal length. For the same focal length, aperture and focus distance, a larger sensor doesn't change DOF; it just adds more of the surroundings to the outside of the picture.
It's a combination of wide-angle focal length and small sensor size. It is still possible to get a natural depth of field effect by getting very close to the subject, and that effect should be more pronounced with the 56mm equivalent telephoto lens.
Because sensor size has a large factor in depth of field. The camera sensors in phones are very small. This is why you can get better depth of field with a full frame camera then you can with a crop sensor and same goes for small phone sensors.
mobiles are mature products and the players are strictly in cash-cow or market share mode. nothing of importance is changing.
I've got an iphone se and an iphone 4 and you can't tell me that's the most they can do for 6 years of product development by one of the richest companies in the world. (yes i know that it's faster with more a and more b and more c etc)
Apple needs to drip feed improvements over the next x years to keep sales up so we can't expect anything game changing.
"The Others" are trying this and that but nothing seems to be sticking, probably not able to drive consumer desire enough.
so if nothing is happening, what is the post-phone next-big-thing to get into?
IoT and VR are the obvious technologies that have been introduced after smart phones. They both have significant obstacles in addition to the significant potential.
I won't pretend to know how things will pan out -- I agree with the idea that inventing the future is easier than predicting it.
I'd like to hear some contrarian thinking against IoT and VR. And maybe a list of "next big things" that weren't. Clean tech might be one of them. I recall some pre-www hype by Bill Gates about the "CD-ROM business", which seems to have been less of a business than a cheap distribution medium. Flip cameras were a blip.
"Live in the future and build what seems interesting"
People trying to jump on trends are usually too late, because 1) they pick the wrong trend due to lack of fundamental understanding, and 2) It takes years to develop true expertise.
The people really profiting from deep learning now were toiling in obscurity 10 years ago. And plenty of people picked a line of AI research 10 years ago that has already fallen out of favor. There's no free lunch: risk and reward go hand in hand.
Yes, agreed on this. Just for fun, I'll make a prediction on timelines so I can look back on this in 5 years and see how it played out (and probably laugh at myself):
Closed VR headsets (maybe some AR, but still bulky headsets) for the next couple of years, with moderate adoption amongst gadget lovers, enough of a market for lots of investment and R&D, but ultimately never make it mainstream.
In around 5 years' time, with miniaturisation + battery improvements, the tech eventually evolves into a light, practical and nice-looking AR glasses form-factor which does achieve mainstream adoption and becomes ubiquitous - possibly even replacing the glass-slab smartphone as the primary mobile computing device for a majority of people.
They are rightfully advertising it as '5 hours for each ear'. Which, in my case, is actually 10 hours. I only listen to podcasts - and listen to them in one ear. So when one dies, I'll switch to the other while charging the first one. It's really ideal for my use.
They mentioned in the keynote that you can use just one earpod (eg for a call) and it will route full stereo audio through only that earpod automatically.
You put the headphones back in the case when you're not listening, and they charge. Do you frequently listen to your headphones for > 5 hours uninterrupted? I'm sure some people do but I bet it's pretty rare realistically.
Everytime I fly cross country, which is every 3 weeks. So yeah, this is a pretty big deal. I also charge my phone while I'm doing that so when I land in CA my phone has a full battery since I have a full 8 hour work day there and my iPhone battery doesn't last.
Also, uninterrupted listening to music for several hours straight can be damaging to your ears, even if you're not playing at a high volume, or so I've heard. I enjoy listening to music but I think it's important to take breaks.
I can't afford an iPhone but I have an iPod touch and a Bluetooth wireless headphone set that has good battery charge which I bought this summer following my set of previous generation 3.5mm audio jack headphones having broken down after 5 years or so of active use, and I do appreciate not having to charge my headphones too often, but I think if the headphones are easy to charge alongside the iPhone and iPods, users will find that it is unlikely to be much of an inconvenience.
While we are on the subject, I must say that I am very pleased with using wireless headphones with my iPod. IMO, the advantage of never having a wire dangling around your upper body and being a general annoyance far outweighs the inconvenience of having to charge them now and then.
The only thing that I am a little sad about with the wireless headphones is that while they work excellently with my iPod and the audio quality is impeccable for me, if I connect them to my desktop computer, which I run Fedora 23 Linux on, then the audio quality is complete garbage. With my laptop, which I run FreeBSD on, I am not able to use audio over Bluetooth at all. I found some reference to A2DP support under FreeBSD, and I think A2DP is the name of it, but have not had time to figure out if it is usable and if it is then how to make use of it.
My Bluetooth headphones do have a 3.5mm cable which I can plug into it but I've only used that twice. I might have to begin using the cable for a little while since my iPod charger cable broke and I am waiting for a new one to come in the mail so I can't use my iPod right now and as I said, the audio over Bluetooth is not working well for me in Linux and FreeBSD.
How can listening to music for a long period of time regardless of volume be damaging to our ears? I'm not sure about you but my ears hear things continually, even when I sleep. What's different about music? Do you mean to say that listening to headphones for long periods is damaging? Do you have a source because that seems like an strange claim.
>The idea is to minimize unsafe listening practices, which depend on two factors: how long you listen and how loud the sound is. The sound of a typical conversation is 60 decibels, which won’t cause any hearing problems. But an idling bulldozer is about 85 decibels, which can cause permanent damage after eight hours. Sounds like a clap of thunder or even a close vuvuzela clock in at 120 decibels, damaging hearing after just nine seconds.
I phrased my first comment a bit poorly. There is a lower limit to what is damaging, but my point is like the quote says, even volumes which aren't extreme can damage your ear if you expose your ear to that level of sound for an extended period of time.
As the parent said, the case is a battery/charger as well. Do you put your earphones in at home and leave them in all day and not take them out again until you get home? If so I would say you are not a typical headphone user.
I think the idea is that you aren't going to listen to more than 5 hours straight - so you put them back in the case in between and they get recharged while in the case, in your pocket. Then you plug in the case at night along with your phone and watch.
If you want to listen to 6+ hours of audio straight, then you'll have to use something else.
Making people get into the habit of always putting them back into the case when not in use should also reduce the likelihood of loosing them.
I think Apple needs to add a few younger people to their executive team, because it seams they no longer can even pretend to be exited during the presentation.
I know this is a minority use case, but my iPhone is a great tool for testing whether audio equipment is working or not when I'm doing media system installs. Simply plug in the iPhone and play some sounds. Alas...
They just solidified the iPhone SE as the best product they offer. No way to charge the iPhone7 and use wired headphones at the same time. A camera wart so the phone isn't flat like the SE. The loss of extra battery by going with a wart over a thicker, easier to hold phone like the SE.
I'll be sticking with my 5S, and my wife is no longer upgrading her 4S to the 7 as we were planning.
We love our iPhones, but we do need to replace hers and now looking for non-Apple alternatives since while I prefer the SE over everything on the market, she thought she was going to want the 7 Plus.
Why did she think she was going to want the 7 Plus? What is it about the SE that isn't appealing? What is it that she was expecting in the 7 Plus that the 6s Plus doesn't offer?
This is an honest question, I have continually upgraded my iPhones for years and this new phone doesn't speak to me either but you are on much older hardware, what about the new phones doesn't speak to you?
Personally I am considering a move to the SE because the form factor of the 6/6s is still too big in my opinion and the 7 doesn't seem to offer me anything I actually need or want.
I keep mine in my pocket, I never saw a reason to go back to the 4.7" Android phones that I used for 5 years prior to moving to iOS. 4" is the right size for a phone IMO. I only have notifications enabled for calls and texts, I'm not the type to be into my phone like a fool and look at it while driving, and I only use it for useful purposes. Random Teamviewer access, checking Google News, Feedly, check personal/work email, check deposits/banking. I also have smaller hands, and need to hold onto metal rails as I ride the train and bus. I almost fumble 4.7"+ phones when using them 1-handed.
She usually has her purse and uses her phone more than me, essentially as a tablet. Playing games often such as something I've become accustomed to, Cookie Run. It's really preference. She doesn't mind the larger phone and doesn't mind the inconvenient size for day to day use.
I'm very letdown the 7(Plus) doesn't have a Lightning port pass-through port on the new charging cables. I can let go of 3.5mm, as I don't have any particularly great investment in headphones, but I can't accept inability to charge and use a wired headset at the same time.
I think they will bring in Lightning port pass-through cables with the iPhone7S, but right now want to rake in expensive, more quickly obsolescent (batteries) wireless Beats headphones before they do that.
Wireless stuff to me just means 1 more thing that needs charging, and while I do like those LG around-the-neck Bluetooth headsets, I dislike being forced into it if I want to charge my phone and use a headset.
The keynote was trying to boast the gaming capabilities with a demo of… 400 monkeys.
Weak. Give me 400 monkeys, then 4000 monkeys, then 400 000 monkeys, and now the monkeys are forming a fractal, but the fractal is just the surface of a sphere, and zooming out there are a million spheres, and the spheres form… a monkey.
I recently went on a trip with several friends and we rented a new Ford Expedition. The integrated audio system in the car supported multiple Bluetooth devices with a history (including previous renters) but as far as I could tell not more than once device at a time. Every time we started the car we had to select Sources -> Bluetooth -> Connect -> ${device name} -> Sources -> Bluetooth -> ${device name}. It was a huge hassle and a 3.5mm cable would have been far easier and sounded better.
So one interesting aspect of the airpods is seemingly automatic pairing, without having to dive in settings, through what seems like near-field communication. I'm curious to see if they've solved the multi-device pairing problem too.
The thing is, the pairing UI is rarely the problem. It's the actual pairing implementation. Pairing a phone to a car is usually just a few button presses. Not quite as convenient as NFC or whatever, but not a real problem. The problem arises when you find that Pair button and press it and then it doesn't work and provides no feedback on why it failed. Cue five minutes of screwing around turning things off and on again and finally giving up.
I'm lucky to not have had that experience for initial pairing. I was recently gifted the beats headphones and they've never had an issue like that, though I do have to re-pair with every device which is my main annoyance.
I stopped using a BT trackpad because I would get disconnected randomly though, so maybe it comes down to the devices?
Also not the first time we've had a chat in HN comments. How's the robot boxing chess league? ;)
Devices no doubt play a part, and I think some of it is just dumb luck. Sometimes you might encounter a Bluetooth stack that's been wedged somehow, and it just won't go anywhere.
A few weeks ago I was riding with my father and brother in my car, and they both wanted to play some music. We paired my brother's phone and all was well. Then we did my father's phone and we simply couldn't make it work despite a great deal of trying. They have the exact same iPhone model, but one worked and one didn't. A few days later we tried my father's phone again and it worked that time. No idea why.
I almost said you had me confused with someone else, then I finally managed to remember that conversation. Where did we even talk about robot chess boxing? I remember discussing it in pretty alarming detail, but I can't remember where.
From the website, big and bold: "iPhone. Now in stereo."
Honest question, not having owned an iPhone before - is this really the first iPhone that can produce stereo sound through the speakers? If true, that seems like a crazy thing to advertise given how standard a feature it has been in most phones for so long. On the other hand, if iPhones have had stereo output already, why shout about it now?
It's stereo in the sense that there's a speaker on the top and bottom of the phone, so that when watching media with the phone in landscape orientation you can hear good stereo audio. I'm not aware of another phone that does this; I'm sure they exist, but it's not a common feature.
They generally don't market the amount of RAM; I had to scour blogs after the SE launch.
It seems very unlikely they'd go from 2GB (in the 6S and SE) to 1GB though. Most likely 2GB. I could see 4, but that seems quick on them to increase it compared to usual.
Speaking of collapsing, does it feel really slow in this thread? It almost feels like their implementation is O(n) where n is the number of comments, and it's really struggling here. I see a very clear 500ms delay here whereas it's instant in most other threads...
One thing that hasn't been mentioned is AirPods seem super useful for taking phone calls and all the other apps such as Snapchat, I would wear them off all day.
Airpods might become the virtual reality for your ears.
You're right... But there is no faster way to kill the coolness of AirPods than to have it associated with the stereotype of bluetooth headset-wearing douchebags fielding phone calls in public.
I'm still kind of dumbfounded that the 7 Plus has two cameras side-by-side and apparently ISN'T using them to capture 3D images. One would think this would be the best/most obvious application.
You can still do it, you just have to tweak your calibration parameters to accept a different focal length for the second camera. It's a huge pain but doable.
They're too close together for that. Your eyes are about 6cm (~2.4in) apart, those lenses look like they're 1cm apart. You need enough distance between them to capture stereoscopic images.
Remember Touch ID hardware > Apple Pay? I expect we'll see something similar with the dual cameras.
I expect either VR support, 3D imaging, or using them+dynamic light sensing of iPad Pro to have a "reactive" UI where gradients in the UI behave as if they might have real world lighting applied to them
I was really curious how they'd handle wireless audio. In my experience, Bluetooth is slow to pair, connect, and glitchy in common environments. So I find it very indicative that the new Airpods do not mention Bluetooth, and the Beats Solo3 cryptically mentions "Connections: Bluetooth, Wireless" on its product page [1]. Sadly, I don't expect them to open their tech to 3rd parties soon :(
From the video, I got the impression they're using their own custom radio solution, that allows them to more easily pair. We don't know much about the reliability of the new mechanism, however.
It's also compatible with old iPhones going back to the 5, so it can't be anything too custom. My bet is it's Bluetooth but a custom profile and custom pairing.
> Android is getting to the point where most users will not really notice a difference between Android and IOS, even on a very inexpensive device.
Having had experience recently with top-end Android devices, I'd beg to differ. Functionally an Android device is roughly equivalent to an iOS one, but the design, UI, responsiveness etc. is IMO miles apart.
It may be a matter of subjective taste but I would recommend that anyone reading the above and considering switching spent some serious time using Android first.
> the design, UI, responsiveness etc. is IMO miles apart.
This was my perspective too, last year. Moore's Law seems to have made Android's slower approach to smooth UI finally just about as silky as IOS, even on low end hardware.
I especially enjoyed the last second comment under his breath regarding the matte black iPhone 7 pricing.
32GB standard for all models, except the matte black, which will ONLY come in 128GB, and you'll be paying $100 more at $750.
Nice underhanded move by Apple to maximize profit for what will undoubtedly be the most popular color.
First they force everyone to buy the 32GB upgrade last year on the 6S, now you're forced to do the same to 128GB, unless you want a rose colored phone.
The camera upgrade looks nice, but the headphone jack is a joke. Another wire that will inevitably fall apart like the other Apple lightning connectors.
Rumors had it that they're in shorter supply than the other colors so it might make sense for them to mark that one as a premium model only. They could add a 32GB model later.
Another theory might be the branding they started with the cylindrical Mac Pro which is also this sort of gloss black. So perhaps we'll see more products with this gloss applied?
Either way, I've always ended up regretting getting a lower capacity model. I only upgrade every 3-4 years and I am definitely looking forward to 128GB or more so I don't have to juggle apps, audio, and pictures constantly. So for me that's the starting price. Steep but I don't buy phones so often so it's not my biggest budget worry.
Gloss anything always turns into a nightmare of scratches, and fingerprints. It looks pretty for about three seconds out of the box, and then it's quickly ruined. I thought they learned their less with the old plastic gloss cases, iphone2 era?
With multiple cameras as 12MP on this thing, 32GB is just going to become as silly as the 16GB model was. Embarrassing it's such a small amount on a $700 device.
16GB for smart phones has been a terrible option for years. It's sort of comedic, though also very tragic, to watch people juggle images and audio and apps on 16GB devices.
It's not really a big deal, I have a charger at my desk for my phone. So once every 3-4 weeks, I plug in the mouse when I leave. It's never run out of battery when I wanted to use it.
i think they wanted to specifically make sure people don't use these with wires attached. Apple HATES wires. Imagine their marketing people getting heart attacks when some people dare to post pictures of their shiny Apple hardware online and the magic mouse has a wire attached.
Then they should have designed it such that it doesn't take too much longer to charge than it would have taken for a normal person to pop new batteries in a generic wireless mouse.
Well, hell. I didn't even think about that. And it's a super complicated active cable, so there's not much chance of modifying an adapter to accept a charge cable alongside a 3.5mm plug.
On the other hand, I will be very surprised if no one has come out with a dual adapter within a year.
Problem is using headphones while charging is my daughters use case (she keeps forgetting to charge the phone) she is as likely to forget to charge headphones
The Airpods look like a genuine improvement. I really hate untangling my earphones every time I use them. The carrying case looks brilliant; much nicer to carry a smooth case than a mess of wires in my pocket.
That's a good question as during the presentation of the new features, one of them was called "Wireless" and for a moment I thought "Oh, so that's it, wireless charging too so no need for that strange dongle to charge the phone while listening to music!"
Really boring and hard to justify the cash. Wish I had a 6S so I could keep it for a year or so... I have iOS 10 right now and it's quite laggy on my 6.
Regarding the comments about how do I charge and listen, I accidentally found this dock[0]. Not sure if it's a new product.
I'm curious if this spells the end for the headphone jack in the industry. Now that's gone from the iPhone, should we expect other phones to drop it? What about tablets and laptops?
i am pretty sure it's the end of the headphone jack, IF the wireless headphones work really well. Traditionally Bluetooth headphones have always had a few quirks and annoyances (i still love mine) so if they fixed that i believe that people will see the benefits. It's kind of like the outcry when the very first iPhone did not have a keyboard at all. Only a Touchscreen ? WTF?
Yeah, that would be the case, if it only were not for the dozens of just touchscreen phones before the iPhone came out.
IMO, this could be the beginning of the decline of Apple (since smartphones make majority of apples profit)
It's not that there have never been phones without a proprietary headphone jack before right ? But it's the first time a really popular phone does it, similar to when they introduced the first iPhone. Pretty sure in a few months nobody will really care about the missing headphone jack anymore, i mean the only real downside i see is losing the ability to listen with analog headphones and charging at the same time (but there will probably be adapters for that as well)
Is this website a terrible viewing experience for anyone else? The videos don't work, and I can't scroll the slideshows unless I flick super fast. I'm on Chrome desktop.
Surprised to see them not move from Lighting to USB-C with this. Now we'll have a new generation of EarPods that won't fit their new generation of MacBooks. It seems disjointed for how coherent a company like Apple tends to be, now that they had the opportunity to unite their product line better with purely digital audio.
Was USB-C supposed to be their future or not...? It sounded like it when they introduced the MacBook. Do their teams communicate well with a lack of strife?
This bothers me as well...and definitely becomes an argument against the iPhone 7 Plus. It's going to be difficult to choose between dual camera / longer battery life, and correctly mapped pixels.
At more than 400 dpi it's not really visible. I've scrutinized it heavily, and I can even (barely) see the pixels on the retina iPad and regular iPhone.
I think the only people that are annoyed with the camera bulge (a functional bulge if there ever was one) are people with OCD -- it "ruins" the perfectly straight edge. It's not like you'll ever feel it in your pocket or something.
Meanwhile, just a decade or so ago most phones had camera bulges, edge bulges, antennas that stretched out from the body, were 3-4 times the thickness, etc.
Great, now they have a phone with double camera wart and no jack.
Also what's up with Apple being so obsessed about pictures? I know you want to have the nude selfie in the toilet to be the best as possible, but come on!
And everything revolves around fitness. People wont get up from their bum, just because their watch tells them to. And the other who already do fitness don't need a watch to tell them how fit they are. They already know. Because they can feel it.
And I almost forgot that having now two different types of back casing is a feature apparently.
Last but not least, Apple is still ignoring the cries of millions of users about the battery life. That majority of the people would trade in the slim design for days worth of juice.
Who cares about paper thin phones when you have to put them into a case with extra battery within it to have it powered through the day?
Who cares about the seamless Jet Black casing when you put the phone into an ugly plastic case?
It looks like 'Form Over Function' again for Apple.
Good job apple, this is probably the most uninteresting keynote ever. Except for the people dancing in stockings at the end.
Apple isn't selling you an iPhone, they're selling you a dream. The idea is to make you want to be the person snapping all those great photos and most people want to be fit and active, even if we don't want to put in the effort. Apple is selling you the dream that if you just have an iPhone and Apple Watch you'll be motivated to get out, get fit, meet interesting people and sit around a fire at a beach on a summers night. That's why they are so focused on photo, and fitness.
There isn't really much innovation in the iPhone 7, it's just the next iteration of the models before it. It just doesn't sell that many phone telling people: Yeah it's a little fast, so if you feel that your phone fast enough, maybe don't buy it.
It is true for a long time now, that Apple sells a lifestyle. It really kicked off when they introduced the iPod and the new line of Mac's not to mention the debut of the iPhone.
I'm not denying the genius behind their marketing strategy, but I'm wondering when this cow will start giving less milk.As more and more people in the upcoming generations are tech literate, the harder it will get to impress them with a better camera and a shiny gloss finish.
I feel this road doesn't lead to more useful innovations. Maybe it will lead to a fitter, happier life with loads of pictures in it.
Why not ask the same question of Nike or Addidas? The number of people who wear sportswear for fashion FAR outstrips those who wear it for sports alone. And that cash cow seems far from milked, what with the recent fashion trend of athliesure...
My point is, tech literacy is irrelevant; the lifestyle brand is everything.
> Also what's up with Apple being so obsessed about pictures?
It's a very, very, very common and important use case for the phone. The iPhone has been for many years the "most popular camera in the world" according to pretty much any metric and any website (Flickr, Instagram, you name it).
They can't keep substantially improving how well it makes phone calls, only tiny incremental improvements happen in that field, but they do frequently have newsworthy changes to the camera, and they know it's a hugely important aspect for the iPhone audience, so they make sure to tell you about it - be it Harry Potter photos, a Backside Illuminated CMOS sensor, more megapixels, better aperture, one more sensor sticking out from a random side, etc.
I understand this.
As the first cameras were introduced in mobiles the trend is still on the rising.
Also I haven't said that they should improve the the quality of the calls. We are talking about smartphones, there are hundreds of other thing to be improved or added.
I'm not saying they're not adding or upgrading other features, but it really feels like the biggest selling point is the camera now.
Like last year trying to sell 3 second videos as live photos.
I'm having a hard time seeing the value add on the AirPods that justifies paying ~5x the cost of stock Bluetooth earphones.
Siri integration and easier charging is definitely really cool, but not worth paying $120 over regular Bluetooth headphones that will probably be copy cat'ing that functionality in t minus 3, 2, 1...
Unless Bluetooth earphones support AAC over Bluetooth, they are going to sound bad on an iPhone. So there is the potential for the Airpods to sound much better than cheaper earphones. Looking at the presentation, they do pack a lot of faszinating technology. So, taking the typical Apple pricing into consideration, I do not think they are especially expensive. Of course, all depends on how good they actually sound.
Absolutely amazing HN thread, 1711 comment as of now and less then 10 are on A10 SoC?
It is truly a astonishing, how they manage to use the same TSMC 16nm, and get 40% single core performance increase. The rumors is the same SoC core from A9 but 40% higher clock speed from 1.8Ghz to 2.6Ghz, while keeping the same thermal envelop.
Some people were wondering if these Smartphone CPU can easily scale up the clockspeed. Turns out it can. And the performance could now exceed the baseline performance of Macbook.
i.e, Apart from compatibility reason, there is no longer a case for Apple to continue and use Intel CPU. A Quad Core A10 may even outrun the current Macbook Pro given the similar TDP.
I do hope that this will push Bluetooth technology forwards - on my android devices bluetooth audio sound-quality is poor and skips when you launch resource-intensive applications. Also, the UI for syncing and selecting bluetooth devices is generally mediocre and confusing.
Question: besides a cool accessory (airpods), and a weird double camera thing, what's really pushing forward here?
Galaxies have been splash proof for some generations, and Bluetooth phones aren't new (only the design of this one seems to beat everything else).
Other than that, only traditional Moores Law advancements, like, more battery, more RAM, more processing power. None of these are enabling techs, in that they don't enable you to do anything that you can't with older devices.
So, I guess, update when the old one gives up the ghost?
It's hard to know without it in my hands how big of a deal the stereo camera is going to be. The fact that it wasn't designed for depth (at least publicly stated) makes it a little unnerving - for example having to compensate for two separate focal lengths to get good parallax is going to be a pain. However we built our SLAM around taking on dual cameras IF they happened to show up so we should be ok with some parameter changes on each input.
Don't count on it. Most people aren't interested in AR. And even when you mention it most people will tell you they'd "rather just use it like normal" (ie. no AR)
If you're talking about groundbreaking mixed reality, like the HoloLens or Magic Leap then maybe. Microsoft is doing the right thing by first marketing to business. The consumer tech isn't ready, and won't be for probably 5-10 years (to be at a place where it won't require any overhead.)
Most people don't know what they're interested in and consumers are starting to actually take hold of AR. Ever seen Snapchat filters? Yep those are 3D tracking with depth. Not fiducial AR or just non tracked "overlay" so it counts. It's steps toward HMD AR by showing people what is possible to do to changing the real world dynamically.
Having hardware that can do depth at scale with an application layer is a big step - not sure that the 7 plus gets there but it's a start.
I'll give them credit for going deeper into features in he new phones. I question whether people will think to use them if they go into their phone for a specific task.
> Now they consider the waterproofing good enough to guarantee it.
Well, no, since liquid damage isn't covered by the warranty, there is no actual guarantee. There is a claim (and maybe a third-party certification) of meeting a particular standard, but that's different from a guarantee -- its marketing with no risk of having to pay out money if the performance isn't up to snuff in practice.
A guarantee puts warranty money where your marketing mouth is.
IP67 is not good enough for swimming (1m submersion). Note the emphasis of the watch being able to be swum with, but for the phone they only showed it being used when it was raining
Here's an ad for the 1957 Chevrolet Bel-Aire. (Available "with two four-barrel carburetors!" Two-tone paint! Tailfins!) There's about as much difference between the new IPhone and the N-1 model as there was between the 1956 and 1957 Chevys.
I won't be buying the new iPhone but I thinks removing the headphone jack seems like an extremely small problem.
The main issue seems to be that you now can't charge and listen to music at the same time. How often do you actually do that? In the past 5 years I have probably done that once.
For those of you who do think it is an inconvenience, I bet there will be a product on the market in 2 weeks that eliminates this problem.
> You can't charge and listen to music at the same time. How often do you actually do that?
My two use cases that I expect are pretty common:
1. In the car, plugged in to charge since using GPS navigation drains the battery very fast, and car audio input is AUX only.
2. Phone on the nightstand, plugged to overnight charge and I go to sleep listening to podcasts or music on headphones to avoid disturbing my partner. I can dozily remove my headphones, but I can't switch cables without waking up.
I agree that there will be aftermarket products to solve it. Just makes the thing more expensive for me, so less likely to buy.
> You can't charge and listen to music at the same time. How often do you actually do that?
Lots of times. Me and anyone that takes medium to long trips in their cars and and uses GPS navigation while charging and listening to music like basically all people that use smartphone do.
It's interesting how you didn't compare it to buying a new computer every year, but rather to cars/clothes, i.e., as a form of conspicuous consumption, a way to enhance social status. But this makes sense as this is how Apple markets its products.
My understanding is that you own it once it's paid off. So it's not a lease. It's more like they're loaning you the money and you're paying off the loan.
The prices are not bad either. They seem to range from $32.41/month up to around $46/month for the most expensive possible model, which translates to about $1/day up to $1.40/day. It includes AppleCare as well.
It's actually a pretty good deal. It costs a little bit more than buying the phone outright on day 1, but you get to pay over time.
If you trade in after only one year, you basically paid a dollar a day to rent the phone. But if you had bought one outright and sold it at the end of the year in order to buy the new model, you would not be a whole lot better off -- and you might have had to deal with potentially scummy eBay or Craigslist buyers.
> It costs a little bit more than buying the phone outright on day 1, but you get to pay over time.
And the cost difference is the same as the cost for Apple Care, which is included. So if you were going to sign up for that (which I have to do) you're already breaking even.
Check out the high prices people are paying on eBay for iPhones and iPads with broken screens, or dead batteries, or which are locked (probably because they are stolen).
I want a combination wallet+airpod dock+phone battery case. Wallet, airpod dock, retractable lightning connector (to charge iPhone), retractable usb cable (to charge battery). Battery doesn't need to be huge, just enough to get you another 20% or so phone charge -- and I imagine that would be enough battery for a whole lot of airpod recharges.
I wish people would care for the environment more and keep their phones and devices for longer.
Even the packaging mostly ends up in landfill. There is something unhealthy about "shiny new toys" released every year that we must have according to the media's frenzy of Apple advertising.
I can't believe that even the newest Beats 3 Solo Wireless have Micro-USB charging. Talk about Apple not knowing what their product charging/connection strategy is! (Lightning for AirPods, but Micro-USB for Beats, Lightning for everything else, from Apple Pencil charging to Apple Mouse)
One major thing I haven't seen anyone mention about replacing wired headphones with wireless is that as far as I know, you're not supposed to use wireless headphones on a plane. I don't think you'd actually get hassled by a flight attendant but who knows.
Wouldn't the AirPods will be very easy to lose? What if they drop-off while snoozing. I mean with wired headphones, even if they come out of the ear (say while sleeping on a long travel) they are still attached to the phone and hence cannot lose them.
This comment will probably drown in the deluge, but it'll be interested to see if there market for higher quality Bluetooth DACs just got cracked open a bit. I use a Soundblaster E5 myself; this thing is great.
Confused about what earphones come with the iPhone 7. The standard analog ones (since an adapter is included)? Feels very backwards... unless I'm missing something...
It comes with EarPods with a lightening plug on the end that use the lightening port. They're also throwing in an adaptor so you can use older headphones in the lightening socket too. The only port the iPhone 7 has is a lightening port.
I feel like I can't buy this unless Apple pays its EU-enforced Irish tax bill. We give them money but the vast majority of it never goes back into the economy.
It's an Irish tax bill decided by the EU. Think about that. Starting to think Brexit wasn't such a bad idea after all.
Also, spending money puts it back in the economy, and Apple spends plenty. Taxes are probably the worst way for money to cycle through from an efficiency standpoint.
All that said, they should obviously pay what they legitimately owe.
It's an Irish tax bill decided by Ireland, but not enforced for Apple and probably some other big companies. That's what the EU complaint is about: Unfair state subsidies to Apple, the most anti-capitalist thing ever - people's taxes are used to subsidise Apple. Let that sink in.
If you are still trying to justify Brexit's shitshow you're doing it wrong.
Taxes may be the worst way to recycle money but in the absence of anything else it's a really good way. Apple's revenue far outweigh its costs. They have one of the largest cash reserves of any corporation in the world.
You're not "giving them money", you're exchanging your money for their product. If you are so keen on giving money to your government, there are plenty of ways to do it.
IIRC, with the 6 the unlocked model wasn't available for a couple months but the 6S was available immediately. It was enough that I didn't bother with the 6 because by the time it was available and in stock it was close enough to wait until September.
Sorry, I think my previous message might have been insufficiently clear: I waited until I could buy an unlocked 6S. Foreign travel was exactly why: last time we were in Iceland, where AT&T didn't even have a service partner but also refused to unlock a long out of contract phone until I escalated. When we dropped them, I didn't want to risk repeating the process.
That's incredibly stupid, I called T-Mobile and my iPhone 6+ was unlocked the next day two months after I started EIP payments on it (did this so I could pop my work-issued Verizon SIM into it while traveling on a business trip, I don't like bringing two phones but I wasn't going to burn through my personal data with tethering since there's always inevitably a fire I have to deal with while traveling).
what would be interesting for the iphone 7 plus would be to use the telephoto camera for a picture, and use the information from the wide-angle camera to improve the noise reduction in low light, I wonder if Apple is going to also do this (besides using it for bokeh)
Image manipulation isn't my thing, but I would think it would have to be the other way round. You're at 2X telephoto so each of those pixels is four of the wide angle pixels in terms of detail now.
They claim the plus as "optical zoom" and talk about a 2x factor. Do they mean it can switch between a wide and tele focal length? That isn't "zoom" (at least not in the normal sense) - it's just two focal lengths with a switch. Did I understand the feature correctly?
No, when using optical zoom there is no mix of data. It uses just the second camera. I think they use both only when creating shallow depth of field shots.
Nah, I wouldn't say a drop in teleconverter in a lens makes it a zoom lens, the zoom bit is the continuous movement between focal lengths.
I suppose even with just two focal lengths, the focal length can be "varied" which is the normal definition of zoom, but I have never heard the term used that way.
My point is the difference is a difference of terminology not in functionality. A zoom system is one that can achieve multiple focal lengths with the same setup, and in that sense the iPhone 7 plus has a 'discrete' zoom, just like for example, microscopes, or telescopes with different magnifications, or leica's tri-Elmar lenses. (Leica doesn't call them zooms because in the world of Leica primes are the standard, but I don't see why you wouldn't.)
If you define zoom as the physical action of sliding a piece of glass to achieve different focal lengths in a lens, then a digital zoom, by that definition is also not a zoom.
Now, the iPhone is not using a teleconverter, which is something that is added to the lens, but a different lens plus sensor alltogether to create the effect of a zoomed image. And this is the point where the old definitions break down; is a camera the sensor or is a camera the device that creates the picture? I think it is the latter, and in that sense I think iPhone 7 plus does have a 'discrete' zoom.
I agree it's only a matter of terminology - just like Teslas "Autopilot".
"Optical zoom" has always meant continuously variable optical focal length. That doesn't mean there is a clear definition, but there is room for confusion using it in this context.
In binoculars there is quite a difference between "dual magnification binoculars" with a switch, and "zoom binoculars" which allow for continuous change.
I'd be completely happy with the use of "2x discrete optical zoom" here - it removes all confusion.
I should have been clearer. I really expected them to announce a free repair for anyone suffering from the issue, not to keep ignoring it like they have so far, even when the problem is obviously effecting many customers.
I doubt it, actually. They have a history[1] of removing ports and features which seem unbelievable at the time, and then pushing forward with that decision, however unpopular.
1: Floppy drives, optical drives, MacBook Air ports, etc
I've never seen Apple backtrack on a decision this substantial. They've weighed all the outcomes, far more than we will probably ever understand and they will not reverse course here. Far more likely, the rest of the industry will follow within a few years.
I've been looking for over a year for a good (build quality) laptop which can run a unix-like environment. And I always end up circling back to macbooks, which have been comprised of very old hardware for quite some time now.
Hard to justify spending so much money for a 3/4 year old CPU.
The alternative is to have a machine that requires more maintenance than my 5/6 year old thinkpad running OpenBSD.
I got a regular Dell XPS 15 (but the keyboard and everything else I think is the same) and while the laptop looks great I was expecting better quality for this price range.
You know I was annoyed the audio port being missing but after seeing the new airpods, I'm sold. They look amazing, and will be fantastic to use in the gym. I'm sold. Take my money!
the price for heaven's sake... it's me or every year the new model gets almost 100 bucks more expensive the the previous one. We can expect a base price of 1000€ in 5 or 6 years.
No, it's virtually the same price it's always been, but with more storage. The first iPhone with 8Gb was $599, 9 years later it's only $50 more for the 32gb model. What weird blogs have you been reading?
So it's water resistant but not water proof... It has 2 cameras like other Android phones had years ago. Basically same everything but with a Mario app and no headphone jack? Do you think Steve Jobs would have approved of this to hit retail?
It's official, Apple is basically resorting to nickle and diming their customers, except instead of nickles and dimes, it's $160 to achieve very basic functionality in order to achieve something that virtually nobody really honestly cares about. All that's been achieved is that Apple has now created/affirmed a new non-optional secondary market that they're now positioned to best sell into (Beats). There's not even the decency to see if people care about a thinner phone by offering both a thin model without a jack and a thicker phone with one (for some strategically important price differential).
But honestly, complaints and analysis don't matter, people will line up to buy this garbage and to make it worse it'll become a stupid trend that will bleed over into Android-land and now instead of the perfectly fine $10 headphones I picked up at Big Lots, I'll have to shell out 10x that so I can listen to a podcast on my way to work.
edit and they don't even have the respect for their customers to ship their stupid buds on time with the product that requires them...so that their customers can look like bluetooth douchebags from both sides.
>except instead of nickles and dimes, it's $160 to achieve very basic functionality
The size, performance, battery life and construction of the wireless earpods are anything but "basic". In fact, most run-of-the-mill competitors are at the same price or more for wireless earbuds.
>There's not even the decency to see if people care about a thinner phone by offering both a thin model without a jack and a thicker phone with one (for some strategically important price differential).
The "decency" of not having a focus and vision as a company, and throwing stuff out to see what sticks?
>All that's been achieved is that Apple has now created/affirmed a new non-optional secondary market
You know you can use all other brands of wireless (and wired with either the adapter or with lighting) headphones, including all your older headphones, right?
>But honestly, complaints and analysis don't matter, people will line up to buy this garbage
So, people buy it, but it's still "garbage" because you say so?
>and they don't even have the respect for their customers to ship their stupid buds on time with the product that requires them...
The "respect" to magically fix the production slowdowns? Maybe ask the Chinese to whip and beat their workers more or over-clock the assembly line robots?
Or the "respect" to delay the release of the phone for 2+ weeks, so that those interested in those specific wireless buds (a small percentage of the overall iphone buyers) get them simultaneously with the phone?
Even the starting premise is wrong. Nothing "requires" them. You can use your old, non wireless buds, third party wireless buds, new non wireless headphones, and even third party Lighting headphones. Apple's new wireless earpods are just one option upon hundreds.
>so that their customers can look like bluetooth douchebags from both sides.
Maybe you have some anger issues, but Apple doesn't seem to be the real source...
coltea, I say this fairly nicely, having seen your posts many times here on HN, your posts are so consistently composed of Apple apologia as to be irrelevant to any discussion about the company or their products. You're kind of the poor man's John Gruber of HN.
I don't mean this to be personal, but I've never seen you post (and I just searched back comments on HN) anything even remotely critical of Apple, and most of your Apple related posts relate to you popping up to defend the company or "clarify" something that could be construed as negative to the company. If I didn't know better, I'd say that you worked for the company -- but you've claimed you don't a couple of times.
>coltea, I say this fairly nicely, having seen your posts many times here on HN, your posts are so consistently composed of Apple apologia as to be irrelevant to any discussion about the company or their products.
Compared to posts that suppose that the iPhone is garbage and people are idiots to "line up to buy this garbage", or that those using bluetooth are "bluetooth douchebags"?Or that not having the earpods available on the same launch day but some weeks delayed shows lack of "decency"?
Yeah, my posts lack such subtleties.
>If I didn't know better, I'd say that you worked for the company -- but you've claimed you don't a couple of times.
Yeah, I don't. I'm a (mostly) web backend developer, with side gigs in video production. I just happen to like their products and agree with most business decisions they make. Which, given that they are the richer company on earth with billions of sales, doesn't seem very outlier-ish.
I don't like some of their stuff (e.g. their mice before the Magic Mouse were crap, I'd prefer they kept the magsafe adapter in the new MBP, not particularly sold on lower-height keys on the new MacBook, Apple Music is a mess, etc), but I do like most of the hardware and OS. Been using it since 2003, and have had worked with SunOS (pre Solaris), HPUX, Windows, RedHat, SuSE, Debian and other OSes and flavors (still use Windows and Ubuntu personally, and Centos professionally).
I also don't like the trivial and complaint-for-complaint's sake arguments most people on the internet use. And judging from sales volumes, most people don't particularly care for them either.
But all of these are beside the point. Even if I were Cook himself or Gruber (which has a HN account actually and has commented 1-2 times IIRC), what matters is the arguments I put forward.
That's the price for their wireless headphones. The wired ones are still included. Other wired ones can be used with the adapter, also included. New adapters can be purchased for $9.
Go ahead, get this phone. Then think about what I've said here every time you need to buy something you didn't need to buy to use the previous phone. Multiply that by the install base at the time you had to purchase a specialty headphone or extra dongle or a replacement adapter.
The only innovation Apple is introducing here is the creation of a completely unecessary but new captive market that they then are best positioned to sell into.
Side note, I think it is hilarious that Apple can't get the AirPods to ship at the same time as the iPhone. Anyone who buys the new phone on release is going to be stuck with the crappy lightning headphones for at least a month and a half.