
'Courage' - franze
http://daringfireball.net//2016/09/courage
======
chickenbane
Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I'm of the belief that you shouldn't refer to
yourself as courageous. Especially if you're a company. Courage is something
others must judge, and I was amused during the keynote Apple used the moment
to give themselves a pat on the back. Ick.

That said, I'm glad they're doing it. They're putting an adapter in the box
and they're selling it for $9, which is more than fair in the Apple universe.
And the truth is, Apple is the most b(only?) influential player that can push
the industry towards wireless. Nobody else can really move the market, and if
Apple doesn't do it, we'll continue to be stuck using this very old connector.

~~~
gumby
> ...continue to be stuck using this very old connector

The question is: what's really wrong with the old connector (from a consumer's
PoV)?

When they abandoned ADB, SCSI etc for USB (and at least it was clear that the
new thing would end up being better, soon. Abandoning VGA could have been
similar except it meant a shift to a parade of different things (DVI D/A/both;
DP, mini-DP, etc) which only, (mostly) converged when the rest of the industry
finally caught up by standardizing itself on HDMI. And the consumer lost as
well as won in that. Switching the MacBook to USB Type C was a transition
similar to the first USB one: eventually it will be great but the
infrastructure hasn't build out yet (believe me: I own a MB, love it, but
don't have any peripherals).

But the TRS connector wasn't preventing much of anything.

I think the real significance is that they are going to a port-free device
with inductive charging like the watch. But they can't do that until enough
people have switched over to wireless headsets.

------
dr1337
This goes to show how much of an Apple apologist Josh Gruber is in defending
the removal of the headphone jack. People need to realise that not all
deductions by Apple were accepted with open arms (remember the buttonless iPod
Shuffle) and I feel there might be a 50% chance that this is not the end of
the headphone jack on iDevices.

I certainly think that there's courage in what Apple's doing; it's just not
not the courage that Phil Schiller described it as the courage to move
forward. It's more the courage to test the limits of the goodwill/fanaticism
that Apple has built over the last decade of true innovation to force an even
more locked down ecosystem that keeps users from never switching away. If
Apple were truly courageous for technology's sake, they would have adopted an
open standard like USB-C or make Lightning an open standard and drop the
ridiculous royalty fees and MFi process associated with it. That is the
courage to do what's right with out profits in mind.

~~~
Terretta
Bringing up USB-C suggests you miss the point. It's not about picking jacks
and wires. The new world is wireless, and incidentally it's standards based.

~~~
dr1337
Why then does Apple still sell Lightning earphones and a Lightning to stereo
jack converter? What if I don't want the hassle of another chargeable
dependency? What if I want the ease of use of plug and play?

With all the dongles required and extra charging requirements for accessories,
unfortunately the simplicity and mantra of "It just works" doesn't quite apply
to the Apple of today.

------
MollyR
I really hate the idea of having to recharge my headphones. I'm not a fan of
the idea of wireless headphones. The whole adapter issue doesn't seem to
bother me that much.

But I do feel it goes against Job's philosophy on stuff. I remember reading he
hated the idea of stylus's for the phones because he lost them or thought
people would lose them.

------
ksk
> but which would lead to everyone having a better experience in the long run
> (and for early adopters, a better experience as soon as they start using
> their AirPods)

How long is the long run? Oh and he forgot to mention that "as soon as"
precludes you spending $150 on AirPods. So, after you spend several hundred
dollars buying a new phone, you're either relegated to carrying around a
pointless dongle for something as basic as a headphone, or you now have to
spring $150 more for AirPods, and keep charging them, because Apple now has
"courage". IMHO this decision is driven primarily by self-interest from the
Beats acquisition.

In any case, I'm actually looking forward to better wireless tech (from any
vendor). I'm just not buying the courage BS, or that this iteration of the
tech is ready for primetime. I don't doubt that they will get a ton of sales
from the iPhone 7. Hopefully it will help bring down the cost over time. I'm
hoping that by the time the iPhone 8 comes out, they'll have out of the box
wireless headphones and proper wireless charging, etc. I only hope they don't
slow down my 6S too much before then.

------
zbuf
Let's not get too excited by comparisons to the non-inclusion of Flash on iOS.

Back then, a closed, proprietary and bloated system was phased out in favour
of openness and interoperability -- because it worked well for Apple.

In this case it's the opposite; the open and interoperable standard is on its
way out. Apple is really just doing what they think makes good business sense
for them, there isn't some noble aim here.

~~~
jgruber
I didn't say it was noble, only that it took courage. It takes courage to rob
a bank.

------
remir
Unrelated, but I found interesting to see that the new W1-powered Beats
headphones charge via a micro-usb cable instead or Apple's lightning.

------
SakiWatanabe
What exactly is this W1 chip thing? Does it change the underlying bluetooth
communication? That wouldn't make sense as the AirPod works with existing Mac
as well. Looks like W1 chip is still utilizing the existing BT protocol but
adds extra logic to make it easier for pairing/dropouts etc if the host
(Mac/iphone) has support for it?

~~~
jgruber
Exactly.

