
A Eulogy for the Headphone Jack - mparramon
https://medium.com/@flimshaw/a-eulogy-for-the-headphone-jack-aabda6c66cd8
======
rvense
I honestly believe that the headphone jack is done.

Done as in, we can just keep using it. It perfectly solves the problem of
moving audio and similar from a device on or near my person to my ears.
There's no need for any such device to be smaller in any dimension than the
minijack allows. Wires are fine, they're so easy to understand. There is
absolutely no need to keep working on this, it's fine as it is.

They should still be making headphones with minijacks in a 1000 years -
because maybe in time we would learn to make devices that lasted that long. In
general I really wish our culture would become used to the idea of solved
problems.

~~~
sheraz
well said. That stupid apple dongle on iPhone. Amazing that I can't charge AND
use my urban ears. Wtf.

Or apple abandoning that cool magnetic charger! My mbp 2010 had that skinny
one, and I never came off.

Now we have usbc or whatever it is called, but waaaaay longer battery life, so
that might be the answer there.

Come to think of it, is there wireless charging for laptops yet?

~~~
zeveb
> Amazing that I can't charge AND use my urban ears.

I think Apple must have fired all of their UX engineers. That's the only thing
that can explain the inability to charge & use headphones and the inability to
charge & use a mouse[0].

[0] [https://www.geek.com/apple/design-before-function-apple-
magi...](https://www.geek.com/apple/design-before-function-apple-magic-
mouse-2-cant-be-used-while-charging-1636939/)

------
tjoff
Those are good points, but I'm more outraged that I can't just hand someone an
AUX-cable and let them play music. Nowadays you have to fiddle with bluetooth
(which for some reason tries borrow your contacts) and it just isn't worth it.

It is beyond insane to remove the headphone jack when we have no even half-
decent alternatives. This is _before_ the detail that today you can be
absolutely certain that all your bluetooth devices are remotely hackable.

Most people that don't seem to mind the disappearing of the headphone jack
only seems to view it from their own very narrow perspective. Yes, you've just
bought some decent bluetooth headphones and love the cordless freedom, I get
that - it is awesome. But that is a very narrow use case that isn't going to
hold long. I've alternating between cordless and wired headphones for many
years and there is no reason even on the horizon to stick with cordless
headphones.

Also, you have to pay $100 extra for that bluetooth connectivity. So, a wired
headphone for $100 will cost you $200 if you want it cordless, and that goes
with the assumption that you have aptx. And I don't even have a clue of
whether I have aptx.

And a decent wired headphone will just last (spoiler, good headphones have
better cables and connectors than that $25 headphones that break all the
time), the cordless version will not be that cool when the irreplaceable
battery dies.

Also, I have to spend tons of money on adapters I have to carry with my all
the fricking time just so my phone manufacturer can save a few cents, it's
ludicrous.

~~~
wilsonnb
The only issue I see is that iPhones aren't using USB C, at least not yet.

If you go out and buy a new android smartphone and a new laptop right now,
there's a pretty high chance that they will both have USB C. You can then use
a reasonably priced USB C -> 3.5mm adapater with a DAC (the Google one is only
9 dollars, and your phone will probably come with one of these) and use your
headphones with either device.

In the past, laptops/desktops and smartphones/mp3 players didn't share any
ports aside from the 3.5mm analog port. Now, they're going to share a USB C
port so there's no longer as much of a need for the 3.5mm port.

In the near future, I expect many more headphones to come with their own USB C
adapter or to forgo the 3.5mm jack entirely. In the medium to far future, I
expect Apple will replace the lightning port with USB C and from that point
on, including a 3.5mm port on something will make about as much sense as any
other legacy port that most people no longer care about.

The exception will probably be professional audio equipment, which I expect
will keep analog ports around forever because it actually makes sense in that
field.

~~~
tjoff
Why?

Oh, and why shouldn't I be able to charge and listen to music at the same
time? I need another adapter for that?

Adapters are an _insane_ solution to a non-problem.

~~~
wilsonnb
I'm not sure what you're asking why too - I will go ahead and assume you're
asking why analog ports make sense for professional audio.

The answer to that is partially because there is a huge culture of analog
being superior to anything digital in parts of the field, and doing live
signal processing on an analog signal being cheaper than digital. For most
recording purposes, the sound is recorded and turned into a digital signal
almost immediately. However, for live sound, a lot of places still use analog
compressors, equalizers, reverb, and other effects because they're cheaper
than the good sounding digital counterparts and easier to troubleshoot.

If that wasn't what you were asking why too, feel free to specify what you
were asking about and I'll give answering that a shot too.

> Oh, and why shouldn't I be able to charge and listen to music at the same
> time? I need another adapter for that?

The answer to this is pretty simple, I think. Most people just don't charge
their phone and listen to music with the headphone jack at the same time very
often. Obviously, for those who do this will be an inconvenience but for most
people who charge their phone every night and don't listen to insane amounts
of music this will never be a problem.

Even if Apple were to put a second port on the next iPhone, it would make much
more sense to put a second lightning port instead of a headphone jack. Then
people could listen to music and charge, or do any number of other things and
charge at the same time.

In a perfect world they would put a lightning and a USB C as the start to
their transition to USB C iPhones, but I can't see Apple doing that.

~~~
tjoff
Why I would ever want to listen to music through the USB C port. There is no
benefit and there are tons of decade old devices still being used that use
3.5mm. There is no reason to change.

> The answer to this is pretty simple, I think. Most people just don't charge
> their phone and listen to music with the headphone jack at the same time
> very often.

Quite common during work. Or when traveling, airports, trains etc. do have USB
ports for charging.

~~~
wilsonnb
One reason is that you can get a higher quality DAC/headphone amp if you use
USB C.

Something like this ([https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-DragonFly-Black-
Headphone-...](https://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-DragonFly-Black-Headphone-
Amplifier/dp/B01DP5JHHI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1517505623&sr=8-1&keywords=firefly+dac))
is needed to drive high end headphones and might mid-quality headphones sound
better.

I don't think that the average person will _want_ to use USB C or lightning
instead of a headphone jack, but I also don't think the average person will
care about it. Because their phone probably came with a dongle and/or
lightning/usbC headphones, it will probably be a pretty similar experience to
before the headphone jack was removed.

I personally am in favor of a single port replacing as many other ports as
possible. I'm not really sure why, but I like the idea of one port to rule
them all.

> Quite common during work. Or when traveling, airports, trains etc. do have
> USB ports for charging.

I agree that some people will be affected by not being able to charge and
listen at the same time. Those who are traveling are probably the best
example. Now that most phones have enough battery life for a day and then some
of typical usage, and can fast charge to 50% in less than 45 minutes, the
number of people affected is small enough for Apple, Google, and other
companies to ignore. Much like they ignore people who could use a VGA port on
their laptop for their presentations. A good number of people are affected by
not having a VGA port, but not enough for it to matter.

~~~
tjoff
Regarding DACs, sure, that is quite the niche that I might be part of one day.
But that does not in any way reduce the need nor the usefulness of the
headphone jack.

I buy into "one port for everything", but headphone jacks will probably
outlive usb-c. The stereo right beside me is 15 years old (nothing special but
nothing wrong with it either) and the one I just bought will probably be used
for way more than 30 years. They both have headphone jacks, none of them have
usb-c. It monumentally moronic to have headphones that only work with certain
types of devices, especially for no good reason. My car stereo is so old it
doesn't even have an AUX input and I'm eventually gonna replace it solely for
the reason of gaining an AUX input.

There is no way that you can convince me that removing the headphone jack is
nothing but a travesty.

------
executesorder66
> You can also tell companies that are getting rid of headphone jacks that you
> don’t like it. That your mother did not raise a fool. That aside from maybe
> water-resistance, there’s not a single good reason you can think of to give
> up your headphone jack.

I don't understand how people can just accept this change. Why would you pay
for a shittier experience? I feel like people get outraged by the stupidest
things these days. But when it comes to issues that will actually affect them
in their everyday life, most people don't seem to give a shit.

~~~
ginko
It's like with the switch from 4:3 aspect ratio to wide screen (first 16:10,
then 16:9) in computer displays. I'm still mad about that one.

~~~
KozmoNau7
It was a bit annoying until displays with reasonable vertical resolution
became widely available. There were way too many displays with shitty low
resolution, but you only get those in the shittiest bargain-basement monitors
now.

I'm using a 27" 1440p monitor at home (bought it ~4 years ago), and it has
plenty of space to comfortably show two full-size pages side by side, with
plenty of space left over for toolbars and such. Or two 1280x1440 windows,
which is a very handy size, giving me the equivalent of two portrait-mode
monitors. Most modern WMs (and even Windows!) have window snapping/tiling that
makes this very easy (win+arrows).

Aspect ratio isn't really an issue anymore, as long as you have enough
vertical resolution, and the additional horizontal space is nice for tool
windows and such.

------
aestetix
For a culture that claims to be rooted in logic and reason, the momentum to
abandon a 100+ year old standard because "Apple did it" is rather illogical.

~~~
Jedd
Speaking of 100+ year old standards <sic> ... ask a photography friend who
advocates Full Frame DSLRs why they think Full Frame is the holy grail of
photography. Hilarity shall ensue.

~~~
amdavidson
Do you know people that think that 35mm is some sort of magical dimension or
are you arguing that sensor size doesn't play into photography?

~~~
Jedd
I'm reasonably familiar with the physics and artistic implications of sensor
size, and I know an unsettling number of people (typically Canon or Nikon
fans) that don't know why they think 35mm is the perfect size for a sensor,
but they know that it is, and they know they need one.

There's two things I love about 35mm - first, along with most numbers used in
photography, it shows Americans can cope with (and indeed embrace) metric, and
second the origin is a 'let's get 16 frames to the foot of motion picture
film' arbitrary decision made in the late 1800's.

That it defines so many amateur photographers' desires 130 years later is
perversely delightful.

------
JorgeGT
Here in my uni we give future engineers their first taste of data acquisition
and generation using the sound card as general purpose I/O.

It's perfect because it's a very capable DAQ system (16 bit samples @ 48 kHz!)
and almost every students owns one already so they can play at home.

~~~
solarkraft
Would having to use an external DAC be a real problem here? The Google pixel
one costs 9€.

------
iamben
This, so much.

I have bluetooth headphone for the gym, because exercising with a cable is a
faff. But I hate then. I hate that they run out. I hate that I have to, and
often forget to, charge them.

From a purely practical standpoint, my year old phone barely holds a day of
charge with a little usage. But at least now I'm still able to charge my phone
and listen to music at the same time. I listen to music (on fantastic, wired
headphones) for about 7 hours a day in the office. I can't imagine a world
where I'd have to stop after 5 hours for 3 hours of charging before I could
wire in again.

Until you can give me phones and headphones that charge by themselves - nay -
until you can replicate my current experience, just without the cables, I'm
not interested.

~~~
solarkraft
Hey, you could charge while you listen (my Bluetooth earphones didn't allow
that).

------
mmjaa
I find it fascinating that the music-making market is constantly ignored in
the rush to make better consumer devices out of the iPhones/iPads and whatnot
of the day .. as a musician with tons of iDevices, and lots of cables, I rue
the day I won't be able to get a low-latency, high-power, perfectly usable
audio signal from one of my devices. It really seems stupid that this market
is being under-represented by the manufacturers .. perhaps they just want to
sell more external-audio interfaces?

~~~
delinka
In the system of Apple devices, iPhones aren't "supposed" to be content
creation devices. iPads still come with headphone jacks. They've got bigger
screens with space to use implements like styluses. Apple sees iPhone as a
consumption device and iPad as a creation device.

~~~
styfle
I seem to recall one of the iPhone keynotes saying that the iPhone is most
popular camera (as in most photos taken in a year) presumably by looking at
EXIF. That sounds like Apple is aware of content creators using the iPhone.

------
oelmekki
I see the point from both side, here. I guess both tech could live together as
alternatives.

There's one thing I would ask from manufacturers who go the bluetooth-only
way, though: please first make sure a bluetooth receiver can handle multiple
connections.

I have bluetooth speakers at home that I've put on top of my sofa, so I can
watch movies comfortably without annoying neighbors with loud sound. During
the day, my phone is my media center, playing music. But I also want sometimes
to play sound from my computer, like when I watch a youtube video.

In order to do that, I plug the speakers' jack to the phone, and connect the
laptop through bluetooth. This is awesome and is better than jack only
speakers: I can easily plug two devices on it. But if everything was bluetooth
only, then it would be a regression, as I could only connect one device.

Could bluetooth multiplexing be a thing? (or are there reasons it couldn't
happen?).

I would also love to know if I'm an edge case, or if other people here are
doing something similar as well.

~~~
zimpenfish
My TaoTronics TT-BA08 can have two devices connected at the same time in
receive mode (obviously only one can send data at a time).

HOWEVER - and this is a giant caveat - the firmware[1] is really dumb about
this because if A and B are connected, A is sending audio, and you move out of
range of B, it'll start a plaintive beeping.

[1] Might actually be a function of the chipset since it's happened
identically on two different dongles that allowed two connections.

------
jacknews
As per the article, they'll have to pry the jack from my cold dead hands...

------
solarkraft
Yeah, it's cool. And it's cool that the author thinks about it. You could
repurpose what was meant to carry audio and do cool things with it. The
problem is: You still can. You'll need an external DAC in the worst case, you
needed extra parts before anyway. Except now, by communicating digitally, you
get a more reliable signal and potentially higher throughout. It's a bit more
effort to build a nice product, but DIY projects can still just use audio
dongles. _The removal of the built in audio jack won 't hurt us much. _

------
Theodores
This is a eulogy for the 'headphone jack' and not 'analogue audio out'.

How many Sony Walkman tape players and their clones did I break and where did
they break? The headphone jack.

How many headphones have I broken and where did they break? The headphone
jack.

As a student playing around 'on the decks' I found that anything with a
headphone jack was liable to be responsible for that mains hum.

I have fond memories of using the headphone jack of the 32x CD ROM that was in
the front of that 'Compaq' PC that cost many thousands. But when was the last
time I touched a CD? So that is another headphone jack we thought we needed
but didn't.

Had we moved to a magnetic latch as per the Apple power arrangement then I
think that I would have got burned a lot less with the soldering iron and the
purchase of hi fi kit and caboodle. Maybe with some optional VGA style screws
if you really want the connection locked down hard. This could have been a
much more 'jogging friendly' solution, waterproof too.

I mourn the loss of analog audio but not the headphone jack. Maybe the latter
is responsible for the demise of the former and maybe there was vested
interest in the Walkman era in having the universal but breakable headphone
jack.

Incidentally the headphone jack seems much better engineered in computers and
phones than in 1980's era Walkman style tape players. Maybe there was some
lightbulb style conspiracy to ensure that headphone jacks only lasted '1000
hours' before failing, therefore maintaining sales of new tape players.

~~~
imiric
I recently acquired a pair of high-end earphones, and while the audio quality
itself is excellent, there's noticeable background noise on low volumes or
during track skips, not to mention the microphonics effect. It's likely coming
from the cable itself, which thankfully I can exchange, but the fact that a
high-end product exhibits this behavior is concerning.

I'm very much in favor of keeping the headphone jack, but we'll look back at
these analog issues the same way we currently think about needle static from
record players.

~~~
tjoff
I'm very curious as to why you think the cable is the issue.

------
dbrgn
Well, the same thing counts for the serial (UART) port. It's incredibly
simple, it's a license-free universal I/O port. And in spite of that, it has
disappeared from computers and we now have the complex beast called USB
instead.

I'm not happy at all about headphone jacks disappearing, but I doubt the
development can be stopped.

------
5555624
Without a headphone jack, how do you use the built-in radio? All of my phones
that had a working, built-in radio (NEC, Sony) used the headphone cable as the
radio antenna. With a movement to get manufacturers/carriers to activate the
built-in FM capabilities of the chips, what will they use as an antenna?

~~~
zeveb
> Without a headphone jack, how do you use the built-in radio?

I don't think Apple & Google _want_ you to use the radio. They don't make
money from it, so they don't see a reason to permit you to use it.

------
mhd
I bet there will be someone selling $2000 gold plated 1/4 inch jack cables in
2118 (adjust for inflation/non-existence of USD).

------
tezza
while i cling on to my audio jack personally, the article use cases would be
trivially replaced by dongles and adapters

there is the lightning dac for apple and equivalent for other brands

there are oodles of audio <-> bluetooth adapters

then i am sure there will be a raspberry pi / beaglebone / arduino with open
source oscilloscope clients available.

