
Apple’s $9 engineering marvel no one wants (2017) - wheresvic1
https://misfra.me/2017/12/12/apples-9-dollar-engineering-marvel-no-one-wants/
======
ericabiz
I have non-anecdotal evidence that people definitely buy the Lightning to
headphone adapter. We sell them in our stores and it's one of our biggest
accessory sales.

You know why people buy them all the time, though? Because, frankly, it's a
terrible design. It's tiny, easy to lose or forget, and they break easily.
_That 's_ why it has such terrible reviews in the Apple store site--it's not a
good product for what it is.

I deal with Apple products on the daily, and the removal of the headphone jack
is still one of the things that irritates me most about Apple.

The others would be: the whole battery scandal where Apple slowed down older
phones without explaining that the battery, a replaceable component, was the
issue. And the 2016-2018 MacBook keyboards, which are an absolute travesty.

The headphone to Lightning adapter may be a "marvel of engineering", but it
was a completely unnecessary one. It doesn't create more room inside the
phone, and Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. It's
basically designed to force you on to more expensive wireless headphones.

~~~
basch
Apple didnt "slow down phones with old batteries", they capped the power
output to the cpu of batteries that couldnt deliver reliable peak power
anymore, so the phone didnt panic and crash as the cpu usage redlined. Their
actions are much preferred to the alternative.

~~~
chvid
I applaud what Apple is doing. I prefer airpods any day over their 3.5 mm jack
counterpart and I appreciate a waterproof phone. Sure it is annoying that they
can run out of battery and lightning is unnecessary now USB-C is here; but I
guess it is a transition.

~~~
PeanutNore
The idea that the elimination of the 3.5mm jack has anything to do with
waterproofing is a complete misdirection, as evidenced by the list of
waterproof Android phones with USB-C and 3.5mm jacks.

Also, any modern phone with bluetooth is just as capable off running airpods
or any other wireless headphones whether or not it also has a 3.5mm jack.

Lastly, eliminating the 3.5mm jack has nothing to do with making the phone
thinner either. My jackless iPhone 7 is actually a few mil thicker than my
older yet nearly identical iPhone 6 which has a 3.5mm jack.

------
PascLeRasc
It is an impressive engineering feat, and certainly better than the Android
ones that just pass analog through the USB-C jack, but it's worth noting that
this DAC performs worse than what it replaced [1]. Dynamics have less range,
there's more THD, and output impedance is lower, so it's harder to drive
heavier headphones. I noticed a difference in clarity using Audio-Technica
ATH-M50s and Beyerdynamic DT 990 250Ω. Specifically, the Beyerdynamics could
be driven "good enough" for me with the iPhone SE jack, but I wasn't happy
with how they sounded on the Lightning dongle.

[1] [https://ifixit.org/blog/8448/apple-audio-adapter-
teardown/](https://ifixit.org/blog/8448/apple-audio-adapter-teardown/)

~~~
holy_city
The link to the measurements from your source:

[https://kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-
qualit...](https://kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm)

According to those measurements the adaptor's DAC is fantastic, especially for
a $9 part.

And in the spirit of anecdotes, the old iPhone DACs were notoriously hissy and
weak, and if you're buying high impedance headphones you have no business
plugging that into a phone's headphone jack... spend the $20-50 on an amp/DAC
and call it a day. Just a bigger dongle.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Sure, it's not a bad DAC and I'm happy with the sound on wired IEMs. It's just
that I could drive my high impedance headphones straight from an iPhone SE and
I can't with an iPhone 8. I lost functionality.

------
blub
An engineering marvel necessary because of product design stupidity.

One can neither use the same headphones for a Mac and iPhone, nor charge an
iPhone from a Mac using the cables that come with the devices.

I barely use that crap adapter because it's inconvenient. Thank goodness Macs
still support headphone jacks.

~~~
baby
I use the air pods now, so it works on every machine except my nintendo switch
:(

~~~
CodeWriter23
Can you tell me why I’m always seeing AirPod users with only one headphone in
their ear?

~~~
acolytic
In my case, I lost one of them.

~~~
calaphos
maybe you could connect them with something, so you cant loose them. A cable
would work for that :)

------
n1000
Not everybody agrees about the sound quality, compared to the jacks on
iDevices:

\- [German] [https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/iPhone-7-nachgemessen-
Audio-...](https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/iPhone-7-nachgemessen-Audio-
Adapter-liefert-schlechteren-Sound-3325932.html)

\- [Summarising the above]
[https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/256241/45492](https://apple.stackexchange.com/a/256241/45492)

\- Another test: [http://soundexpert.org/articles/-/blogs/audio-quality-of-
lig...](http://soundexpert.org/articles/-/blogs/audio-quality-of-lightning-
to-3-5mm-headphone-jack-adapter)

\- [https://ifixit.org/blog/8448/apple-audio-adapter-
teardown/](https://ifixit.org/blog/8448/apple-audio-adapter-teardown/)

------
locklock
I've been using Mac products since I was a child (thanks, dad) more or less
happily and the removal of the headphone jack and the requirement that you
have these adaptors has been the first thing to make me seriously consider
going elsewhere. I probably won't, due to years of lock-in, but to rephrase
it's the worst experience I've had with anything Apple in my lifetime. I've
had three adaptors, two Apple ones that broke in separate ways (one would keep
firing commands randomly from the control buttons on my headphones, the other
lost the right channel entirely) and a crappy third party one that just fell
apart. Even when the adaptor works, having a dongle sticking out of your pants
pocket is a total pain that nobody really asked for. It solves no problem,
it's in no way better than the previous alternative, and it really just reads
like a massive "fuck you, pay me" from Apple to their customers.

I settled on non-Apple bluetooth headphones, which have their own set of
problems but at least I can reliably listen to music during my commute (for
the most part).

------
golfer
HN hug of death? "503 Service Unavailable"

Here's the Google Cache link:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmisfra.me%2F2017%2F12%2F12%2Fapples-9-dollar-
engineering-marvel-no-one-
wants%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmisfra.me%2F2017%2F12%2F12%2Fapples-9-dollar-
engineering-marvel-no-one-wants)

~~~
misframer
Author here. Sorry, resizing my droplet now.

~~~
Nextgrid
Just wondering if you can share your stack and what kind of traffic did you
get (in terms of requests/second)? Always curious as to how much traffic HN
really brings and why some sites stay up and others die.

~~~
liquidise
Some stats from my front-page a month ago:

    
    
      - Time on front page: 15 min
      - Views in first 15  min: ~5000
      - Views in first 60  min: ~7000
      - Views in first 600 min: ~11,000
      - Views over the next 5 days: ~5000
    

HN front pages bring a bunch of users quickly, but it isn't a scale that will
cripple moderate hardware with some basic performance tuning (directly serving
assets, for example). The tail is also great, fully 3/4 of my post-front-page
views come from click-throughs on social.

~~~
majewsky
I saw similar numbers on my server. About 10,000 views over the course of an
entire day (derived as total data transmitted divided by the size of one full
page load), with the bulk concentrated in the first two hours. My nginx served
it without breaking a sweat. Peak CPU usage was at 5% and network load peaked
at 1 Mb/s (data at 60-second resolution).

My stack was just nginx serving static files, on a 1/1 VM that also hosts half
a dozen other services (XMPP, Gitea, Matrix, Mumble etc.).

It is my belief that everyone who encounters the HN hug of death is doing
something wrong.

~~~
Macha
I used to have a blog that ran on Wordpress (3.0 was I think the current
version at the time, this was a while ago) with the APC plugin, served via
Apache. An article hit HN and it fell over.

Some time later I had migrated to blogofile and nginx and made it to HN again,
the server barely noticed.

------
terryschiavo22
This doesn't replace the fact that I never wanted my headphone jack taken away
in the first place. They broke a perfectly good thing in the name of $200
wireless earbuds.

~~~
ceejayoz
They broke a perfectly good thing in the name of _water intrusion_ , didn't
they? IIRC Apple said the headphone jack was the single biggest source of
damage.

The first device to ditch the jack was Apple's first device to hit IP67
rating. [https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT207043](https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT207043)

~~~
alexvoda
Plenty of other companies make or made IP68 waterproof phones with exposed
headphone jacks. It's not an issue.

~~~
ceejayoz
It's entirely possible that Apple doesn't like/trust the way their competitors
approached waterproofing.

~~~
iainmerrick
Given all the many hardware problems Samsung has had -- exploding batteries!!
-- if there was a flaw in their waterproofing don’t you think it would have
been publicised by now? I haven’t heard any such reports.

If doing it “the Sony way” would involve making the phone 1mm thicker, okay, I
can easily believe Apple would decide they need to rip it up completely and do
something different.

Samsung and Sony phones aren’t exactly chunky, though.

I would have been really happy with just a waterproof iPhone 6. Then maybe
they could follow that up with an iPhone X with a headphone jack. Still do
AirPods, just market them as a completely independent product.

------
zdragnar
> Personally, I’m amazed whenever I use it but I always wonder for a moment,
> “what if Apple just made what people wanted?”

"What people want" is pretty slippery. For every person I've heard complain
about needing the dongle, I've known at least one or two others who
exclusively use the wireless ear buds and wouldn't go back. YMMV.

~~~
epberry
Give it a few years I think most people will look at this like removing the
CD. The wireless audio experience is mostly better. Airpods for example
connect and disconnect effortlessly. Being able to walk all over the office
while on the phone has done wonders for my pacing.

~~~
b_tterc_p
It's already been a few years and people are still annoyed by it. Airpods are
great, but they're also expensive. Saying wireless is better isn't a fair
comparison either, because wireless is an option even with a headphone jack,
and most people still use wired headphones anyway with a much less convenient
connector.

~~~
culturestate
I would be willing to take a bet that if you stood at one of the entrances to
Times Square for 24 hours and tallied wired vs. wireless headphones, wireless
would come out on top.

NPD had wireless overtaking wired in sales (obviously this doesn’t account for
people using bundled earphones) for the first time back in 2016:
[https://qz.com/745108/wireless-headphone-sales-just-hit-a-
ti...](https://qz.com/745108/wireless-headphone-sales-just-hit-a-tipping-
point/)

~~~
mixmastamyk
When wireless is much more expensive, this is unlikely.

~~~
culturestate
Even _before_ the iPhone lost its headphone jack, NPD already pegged the share
of wireless headphones under $50 at 30% of the (again, already larger)
wireless market. The demand has only grown since then, and the market has
responded.

The most popular pair of bluetooth headphones on Amazon is waterproof, has 4.5
stars, and only costs $20: [https://www.amazon.com/LETSCOM-Headphones-
Waterproof-Sweatpr...](https://www.amazon.com/LETSCOM-Headphones-Waterproof-
Sweatproof-Cancelling/dp/B07DXQTCQL/)

------
jdreyfuss
This is just another entry in the "Apple: a Dongle Company" narrative. Apple
has long had a philosophy of designing things their way and making the
consumer adapt to their whims, rather than accepting standards or designing
for the way people like to use things.

If you're charitable, you can say that they design with the future in mind. If
you're not, you can say they know they can squeeze out more revenue via
dongles and be indifferent to consumer wants because they have the size and
market loyalty to get away with it. Depends on how you feel about Apple, I
suppose

~~~
closetohome
"Apple makes money off of dongles" is such a ridiculous argument though. And
to imply that they would make major changes to their flagship hardware just
for that is way on the wacky end of conspiracy theories.

These decisions are based on focus groups, user analytics, and reducing
manufacturing costs. Nothing more.

~~~
llampx
Apple has a long and rich history of making their customers buy dongles to
interact with technology.

~~~
closetohome
I have yet to disagree with one of their format changes. Lightning was miles
better than Micro USB or the old 30-pin dock connector, and USB-C allows me to
dock my laptop with a single cable.

Got any other examples?

~~~
Rebelgecko
Other companies that make USB-C laptops still manage to include USB A ports,
ethernet ports, and HDMI. Some USB-C laptops even have more esoteric stuff
like RS-232. Docking my MBP at my desk is great, but it's a pain in the ass
when I need to go _anywhere else_ and use multiple video outs and multiple
network connections

~~~
closetohome
If you want RS-232 on your laptop, you must realize that you belong to a
vanishingly small demographic that Apple will never even pretend to cater to.

~~~
Rebelgecko
Definitely don't expect Apple to bring back serial ports, just pointing out
that if Laptops _smaller than_ a MacBook _Pro_ can have HDMI, serial, USB A,
USB C, ethernet, and VGA then I don't buy any arguments about getting rid of
ports to keep the device small.

------
JustSomeNobody
I have one. I had to buy it as my 8 didn't come with it.

I think the louder supporters of the 3.5mm jack removal are a bit disingenuous
with how simple BT is. I have several iDevices. As does my wife. If we turn on
a BT speaker, we don't know which device it will connect to. Sometimes the
last one, sometime whichever one responds to the speaker faster[0]. My BT
headphones? Same thing; will it connect to my work phone? My personal phone?
My iPad? My laptop? Who knows? Here's what I _do_ know, A 3.5mm jack with
always[1] connect to the device I want it to connect to.

[0] I'm sure someone will tell me I'm doing it wrong. Whatever, a 3.5mm jack
still wins here.

[1] For most definitions of always.

~~~
pier25
I agree... BT is finicky, specially if you use your headphones on multiple
devices. When I want to use my headphones with my TV I have to make sure BT is
turned off on my phone and iPad before turning my headphones on.

If wireless headphones are the future we need something better than BT.

------
pier25
Wired headphones have better sound quality, are cheaper and easier to repair
(considering the same headphones wired vs wireless), do not need to be
charged, and the battery does not degrade over time.

Really, what is the mobile industry thinking? Apple was the first but everyone
else is following.

~~~
asdff
>Really, what is the mobile industry thinking?

The obvious. All the pros you are listed are cons when you are concerned about
profitability uber alles.

~~~
pier25
Because... ?

------
rargulati
From the comments I've read here, I guess a contrarian take:

If the purpose of the decision was to get people to move to wireless
headphones, then specifically for myself and my network of folks, this seems
to have worked.

Initially I had the Oppo Wired headphones. Soon after removing-3.5mm-gate (and
dealing with the adapter), I'm exclusively on wireless: the Airpods and the
latest Sony over ear headphones.

Honestly, at the cost of sound quality (which used to be important to me), but
gaining noise-cancelling and not having to wrangle with wires, it's such a
convenience. Apple was right, and I imagine the trend will largely be towards
wireless. That being said, experience still has a ways to go (connect,
battery), and die-hard audiophiles will never be satiated.

~~~
tzs
I don't see any reason wireless can't be identical to wired as far as audio
quality goes on a phone.

If we were talking about wired vs. wireless headphones on a home stereo listen
to LPs, then yeah, there might be something to talk about. There you have an
analog source, and with wired the signal stays analog all the way to the
transducers in the headphones. Going wireless will introduce an ADC on the
stereo end and a DAC on the headphone end.

But with a phone you have a digital source, going to a DAC, and then to the
transducers. The difference between wired and wireless there is that wireless
puts the DAC closer to the headphones, and the digital signal goes over a
wireless link.

I'd expect die-hard audiophiles to actually prefer wireless in theory, because
with wired you are relying on a DAC and amplifier provided by the phone
manufacturer. With wireless you are using a DAC and amplifier from the
headphone manufacturer, which allows in theory for the headphone manufacturer
to use a better DAC and amplifier than the phone provides.

~~~
imtringued
Because Bluetooth simply cannot deliver what you're talking about.

------
NickBusey
In the years that have passed since switching to an iPhone without a headphone
jack, I have never once needed to use that dongle. Bluetooth more than covers
my use cases. So the article is correct, I don't want it, but I also don't
need it.

~~~
dbcurtis
> Bluetooth more than covers my use cases.

That is great for you. But when Apple designers decide that everyone should be
forced into your category, they are actively deciding not to have empathy for
the users for whom Bluetooth does not cover their use cases.

Good product design starts with empathy for every user. Apple has written off
entire categories of users. I assume it is not because the don't know how to
gather user data, it is because the actively DO NOT CARE.

For me, someone who: a) still has their hearing, b) has been listening to
classical music for decades, c) has a collection of carefully and critically
chosen wired headphones, the lack of a headphone jack is a gigantic FU.

~~~
scarface74
_Good product design starts with empathy for every user._

And this is how you end up with the HomerMobile.....

~~~
Dylan16807
Not even close.

Also these are features that are already proven to work.

~~~
scarface74
As was the floppy disk, the CD Drive, ADB ports, SCSI, Nubus, 68K processors,
PPC processors, etc.

~~~
imtringued
Because of this attitude wired headphones will still be relevant in 3 years.
No, wireless isn't good enough. Fix it. Then we can talk. The fact that people
still write articles about it should tell you something. [0]

[0] [https://www.soundguys.com/ultimate-guide-to-bluetooth-
headph...](https://www.soundguys.com/ultimate-guide-to-bluetooth-
headphones-20019/)

~~~
scarface74
From the article.

 _However, most people won’t be able to hear the difference_

------
BooneJS
It wasn’t “free” in terms of money. Neither were the tires that came with my
car.

It’s also not free in terms of time spent thinking about them. Like all
dongles, I have to remember to bring them wherever I go in case I need them.

They’re an engineering marvel, no doubt about it. I just wish I didn’t maybe
need it.

------
nfriedly
As an Android user, I am still regularly annoyed by Apple removing the
headphone jack because it gave Google the "courage" to do it. And that has
negatively impacted my life regularly in the past couple of years.

The main problem I have with Bluetooth headphones is that it's so much effort
to switch them between devices. I have 3-4 things that I regularly listen to
headphones on, and after repeatedly loosing my dongle, I just gave up and
bought a separate set of Bluetooth earbuds for my phone.

It's the same in reverse with shared Bluetooth outputs like Amazon Echos and
my wife and I's car. They always want to connect to whichever phone was _last_
rather than whichever phone I'm trying to connect it to right now. I literally
turn off Bluetooth on my phone whenever my wife wants to connect hers to the
echo.

With the car, I previously used the aux input and let Bluetooth be exclusively
for her. Now I just listen to audio through the phone speakers and don't use
the car speakers at all. My car audio experience is significantly shittier
than when I had a phone with an headphone jack. Thankfully, I don't drive very
much.

I know there are workarounds for this, but they're all significantly more
complex and expensive than a simple headphones jack.

That and, of course, it's one more battery to charge.

------
jdillaaa
I am pretty convinced that this greatly degrades audio quality on my aux
headphones. Bluetooth quality is normal, but with this cable, I can hear the
difference. When plugged into an amp/speaker the grain is so abundantly
obvious (compared to a BT or AUX connection)

~~~
thesumofall
[https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-
qu...](https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/lightning-adapter-audio-quality.htm)
seems to disagree. Could it be a question of the higher quality output (in
comparison to BT) highlighting a lower quality source signal?

------
josefresco
> But guess what? No one wants it

With 794 reviews, clearly some people want it. The bad reviews tell us more
accurately that; "no one likes it".

~~~
kminehart
i think the point is that people have to buy it, not that they buy it because
they want it.

------
benbristow
I would've preferred a headphone jack as I've already lost mine.

~~~
kalleboo
I've lost like 4 of them by now

~~~
wilsonnb3
[https://www.amazon.com/Dongle-Dangler-Keychain-Accessory-
Com...](https://www.amazon.com/Dongle-Dangler-Keychain-Accessory-
Compatible/dp/B01MSYT8HH)

I keep mine on my keys, haven't lost it yet.

~~~
dontbenebby
Semi serious question: but where do you keep your keys?

(When I don't have a bag, I find my current keyring bulky as it is...)

------
_bxg1
It's weird that this much quality went into the guts, but they couldn't make
the cable on it a little more sturdy. I use mine sparingly, but it feels like
it's going to break if I look at it the wrong way, and I've read that some
people have to replace it every couple months.

~~~
d-sc
I understand where you are coming from. I have a couple of these of my own.

Apple probably doesn’t want to make these stronger than the things the connect
to: eg headphones or the phone. Within certain load profiles the weakest
component will suffer most of the wear. Would you rather the connector broke
on the $9 adapter or the $1500 phone?

~~~
Dylan16807
It's not the connector that breaks. Making the actual cable thicker shouldn't
cause anything else to fail first, and the nature of a short piece of cable
connected directly to a phone is to get horribly bent all the time; it needs
thickness.

------
blakespot
It's Apple's Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter that amazes me. That little $29
thing is a full PCI-e device --- there is a PCI-e interface and a FireWire
chipset built into the housing. And the little cable has a huge number of
individual cables inside of it.

[https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD464LL/A/apple-
thunderbo...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MD464LL/A/apple-thunderbolt-
to-firewire-adapter)

~~~
Dylan16807
It's just a repeater chip[set]. For something that competes with USB it's a
pretty bad price. You can get pretty powerful CPUs for half that or less.

~~~
detaro
No, it's just as the parent describes: A Thunderbolt-to-PCIe bridge chip, a
short PCIe connection, a PCIe Firewire host chip, and a microcontroller to
coordinate.

~~~
Dylan16807
Thunderbolt _is_ PCIe.

I have fixed my post to not imply it's only a single chip. It being multiple
important chips should cause the _opposite_ of amazement. It means that the
product wasn't important enough to get a dedicated chip, which is probably the
main reason it costs $29 instead of also being $9.

~~~
detaro
And Firewire is not related to PCIe at all, so the adapter clearly is not just
a repeater. If you want to say something along the lines of"it's just a
Firewire host adapter chip + some conversion, doesn't have to be expensive",
then say that.

~~~
Dylan16807
It's shoveling bits through basically unchanged. It's a repeater with a
different electrical standard on each side. 90% of the effort is in the
transceivers.

~~~
blakespot
Here is a teardown of this little $29 device. Take a look...

[https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-thunderbolt-to-
fi...](https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/apple-thunderbolt-to-firewire-
adapter-teardown.1428004/)

------
yellowapple
If only Apple had put that phenomenal technology in their actual phones
instead of making it a $9 dongle.

Like, I'd be more tolerant of Apple's decision to drop the 3.5mm jack if it
had coincided with Apple migrating iPhones to USB-C connectors, since at least
that has the opportunity to play nicely with the rest of the USB-C ecosystem
(which is growing pretty extensively) and could be a good way to push USB-C as
"the" new standard for audio device connectivity (especially since USB-C
directly supports analog _and_ digital audio; the standard seems to advise
rather strongly against using USB-C as a 3.5mm replacement outright, but a bit
of "Courage™" from Apple could shift the tides such that such a prohibition is
excluded from USB-C implementations). Their failure to do so makes it clear
that Apple would rather make money on accessories tied to proprietary
connectors than actually make good and useful products.

------
SyneRyder
A related tip - if you've got a ThinkPad X1 Yoga with its awful internal
headphone audio, try Apple's USB-C To Headphone dongle. It's a cheap but
effective audio upgrade, and the competition (like the M-Audio Micro-DAC) is
about 4x the price. It even adds support for Apple inline headphone volume
controls too.

------
m3andros
For the lazy:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://misfra.me/2017/12/12/apples-9-dollar-
engineering-marvel-no-one-wants/)

------
neves
Does it mean that if I buy it and an female lightning to male usb adapter I'd
get a good DAC for US$10?

Would be a bargain.

~~~
thirdsun
If you have USB-C you can skip one adapter:
[https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MU7E2AM/A/usb-c-
to-35-mm-...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MU7E2AM/A/usb-c-to-35-mm-
headphone-jack-adapter)

------
joshfraser
I curse Apple every time they make me pull out a dongle for something that
used to just work. I used to love Apple before they became a dongle company.
Don't get me started on them killing off MagSafe.

------
karmakaze
Why hasn't Apple just switched to USB-C already? Then we can have a wealth of
DAC/amp options. To make iPhones thinner still or keep the garden walled.

~~~
ascagnel_
I think they'll do it eventually.

They took a lot of flack from folks when they tossed out 10+ years worth of
30-pin cable support on the switch to Lightning, so they'll likely take a good
long while before they switch the phone to USB-C. I think it'll be the last
device they produce to make the switch.

------
gumby
I always enable the "product improvement" analytics for companies I trust. And
as it happens, I don't care about losing TRRS audio jack, losing the SD slot
on Macs (I only have micro SD-using devices these days anyway), Type C (yay!
-- and I don't carry _any_ dongles), etc. Since I happen to be happy with
these changes I obviously never complain about them.

Apple is famous for not doing market research (though I know they do a lot)
and I wonder really if they don't probably know what they are doing with a lot
of these changes. As far as demographics go, my kid (20) and my gf's kids and
their friends (11-16 yo) don't seem dismayed by _any_ of these changes.

I'm not saying that these are "get off my lawn" complaints, but the phone is
the most mass market of mass market devices and every design decision affects
some subculture positively or negatively. As for headphones specifically:
iphone volume is high enough that the fact that lightning headphones haven't
taken off suggests the headphone market isn't as big as one might think.

There are no shortages of boneheaded moves by Apple (I happen to like the feel
of the butterfly keyboards but am _not_ happy about how many I've had
replaced: _4_ since 2016) so this is no apology for a big company that can
defend itself!

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netsharc
I've learnt it has a DAC after watching Strange Parts take 1 apart and put the
components inside the iPhone 7 so he could have the 3.5 jack:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utfbE3_uAMA)

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georgeecollins
Isn't the point of all this that Apple wants you to migrate to AirPods?

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beat
I use it almost every day, to listen to my iPhone at work with the studio-
grade headphones I've trusted for years (Beyerdynamic DT770). It works great
and hasn't failed yet.

Marvel indeed!

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elsewhen
site seems down. google cache:
[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ckxU-A...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ckxU-
AKUcgAJ:https://misfra.me/2017/12/12/apples-9-dollar-engineering-marvel-no-
one-wants/+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

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dongled_gates
If the idea to revoke the eighth-inch headphone jack is such a great idea, why
not make it USB-C like the rest of the donglegate devices?

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delibes
Hug of death - archive link:
[http://archive.is/rQqtB](http://archive.is/rQqtB)

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MR4D
If they made a USB-C version of this, they could sell them for 3 times that
price and probably run out of stock.

~~~
sirn
They do, and it also costs $9[1]. I bought one after I realized (the hard way)
that the new iPad Pro doesn't have a headphone jack…

[1]: [https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MU7E2AM/A/usb-c-
to-35-mm-...](https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MU7E2AM/A/usb-c-to-35-mm-
headphone-jack-adapter)

~~~
davio
Especially interesting since Apple doesn't make USB-C headphones. I can
tolerate the iPhones shipping with Lightning headphones. For the iPad Pro I
guess the only official solution is AirPods.

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javagram
Might be worth adding a [2017] tag.

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creeble
They're $9 now. I wonder what they'll be next year.

~~~
mcphage
They’ve been $9 for a few years, I’d expect them to stay at that price until
they’re discontinued or significantly changed.

