
‘Courage’ - robmaceachern
http://daringfireball.net/2016/09/courage
======
bfred_it
You know what makes his whole argument BS? Exactly the "nudge" he's talking
about.

If Apple was really pushing for "a better technology" then they should have
just included the airpods.

What they've done instead is compromising the experience and pushing the user
to drop an additional $170+ on any of their headphones.

When they got rid of Flash, they didn't ask for more money to use the
alternative nor did they provide a subpar flash player "as a nudge"

Also, while dropping Flash made the battery last longer, dropping the port
only forces me to charge an additional battery.

~~~
terminalcommand
I want to offer a different perspective.

Apple ships the phones with an adapter for lightning to 2.5 inch headphone
jack. Old headphones may become harder to use, but they're still perfectly
usable.

We can't argue that the future is in wireless. Headphone cables get tangled,
headphone sockets collect dust.

I'm currently using an iPhone 5 and the headphone input, spits out the
earphones from time to time. That's because it collected dust.

IMHO that's why the article is spot-on. Apple always had the courage and
boldness to push things forward.

I remember when the current macbook came out, everyone -including me- made fun
of it. Just a usb-c port, really? Or performance??

But now I think that mobility beats performance, and simplicity beats
complexity on portable devices.

On the other hand the price politics, and marketing ploys of Apple do make me
angry.

~~~
elmigranto
> That's because it collected dust.

Same is also true for lightning, where's wireless charging then? Also, both
are perfectly cleanable.

~~~
terminalcommand
You're right wireless charging should already be here too.

As for the headphone jack, I tried to clean it many times but couldn't fix the
problem. Although, I haven't tried compressed air yet.

We have wifi sync, bluetooth peripherals, the only remaining thing for a
cordless future is wireless charging.

Maybe we'll see the removal of the lightning port as yet another bold move. It
would line up with Apple's vision. But then I think Apple will develop some
kind of a new short-range wireless transmission protocol that's inconsistant
with everything else.

If they'd fix all the problems, what would be left to sell :)?

~~~
elmigranto
> If they'd fix all the problems, what would be left to sell :)?

You can always introduce new ones and suddenly there is a whole market for
next generation of accessories and "using lightning in 3-rd party
devices"-fees.

------
elmigranto
I don't think these two situations are comparable.

For one, I own multiple devices that are somewhat obsolete now. This wasn't a
case with Flash, since I doubt anyone cared for technology the video was using
— it's fine either way if you see same pixels on the screen. Apple also wasn't
making money from every website that didn't include Flash, but I bet that's
the case for each Lightning device produced, and the major reason jack is
removed.

It's not even headphones-only either, there are multiple devices using 3.5mm
for extedning iPhone's functionality that Apple don't get a cut from. I'm
interested whether those will be supported via adapter.

I'm also not sure that 3.5mm is objectively worse than wireless. If anything,
both have advantages and disatvantages.

------
carlosrg
> There was outrage over Apple’s refusal to support Flash on iOS. Genuine
> controversy in the mainstream media. Most people saw it as competitive spite
> against Adobe, not a principled stand for a superior technology, superior
> experience, and open standards. There was outrage over Apple’s refusal to
> support Flash on iOS. Genuine controversy in the mainstream media. Most
> people saw it as competitive spite against Adobe, not a principled stand for
> a superior technology, superior experience, and open standards.

>open standards

Like the headphone jack. Oh the irony.

------
nikolay
If they had any courage, they'd drop the subpar proprietary Lightning
connector and use USB-C instead.

~~~
k__
They added a Lightning port instead of USB-C?!

I'm not an Apple fan so I didn't read much about it, the only thing I got was
that they're dropping the headphone jack. But I thought "Well, at least they
now use USB-C for everything."

But this is Firewire all over again...

~~~
nikolay
My point was: drop the audio jack and Lightning and replace with USB-C. That's
brave!

