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WTF?!? No headphone jack in the new Google Pixel?
https://www.theverge.com/2017/10/5/1...ireless-future
The Pixel's missing headphone jack proves Apple was right
When it launched the iPhone 7 a year ago, Apple confidently declared the headphone jack obsolete technology that we could learn to live without. I disagreed with the necessity of its removal then, and I disagree with it now, but with Google joining the ranks of jack-less phone makers, I think it’s time to accept the inevitability of the 3.5mm port’s demise. According to the two towering US giants of mobile tech, the future is wireless (or, in emergencies, dongle-shaped) and even though that will make our lives less convenient and our tech less compatible, we should all just come along for the ride.
I’m not okay with this, but it isn’t my choice to make.
Perhaps this is the resignation stage of grief that I’m going through. I just can’t summon the passion to be enraged by Google omitting what I consider to be one of my favorite things in the world. Plugging in a new pair of headphones is, to me, part of the ceremony of discovering great new sound. It’s a tactile and auditory preamble to the enjoyment of music. But the truth of headphone jacks on phones is that not all of them were made equal. A lot of them have actually served as portals to hellishly bland, flat music reproduction that let the user down. The original Pixel was among the number of phones with really underwhelming headphone audio.
Apple’s bet in removing the headphone jack was that we could stomach some short-term inconvenience for the longer-term benefits of freeing up valuable real estate inside the phone. It was a calculated risk, intended in part to also force the development of better wireless and digital gear by headphone makers. Audeze, Bowers & Wilkins, and Shure have all responded by developing their own Lightning cables, which ensure their headphones sound their best when playing stuff from an iPhone. Everyone else in the consumer audio space now considers wireless as the default area of focus, and Apple’s influence in this respect should not be underestimated.
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When it launched the iPhone 7 a year ago, Apple confidently declared the headphone jack obsolete technology that we could learn to live without. I disagreed with the necessity of its removal then, and I disagree with it now, but with Google joining the ranks of jack-less phone makers, I think it’s time to accept the inevitability of the 3.5mm port’s demise. According to the two towering US giants of mobile tech, the future is wireless (or, in emergencies, dongle-shaped) and even though that will make our lives less convenient and our tech less compatible, we should all just come along for the ride.
I’m not okay with this, but it isn’t my choice to make.
Perhaps this is the resignation stage of grief that I’m going through. I just can’t summon the passion to be enraged by Google omitting what I consider to be one of my favorite things in the world. Plugging in a new pair of headphones is, to me, part of the ceremony of discovering great new sound. It’s a tactile and auditory preamble to the enjoyment of music. But the truth of headphone jacks on phones is that not all of them were made equal. A lot of them have actually served as portals to hellishly bland, flat music reproduction that let the user down. The original Pixel was among the number of phones with really underwhelming headphone audio.
Apple’s bet in removing the headphone jack was that we could stomach some short-term inconvenience for the longer-term benefits of freeing up valuable real estate inside the phone. It was a calculated risk, intended in part to also force the development of better wireless and digital gear by headphone makers. Audeze, Bowers & Wilkins, and Shure have all responded by developing their own Lightning cables, which ensure their headphones sound their best when playing stuff from an iPhone. Everyone else in the consumer audio space now considers wireless as the default area of focus, and Apple’s influence in this respect should not be underestimated.
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Hooray for washed up companies that make dumb decisions and have no new ideas!!
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