Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Why the Headphone Jack is Going EXTINCT”.
When Apple revealed the iPhone 7 back in 2016, the company was widely ridiculed for describing its decision to omit the formerly universal headphone jack as courageous a term that is usually reserved for people like War veterans and cancer survivors. But marketing bombast aside Apple started a trend as they so typically do, and these days many other smartphone manufacturers are ditching the headphone jack. Is there actually a good reason for this? Now the cynics quickly crafted their own theories. Apple was trying to be different just because or maybe they were trying to push they’re conveniently just released, not to mention expensive wireless air pods, which is obviously going to be easier. If the alternative is a clunky looking dongle or maybe they just wanted more of that sweet, sweet, lightning, connector royalty money for the third-party headphones, that would inevitably show up down the line featuring that connector. But none of these explained the industry trend that was about to take place, I mean, did the others follow suit, just because they wanted to be cool, like Apple well hold on a minute now.
Maybe there were some solution Anakin’s going on here, but the official explanation that Apple gave once you get past the nonsense about courage actually made quite a bit of sense. Smartphones are really miniature computers and the companies that manufacture them are tasked with taking the basic functions of a machine that has traditionally occupied a large chunk of your desk or at best your backpack and fit them into something that can comfortably rest in your pocket. And they also provided the admittedly very reasonable rationale that fewer points of ingress made it easier for their latest device to officially be water-resistant. I mean here’s the thing we kind of take it for granted, because smartphones, even waterproof ones, are everywhere, but all of that stuff is not trivial to do and it requires very efficient use of just about every bit of available space inside the device. So it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that manufacturers, including Apple, had been increasingly viewing the headphone jack as a space hog that just doesn’t justify how much real estate it takes up, and this is especially true when you consider that some people already didn’t use it and they’ve Got so many extra features that they’re trying to cram into these phones to make them stand out from the competition from 3d face recognition, sensors to triple camera setups to more spacious batteries? And this is all in the name of differentiating their phone from their competitors. In a world where truly tiny differences between models can make or break sales, and according to the folks calling the shots for these manufacturers, trends like displays that take up as much of the front of the phone as possible and thin sleek chassis are driven directly by Consumer demand this has led to not just headphone jacks, but also bezels and even physical buttons, ending up going the way of the television channel dial. Now we aren’t going to defend every reason.
Some companies claims that they were ditching the headphone jack because it delivers poor audio quality compared to wireless solutions or headphones, that connect digitally via a USB C or a lightning port. But while an analogue connection can be affected by electrical interference from other components inside a phone, many users were perfectly happy with the sound quality they were getting and the convenience factor of something that’s compatible with all your old stuff is pretty high, but regardless of the Intentions of the company that made your smart phone, the disappearance of the headphone jack, looks like it’s a trend. That’S going to be very hard or maybe even impossible to reverse, even though many users have lamented that Bluetooth, USB C and lightning headphones. Often don’t provide good enough sound quality or a good enough user experience to justify their price tags, throw in then the fact that you often have to buy a separate adapter just to listen to your headphones and charge your phone at the same time and taking out The headphone jack remains a controversial decision more than two years after we were all first introduced to the idea.
Well, I, for one, accept, I think it’s gon na be okay as long as this doesn’t become a trend in the tablet space that wait. What really I mean come on? Do you have an extra five minutes per day? What a tremendous problem and I’ve got the solution using brilliant, daily problems to help train your brain. Every problem provides you with the context and framework that you need to tackle it. So you learn the concepts by applying them and if you like the daily problem, then there’s more like it in the quiz on the left. So you can explore the concept in greater detail and develop your framework if you’re confused and you need more guidance, then you can join the brilliant community in discussing the problems. So these thought-provoking little challenges are designed to lead you from curiosity to mastery just one day at a time. So what are you waiting for? Go to brilliant org, slash tech, quickie, we’re gon na? Have that linked below and finish your day, a little smarter than you began it or a lot smarter, because you also watched a tech wiki today. Also the first 200 of you will get 20 % off the annual subscription to view all the problems in the archives.
So go: go. Go, go go so thanks for watching guys like dislike check out our other videos, don’t forget to leave a comment. If you have suggestions for future fast as possible, we do check those out and subscribe. Follow subscribe, follow! Well, I just once, if you do it twice, it actually unsubscribes, which is bad unless you were already subscribed, in which case it would Reese absque Ribe you, and that would be good. Oh no just snapped a brain cell. No I’m fine! .