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Andy
Film buff, metal fan and technology nut.

My Opinion On The Possible Apple Headphone Controversy

Apple are famous for not announcing their plans before they’re unveiled so the idea that they will remove the headphone jack socket is just a rumour. It’s probably worth discussing though because of Motorola.

Motorola removed the headphone jack from their new Moto Z. For Moto Z users there are 3 options:

  1. Bluetooth heaphones
  2. USB C headphones
  3. 3.5mm headphones via a 3.5mm to USB C adapter

None of these options are optimal. I’ve heard of a lot of people who have had trouble with Bluetooth (a lot in Seattle it seems). Bluetooth is prone to interference. Anyone who’s tried to listen to music while downloading a file on a laptop using 2.4GHz WiFi can attest to this. Then there’s the need to recharge them, not a problem with wired headphones.

I use Bluetooth earphones everyday on my commute. I could probably get away with only charging them once a week but I charge them twice a week just to be sure. They wouldn’t do on a long flight or train journey though.

The problem with USB C is Apple don’t use it on their iOS devices. Apple’s EarPods would probably use the Lightning port. The problem here is that the EarPods can’t be swapped between the iPhone and the Moto Z. Headphone manufactures would have to choose which one to support, or ship two versions of their products where they currently only have to ship one. Or there are adapters.

Right now I can plug my Sennheiser earphones straight into my MacBook Air or my iPad or my iPhone or my old desktop PC or my old Windows laptop or my old iPod or my Nexus 7 or my Nexus 6. Under the new way I’d need adapters to convert from 3.5mm to USB C and Lightning. Adapters can get lost and add an extra point of failure to the device chain. And they cost extra money if they do get lost or broken.

So removing the headphone jack is more hassle so far.

One of the arguments I’ve heard in favour of removing the jack is it’s old technology and should be updated after all we got rid floppy disks and parallel and serial ports and CD and DVD is on it’s way out.

The problem with that argument is there was always something better to replace the old technology. Floppies gave way to CDs then DVDs. The 20 floppy installation gave way to a single CD and who wouldn’t want to store 700MB instead of 1.44MB on one disk? Parallel and serial ports gave way to USB.

There’s nothing better to replace the 3.5mm jack. It still works well and is a universal standard. Getting rid of it as things stand now is a step backwards.