Courage

When Apple chose to drop the 3.5mm headphone jack from the iPhone 7, they cited “courage” as the rationale. As controversial as that decision was, let’s put it aside for a moment. What’s more interesting to me is the idea of courage itself.

We certainly take a lot of courageous ideas for granted now. Say, the Sun being at the centre of the solar system. Or human spaceflight being possible. Or even that the most valuable company in the world could be an all-in-one computer hardware and software company.

Smart people rejected these ideas. Plato believed the Earth was the centre of the universe, the New York Times thought human spaceflight was infeasible, and Steve Ballmer was certain the iPhone would never gain significant market share. It took Copernicus, Apollo, and, well, the iPhone, to set them all straight.

It’s so much easier to destroy ideas than to create and validate and think about them. We criticize art without producing any; we bemoan inefficient government without influencing it; we complain about relationships without trying to fix them. We find it more important to be right than to be useful.

I’m vulnerable to this kind of lazy thinking myself, which brings me back to the headphone jack. My initial reaction to its removal was, “That’s a terrible idea! Everybody uses wired headphones all the time!” Yet while the AirPods aren’t being welcomed with open arms, the reviews say they’re decent. And there are plenty of other wireless options on the market. The iPhone will survive this.

Was Apple’s choice a stroke of brilliance that will singlehandedly win them the embattled Asian smartphone market? Probably not. Did it turn out better than people (read: I) expected? Yes. Was it courageous? If we’re being honest, kind of.

We’ve only gotten as far as we have because people were willing to try things that sounded dumb at the time. A culture that welcomes this crucial trial-and-error can’t just shoot down every wild idea. Not prematurely, at least.