Apple’s long history of pissing people off by killing stuff
iHate.
Apple is the Marie Kondo of tech companies. First we scream and throw things when they demand we evolve, then we begrudgingly adapt. Baaaaa, sheeple.
Rumor is Apple’s next iPhone will lack a crucial hole we use daily: the headphone jack. And Thursday it announced plans to discontinue the Thunderbolt display, the only monitor in the Apple store.
The company has a history of removing features just as they become critical to your very existence. But in short, Apple has the crystal ball, the engineers and the loads of cash to predict the future. And most of us do not. Sorry not sorry.
“You cannot move forward if you don’t sever the ties to the past at some point,” writes M.G. Siegler in his requiem for a headphone jack.
The reasons for Apple’s kills and pivots vary. Owning the peripherals and accessories market is a big one. And retiring products forces customers to upgrade more frequently. (We see you, loads of cash.)
But since the rate and frequency of tech adoption is higher than ever, one would think the anxiety around adapting would ease. Even though you freaked when Apple introduced the Lightning port, when was the last time someone asked for an “old iPhone charger”?
Let’s look back at the outrage, take a deep breath and just resign our futures to our lord and shepherd, Apple Inc.
‘Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid.’ —Nilay Patel, The Verge, 2016
Your next iPhone might not have a headphone jack. WHAT DO YOU MEAN, AND HAS BEYONCÉ SIGNED OFF ON THIS?!
Instead the Lightning port will double as a headphone port, The Wall Street Journal attributes to anonymous sources. Apple customers are scratching their heads, wondering whether they’ll resort to wireless Bluetooth speakers or just deal with it. The change would pose a problem for commuters who charge phones while simultaneously using the headphone jack to play audio through car speakers.
‘Hey Apple, please don’t ditch the MacBook magnetic charging jack — it works like magic and we love it!’ —Rob Price, Business Insider, 2015
Maybe you never knew the official name for “that magnetic charger” but the MagSafe has been a darling of the Apple fan club since its 2006 launch. (Before it, we tripped over our power cords, causing our laptops to crash to the floor.) However, in 2015 the MagSafe was discontinued for Macbook, replaced with a USB-C port. No fun.
‘Apple EarPods Review: Better! (But Still Garbage)’ —Mario Aguilar, Gizmodo, 2012
Earbuds, really? Who really cares? Turns out, everyone. People flipped when Apple demoed its new EarPods in 2012. The design was more streamlined, like some kind of weird hard candy you’d suck on in space. But some people complained the new buds ($29) hurt their delicate ear holes, so third-party designers hacked solutions to make you spend more dough.
‘The Dock Is Dead’ —Jawbone, 2012
And just like that, thousands of docks were obsolete. In a play for a bigger hold of the competitive mobile accessories market, Apple replaced its 30-pin connector with a proprietary Lightning connector, which would charge all its future iPhones. Cue: Two years of anguish when you needed juice and your hipster friend still had the old charger.
‘Why the Macbook Air is Wrong About DVD Drives’ —Ryan Faas, PC World, 2010
Apple swiped left a lot in 2010. In one of the biggest shifts in consumer technology, Apple ripped its optic drives from Macbook Air and eventually Macbook all together. Critics suddenly had no way to play that Runaway Bride DVD on the red eye to D.C. But Apple saw the future of data storage, as media soon ported to USB flash drives and ultimately to the cloud.
‘Apple’s Magic Trackpad: Mouse Killer or Pointless Device?’ —Harry McCracken, PC World, 2010
Tech geeks proclaimed the mouse officially dead in 2010, especially once Apple released its Magic Trackpad, essentially a larger, detached version of a MacBook trackpad that connects via Bluetooth. The device followed the Apple Magic Mouse, the first consumer mouse with multi-touch capabilities. It was nonetheless discontinued in 2015, because Apple.
‘How Apple killed the MacBook, and crippled the MacBook Pro’ —Tim Hanlon, Gizmag, 2008
When Apple killed the Firewire port, first in its iPods in 2005, then in Macbooks in 2008, people went bananas. For many, Firewire offered more power and speed to peripherals, such as hard drives and audio interfaces. It was yet another axe between Apple products and formerly compatible third party systems.
‘Some people have come to love, or at least tolerate, the hockey-puck mouse and skeletal keyboard…but I am not among them.’ —Peter H. Lewis, The New York Times, 1999
If you were born before 1990, you remember those funky, gel-filled wrist rests that sat in front of your keyboard. That’s because most keyboards were raised and featured chunky keys, a relic of typewriter days. With the iMac, Apple delivered a flatter keyboard with sexy, black keys, and keyboards just kept shrinking (or disappearing) from there.
‘The most shocking part of the Mac isn’t what it offers, but what it lacks. The iMac has no floppy drive…’ —Andrew Gore and Anita Epler, Macworld, 1998
Floppy disks were the coolest. They held everything from your term paper to your favorite video game. The main nuisance was blowing the dust out of the drive every so often. But Apple needed to make a splash with its iconic iMac and that meant releasing it without a floppy drive (and many other familiar ports), a controversial move that nonetheless predicted a future of streamlined data storage.
BONUS: The glowing Apple logo, because people complain about everything.
