Ok two points here, very sad day that you have to edit another publication to
make it available here. And btw, you missed a word that will almost certainly
get the moderators panties twisted in to a neat little bunch.:) Even though
that word is totally acceptable on your BBC btw.
That being said, I think the poster of this article has a drug problem.:) Ok
hyperbolic but a little true, I think the positions are nuts. The only one
that sways me a little is the DRM argument. However, this does not scare me.
I remember back in the digital audio tape days, while DRM killed the consumer
DAT market the units I used along with everyone else in the recording game at
the time had a neat little dip switch that you could set to disable DRM.:) You
usually had one dip switch for sample rate, one for drm and maybe 1 or 2
related to clock functions. Flip the dip and bam, no more DRM. So I expect in
future if I order my adapters from Caruso Music instead of Best Buy I’ll be
fine. (if you see my point) (the commercial gear is usually better and almost
always more open) And yes the ridiculousness of the state of things is not
lost on me I just point out that it it is not as cut and dry as proposed.
The rest of it is bunk, nobody says you have to use a wireless technology,
dongles are not bad, I like dongles because they allow me to customize my tools
to the way I need them and getting pure digital out has a lot more benefits
than downsides. Since the media is entirely digital in the first place and
there’s no way to store analog content in a modern phone you can’t make the
argument that you want an analog signal path through the whole system for audio
quality reasons, since it starts digital leave it digital as long as possible.
I can add the D/A convertor of my choice that meets the spec I want and not be
tied to the cheap give away DAC they include in the phone. Likewise, I can
sample with the quality I want and dump it back on the bus of the phone with
out the phones cheap ADC getting in the way not to mention quantization error
as the internal sampler drifts from my external digital sound source. Unless
I’m missing something, phones are not including word clock time for me to sync
with.:)
What if I want to build a set of highend headphones. I could take that
digital signal, pull it up all the way to the users head and include an
amplifier made with nice MOSFET transisters and a healthy overclocked beautiful
analog devices or maybe a higher end Burr Brown in each can attached right to
the transducer with a minimal amount of analog signal path for signals to bleed
in and out of. Not to mention with a digital signal right to the can I can do
much more highly accurate sound canceling calculations. That’s just one
example I can think of off the bat.
I’m just not convinced by this article. IF we extended out this guy’s
argument we should never have digital television because analog was the way
it’s done even though digital television is far far better. What do you all
think?
On 6/25/16, 9:39 PM, "M. Taylor" <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com on behalf of
mk...@ucla.edu> wrote:
Hello Everyone,
Here is an interesting article that I thought you'd like to read, the URL to
which is located at the end of the text.
NOTE: I edited out the 1 profane word that appears in the original text so
as to bring this piece in compliance with our list policies.
Enjoy,
Mark
Taking the headphone jack off phones is user-hostile and stupid, Have some
dignity
By Nilay Patel on June 21, 2016
Another day, another rumor that Apple is going to ditch the headphone jack
on the next iPhone in favor of sending out audio over Lightning. Or another
phone beats Apple to the punch by ditching the headphone jack in favor of
passing out audio over USB-C. What exciting times for phones! We're so out
of ideas that actively making them shittier and more user-hostile is the
only innovation left.
ditching the headphone jack on phones makes them worse
Look, I know you're going to tell me that the traditional TRS headphone jack
is a billion years old and prone to failure and that life is about progress
and whatever else you need to repeat deliriously into your bed of old HTC
extUSB dongles and insane magnetic Palm adapters to sleep at night. But just
face facts: ditching the headphone jack on phones makes them worse, in
extremely obvious ways. Let's count them!
(Also, here is a list of reasons you might actually prefer Lightning
headphones, by my friend Vlad Savov, but let's be clear that my list is the
superior one.)
1. Digital audio means DRM audio
Oh look, I won this argument in one shot. For years the entertainment
industry has decried what they call the "analog loophole" of headphone
jacks, and now we're making their dreams come true by closing it.
Winter is coming
Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music
publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright
enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP,
remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always
hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music
industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and
recording devices anyway. We deal with DRM when it comes to video because we
generally don't rewatch and take TV shows and movies with us, but you will
rue the day Apple decided to make the iPhone another 1mm thinner the instant
you get a "playback device not supported" message. Winter is coming.
2. Wireless headphones and speakers are fine, not great
I am surrounded by wireless speaker systems. (I work at The Verge, after
all.) And while they mostly work fine, sometimes they crackle out and fail.
It sucks to share a wireless speaker among multiple devices. Bluetooth
headphones require me to charge yet another battery. You haven't known pain
until you've chosen to use Bluetooth audio in a car instead of an aux jack.
Bluetooth: next year it'll work great.
3. Dongles are stupid, especially when they require other dongles
Shut up, you say. All of your complaints will be handled by this charming
$29 dongle that converts digital audio to a standard headphone jack!
Have some dignity
To which I will respond: here is a photo of Dieter Bohn and his beloved
single-port MacBook, living his fullest #donglelife during our WWDC
liveblog:
Photo of macbook with a bunch of dongles
Everything is going to be great when you want to use your expensive
headphones and charge your phone at the same time. You are going to love
everything about that situation. You are going to hold your 1mm thinner
phone and sincerely believe that the small reduction in thickness is
definitely worth carrying multiple additional dongles.
Also, they're called [redacted] dongles. Let's not do this to ourselves.
Have some dignity.
4. Ditching a deeply established standard will disproportionately impact
accessibility
The traditional headphone jack is a standard for a reason - it works. It
works so well that an entire ecosystem of other kinds of devices has built
up around it, and millions of people have access to compatible devices at
every conceivable price point. The headphone jack might be less good on some
metrics than Lightning or USB-C audio, but it is spectacularly better than
anything else in the world at being accessible, enabling, open, and
democratizing. A change that will cost every iPhone user at least $29 extra
for a dongle (or more for new headphones) is not a change designed to
benefit everyone. And you don't need to get rid of the headphone jack to
make a phone waterproof; plenty of waterproof phones have shipped with
headphone jacks already.
5. Making Android and iPhone headphones incompatible is so incredibly
arrogant and stupid there's not even explanatory text under this one
6. No one is asking for this
Raise your hand if the thing you wanted most from your next phone was either
fewer ports or more dongles.
I didn't think so. You wanted better battery life, didn't you? Everyone just
wants better battery life.
Original article at:
http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2016/6/21/11991302/iphone-no-headphon
e-jack-user-hostile-stupid
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