From: Jonathan Mosen <mailto:jmosen@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 01, 2015 3:49 PM
Subject: Apple, Don't Take my Headphone Jack Away
Hi everyone, I waited a few days to see if this issue might be raised by
someone else. But I'll raise it here myself, because I'm not sure whether Apple
may be flying a kite here and seeing what reaction this idea gets.
There's an unconfirmed rumour from a source that has in the past been credible,
that the next generation iPhone will not include a headphone jack, so Apple can
make the phone thinner.
I'm pasting a blog post that I wrote and published on this subject 72 hours
ago. Here goes.
I like thin, lightweight technology, but it isn’t the only criterion that
determines what I use. If thin and light doesn’t give me the performance I
need, I’m happy to choose something heavier or bigger.
When the iPhone 6 Plus came out, I bought one. Initially, it seemed absolutely
enormous, and I thought I’d never get used to it. Now I’m on the 6s Plus and
would never go back to a smaller iPhone. The battery life and the bigger screen
for Braille screen input make it the right choice for me.
After being a MacBook Air user for three years, I recently bought a 15-inch
MacBook Pro with all the specs maxed out. It includes 16GB of RAM and 1TB solid
state storage.
Compared to my MacBook Air, the Pro feels heavy and thick, and I’ve therefore
given it the nickname “The Big Kahuna”. But it fits in my backpack just fine
when I travel, it isn’t really that arduous to take places, and the thing is,
it goes like a rocket. I enjoy having OS X for a few apps and functions, but
Windows is still my primary operating system. With a laptop this fast and
powerful, I can run JAWS in a virtual machine with superb results, and still
tend to iMessages and FaceTime calls.
Sometimes I pick up my old MacBook Air and think, “oy, what have I done? This
thing is so cute!” But the performance factor soon reminds me that I made the
right decision for my particular needs.
There’s plenty of choice of form factor in the MacBook line now. If you want to
go ultra-portable, there’s the new 12-inch retina MacBook, which is just
adorably thin and light, with compromises to match. It sports a single USB type
C port, which is the only way both to connect peripherals to it and charge it.
And the keyboard is, to put it charitably, an acquired taste.
So when it comes to Mac, Apple now has a line-up that can meet the needs of the
road warrior who wants something really light for a bit of word processing,
email and web surfing, all the way to someone who needs plenty of grunt and is
willing to lug it around.
There is not so much flexibility in the iPhone stable, where there are usually
now two current models with similar specs but different screen sizes. So when I
read a rumour that Apple may dispense with the 3.5mm headphone jack in iPhone 7
models, it had me concerned.
Before I explain why, let me be clear that Apple itself has made no official
statement about the future of the headphone jack. It’s only a rumour. But I
read a lot of technology sources, and have come to know which sources tend to
be more reliable. The source of this story, the Japanese technology site Mac
Otakara, has a good track record. No news site that reports things like this
gets it right 100% of the time though. It’s also possible that Apple wants to
monitor customer reaction to the idea, by letting it leak. But there’s no doubt
that decisions as fundamental as this are being taken now, or probably have
already been taken.
You can read an English summary of the story at Mac Rumours
<http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/27/iphone-7-no-3-5mm-headphone-jack-lightning/>
.
Even if the story is wrong, and I hope it is, I want to write a defence of the
headphone jack for those who think its loss wouldn’t be a big deal. Some of us
really, genuinely need it.
The story suggests that the 3.5mm headphone jack will be dispensed with,
because it’s preventing Apple from making the iPhone thinner. If they removed
the jack, they could shave more than 1mm off the thickness of the phone.
If this rumour is correct, Apple would probably include Earpods with a
Lightning connector, since specs for headphones that use the Lightning port
have been available since 2014.
According to the story, the Lightning port would include a digital to analogue
converter, so you’d still be able to connect 3.5mm headphones. There is no word
in the story that this Lightning port would be in addition to the one already
on iPhones, implying that you’ll have one port for both charging your device
and listening to wired headphones or connecting the device to a mixer.
My first objection to this rumour is a philosophical one. 3.5mm headphone jacks
are ubiquitous. The standard is supported by a massive number of manufacturers.
It would be sad if Apple required its users to carry a proprietary adapter,
probably sold separately, to connect standard equipment to their single
proprietary port. But they’ve done this before. Even on my maxed out MacBook
Pro, I have to buy a special adapter just to connect to wired Ethernet.
My remaining concerns relate to functionality. As a hearing-aid wearer, I use
my iPhone with a cable between the headphone jack and my hearing aids about 95%
of the time. There’s no latency because it’s analogue all the way, and since no
Bluetooth is involved, it’s energy efficient in terms of hearing aid battery
usage. The Lightning to analogue adapter would be one additional device to
carry, use and potentially lose, and it would mean that I couldn’t use my
iPhone in the way that is optimal for me while I’m charging it. There’s also
the possibility that the digital to analogue converter may introduce latency.
That wouldn’t be important for most tasks, but it would be detrimental to all
VoiceOver users who use 3.5mm devices, not just hearing aid wearers.
But there’s always Bluetooth, and that’s the way the world is going, right?
There may be a few exceptions, but the majority of Bluetooth audio I’ve used on
iOS is laggy with VoiceOver, Apple’s built-in screen reader for blind people
like me, that I find it a frustrating, sub-optimal experience. Streamers for
hearing aid wearers often power down very quickly after VoiceOver has stopped
speaking, to save energy. This means that hearing aid wearers who use VoiceOver
with Bluetooth streamers often must cope with missing the first second or two
of what VoiceOver is saying, as the Bluetooth streamer powers up after
detecting audio. If you’re taking a phone call or listening to music, that’s no
big deal, but for a VoiceOver user, it’s not a good experience. And Bluetooth
streamers chew through hearing aid batteries faster than an analogue
connection, imposing additional costs on hearing aid wearers.
Taking hearing impairment out of the mix, there are many people who use the
3.5mm jack, and want to do so while charging their device. Bonnie, for example,
has a pillow speaker, because she likes the radio on at night. It plugs into
her iPhone while it’s charging.
We may be about to see a similar controversy with iPhone to the one that
greeted the new MacBook’s single USB C port and all the inconveniences that go
with that. When that controversy was at its peak, proponents said that Apple
often likes to move the tech agenda forward, and that they’re uniquely
positioned to do that by making “bold” decisions like this. Sorry, I don’t
consider a single port for peripherals and charging a bold decision. It’s just
a pain. If you want to use multiple devices, you have to buy some sort of hub,
which detracts from the convenience of having an all-in-one device.
I realise that as a VoiceOver user with a hearing impairment passionate about
getting the most optimal audio experience, I’m a minority within a minority.
But if this rumour proves to be true, it will be my queue to seriously examine
other mobile options. I really don’t want a phone one more millimetre thinner,
when it’s going to create an experience for me that would be poorer.
Jonathan Mosen
Mosen Consulting
Blindness technology eBooks, tutorials and training http://Mosen.org
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