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The Walled Garden Closes In

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IainB:
I thought this was rather amusing:
Listening to music and charging your iPhone 7 at the same time costs extra

Maybe the designers were operating in a state of commercially-enforced haste and overlooked a couple of design considerations here...    :-[

Josh:
Audio quality aside, how many of Apple's primary target demographic actually care that much about studio quality or better audio? How many are downloading FLAC files or FLAC-HD files and hoping for top quality playback while listening to audio on a mobile device? The technophiles of <insert technology here> will always take issue when a major shift takes place in the tech realm. However, unless you are talking about a tech-specific manufacturer (Monster audio, Bose, etc), most consumer-level products will adapt and provide "Good enough" quality.

When you walk around and see people listening to music or sitting somewhere listening to a book/watching a video with headphones on, what do you see? I see one of two things: I either see people with the "Factory standard" Apple earpods or I see some form of "Beats by Dre" design headphone. I rarely see top of the line headphones while people are out and about. Something tells me this is Apple's target market and is who they are really after. As I said above, the technophiles in ANY market will always cry foul when a technology is changed which hinders their investment. It happened with DVD (Yes, I remember a lot of VHS junkies complaining about the cost and transition) and then again with Blu-Ray. Heck, we still have folks who state that a turntable is far superior to any digital format.

As for the NSA and DRM groups, I am all for more control on the consumer end of what we can/can't do with property we purchase. We absolutely need groups looking out for the consumer and we need to maintain our rights. That said, I still don't see this as a major issue. Does digital audio create a chance occurrence of more integration of DRM? Absolutely. But, with the transition, led by Apple, away from DRM-based audio, will this likely occur? Apple pushed many manufacturers to eliminate DRM from audio and provide their audio files DRM-Free. I can still download any file from Amazon, Apple, and various other audio sources and use it anywhere I choose. I can transcode it, back it up, and even alter it in any way I see fit. Unless we get to a point where these DRM-free files are restricted to a certain device (as in you cannot transfer them off), then I fail to see where this will become an issue. I really doubt the NSA cares about controlling what you listen to or monitoring it, for that point. Many fail to understand exactly what the NSA's job is and how they operate. I am not an apologist for the NSA, Apple, or any other organization, but I do try and level the extreme views of any side, or in some cases paranoia, with a well-rounded logical balance.

Disclaimer: I own an iPhone and MBP. I only own the iPhone because the Nexus was sold out for 6 months as I waited to buy it from Google.

wraith808:
Audio quality aside, how many of Apple's primary target demographic actually care that much are studio quality or better audio? How many are downloading FLAC files or FLAC-HD files and hoping for top quality playback while listening to audio on a mobile device? The technophiles of <insert technology here> will always take issue when a major shift takes place in the tech realm. However, unless you are talking about a tech-specific manufacturer (Monster audio, Bose, etc), most consumer-level products will adapt and provide "Good enough" quality.
-Josh (September 12, 2016, 08:46 AM)
--- End quote ---

Actually, one of those formats, i.e. ALAC, is Lossless iTunes audio.  And there is a whole subset of audiophiles that do always want lossless quality, and most of them are in that same demographic.  That said, I'm not sure how many use their phone for this.  However, this seems to be a slippery slope that would affect them once it moves on to the iPad flavors, as many of them do use it for that.  This might not be the intent.  But it is downslope of this decision.

After further consideration, I missed an obvious connection.  Musicians.  All of my musical tools that I use connect via the 3.5mm jack.  And the one that I use that even gives the opportunity not to use the 3.5mm jack, doesn't do well over BT, at least in my experience.  And there area lot of musicians that use it in that way.

Check out http://www.ikmultimedia.com/ to see the types of tools to which I'm referring.

wraith808:
Interesting article:

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/09/no-headphone-jack-nintendo-did-it-first/

I never got into the portable game systems (I tried the Playstation one back when they first came out), but apparently Nintendo did test these waters, in much the same way, for much the same reason, with the same response, though it didn't hurt sales.  But they figured out a way to get it back in with their next iteration, which says something IMO.

Deozaan:
I never got into the portable game systems (I tried the Playstation one back when they first came out), but apparently Nintendo did test these waters, in much the same way, for much the same reason, with the same response, though it didn't hurt sales.  But they figured out a way to get it back in with their next iteration, which says something IMO.
-wraith808 (September 19, 2016, 12:44 PM)
--- End quote ---

I'd forgotten that the GBA SP didn't have a headphone jack. That didn't bother me as much as the fact that the GBA Link Cable connection was right next to it, and some games that connected to the GameCube, such as Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles or Zelda Four Swords, used a GBA Link Cable connector that covered the power port. So if your battery got low, you couldn't charge and play at the same time. This was made even more aggravating in a game like Zelda Four Swords where if the game lost a connection to the GBA for more than a couple of seconds, it would kick you out to the menu.

"Yeah, you know the last 45 minutes you've spent trying to finish this level with 3 of your friends? Well, all that time was wasted and the progress lost because one of you dared to let your battery die."

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