There's no good reason for Apple to kill the headphone jack

One of the things that I like about the 3.5mm jack is that it&#x27;s ubiquitous. I unplug them from my PC, plug into my phone, then into a tablet...<p>I have no prior experience on wireless headsets. How well does pairing work when there are multiple devices? I haven&#x27;t had a good experience with other gadgets in the past; I used to dualboot my PC, but pairing my Bluetooth mouse with one OS automatically unlinked it from the other OS.<p>I don&#x27;t know if it&#x27;s just a bugged device or if that&#x27;s what is supposed to happen. If it&#x27;s the latter case, I wouldn&#x27;t see any advantages for wireless headphones over 3.5mm, at least in my case.<p>EDIT: Typos.

I have never had a bad experience with Bluetooth.<p>I don&#x27;t use wired headphones anymore, wireless is just better for running.<p>That said -- I oppose eliminating this jack. My hearing disabled father relies on it for his custom monaural earpiece.<p>Why eliminate such a functional port in the first place? As someone who took the MacBook plunge USB-C is a pain in the ass.

I&#x27;d be totally OK with Apple producing a slightly thicker phone that is 1) Easier to hold 2) Doesn&#x27;t bend in your pocket 3) Has a headphone jack 4) Has more room inside for a larger battery 5) Has more room inside for a SD reader

Not to mention wired headphones work even if there are 200 people in the room with the same headphones.<p>200 is a large number, even a number as low as 10 in your immediate vicinity causes trouble. Use your microwave oven? Too bad.<p>(Owner of wonderful wireless qc35&#x27;s - still use wires)

Of course there is. They want to shove iTunes DRM down your throat. They can&#x27;t do that with standard headphone jacks. But with their own solution, nothing is stopping them from allowing only headphones with built-in DRM.

I bought a pair of Bluetooth headphones the other day. Was really excited to have a slick new headset to replace my $3 earbuds &amp; mic combo that I&#x27;m using on my PS4.<p>Turns out PS4 doesn&#x27;t support Bluetooth. Just the 3.5mm jack.<p>Oh well, I guess I can use them at work. I whipped em out, paired em up to the Bluetooth on my laptop, and they paired up fine.<p>Unfortunately, they didn&#x27;t show up in the list of default devices for sound output or microphone input.<p>An hour of googling, a new set of driver downloads, re-pairing, this time WITH the extra settings under the advanced menu checked off...<p>Still don&#x27;t work. I can&#x27;t afford to burn any more time on this. 3.5mm at the office it is.<p>Maybe they work on my phone (Android) ... They do.<p>It&#x27;s actually really nice to have no wires between me and my music while at the gym. No worries about the phone call g out of my pocket while doing decline bench press, no annoyance about the phone getting in the way during a deadlift or clean &amp; press (because it can sit on the floor!)<p>They were about 2 - 3 time more expensive than my regular headphones. Are annoying to charge, and only work in 1&#x2F;3 of the places I need headphones.<p>But for the gym, they&#x27;re not horrible.<p>Oh! And they&#x27;re too damned loud with no volume control. I have my phone volume set to 1 and these things are still louder than I&#x27;d like.<p>Anyways, that&#x27;s a long way of saying I tend towards agreeing with the article.

New bluetooth is great. It used to be shitty, but my galaxy s6 pairs perfectly with my car every time. no complaints

This sounds to be 5 years out of date.<p>My Plantronics bluetooth headset works and pairs fine, ten quid. I also have some Bluetooth earphones (Vansky), it has issues but for the most part works really well impressive for fifteen quid.<p>I got fed up with wires. My main issue is with losing the ear bud gromits, I thought this was going to be an article about the audio quality; not a dyspeptic rant.

How do you &quot;unplug&quot; bluetooth headphones from one device and plug them into another?

It&#x27;s standard to pair with NFC today. Just tap your headphones on your phone and they&#x27;re paired.<p>Example: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4Aqr4fskGxA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=4Aqr4fskGxA</a>

What about noise cancelling earphones ? their size really benefits from an external power source - which is in a standard format - so less lock-in games we see in android), they already have a chip inside - so theoretically the new headphone connector shouldn&#x27;t make them much more expensive, and maybe there&#x27;s a possibility of co-processing the noise cancelling algorithm on the phone .<p>Couple that with ,maybe, Apple starting a technology war on that front(and we already see few rivals pre-attack, like leEco, Samsung, Sony) could be a beneficial thing for us.

I used to hate Bluetooth as well and my prior experiences have been exactly like the author described. However a few months ago I took the bold step of buying a pair of Power Beats. And I use them with my SONY Walkman. I was pleasantly surprised when the whole setup just worked out of the box and the SONY and the Beats were able to communicate. Hooray.<p>However this still doesn&#x27;t eliminate the wires. The beats have a cable between them which annoyingly sticks to the back of my neck when I turn my head and unplugs either ear. Almost as annoying as my original wired head plugs.<p>And then there&#x27;s the recharging, which isn&#x27;t big of a deal of itself but ofc after the recharging I have to reconnect the devices. And obv there&#x27;s the occasional glitch that it doesn&#x27;t work the first time and I have to redo it and then it works on the second time.<p>Anyway, even if Apple does in fact remove the ubiquitous 3.5 mm stereo jack I&#x27;m sure plenty of people will bitch and moan <i>and</i> still buy it. Such are the fanboys (;

Of course there is; so they can make a killing on the peripherals market.

Hmm this could lose them a large chunk of the audiophile&#x2F;music lovers market (though they may be losing that anyway). A lot of top quality headphones don&#x27;t have removable wires and carrying an adapter is a pain. Why choose Apple anymore when you&#x27;ve brilliant music phones like the HTC 10, LG V10 and vivo xplay 5 kicking around.

Apple&#x27;s bluetooth has such a high failure rate on laptops, IMO, it simply doesn&#x27;t work. After trying to get it to work in multiple locations with multiple laptops over multiple years, it&#x27;s clear to me that Apple does not have the capability to deliver working bluetooth on its laptops (at least one that works with audio for longer than a few seconds at a time). Which makes the push that much more of an asshole move on their part. They&#x27;ve had years to come up with a fix for their bluetooth (and RF and WiFi) and have failed, yet now they&#x27;re trying to push a technology they&#x27;re not even competent in.<p>This is like buying blood testing kits from Theranos at this point. And that&#x27;s before you start to get to the problems addressed in this article.

I have owned maybe seven bluetooth capable device and hosts of bluetooth audio devices. I have not had a single one that I would consider working. Random disconnects, issues pairing, and static interference.<p>I don&#x27;t know how anyone uses bluetooth in any serious manner.

It&#x27;s already been leaked that Apple will bundle a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter with the phone. Most users will stick it on the headphone jack and forget about it.<p>(PS I&#x27;m not saying removing the headphone jack is a good idea).

I have a pair of nice headphones at work. (Sony mdr v6). They sound great and I don&#x27;t want to replace them.<p>There are 2 things the plug does for me, 1) allows me to easily switch between using my computer for audio or my phone. Prevents my computer from making noise that might bother my officemates (auto play if I forget to turn the volume down)<p>Also isn&#x27;t there a smaller&#x2F;thinner 2.5mm headphone jack? I had a phone with headphones for that (Nokia?)

I haven&#x27;t had significant problems with bluetooth in about four years. Also his steps:<p>Unbox Bluetooth headphones. Try to put them in pairing mode. Can’t figure out how to get in pairing mode. Open Settings -&gt; Bluetooth on phone. Wait for headphones to show up.<p>Should have &quot;read the instructions&quot; at step one. I know few people believe this but the manufacturer often knows a lot about getting their product to work out of the box.

I believe the reason is so they can make them thinner.

I&#x27;ve heard it makes waterproofing easier.