What Did You Think of the Apple Event?

[Anderton]

I didn't get to see it...opinions?

[Phil O'Keefe]

I didn't see it either.

 

Did they do away with the headphone jack on the iPhone 7 like the rumors said they were going to do?

[Phil O'Keefe]

It looks like they did do away with the headphone jack. The "good news" is that they toss in the 3.5mm to Lightning adapter. Yay.

 

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/techn...qKi?li=BBnb7Kz

 

http://www.apple.com/iphone-7/

[MikeRivers]

This is the first hit I got on Google: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/n...vent/89940506/

 

Yes, the headphone jack is gone. It comes with a free headphone adapter, though so I guess that means either it's a pretty fancy adapter to give away for free or answers my question about whether the Lightning connector (if it's still a Lightning connector) has stereo audio coming out of it.

 

I'm sure more news will roll in and be posted or linked here by later this afternoon.

 

And here we have a picture of the headphone adapter:

 

 

 

With what are volume up/down buttons (I don't know what the one in the middle is - push to talk maybe, or a remote power button for the phone) it probably does have digital guts. And they even thought to put a Lightning pass-through on it so you can charge the phone with the headphones plugged in. It does look rather clunky though, not something you'd want to shove in the pocket of your sweat pants at the gym.

 

Upon further study, this one may not be the one Apple throws in the box for free. There apparently are several available for sale already. The official one will probably be shown around soon if not yet.

 

 

 

Maybe this is what Apple's giving away.

[Geoff Grace]

I didn't see it either, but reports make it sound pretty ho-hum. My theory is that Tim Cook forgot the "One more thing..." part of the presentation at the end.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Dendy Jarrett]

I was impressed with the fact that they have doubled the storage capacity 256GB and didn't jack the price up. The camera is an impressive deal and water resistance is pretty cool as well.

 

Overall, I was excited enough to consider upgrading from my 6 Plus.

 

D

[nat whilk II]

I see a company that has little new to offer and instead is relying on an imagined trajectory of progress from the glory days.

 

nat whilk ii

[Anderton]

Nothing about desktops? Laptops? iPads?

 

I realize these are on the wane for Apple, but then again, so is the iPhone...maybe the new features will revitalize the line, especially after the recent Samsung fiasco.

 

More and more, though, it looks like Apple is just ceding the market for Surface Pro-type machines to Microsoft. I know quite a few Apple fans who just said "screw it" got a Surface Pro instead of a MacBook Pro + iPad.

 

I was also expecting some kind of nifty announcements regarding Apple Music and Apple TV aside from the London event at the end of the month being streamed. Maybe they're too busy working on the Apple car.

[Phil O'Keefe]

Nothing about desktops? Laptops? iPads?

 

There are some reports that suggest Apple may do another "event" in a month or so to announce some other things.

 

http://fortune.com/2016/09/07/apple-iphone-event-recap/

 

 

I read an article yesterday that tried to explain why doing away with the headphone jack is a good thing. I'm still not entirely convinced, but I thought the article did bring up some interesting points.

 

http://fortune.com/2016/09/08/apple-headphone-jack-gone/

 

 

 

 

[Geoff Grace]

Nothing about desktops? Laptops? iPads?

Oddly enough, yesterday's best announcement garnered little attention. It was about iPads:

 

Apple changes storage options in iPad, reduces prices for iPad Pro

 

No more 16 GB models.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[Phil O'Keefe]

The first iPad I purchased (an original iPad mini) only had 16GB, and it's always felt like too little. I wouldn't get one with less than 32GB, so the increased storage / decreased price is appreciated.

 

 

[nat whilk II]

So do the little adapters have d/a converters in them?

 

If so, I wonder if they are of lower quality than the ones the wireless buds will/do have.

 

I'm no fan of wires, they are a pain - but most wireless devices have a downside in reliability and/or security. The most successful wireless items I've owned have been computer mice and keyboards. Our wireless home network has mysterious connectivity issues to the extent that I've strung cable for most stations. Our wireless TV has limited bandwidth and a speed penalty. The wireless MIDI controller I bought was useless in wireless mode - latency off the charts.

 

Look 'n feel ain't the whole deal.

 

nat whilk ii

 

[bookumdano4]

So wait a minute, are you all saying that there's no 3.5" floppy drive on iPhones?

[Phil O'Keefe]

So do the little adapters have d/a converters in them?

 

If so, I wonder if they are of lower quality than the ones the wireless buds will/do have.

 

I'm no fan of wires, they are a pain - but most wireless devices have a downside in reliability and/or security.

 

And audio quality.

 

There are very few Bluetooth headphones that I've heard that can approach the sound quality of wired headphones. Maybe that will change because of this, but if Bluetooth speakers are any indication, we'll probably see a lot more cheap and / or overpriced junk with an emphasis on "style" as opposed to serious performers with really high audio quality.

 

The most successful wireless items I've owned have been computer mice and keyboards.

 

Love 'em!

 

I'm all for going wireless, and after reading that article I linked to previously, I can see certain advantages to Apple's move - but they're nearly all computer-related and interfacing advantages, as opposed to audio-related ones. Outside of the convenience of getting rid of the hassle of cables, the move doesn't bode well for audio quality and fidelity, but we'll have to wait and see how they implement it, where (and how good) the D/A is, how big and clunky the 3.5mm adapter is, etc.

 

 

 

[Zooey]

This is the most unintentionally hilarious thing I have read on the internet in a long time. From something called "Tech Radar."

 

Soak it all in: http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/why-the-lightning-port-beats-bluetooth-for-sound-quality-1327836

 

With Lightning or Bluetooth, the audio signal is transferred to our headphones digitally - meaning that the signal isn't degraded like it is with a traditional 3.5mm jack.

Instead, the audio signals are decoded by the digital-analogue converter (DAC) in our headphones, pulling the bits apart and making them into the smooth analogue sound we know.

Perhaps the simplest way to compare the two is in terms of how much data they can transfer: the more data they can shift between your phone and your headphone's DAC, the better quality audio can be. More data means more bits of sound to play with and reassemble - and on this measure, there's only one winner.

Simply put, Lightning cables are capable of transferring much more data than Bluetooth, which means higher fidelity audio in your ears.

 

 

[MikeRivers]

So do the little adapters have d/a converters in them?

 

Yup. This isn't really brand new. When Apple introduced the Lightning connector, they came up with a Lightning adapter to accommodate the people who had 30-pin docks from their previous generation iThingy. It had a D/A converter that shot audio out on the correct pins so the dock would play audio.

 

If so, I wonder if they are of lower quality than the ones the wireless buds will/do have.

 

Converter chips get better about every two weeks, so it's unlikey that there's anything to complain about here. I'm sure fidelity is at least as good or maybe even better than the analog output on last week's phone. The wireless ear buds are degraded more by the Bluetooth dat compression than by the D/A converter. There have been some developments with what might be called "audiophile Bluetooth" in the past couple of years that seem to be good enough to keep people who have bought $2500 wireless speakers happy.

 

 

 

[nat whilk II]

 

There have been some developments with what might be called "audiophile Bluetooth" in the past couple of years that seem to be good enough to keep people who have bought $2500 wireless speakers happy.

 

I have never....ever, never, never, ever been happy perched on the leading edge of technology.

 

I started lagging behind the leading edge, purposefully, some 20 years ago. Tortoise and the hare...read up on it!

 

nat whilk ii

 

[MikeRivers]

 

I have never....ever, never, never, ever been happy perched on the leading edge of technology.

 

Me neither. I don't have an iPhone. My car is old enough so that it doesn't have Bluetooth integrated with the radio, though it's old enough to have a cassette player and CD player. I use a cassette adapter to play my (Android) phone through the radio when on a long road trip. Sound quality? What do I care? I'm busy driving, and I just enjoy my pre-recorded entertainment and not having to find a new radio station ever 50 miles.

 

No reason why I couldn't do the same thing with Bluetooth (which I often use when I have a rental car) or a D/A adapter. I don't live in the future, but often try to make do with the pasture.

[nat whilk II]

I don't live in the future, but often try to make do with the pasture.

 

I like that. If you coined that, you are to be praised.

 

nat whilk ii

 

[MikeRivers]

Thank you.

[Danhedonia]

I think Apple's going to have some tough times. Looking back, I think their differentiators were:

* sexier form factor / fantastic design

* superior functionality in terms of 'one touch' / 'plug and play'

 

As they have lost ground to #1 above, I see the cycling through increasingly absurd connectivity schemes as a sort of slow-motion panic. At the moment, the only positive I can see for Apple products is the tremendous lead they have with developers.

 

Apple's products used to look best, work easiest, and they charged you handsomely for that -- and treated their customers fairly well. Not any more. I've never worked with a development team that had to port an IOS app to Droid, but wonder how prohibitive that could really be once things change? Mobile Windows?

 

Who knows? Apple won that share of the development spend by offering more-desirable hardware. Now that their hardware isn't more desirable, there's going to be a levelling process.

 

As for "it's better to be wireless," well - sure. It's also better to have solar panels than burn coal, and better to have an electric car, and better to have a lot of things. But once you force people to make that change, you start ticking them off.