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Sound Reinforcement - Forums for Live Sound Professionals - Your Displayed Name Must Be Your Real Full Name To Post In The Live Sound Forums => The Basement => Topic started by: Aaron Maurer on September 07, 2016, 06:03:05 AM
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Hum not a real fuzzy feeling as my phone is my go to for music pre, post, and after sets at a gig.
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/09/06/492876197/apple-may-test-iphone-users-loyalty-if-it-dumps-the-headphone-jack
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I'm as disappointed as you are, and I really really hope the rumors are wrong. My phone is often my test audio generator. Yes, there will be adaptors, but no, I'm not going to carry on in my pocket.
I also don't look forward to the first time I tell someone important that "No, I cannot play anything off your phone through the PA."
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Get rid of all jacks and do inductive charging. Then the phone can be waterproof.
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Radial better get ready for all the Bluetooth interfaces I am going to have to sell to my customer now.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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The rumors also include a lighting to 1/8" headphone adapter. Just add it to your kit and you're good to go.
Audio professionals won't be affected nearly as badly as the consumer who just wants to plug in their headphones at the gym or on a plane. Or who want to impromptu plug their phone into a friends stereo, car, etc.
This whole thing is going to be a major PITA, but apple probably has enough of a market share that eventually the market will be flooded with compatible headphones, cables, etc.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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The rumors also include a lighting to 1/8" headphone adapter. Just add it to your kit and you're good to go.
Audio professionals won't be affected nearly as badly as the consumer who just wants to plug in their headphones at the gym or on a plane. Or who want to impromptu plug their phone into a friends stereo, car, etc.
This whole thing is going to be a major PITA, but apple probably has enough of a market share that eventually the market will be flooded with compatible headphones, cables, etc.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I expect Beats headphones will have an advantage somehow, eventually. Of course Apple bought Beats for the music part of it, but plenty of people pay far too much for those lousy headphones.
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I expect Beats headphones will have an advantage somehow, eventually. Of course Apple bought Beats for the music part of it, but plenty of people pay far too much for those lousy headphones.
Is lousy a polite euphemism for shitty? Beats makes my Sony phones seems good in comparison.
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The rumors also include a lighting to 1/8" headphone adapter. Just add it to your kit and you're good to go.
Audio professionals won't be affected nearly as badly as the consumer who just wants to plug in their headphones at the gym or on a plane. Or who want to impromptu plug their phone into a friends stereo, car, etc.
This whole thing is going to be a major PITA, but apple probably has enough of a market share that eventually the market will be flooded with compatible headphones, cables, etc.
Interestingly enough, all of these same types of comments were abound when Apple released the iMac in 1998. "OMG WHAT? A computer without a FLOPPY DRIVE?!? HOW CANZ YOU LIVE?!?" They decided on a course of action that was, to be candid, very different then what other computer manufacturers were doing, and people got over it.
So, same deal here- if they really decide to introduce a new phone without a headphone jack, yeah, people are going to have to find new ways to get the audio off of their phone, but at the same time it's not like we're all throwing away our current iProduct just because New & Shiny was introduced.
I'm as disappointed as you are, and I really really hope the rumors are wrong. My phone is often my test audio generator. Yes, there will be adaptors, but no, I'm not going to carry on in my pocket.
I also don't look forward to the first time I tell someone important that "No, I cannot play anything off your phone through the PA."
I wouldn't have an adapter in my pocket, but you can bet I'll have appropriate adapters in our workboxes. We Deliver Results, Not Excuses.
-Ray
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Hey, don't you go dissin' my venerable Sony 7506s now.
Is lousy a polite euphemism for shitty? Beats makes my Sony phones seems good in comparison.
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Reminds me of the time Microsoft introduced Windows Me and people complained that their 16-bit apps and drivers no longer worked (despite Windows having supported 32-bit for over 10 years -- yes, even under 3.1 -- already).
Yes, headphones and earbuds with 1/8" connectors are ubiquitous. They've been around a LOOOOONG time. It's a supremely convenient interface. But it also places some limits on the ability to construct phones: in the super-compact world of mobile devices, aside from the screen and battery, the headphone jack is the largest component in the device. I think Apple is looking at designs that just aren't possible if they have to include a headphone jack.
Think of the Apple Watch. They're going to turn it into a full-fledged phone. Rather than linkng to your iPhone, it will be your iPhone. On your wrist. And there's no room to put a 1/8" jack there. Or maybe they are working on a super-thin flexible device. A 1/4" plug is not flexible.
Look at the market: it wants to be wireless-everything. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me to want to eliminate less than 3 feet of wire, but that's what the market wants. I'll admit, I use a wireless mouse. I hate mice with wires. (I hate touchpads on laptops even more, but that's a different rant.) I can see where the next generation of consumers will want wireless earbuds. No wires to tangle.
There's another angle to this too: device maintenance. That headphone jack is an open sewer to collect all manner of garbage. If debris gets in there, it can cause the phone to assume that a headphone is always plugged in. It happened to my wife's phone; she has to turn it on speakerphone to use it. The hold-it-up-to-your-ear method doesn't work. It's extremely difficult to clean out. Without the headphone jack, a common support nuisance goes away.
I can see why the rumor might be true. For mobile devices, the headphone jack can be a royal pain in the output port.
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Once again our friends at Apple
"Welcome to the proprietary loop"
How darest thou show displeasure in our decisions,
summon the royal beheader.
Hush up dumb ole consumer
you get what we want you to have.
love me some ipad4 though :)
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It's official, iPhone 7 has no headphone jack. Time to get those BT adapters. :(
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It's official, iPhone 7 has no headphone jack. Time to get those BT adapters. :(
I've been waiting for a while for a 48v powered stereo blue tooth receiver...Radial?
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Once again our friends at Apple
"Welcome to the proprietary loop"
How darest thou show displeasure in our decisions,
summon the royal beheader.
Well, it's more of a they're taking the lead on things. Again with the whole floppy drive thing. Media (through file sizes and ease of transmission) evolved beyond the need for a floppy drive- they were just the first ones to step up and say SCREW IT, NO FLOPPY FOR YOU.
Hush up dumb ole consumer
you get what we want you to have.
And yeah, anyone who thinks the consumer drives most business decisions at mainstream companies is quite delusional. I love it especially when people complain that something changed at or was added to Facebook (or removed) -- and "WHY OH WHY did you do this, Mark?!?" -- or get upset that Facebook would GASP track their online habits or otherwise gather all of this information on their users.
Information.
About habits and behaviours.
Valuable information for their marketing and advertising partners...
-Ray
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On the bright side, it will make a darn good excuse as to why I won't/can't plug in your phone and play your tunes, when a drunk random turns up at FOH making requests. "Sure I'll hook it up, here's the cable....... Oh sorry" ;)
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It's all about Courage... lolwut please Phil Schiller.
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Phone ships with a 3.5mm adapter but that consumes the lightning connector and I didn't hear anything about inductive charging. So you're screwed until someone comes up with a lightning splitter thing.
Since the lightning connector is digital, I presume the little adapter cable has some sort of DAC and amplifier in it. Probably not very good given the space in the form factor they showed. But you can always use an outboard DAC. I friend just got a Chord and is raving about the sound quality.
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Since the lightning connector is digital, I presume the little adapter cable has some sort of DAC and amplifier in it. Probably not very good given the space in the form factor they showed. But you can always use an outboard DAC. I friend just got a Chord and is raving about the sound quality.
I wouldn't assume that - the lightning connector has way to many conductors to be just digital. I think they have planned this all along.
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I wouldn't assume that - the lightning connector has way to many conductors to be just digital. I think they have planned this all along.
If you shop for iOS audio interfaces, they're different. And the difference is explained as the 30 pin having an analog signal output while the Lighting is only digital. I just went though this getting an interface to run Studio Six Digital's Transfer Function app. I had an older iPad and newer phone. It's not a matter of connection adapters, they're not compatible. You need their Camera USB interface on the 30 pin iOS devices to use with a newer Lightning digital only interface. The older interfaces with analog lines on the 30 pin were becoming scarce. So I ended up buying a new iPad so that everything was compatible (at least that was what I told my wife ;))
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Well, it's more of a they're taking the lead on things. Again with the whole floppy drive thing. Media (through file sizes and ease of transmission) evolved beyond the need for a floppy drive- they were just the first ones to step up and say SCREW IT, NO FLOPPY FOR YOU.
Except the floppy disk had become unusable for many files due to it's small capacity. It's time had come and gone, just as it had for actual "floppy" disks.
The simple analog headphone connection is still 100% usable and is certainly no where near the end of its time as a useful item.
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Since the phone isn't any thinner than previous, I suspect the primary reason is internal volume. Also, a headphone jack requires a number of additional parts, the cost of which could go elsewhere. Besides the connector itself, you need a flex cable to get it to the main board, which is rarely near where the connector is. Even though the flex is thin, you still have to work out a routing between the two, and hold it in place somehow. You need a DAC and an audio amplifier which is another IC to fit somewhere and pay for. Getting rid of all this makes room for a larger battery, lowers cost and simplifies assembly. So while I like having a jack on the phone, I understand getting rid of it.
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For tjose of us that play the stock market, there has to be an opportunity here to invest in whatever tech is going to replace the phone jack.
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I wouldn't assume that - the lightning connector has way to many conductors to be just digital. I think they have planned this all along.
I don't know. I thought analogue disappeared with the 30pin connector.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_(connector)
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Since the phone isn't any thinner than previous, I suspect the primary reason is internal volume. Also, a headphone jack requires a number of additional parts, the cost of which could go elsewhere. Besides the connector itself, you need a flex cable to get it to the main board, which is rarely near where the connector is. Even though the flex is thin, you still have to work out a routing between the two, and hold it in place somehow. You need a DAC and an audio amplifier which is another IC to fit somewhere and pay for. Getting rid of all this makes room for a larger battery, lowers cost and simplifies assembly. So while I like having a jack on the phone, I understand getting rid of it.
And removing a big hole in the case helps with the water resistance.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
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For tjose of us that play the stock market, there has to be an opportunity here to invest in whatever tech is going to replace the phone jack.
I cannot use Square without a phone jack. Some people pay that way.
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Reminds me of the time Microsoft introduced Windows Me and people complained that their 16-bit apps and drivers no longer worked (despite Windows having supported 32-bit for over 10 years -- yes, even under 3.1 -- already).
I am somewhat of a Windows historian, Windows 3.1 did not have the 32-bit abstraction layer. That feature made it's public debut in Windows for Workgroups along with the stunningly (for the time) fast 32 bit hard disk, network and display driver stack.
The 80x86 architecture had a 24 bit address bus which allowed it to directly address up to 16MB of RAM, however since Windows 3.1 was a DOS application, relying on the extensions of himem.sys to access more than 1MB of memory. This is a convention left over from the 8086 CPU and the whole DOS 768k user space.
If you want to start another thread I could bore you even further as my machine code experience goes back to the Zilog Z80 and Intel 8080 processors and the CP/M operating system, where I cut my teeth.
I love the subject because in the late 70's I was part of the inner circle of R/CPM bulletin board operators. Literally in a single lifetime I have gone from 300 (for all practical purposes 1200) baud dial up connections to DWDM multi-lambda 10G Internet peers. In 1982 I had the privilege to connect a 9600 baud point to point connection from my University in Tampa to either Duke or UNC I forgot. I have a vivid memory of the statistical mux on the connection as we had to share it for some administrative purpose. the SLIP stack was running on an NCR mini tower running System V. Bob Metcalfe (of Ethernet and 3COM fame) and Dennis Ritchie were frequent posters to newsgroups back then. It was really heady times.
Wow - what a thread drift but a fun flashback
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but plenty of people pay far too much for those lousy headphones.
You are doing a disservice to things which are legitimately lousy!
I saw a video where a set of Beats headphones were taken apart. Just $5 of generic cheap driver inside... and a weight to make it feel more substantial!
Steve.
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Everyone was slagging off at the hopeless 1/8" connector until Apple decided to dump it...
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Everyone was slagging off at the hopeless 1/8" connector until Apple decided to dump it...
You noticed huh?
Mac
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Hum not a real fuzzy feeling as my phone is my go to for music pre, post, and after sets at a gig.
http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/09/06/492876197/apple-may-test-iphone-users-loyalty-if-it-dumps-the-headphone-jack
I just saw THIS (http://www.radialeng.com/btpro.php) on another forum. It looks like a good solution to the lack of an 1/8" jack.
Mac
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I just saw THIS (http://www.radialeng.com/btpro.php) on another forum. It looks like a good solution to the lack of an 1/8" jack.
Mac
That is what I was referencing back in post #4. Should have posted a link.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I am somewhat of a Windows historian, Windows 3.1 did not have the 32-bit abstraction layer. That feature made it's public debut in Windows for Workgroups along with the stunningly (for the time) fast 32 bit hard disk, network and display driver stack.
You're right, sort of. And I'm right, sort of. I did a little more research ('cuz my memory cells are dusty) and found out that while Windows 3.1 (the version that ran on top of DOS) was only a 16-bit kernel and therefore didn't have true 32-bit support, Microsoft did release an add-on called "Win32s" that provided some 32-bit support on DOS/Win3.1 by utilizing a backported subset of the Win32 API from Windows NT 3.1 (which was a true 32-bit OS). [I remember installing it on a DOS/Windows 3.1 box!] WfW3.11 did include more comprehensive 32-bit support when it was released in 1993.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s
But back to the headphone jack.
Apple's target market is the consumer, and the typical consumer is ONLY going to use the jack for headphones. And if BT headphones/earbuds are available, why bother with a jack? Getting rid of the jack enables them to do things with the phone package that having the jack prevents, like improving water resistance, making space for stereo speakers, improving battery life, slimming the device, etc.
Apple has a way of driving technology. I hesitate to call them "innovators" -- they haven't ever designed anything truly new and revolutionary. What they do is they take existing technology and present it in a highly usable form, and that form becomes the new standard which everyone else tries to emulate (*ahem*Samsung*ahem*). Apple excels at usability through simplicity. (Bloat is easy. Simplicity is hard to achieve. It requires a ton of creativity and resources to make it happen.)
A couple of weeks ago I was running sound for my church's bible camp. For some of the activities, each cabin group was to have "theme" music. Rather than try to swap out between 10 different phones (and have to figure out how use them -- phones have a habit of locking when you're waiting for the cue), it was far easier for me to use my laptop to replay the music. I have a general policy of "I don't touch your phone" so if they want me to play something from their phone either I have to get it on my laptop or they have to run their phone. From a sound reinforcement provider perspective, I'm not lamenting the loss of the headphone jack. A phone is a terrible tool for our line of work.
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Monday Morning Quarterbacking aside, I'd like someone to tell me that they don't foresee increased trouble in the 2.4GHz ISM spectrum in the upcoming years as Apple forces us to Bluetooth connections. Forcing 25 million additional devices a year into the ISM bands will be ugly.
I'm currently sitting on a plane with only 83MHz of 2.4GHz ISM spectrum. 44MHz of which are occupied by the inflight WIFI system, which is saturated with Delta's streaming service. That only leaves 35 1MHz Bluetooth channels(or 18 BLE channels at 2MHz) for the ~200 people in this metal tube. Spread out over the 200ft, there probably isn't much interference in September 2016. But in September 2017 onwards when the multiple generations of 3.5mm lacking devices hit the market I don't see how there couldn't be signal degradation.
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You're right, sort of. And I'm right, sort of. I did a little more research ('cuz my memory cells are dusty) and found out that while Windows 3.1 (the version that ran on top of DOS) was only a 16-bit kernel and therefore didn't have true 32-bit support, Microsoft did release an add-on called "Win32s" that provided some 32-bit support on DOS/Win3.1 by utilizing a backported subset of the Win32 API from Windows NT 3.1 (which was a true 32-bit OS). [I remember installing it on a DOS/Windows 3.1 box!] WfW3.11 did include more comprehensive 32-bit support when it was released in 1993.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Win32s
But back to the headphone jack.
Cool, that I didn't know about. I did have an NT server about that timeframe, with en EISA SCSI card and a pair of 66's would be my guess
I don't mind the lack of a headphone jack either. If Apple went to USB-C that would be smart.
I expect to see a whole new crop of digital audio interfaces for phones now with high quality Analog Out or maybe even AES. That would be slick.
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Cool, that I didn't know about. I did have an NT server about that timeframe, with en EISA SCSI card and a pair of 66's would be my guess
I don't mind the lack of a headphone jack either. If Apple went to USB-C that would be smart.
I expect to see a whole new crop of digital audio interfaces for phones now with high quality Analog Out or maybe even AES. That would be slick.
I was digging on OS/2 back in my telco IT days. What a shame...
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But in September 2017 onwards when the multiple generations of 3.5mm lacking devices hit the market I don't see how there couldn't be signal degradation.
What the masses don't seem to understand is that using WiFi/Bluetooth in a crowd is just like trying to have a conversation in a crowd of people having conversations. The bigger the crowd of people talking, the harder it is to communicate.
With WiFi/BT there is a perception that it's 1:1 communication; it's not obvious to most people that the conversation is really 1:everybody but the system is discarding the noise. The more noise there is on the spectrum, the harder it is for the devices to maintain the 1:1 conversation. That's also why I say that a WiFi network is more like a hub than a switch: all devices on a WiFi channel receive ALL the traffic on that channel, even if the traffic is from an SSID that it's not associated with. The device has to sort out the traffic addressed to it, rejecting all other traffic. If the device supports 100 Mbps bandwidth, but there's 90 Mpbs of traffic addressed to other devices, that device only gets 10 Mbps.
There's an interesting effect in a crowd of people. As communication becomes more difficult, people naturally raise their voices. That increases the noise floor, making it even more difficult to communicate so people raise their voices even more... it's a compounding problem. If someone gets everyone's attention so they suddenly quiet down, then people go back to talking, the noise floor will reset to a lower level and communication is easier for a while.
Same thing with WiFi/BT. If devices' output power was reduced to the minimum necessary, the noise floor is lowered so communication can improve. The problem is that you'll never get everyone in your neighborhood to reduce the power of their WiFi so the signal barely extends beyond their walls; there's always the ones that believe they need max power to get max speed, and the ones that have no idea how to turn down the power (drum softly). Then as the spectrum becomes more crowded with more devices, the noise floor increases so more power is needed and the noise increases even more.
Or to put it cruder terms, it's like a farting contest. The more people you have farting, the more the air smells like a sewer.
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For what it's worth, we've been using Bluetooth playback from my friend's phone into the living room stereo for about 3 years now (mostly on Saturday mornings when he DJs off the Internet music thematically apropos of the preceding evening's events or discussion, which can be pretty damn amusing).
I'll stick my neck out and say that I find the sound quality entirely acceptable. The limiting factor to sound quality is generally the crappy tracks we're playing. When we get a low-distortion, quiet, not dynamically f'd-up track, it sounds good. For use in front of the public we'd need an interface that doesn't say "thump -- phone one connected" over the audio out, but I'm sure that problem has been solved.
It will be interesting to see how bad the spectrum saturation problem turns out to be. Much like the 3-to-1 rule in close-micing multiple sources, it comes down to the relative distance separation of the intended pair from each other to the next nearest pair of transceivers.
Best,
--Frank
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We're overthinking this. There's only one reason for Apple to eliminate the headphone jack:
http://www.apple.com/airpods/
Without the headphone jack, they can sell more of the $159 bluetooth AirPods that they also introduced concurrently with the iPhone 7.
(EDIT: Corrected the price. A dead-tree-newspaper article I read this morning said $249. Apple's website says $159.)
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We're overthinking this. There's only one reason for Apple to eliminate the headphone jack:
http://www.apple.com/airpods/
Without the headphone jack, they can sell more of the $249 bluetooth AirPods that they also introduced concurrently with the iPhone 7.
Yup it's all about the benjamins...
JR
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We're overthinking this. There's only one reason for Apple to eliminate the headphone jack:
http://www.apple.com/airpods/
Without the headphone jack, they can sell more of the $159 bluetooth AirPods that they also introduced concurrently with the iPhone 7.
(EDIT: Corrected the price. A dead-tree-newspaper article I read this morning said $249. Apple's website says $159.)
Precisely.
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I cannot use Square without a phone jack. Some people pay that way.
It's not like your current iDevice immediately stops working. (I can still use an iphone4 with square -on wifi without even active cell service on the thing)
Within the years or so before you are forced to upgrade I'm sure Square will come up with a new dongle anyways
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The ISM band will be OK. Getting 3' from your phone to the earphones is no problem. If we are worried about spectrum congestion, how about audio? The whole world uses 0-20kHz!
There are many aspects of products that we put up with to achieve an outcome. Those product aspects are mechanisms for delivering the outcome, but are not the outcome itself.
Wires are undesireable, we only put up with them to achieve an outcome.
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Wires are undesireable, we only put up with them to achieve an outcome.
Just ask any wedding coordinator. ;D
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The rumors also include a lighting to 1/8" headphone adapter. Just add it to your kit and you're good to go.
Audio professionals won't be affected nearly as badly as the consumer who just wants to plug in their headphones at the gym or on a plane. Or who want to impromptu plug their phone into a friends stereo, car, etc.
This whole thing is going to be a major PITA, but apple probably has enough of a market share that eventually the market will be flooded with compatible headphones, cables, etc.
And if you want the phone on a charger rather than relying on the battery there's always THIS (http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNN62AM/A/iphone-lightning-dock-black)
Mac
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Why wait for the iPhone7 when you can buy the upgrade: http://appleplugs.com/
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It's not like your current iDevice immediately stops working. (I can still use an iphone4 with square -on wifi without even active cell service on the thing)
Within the years or so before you are forced to upgrade I'm sure Square will come up with a new dongle anyways
Square already has a contactless+chip reader that's BT that works with the iPhone. https://squareup.com/shop/reader-contactless-chip-60-week
The audio jack Square reader is the free one they give out to get people started, but it's limited. So yeah, you'll have to pay $50 bucks, but you can still use Square, and now with more credit cards.
I just had to replace my iPhone 6 because the audio port failed, and it's not a serviceable part - thank god for Applecare, which replaced it for free and will again until 2017 if need be.
In terms of the lightning dongle, I'm already carrying around headphones, so carrying around an extra 3" of cable isn't that bad. I won't get their $150 Airpods because a) Apple earbuds don't fit my ears, and b) prefer an old school set of earphones for talking on the phone, and for travel can double for music, although I prefer my AKG Y70's for travel.
Apple has been bold in removing multiple previously "standard" items from computers:
serial ports - killed by Apple in favor of USB. Suddenly a standard Intel couldn't promote to save it's ass became ubiquitous because we all had to upgrade.
Floppy drive - at the time people thought they couldn't live without them, but short lived.
DVD drive - I have one mac out of 5 in my house that has a Superdrive, and that's because I bought a used 2011 Macbook Pro as my work computer. Not used any more; people thought they couldn't live without them, but now...
Ethernet port - on laptops, again how can you live without ethernet? Turns out WiFi is ubiquitous for most and if not there's an adapter. I need mine perhaps 10% of the year traveling.
Now I'm definitely not a Joney Ive fanboy, and hate that he's reduced a macbook to 1 USB-C for power and anything else, but all of the things Apple has done have been leading the way vs. following, and for that I'm happy.
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As bits in phones go, the switching contacts on a 3.5mm jack are probably the least reliable parts. While I've not had one go bad on an Apple product, I know others who have, and I've had them go on other phones. To the point where I had to use a headset because you couldn't hear any calls otherwise.
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Stephen - this is exactly what was happening. Calls would be intermittent on the mic side, and finally headphones would randomly trigger Siri.
did find out from the guy that AppleCare also covers the lightning USB cable and original earbuds; will be taking another dead one over today for replacement.
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I just saw THIS (http://www.radialeng.com/btpro.php) on another forum. It looks like a good solution to the lack of an 1/8" jack.
Mac
Any BT audio I've heard from consumer products has been horribly compressed with artifacts and pretty bad latency. Not sure if the iPhone's BT implementation is better or not...
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The ISM band will be OK. Getting 3' from your phone to the earphones is no problem. If we are worried about spectrum congestion, how about audio? The whole world uses 0-20kHz!
Because the whole world uses 0-20k, we have to spec systems which are louder than the background noise. This is much easier to accomplish with a sound system than it is with minature consumer products communicating in the ghz range.
A friend of mine is an experimental music/video artist who has 3d-printed his own midi controllers with which he uses wireless arduino type devices to tell pure data patches what to do and has had lots of connectivity issues when too many people are too close to him. Cables are annoying but predictable
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There are two responsibilities here:
Spreading the signal adequately; and
Not transmitting with too much power.
Home-built solutions are probably going to fail on both counts.
But yes, wires are predictable.
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Apple has been bold in removing multiple previously "standard" items from computers:
serial ports - killed by Apple in favor of USB. Suddenly a standard Intel couldn't promote to save it's ass became ubiquitous because we all had to upgrade.
DVD drive - I have one mac out of 5 in my house that has a Superdrive, and that's because I bought a used 2011 Macbook Pro as my work computer. Not used any more; people thought they couldn't live without them, but now...
Ethernet port - on laptops, again how can you live without ethernet? Turns out WiFi is ubiquitous for most and if not there's an adapter. I need mine perhaps 10% of the year traveling.
Now I'm definitely not a Joney Ive fanboy, and hate that he's reduced a macbook to 1 USB-C for power and anything else, but all of the things Apple has done have been leading the way vs. following, and for that I'm happy.
The thing that kills me about the USB situation is that everything (almost) outboard needs a USB port. Last year we bought an iMac to essentially be our media backbone at church-and Apple is supposed to be great with media (and they are even if they aren't always user friendly). Problem is this-plug in our QU for audio, a mouse (hate and don't trust magic mouse), a superdrive, an external drive and my ports are full. We are using thunderbolt to VGA to our projector. Cordless keyboard has to charge somewhere. Yes you can get hubs and chargers, etc. I just hate that I have to start trying to figure out how to distribute limited resources after spending close to $3000 on a computer.
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The thing that kills me about the USB situation is that everything (almost) outboard needs a USB port. Last year we bought an iMac to essentially be our media backbone at church-and Apple is supposed to be great with media (and they are even if they aren't always user friendly). Problem is this-plug in our QU for audio, a mouse (hate and don't trust magic mouse), a superdrive, an external drive and my ports are full. We are using thunderbolt to VGA to our projector. Cordless keyboard has to charge somewhere. Yes you can get hubs and chargers, etc. I just hate that I have to start trying to figure out how to distribute limited resources after spending close to $3000 on a computer.
Grrr. You got me started. This is the kind of shit that is a portion of the reason I don't own Apple products for personal use. I'll buy them because I *must* in order to run specific software for work, but I otherwise refuse to own an i-Anything. To say I'm not a FruitCo fanboy would be an understatement.
Apple doesn't know what's best for my situations and needs and their continuing need to re-skin existing technology (their own or not) for cosmetic and perceived value changes while eliminating tools and changing accessory use is solely aimed at the same kind of purchaser that buys a new car because the color options are different this year (and the bragging rights that go with it).
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I cannot use Square without a phone jack. Some people pay that way.
I use square all the time without a phone jack. I don't think I've ever used the card reader.
You can manually enter the credit card information into the app for payment.
Enter Amount -> Charge -> Credit Card -> Enter information -> Charge
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I use square all the time without a phone jack. I don't think I've ever used the card reader.
You can manually enter the credit card information into the app for payment.
Enter Amount -> Charge -> Credit Card -> Enter information -> Charge
That ups their take by another 1% or so.
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I for one, welcome our new overlords that eliminate the headphone jack.
(https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/14237648_10153781593806373_8827082958249899420_n.jpg?oh=29426c35da332a97e13060f31165ed90&oe=587FF98F)
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I use square all the time without a phone jack. I don't think I've ever used the card reader.
You can manually enter the credit card information into the app for payment.
Enter Amount -> Charge -> Credit Card -> Enter information -> Charge
There is a square device for Apple Pay, Android Pay, and chip cards (https://squareup.com/contactless-chip-reader) but it doesn't have card reader which would need to plug into the lightning adapter.
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The thing that kills me about the USB situation is that everything (almost) outboard needs a USB port. Last year we bought an iMac to essentially be our media backbone at church-and Apple is supposed to be great with media (and they are even if they aren't always user friendly). Problem is this-plug in our QU for audio, a mouse (hate and don't trust magic mouse), a superdrive, an external drive and my ports are full. We are using thunderbolt to VGA to our projector. Cordless keyboard has to charge somewhere. Yes you can get hubs and chargers, etc. I just hate that I have to start trying to figure out how to distribute limited resources after spending close to $3000 on a computer.
My 2009 iMac has 4 USB ports and didn't consider that a limitation, and I also had an iLok, another USB Key and USB MIDI keyboard to deal with. Hubs are cheap and work well. Funny - had a magic mouse, but with Pro Tools for a while you had to turn off Bluetooth, so I still rock the regular Mac keyboard (with the 10-keypad) and the regular mouse, which together take up 1 USB port and can also charge/sync an iPhone.
I think even if the iMac had 7 USB ports like some all-in one PC's, it wouldn't be enough.
Curious - what are you using the superdrive for? on my 2009 iMac, I ditched the superdrive for a SSD boot drive and never looked back.
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Curious - what are you using the superdrive for? on my 2009 iMac, I ditched the superdrive for a SSD boot drive and never looked back.
Mainly for flexibility-we often have missionaries in. A high percentage now use USB or even internet downloads for their presentations-but I still get handed the occasional DVD.
To be fair, I wanted a MacPro. The two younger people involved in the decision were wowed by the big 4K display. Its cool-but overkill for a machine that is primarily media playback, or audio recording in the background. I'd have put that money towards a Pro and then had the flexibility of picking the screen size that fit in the media booth space. Guess I've worked with too much stuff that was gee-wiz in its day but is now obsolete to take that over practical.
The old, all but obsolete tower form factor, had expandability-had its disadvantages, but how many of us like to wear "one size fits all" clothing?
I can live with losing the phone jack on the iPhone-it IS a phone. I know phones are always at hand-but if I am doing audio work, my phone is vital for coordination. Unless I want to throw some sample music on the setup, I really can't have my phone tied up anyway.
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A high percentage now use USB or even internet downloads for their presentations-but I still get handed the occasional DVD.
Funny you mention internet download presentations - my old boss was addicted to Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations, and didn't understand that WiFi wasn't available everywhere, and that it MIGHT be a lot easier to have a Keynote presentation on his MacBook Air that had all the videos embedded vs. hoping that YouTube might load up his video clips...
For those of you asked to put together presentations, WonderTube is a godsend to save the underlying YouTube as a video file to not be in the mercies of internet, wifi, etc. during a presentation to several hundred people...
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Funny you mention internet download presentations - my old boss was addicted to Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations, and didn't understand that WiFi wasn't available everywhere, and that it MIGHT be a lot easier to have a Keynote presentation on his MacBook Air that had all the videos embedded vs. hoping that YouTube might load up his video clips...
For those of you asked to put together presentations, WonderTube is a godsend to save the underlying YouTube as a video file to not be in the mercies of internet, wifi, etc. during a presentation to several hundred people...
Before I got out of the H.O.W. scene this was de riquer with no rehearsal and marginal wireless people used to come up and log on to their accounts. How was I supposed to keep track of credentials or download and correlate all this content? This was when I was supposed to be pinning the stage and ringing out monitors.
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Now I'm definitely not a Joney Ive fanboy, and hate that he's reduced a macbook to 1 USB-C for power and anything else, but all of the things Apple has done have been leading the way vs. following, and for that I'm happy.
One thing with USB C is that it supports higher voltage input for fast charging. But when you put that on a USB bus and plug a thumb drive or something used to 5V into another port, you zap the stick. You have to put some extra stuff in there to make it all play nice. Apple kind of rushed the type C out there.
Disclaimer, I worked on the Pixel Chromebook which I think was the first device with multiple USB-C ports.
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The next generation of digital mixers could likely have Bluetooth on-board to make up for this. Presonus has already done it with their new small format analog mixers, so I really wouldn't be surprised to see it happen more.
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Funny you mention internet download presentations - my old boss was addicted to Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations, and didn't understand that WiFi wasn't available everywhere, and that it MIGHT be a lot easier to have a Keynote presentation on his MacBook Air that had all the videos embedded vs. hoping that YouTube might load up his video clips...
The two biggest problems I've seen with people's presentations are:
- Failing to export the PowerPoint presentation in such a way that fonts (and videos/sounds) are embedded, so many times slides are all messed up when they try to replay it on someone else's computer
- Attempting to play video from a S-L-O-W USB stick
The next problem is video codecs. Sometimes it seems every computer ever made uses a DIFFERENT video codec. Don't know how many times someone has said "play this video I made" and it doesn't play because I didn't have THEIR codec.
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That ups their take by another 1% or so.
it's a tax deduction regardless...
either I get that 1% off my taxable income or I pay tax on the 1%....really doesn't matter in the long run
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One thing with USB C is that it supports higher voltage input for fast charging. But when you put that on a USB bus and plug a thumb drive or something used to 5V into another port, you zap the stick. You have to put some extra stuff in there to make it all play nice. Apple kind of rushed the type C out there.
Disclaimer, I worked on the Pixel Chromebook which I think was the first device with multiple USB-C ports.
Nice...
Anger did release recently a USB charger that has a separate USB-C port for your macbook, so that you can have one charger for both. Doesn't work as a bus, but carrying around one less lump could be worth it. We used Anker chargers exclusively at my last robot job where we were charging 10 at a time per Anker device and no problems with them in 2 years (we had 10)
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Nice...
Anger did release recently a USB charger that has a separate USB-C port for your macbook, so that you can have one charger for both. Doesn't work as a bus, but carrying around one less lump could be worth it. We used Anker chargers exclusively at my last robot job where we were charging 10 at a time per Anker device and no problems with them in 2 years (we had 10)
+2 for Anker, great chargers and indestructible cables
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Why wait for the iPhone7 when you can buy the upgrade: http://appleplugs.com/
Hilarious!
-Dennis
<edit> But, seriously...
http://mashable.com/2016/09/15/robots-iphone7-new-zealand/#NzEUDkGUDOqB
-D
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(http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160918/8b0866317ae0c7268910ce52349a174a.jpg)
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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I feel sorry for those who actually drills a hole in their iphone7...
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I feel sorry for those who actually drills a hole in their iphone7...
Did you also feel bad for those who put theirs in the microwave to charge it last release?
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Considering that Apple makes a LOT of money of service (itunes purchases, streaming music.) I tend to believe that the decision to remove the 1/8" jack was heavily influenced by the desire to control content. If every signal leaving your device is digital it means that you are ready for a full DRM chain from server to final output.
Think HDCP for audio.
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Apple dumped DRM for music and there is Zero chance that they are going back.
The average consumer thinks it is their god-given right to steal music, and Apple knows not to go into a fight they can't win.
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The average consumer thinks it is their god-given right to steal music, and Apple knows not to go into a fight they can't win.
As I recall, Apple went DRM free because they wanted to and it was good for consumers. DRM makes for more theft, not less. They were the only distributor large enough to convince the music labels to go along. I'm still sad no one did that for movies.
Back then, Apple was a hardware/software company, not a media company. In recent years they seem to have moved into being more of a media company with Apple Music, the streaming service, so their stance may not be the same today.
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Considering that Apple makes a LOT of money of service (itunes purchases, streaming music.) I tend to believe that the decision to remove the 1/8" jack was heavily influenced by the desire to control content. If every signal leaving your device is digital it means that you are ready for a full DRM chain from server to final output.
Think HDCP for audio.
Wrong. Removal of a failure point as well as waterproofing. It's also why the home button is now capacitive and now longer an actual button.