We are a week away from apple’s next generation of unusable, unrepairable, unreliable and unaffordable phones, the iphone 11. The iphone and galaxy phones are not “flagship phones”, they are flagging phones (languid, weak, dwindling).
The video below discusses apple and samsung’s primary reason to remove the headphone jack: to force customers to buy overpriced “airpods” or whatever samsung labels them. Apple’s feeble and nonsensical argument is “a lack of internal space” and that headphones are “antiquated”. Key points from the video:
3:00 – Headphones aren’t just about sound quality, reliability matters. Bluetooth sometimes doesn’t work, 3.5mm jacks always do.
3:20 – If I need mobility, I will play music through the phone’s speaker. I do that when riding a bicycle so I can hear the traffic.
4:10 – According to Tom’s Guide, the iphone 11 will have THREE camera lenses. Remove two and you have enough room for a jack.
4:30 – This isn’t about “premium phones”, it’s about change for the sake of change and the illusion of “exclusivity” and “superiority”.
6:25 – Only apple makes the US$150 “airpods”. Dozens of companies make high quality earbud headphones for US$15-25 per pair.
From CBC News’s “The National”: Apple under fire for allegations of controversial business practices. Unethical doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I’ll bet the new piece of crap STILL won’t work when held with the left hand. It’s been that way since the iphone 3.
Perfect parody for the topic:
https://xkcd.com/2000/
The headphone jack on Apple’s earlier iphones was also a piece of shit. The phone would detect if something was plugged in and would change the volume automatically and disable the speakers. So, if you carry your phone in your pocket, it will collect pocket lint in there and eventually the switch will fail. Then your phone will conclude there’s something plugged in and you can never get sound out of the speakers again – even though the control software allows you to specify where the sound should go in every other situation. The folks at Apple are considered to be good at writing easy-to-use software but I think a bunch of chimpanzees would probably do better.
I assure you that the same thing is happening with their laptops. I’ve always used them for work, but I’ll never buy any model made after 2011. For example, in 2012, all Apple laptops have all the internal components *soldered* to the motherboard. Therefore, if your hard drive breaks, or you want to add more memory or a USB port fails, there is no replacing those components. You just have to throw away the entire computer and buy another. And, that was their intention. No repairs, buy another computer.
That’s just the tip of the iceberg. When my 2011 laptops finally die, I’m moving away from Apple completely.
Louis Rossman videos make for entertaining viewing (except for his editing).
https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup
My smartphone is a 2013 model from back when phones had user-replaceable batteries, microSD card slots, and generic headphone jacks. Looking at “modern” phone models, I can conclude that I won’t be replacing my current phone for a long time. It does have a replaceable battery, so I’m good to go.
My last phone was an ASUS (US$260) which lasted barely 30 months, and my current HTC (US$200) is terrible. (I try to buy Taiwanese, but….) The touch screen isn’t broken, all of this model is unresponsive. And the 5MP camera’s pictures only look good if the phone is absolutely still (e.g. on a tripod or table). My backup / secondary phone is more enjoyable to use (a cheap Taiwanese T9 4G flip phone, described as an “old man phone”).
There isn’t one phone on the market that has the combination of features I want. Everything is either overpriced and high end or bottom-of-the-barrel cheap. And I suspect companies won’t make a combination of features I want because nobody would buy anything else.
I’m right handed. But when I might have to type in numbers on the keypad, I type them with my right hand, while holding my phone with my left hand.
If I need to make notes with pen and paper, I use my right hand, while holding the phone with my left hand. So, even people in the right-handed majority often need the phone to work in the left hand. How is this hard to see? How is Apple not just making a silly excuse?
I used to really like Apple computers. I started to dislike the company around when the first iphone came out, and I feel their computers also started to drop in quality and durability. I had a really bad experience with a refurbished mac that pretty much confirmed my anti-apple sentiments. I bought a cheapish pc and started using Linux. that’s been working ok for me, and it’s a hell of a lot cheaper.
Also, Apple is doing all those things that the fanboys used to hate Microsoft for doing back in the 90s. Bad practices are still bad, even when being done by your current favorite…
Not defending Apple, but the headphones thing seems a little overblown. My mid-range (~$40) bluetooth headphones sometimes fail, but they fail far less often than the times I used to unwittingly yank the cord out of the jack with my old headphones or worse, get tangled in the cord and accidentally swing my phone through the air like a very expensive bolas.
Iochaber @6, same here. I’m going to move wholly to Linux. I’ll never buy another Apple device, and I’d been their customer exclusively since 1988. They’ve managed to totally lose a customer who’s been with only them for that long.
Apple programmed Siri to avoid the word “feminism”
Good article, Because without technology we can’t do any work. I like this article and I will give good feedback to you. But before this, I want to know iphone 5 screen replacement price in kenya Because I have urgent need of this. If you have any idea about this, So please tell me