Why Apple Removing The Audio Jack From The iPhone Would Be A Very, Very, Very, Bad Move
from the but-it'll-still-happen dept
It's been rumored for months now that the next iPhone will be removing the standard analog headphone jack -- the same jack that's existed on portable audio devices for ages. It would immediately make a whole bunch of headphone and microphone products obsolete overnight for those who use iPhones. And while some have compared it to when Apple surprised everyone nearly two decades ago in removing the floppy drive from the iMac, this is quite different. The floppy drive really was pushing the end of its necessary existence, and with the internet and (not too long after) the rise of USB, the internal floppy drive seemed less and less important. But that's not the case with the standard audio jack.Back in June, Nilay Patel at the Verge had an excellent take on why this move would be user hostile in very dangerous ways, starting with the fact that forcing audio through the iPhone Lightning connection would mean DRM:
Oh look, I won this argument in one shot. For years the entertainment industry has decried what they call the "analog loophole" of headphone jacks, and now we’re making their dreams come true by closing it.With the latest rumors insisting that Apple is definitely doing this, Cory Doctorow has also weighed in to make the same point and go in much greater detail about how troubling this is:
Restricting audio output to a purely digital connection means that music publishers and streaming companies can start to insist on digital copyright enforcement mechanisms. We moved our video systems to HDMI and got HDCP, remember? Copyright enforcement technology never stops piracy and always hurts the people who most rely on legal fair use, but you can bet the music industry is going to start cracking down on "unauthorized" playback and recording devices anyway. We deal with DRM when it comes to video because we generally don’t rewatch and take TV shows and movies with us, but you will rue the day Apple decided to make the iPhone another 1mm thinner the instant you get a "playback device not supported" message. Winter is coming.
As Cory notes, these are not hypothetical stories and fear-mongering, they're all examples from what we've seen happen before, over and over again, when things are pushed into a DRM-based world. Cory is hoping that if Apple really does drop the audio jack -- as many now expect -- then it should simultaneously declare that the digital audio output is not "an effective means of access control," which would then mean it's not covered by the anti-circumvention laws of the DMCA. But, of course, does anyone actually expect Apple to do that? It has almost no incentive to unless the public rejects this situation in massive numbers, which seems unlikely.Once all the audio coming out of an Iphone is digital -- once there's no analog output -- Apple gets a lot more options about how it can relate to its competitors, and they're all good for Apple and bad for Apple's customers. Just by wrapping that audio in DRM, Apple gets a veto over which of your devices can connect to your phone. They can arbitrarily withhold permission to headphone manufacturers, insist that mixers be designed with no analog outputs, or even demand that any company that makes an Apple-compatible device must not make that device compatible with Apple's competitors, so home theater components that receive Apple signals could be pressured to lock out Samsung's signals, or Amazon's.
What's more, once Apple gets the ability to add DRM, the record industry gets the ability to insist that Apple use it ("A phaser on the mantelpiece in Act One must go off by Act 3" - Pavel Chekov, Star Trek: TOS). In 2007, Steve Jobs published his Thoughts on Music, in which he said, basically, that the record industry had forced Apple to put DRM in its ecosystem and he didn't like it. The record industry is still made up of the same companies, and they still love DRM. Right now, an insistence on DRM would simply invite the people who wanted to bypass it for legal reasons to use that 3.5mm headphone jack to get at it. Once that jack is gone, there's no legal way to get around the DRM.
Perhaps worst of all is the impact on security research: because the DMCA has been used to attack researchers who disclosed defects in DRM-restricted technologies, they are often unable or unwilling to come forward when they discover serious vulnerabilities in technologies that we rely on. The Iphone audio interface is two-way: it supports both input and output. A bug in that interface turns the phone to carry with you at all times, to all places, into a covert listening device. A DRM system on that interface makes that bug all-but-unreportable, guaranteeing that it will last longer and hurt more people before it finally becomes public.
Hopefully, those who make Android and other phones will not follow down this same path.
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Filed Under: analog, drm, headphone jack, iphone
Companies: apple
Reader Comments
The First Word
“The end-game is to have specific apple-only headphones for each generation of iPhone. So the connection in the iPhone 7 will work with iPhone 7 headphones, but iPhone 8 will have a slightly more 'secure' connection, which surprise, surprise, requires NEW headphones all over again.
Tim cook in multiple meetings discussed how to 'lock in' loyal customers and force them to buy Apple peripherals and this is the solution. Lock OUT third party bluetooth headphones / speakers etc. Charge a hefty licence to use their 'special' version of bluetooth and/or make people buy apple approved devices.
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I think it will be years before the all-important 19-25 demographic will accept a technology that can be used by parents and grandparents without routinely generating eye-rolling faux pas.
OTOH, the conversion of text about a song into actual audio bits of the song itself, could generate a mini-licensing scheme. The RIAA would have to cut the NSA in on the deal for access to those multi-billions of communications on your text-o-voice-o-phone device. After all, those mega data centers don't build and maintain themselves!
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Now manufacturers have to have two complete production lines. One for standard analog jacks and one for Apple. That alone is a substantial cost addition. Add to that the near guarantee that Apple will require the same sort of approval (licencing fee) for anyone they let use the new combined jack. So goodbye cheap disposable headphones.
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Re: Dystopian prediction.
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The on-board electronics and Apple Tax guarantee that this $8 set of headphones will suddenly become a $48 set of headphones. Not something I look forward to.
HOWEVER, the arguments about "closing the analog hole" are a bit off. Speakers can't read "digital". At some point, there needs to be analog leads going to the diaphragm of the speakers, and these can just as easily be redirected to any type of analog jack. And there are plenty of companies around the world that would be more than happy to create such a thing; if Apple uses a USB-3-compatible connector and protocol, they can't do anything to prevent other manufacturers from going this route.
And all that said: I actually connect my $8 headphones to a little Bluetooth dongle I keep in my pocket these days; I haven't used my headphone jack on my phone in quite some time. As long as Apple isn't killing Bluetooth audio, there's only so much they can do with DRM. And Bluetooth is never going to be restricted from having analog out.
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It would be made illegal of course.
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Crude digital speakers have been made, using multiple coils. However the real limit on outputs is the lack of digital inputs to the human brain. Audio and video will always be analogue between output devices and human ears and ey
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Backwards compatibility would be an issue though. "I'm sorry, your 2016 Chevy SU-X doesn't have the Apple-Approved radio. That'll be $4000 to upgrade."
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What I hate the most about this is it is a clear anti-competitive movement by them and so many of my friends and family will gladly pay the costs because it is Apple and they can do no wrong.
I am not an Apple hater, I have an iPhone, an iPad and several other of their devices. They make amazing tech. But their movements in recent years have made switching to Android much more appealing.
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In other news, water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, and traffic in DC is bad this morning.
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In other news, water is wet, the Pope is Catholic, and traffic in DC is bad this morning.
Typical DC Tweeb response!
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Just for the record, I don't live in DC (or even particularly close to it); I just know that horrendous traffic there is one of life's great constants.
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Re:
Google exists, you might want to use it to find the many examples of litigation against the company.
"even Microsoft has been told what it can and cant do over the way it locked Windows down to using Internet explorer"
Untrue. They were told not to illegally leverage its desktop OS monopoly position to gain unfair advantages over competitors in other software markets. Windows was not locked down to IE, but MS was been told to give providers of other browsers a level playing field. So, neither assertion you just made is true.
"what music and movies can go on the devices"
That's an outright lie, of course. You're limited to a single store within the device, but there's nothing to stop you transferring content via a computer or via an app.
There's plenty to criticise Apple for, let's not make shit up, OK?
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Because Apple doesn't have 90% market penetration, they are allowed to do whatever, because you supposedly had options in not buying a Mac.
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Market penetration
For many pieces of software, you only get the version for a single platform, and that's if that software exists for the other (though nowadays, there are is a lot more multi-platform software). I'm not sure if Mac developers still have to work around the one-button problem.
But Android and iOS products are certainly sold separately. I don't know if you can even access media purchased on Google Play or The Windows Store on iOS.
So yeah, once you've been on a platform for a while you have a lot of disincentive to migrate. And if that's not taken into consideration regarding antitrust, it damn well should be.
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May not be digital-only
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Re: May not be digital-only
Potentially multiple "headphone jacks" as well.
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Re: May not be digital-only
High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP) - the copy protection on Blu-Ray discs - is required to downgrade not just the video but the audio when sent to analog devices. And that's when it'll output to them at all.
Unlike your old stereo or VCR, your smartphone gets regular software updates. You may be able to use your old headphones with an adapter on day one, and everyone will be happy and the issue will go away. Until the DRM gets activated in a later update.
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Re: Re: May not be digital-only
Pay Lawyers Now
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ISO Standard Credibility Test
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Re: ISO Standard Credibility Test FTFY
The argument in favor of removing the audio jack doesn't sound any less credible if you imagine it being voiced by Donald Trump standing behind a podium.
ISO Standard Credibility Test
The argument in favor of removing the audio jack doesn't sound any MORE credible ESPECIALLY if you imagine it being voiced by Donald Trump standing behind a podium
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Good one! Best joke I've heard all month!
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Let's think this through, REALLY
As for the mechanics of it in general, it driven moreso by the majority of the public who would prefer wireless headsets or wireless connectivity to a larger speaker. You can buy full 'wireless amplifiers' online for $22, that output 50-watts per channel RMS. That's 100-watts (enough to deafen you in a small room).
Why are you making a big deal out of this? You lost your privacy when you didn't stop DMCA, RIAA, and the myriad of other laws out there. You gave up your privacy when you didn't protest the NSA and FISA courts allowing warrantless searches.
It's a phone people, and EVERYONE IS ALREADY LISTENING to every word you said (and the NSA has it on recording in Provo, Utah, just to prove it).
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Re: Let's think this through, REALLY
I disagree.
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Other Devices
There are also a host of non-headphone devices that will be made obsolete. Many companies took advantage of the headphone jack as a de facto I/O port. Their solutions will need to be upgraded, and will be more expensive now, and will require bluetooth, and worse: batteries and charging.
- Square or Paypal credit card readers
- Microphones
- Synchronized flash systems
- Selfie Stick remote shutter buttons
- Add-a-custom-buttons like Pressly
The floppy had universally better options, and was bad at its only purpose. Not so for the headphone port. I have a number of bluetooth headsets that are my primary way of connecting to the phone for media, but I STILL have plug-in headphones for hands-free voice calls. I use them for the pure simplicity and reliability of it.
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Re: Other Devices
Perhaps that's a part of Apple's thinking here -- too many companies were working around the need to pay an Apple Tax, so they want to close that loophole.
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Re: Re: Other Devices
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So Splice an Audio Bypass.
A pair of headphones ultimately has a couple of analog wire pairs leading to electromagnets, which push diaphragms back and forth to move air to make sound. You can splice in an audio jack without any particular difficulty.
Alternatively, you can make what old-time celluloid film-makers called a "Barney," that is, a soundproofed box, in which you can put things which need to be sound-isolated., with the necessary access-holes, such as a noisy mechanical movie camera mechanism. Of course, you can also make a Barney to hold a headphone and a couple of microphones. In the old days, back in the early 1980's, we used to connect computer terminals and modems to mainframes over telephone lines, using a telephone cradle designed along these lines: 1) dial up the mainframe's modem number, using a rotary-dial telephone, 2) listen for the carrier tone, 3) on hearing the carrier tone, rapidly place the phone handset in the cradle, in the soundproofing rubber cups, and enter a couple of carriage-returns.
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Hard to predict
Of course, if the next iPhone *does* sell poorly, that's going to be down to a variety of factors, not just to a headphone jack. It may not be easy, or even possible, to gauge what impact the missing headphone jack has on sales.
On the other hand, it's also possible that once the phone appears in stores, casual buyers *will* react strongly and clearly to the change. We won't know until it happens.
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Uh, okay...
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Uh, okay...
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The end-game is to have specific apple-only headphones for each generation of iPhone. So the connection in the iPhone 7 will work with iPhone 7 headphones, but iPhone 8 will have a slightly more 'secure' connection, which surprise, surprise, requires NEW headphones all over again.
Tim cook in multiple meetings discussed how to 'lock in' loyal customers and force them to buy Apple peripherals and this is the solution. Lock OUT third party bluetooth headphones / speakers etc. Charge a hefty licence to use their 'special' version of bluetooth and/or make people buy apple approved devices.
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Re: I used to work for apple.
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Re: Anonymous Coward and the lessons of History
Macs were all about the intellectual property until an insider licensed its software, tweaked it and sold it as windows. Microsoft didn't make hardware, they kept their plane in software -- allowing hardware companies to license their software and essentially crowd apple out of the market for proprietary overpriced stuff. I might have to cut my losses at the 7, bite the bullet and leave my iphone behind. After all the years I've been with my iphone i hate to do it, but i think its time before they get any more user hostile.
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Forget the music issue...
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Re: Forget the music issue...
It's mostly, but not solely, iPhone users. I really don't understand why this has started happening.
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Re: Re: Forget the music issue...
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If we can kill this in the cradle maybe it can be averted. Too bad HDMI managed to screw everything up.
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Simplicity wins.
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Goodbye Apple, hello Android
I suspect if Apple does this, many more will head over to Android.
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Will there be a Lightning to 2.5mm audio adapter?
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We did this with laptops and USB to eliminate the optical drive.
Similarly, I've been watching mp3 players and before that cassette tape players fail consistently due to that stupid audio jack. They just don't last. During the semi-user-serviceable 90s, I'd be able to open up the unit and repair it. But not so, now. Creative labs customer service has become rather irate with me for daring to suggest I might service my own devices rather than paying for their outrageous repair fees.
But yes, right now it's the only standard we have.
If Apple was really interested in minimizing phone thickness, they could feature multiple lightning ports and (as Anon Coward suggested) a lightning to 2.5 or 3.5 adapter.
Someone, probably someone in China, will make one anyway, much like the lightning-to-USB ports.
In my fantasy world this would push more people toward Android since Apple users look more and more like rich abused cultists. The higher and higher Apple builds its garden walls, the less nice they are to those trapped inside.
* I tried adding a leave-in extension but it automatically cuts out the speakers when even the extension is in, and I don't know how to turn that feature off, and govern the volumes by soft mixer controls. Not for want of looking.
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Re: We did this with laptops and USB to eliminate the optical drive.
Well there's your problem right there.
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Re: We did this with laptops and USB to eliminate the optical drive.
So, I guess, YMMV.
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Soundblaster woes
Well there's your problem right there.
It comes from growing up on the Audigy technology and being something of an audiophile.
Right now I need to solve the problem so I can hold onto a Recon3D for a little bit longer.
If you can recommend a worthwhile sound card for
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Re: Soundblaster woes
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One time when I had a rental car, the stereo had no aux input, so I could not play music from my android throgh the stereo, without using a small FM modulator, which can have problems if a nearby radio station is using the same frequency.
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Mine (Ford Focus) can play music from my phone two different ways. I can connect over USB and it recognizes the phone as a music player, or I can connect over Bluetooth and whatever audio is playing on my phone gets redirected to the car stereo.
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Apple has been making some 'bad' bets lately.
WHY? you ask.
A "fan" will buy the White Album or Dark Side Of The Moon only so many times.
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Why is anyone really surprised by this decision?
And what was the reason for this change? The size of the phone didn't get smaller- in fact, the iPhone 5, 6, and 6s are *bigger* than the 4.
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One Bad Apple
You don't think Google is wringing its hands over this, being hardly able to stop the drool and wetting themselves? This will give them at least a couple years to capitalize on the backlash against Apple when Apple forces DRM on their entire customer base.
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I agree
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Apple
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Re: Apple
But, it might well be a good idea for *them* or a related 3rd party without being a good idea for everyone else. Apple don't do things for no reason at all, but they aren't opposed to doing something that negatively impacts the consumer in the long term.
That's the focus of the article - what Apple are doing here might be very good for Apple, the RIAA and Beats. It may be very bad for the consumer. Maybe not, but that's worth investigating.
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iphone
nice.It is very nice phone .please visit my website to collect various phone visit.
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paid apps for free
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Loving it
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Headphone Jack Can Be Easily Fix in iPhone 7
TBH, this is a lame reason by Apple
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Loving it
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rural development organization raichur
I always enjoy reading your articles, they are very helpful, intelligent and I am sure it brings a smile on many faces out there.
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Apple Removing The Audio
thank you
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Proved Again
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Apple Removing The Audio
[Spotify Premium Apk][1]
⋮
[1]: https://www.freetricks.org/new-tricks/spotify-premium-apk/
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Apple Removing The Audio
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Apple remove audio jack
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