Apple to remove the Headphone Jack in MacBook Pros too?

[+John. Subscriber¹]

I've just completed an Apple survey, and one of the questions was "Do I listen to music via my Headphone Jack?"

 

Quite a few others have had the same survey, too. If this happens, I'm done with it.

 

 

DON'T YOU DARE, APPLE!

[Skiver Veteran]

I've never owned a MacBook but applying "windows" based laptops and tbh even desktop experience I very very rarely in the last 10 years have used a 3.5mm jack for listening to anything. Do you not use USB headsets?

 

 

[Danielx64]

1 minute ago, Skiver said:

I've never owned a MacBook but applying "windows" based laptops and tbh even desktop experience I very very rarely in the last 10 years have used a 3.5mm jack for listening to anything. Do you not use USB headsets?

 

 

At home I use a USB headset but at work if needed I use headphones. I'm thinking of going back to headphones at home I wonder what would give better audio.

[Nick H. Supervisor]

1 minute ago, Skiver said:

I've never owned a MacBook but applying "windows" based laptops and tbh even desktop experience I very very rarely in the last 10 years have used a 3.5mm jack for listening to anything. Do you not use USB headsets?

 

 

Huh. I use my headphone jack all the time. Unless I'm alone in the house I'm not really a fan of playing music through my speakers, and I don't think I have a USB headset.

 

In fact, part of my dislike towards the whole "let's ditch the headphone jack" is because I use my earphones on all my devices almost all the time. It's great that I don't need a set of earphones for one device, another set for another device, and so on.

[MikeChipshop Member]

3 minutes ago, Skiver said:

I've never owned a MacBook but applying "windows" based laptops and tbh even desktop experience I very very rarely in the last 10 years have used a 3.5mm jack for listening to anything. Do you not use USB headsets?

 

 

No. I have a selection of very good 3.5 jack headphones. 

 

This is obviously going to happen at some point. 

[Skiver Veteran]

Just now, Danielx64 said:

At home I use a USB headset but at work if needed I use headphones. I'm thinking of going back to headphones at home I wonder what would give better audio.

 

What your saying is do I want a digital or an analogue signal? I'm pretty sure Digitial is massively more beneficial in terms of sound quality. I vaguely recall someone from Intel coming out recently and speaking out in favour of the move to USB based headphones and talking about the quality boost people will get from that.

[Danielx64]

1 minute ago, Nick H. said:

In fact, part of my dislike towards the whole "let's ditch the headphone jack" is because I use my earphones on all my devices almost all the time. It's great that I don't need a set of earphones for one device, another set for another device, and so on.

I'm sure that audio pros will say that the 3.5 headphone jack would produce better sounds than USB based ones.

[Dick Montage]

Audio out of my MBP?  I tend to use Airplay, but in the odd instance I need a cable, it's HDMI.

 

Also, when I used to DJ using my MBP, it was over a dedicated audio interface.

[MikeChipshop Member]

8 minutes ago, Skiver said:

What your saying is do I want a digital or an analogue signal? I'm pretty sure Digitial is massively more beneficial in terms of sound quality. I vaguely recall someone from Intel coming out recently and speaking out in favour of the move to USB based headphones and talking about the quality boost people will get from that.

Analog > Digital when it comes to sound quality. Digital > Analog when it comes to other stuff like licencing, piggybacking data etc

 

To be honest, most people don;t have good enough quality headphones that they'd notice, but for those that do it's going to hurt.

[Skiver Veteran]

 

4 minutes ago, Nick H. said:

Huh. I use my headphone jack all the time. Unless I'm alone in the house I'm not really a fan of playing music through my speakers, and I don't think I have a USB headset.

 

In fact, part of my dislike towards the whole "let's ditch the headphone jack" is because I use my earphones on all my devices almost all the time. It's great that I don't need a set of earphones for one device, another set for another device, and so on.

 

I honestly think that when the tipping point comes most people will have started to adopt the USB format anyway. The real issue will be people with an iPhone needing a pair of headphones with a lightening port and then perhaps having a standard PC/Laptop and then needing USB A/C etc.

 

4 minutes ago, MikeChipshop said:

No. I have a selection of very good 3.5 jack headphones. 

 

This is obviously going to happen at some point. 

 

I'm looking at this from a VHS > DVD > Blu Ray kinda thing - technology evolves and you at some point have to move on and forget the money you spent on the old stuff and move on or be left in the past. I don't think there are people still around saying "but I spent a lot of money on that DVD player - I don't want to buy a Blu Ray Player". Eventually the same will happen here.

 

2 minutes ago, Danielx64 said:

I'm sure that audio pros will say that the 3.5 headphone jack would produce better sounds than USB based ones.

 

I'd treat those sentiments the same way people say I'd rather read a paperback than a kindle. The benefits are clear but people will choose to ignore it for "nostalgic reasons".

[MikeChipshop Member]

Just to follow on from my last post. Although analog audio is far superiour in quality, most people don;t have the headphones to hear the difference any way.

 

Edit: OK, seems Neowin did manage to post the edit to my above post even though it told me it hadn't Sorry for the double.

[Dick Montage]

2 minutes ago, MikeChipshop said:

Analog > Digital when it comes to sound quality. Digital > Analog when it comes to other stuff like licencing, piggybacking d

Analogue > Digital in a lovely perfect world with no interference where your original source is analogue.

 

Digital > Analogue in the real world, where your sample rate is now at a stage whereby perception isn't impaired.

[Dick Montage]

11 minutes ago, Danielx64 said:

I'm sure that audio pros will say that the 3.5 headphone jack would produce better sounds than USB based ones.

Not even in the least.  First off, all audio from a Macbook is digital - that's a fact and live with it.  The 3.5mm jack converts it to analogue.  It's not the best nor worst quality jack in the world ever (in fairness, it's better than many).

 

But if you want the PURE signal that your Macbook is dealing with, digital is the only way to get that.  Then use a high quality amplifier, preferably valve based.  Seems a lot for headphone usage.

[Danielx64]

11 minutes ago, Nik Louch said:

Not even in the least.  First off, all audio from a Macbook is digital - that's a fact and live with it.  The 3.5mm jack converts it to analogue.  It's not the best nor worst quality jack in the world ever (in fairness, it's better than many).

 

But if you want the PURE signal that your Macbook is dealing with, digital is the only way to get that.  Then use a high quality amplifier, preferably valve based.  Seems a lot for headphone usage.

Well if the headphone jack goes then the line in jack would also go as well right?

[Dick Montage]

1 minute ago, Danielx64 said:

Well if the headphone jack goes then the line in jack would also go as well right?

Yup.  Not used that ever, in fairness.  External breakouts if you want to play with audio.

[Danielx64]

8 minutes ago, Nik Louch said:

Yup.  Not used that ever, in fairness.  External breakouts if you want to play with audio.

Not even something like this: http://www.centrecom.com.au/creative-soundblaster-zxr-pcie-sound-card-high-quality-sound-reproduction ?

[Dick Montage]

2 minutes ago, Danielx64 said:

Not even something like this: http://www.centrecom.com.au/creative-soundblaster-zxr-pcie-sound-card-high-quality-sound-reproduction ?

What about it?  That doesn't go into a Macbook Pro.  Yes, it has some analogue audio ports (RCA/Phono and 3.5mm jack) and is a more professional audio source.  And?

 

Are you asking whether I would use them?  Yes, of course I would, eventually I need to use an analogue connection for my analogue mixer.  I stated that I use external breakouts - this is nothing more than a version of that, that connects over an internal bus rather than external.

 

Sorry, what are you asking?

[+John. Subscriber¹]

The trouble I have, is that I can't see the reasoning (beside profit margins) behind this? The vast majority of people use 3.5mm headphones. You won't save any material space by removing the port.

 

Unless they're replacing it with a lightning port, which would be a very Apple-y thing to do.

[Skiver Veteran]

2 minutes ago, John. said:

The trouble I have, is that I can't see the reasoning (beside profit margins) behind this? The vast majority of people use 3.5mm headphones. You won't save any material space by removing the port.

 

Unless they're replacing it with a lightning port, which would be a very Apple-y thing to do.

 

Read above - why did we replace VHS with DVD, Why do we need a smartphone when a regular mobile still enabled us to make calls? The list goes on its technology advancing.

 

[+John. Subscriber¹]

1 minute ago, Skiver said:

Read above - why did we replace VHS with DVD, Why do we need a smartphone when a regular mobile still enabled us to make calls? The list goes on its technology advancing.

 

I hope - for Apple's sake - you're right. They called it with the 30-pin to Lightning change, and I hope I'm just one of those people that hasn't yet seen the benefit to this.

[Dick Montage]

Just now, John. said:

I hope I'm just one of those people that hasn't yet seen the benefit to this.

In fairness, I think the way apple put this out their has been terribly mishandled.  I agree with the decision to do it but not the way they did it.

 

They didn't play strongly enough how the box contains everything you need to either use your existing headphones, or their included lightning headphones.

 

What they did say (in a very potted way) is: No more headphone jack.  Buy our expensive wireless headphones.

 

OK, so the two are completely separate items, but the take away message is terrible.

[Skiver Veteran]

1 minute ago, John. said:

I hope - for Apple's sake - you're right. They called it with the 30-pin to Lightning change, and I hope I'm just one of those people that hasn't yet seen the benefit to this.

 

It's not just apple that is doing this - Motorola has done this on two of their devices. I think because of the iPhones popularity it's easier to stir up a hornet nest with the users and neglect to mention that there are at least two other phones out there that have already done this too. Those phone uses the USB-C port for audio now and I honestly see this being the standard for all mobile devices within the next 12-18 months at the absolute maximum. 

 

I'd argue it's an easier achievement on something like a Macbook or a Windows based laptop as they generally come with more than one USB port as it is anyway.

[Danielx64]

1 minute ago, Skiver said:

I'd argue it's an easier achievement on something like a Macbook or a Windows based laptop as they generally come with more than one USB port as it is anyway.

Then USB will get replaced with something else down the road.

[Skiver Veteran]

1 minute ago, Danielx64 said:

Then USB will get replaced with something else down the road.

 

Potentially but for now all we will see is a new USB standard/port type. I think we'll probably see an adoption of USB C over USB A but that won't be as quick as replacing the 3.5mm jack.

[Dick Montage]

Just now, Skiver said:

Potentially but for now all we will see is a new USB standard/port type. I think we'll probably see an adoption of USB C over USB A but that won't be as quick as replacing the 3.5mm jack.

Each new port/protocol spec seems to unify a few previous ones.  What USB-C can do is astounding (IMHO) and unifies (or replaces) a lot of existing used ports in various use cases.  But I'm certain something will come next