I miss the headphone port too

Greg Kumparak at TechCrunch still misses the headphone port after two years:

Apple wasn’t the first to ditch the headphone port — but, just as with its decision to include one, its decision to remove it has turned the tide. […] If 2016 was the year Apple took a stab at the headphone jack, 2018 was the year it bled out.

And I’m still mad about it.

Technology comes and goes, and oh-so-often at Apple’s doing. Ditching the CD drive in laptops? That’s okay — CDs were doomed, and they were pretty awful to begin with. Killing Flash? Flash sucked. Switching one type of USB port for another? Fine, I suppose. The new USB is better in just about every way. At the very least, I won’t try to plug it in upside down only to flip it over and realize I had it right the first time.

But the headphone jack? It was fine. It stood the test of time for one hundred damned years, and with good reason: It. Just. Worked.

[…]

None of these [annoyances] are that big of a deal. Charge your damned headphones, Greg. Stop losing your dongles. The thing is: they took a thing that just worked and just made me happy and replaced it with something that, quite often, just bugs the hell out of me. If a friend sent me a YouTube link and I wanted to watch it without bugging everyone around me, I could just use whatever crappy, worn out headphones I happened to have sitting in my bag. Now it’s a process with a bunch of potential points of failure.

I pretty much agree with everything Kumparak mentions in his piece (please go over there and read it in its entirety). And — believe it or not — I have even additional annoyances on top of those he talks about.

Why I can’t go all-in with wireless audio

First and foremost, among the devices I regularly use to listen to music and podcasts, there are some that lack Bluetooth (five different iPods, portable CD player, portable MiniDisc player, my home hi-fi stereo, my car stereo). If you’re thinking Dude, ditch the old stuff and listen to music on modern pieces of technology, then you must be new here. I’m not going to throw away perfectly working devices and systems just because I can’t use wireless headphones with them. My hi-fi stereo isn’t audiophile-quality hardware, but it nevertheless comes from an era when they built things that were meant to last — and in fact it still sounds great after 36 years. When I want to take a moment for myself and filter everything else out, listening to a CD through over-the-ear headphones connected to this 36-year-old amplifier is still the best way to experience music for me.

But there’s another reason why switching to wireless audio is problematic for me, and it’s as maddening as it is simple: I haven’t been able to find a good pair of Bluetooth earphones that fit my ears in a satisfactory and satisfying way.

Note: I wrote earphones, not headphones, because while I’ve tried out many different over-the-ear Bluetooth headphones — both open-back and closed-back — and found many interesting candidates, even at very affordable prices, there are many situations where it would be more desirable and convenient to have Bluetooth earphones. They’re lighter, less intrusive, and my ears don’t feel like boiled meat after an hour of wearing them.

The problem with Bluetooth earphones is that, from my experience, 98% of the offering out there is for in-ear models, and I just can’t wear in-ear earphones. I’ve tried different brands, even expensive models with different silicone buds to provide the best fit. It’s too much for my ear canals. Maybe I have small canals, but they hurt. And I can’t get used to having such buds so deeply embedded in my ears. It’s such an annoying sensation that it becomes distracting.

Just get yourself some AirPods, I hear you say. I wish I could. I’ve tried them on. The left bud fits and feels fine. The right one keeps falling off. And that’s something you don’t want to happen with truly wireless earphones. The funny thing is, I haven’t had such issues with my wired Apple EarPods, that have a very similar earbud design.

Man, you’re such an extreme case, you’re now uttering in frustration. Maybe I am. But I keep finding wired earphones that fit my ears perfectly. Sony, Sennheiser, Panasonic, JBL, JVC, Pioneer, you name it, I’ve tried it, and they’re great. Then I check their Bluetooth offerings… and the majority are in-ear earphones.

Mind you, I’m not arguing it’s impossible for me to find a good pair of Bluetooth earphones. Only that, so far, it has been a surprisingly difficult endeavour. Whereas I can literally buy the first pair of wired earphones I lay my eyes on — as it happened with the Gumy earbuds by JVC — and they’ll typically fit well enough.

Thankfully, I don’t need to go all-in with wireless audio

To be perfectly honest, I’m still not in a position to be personally annoyed or impacted by the disappearance of the headphone port in many current devices. So far, the only device I own which lacks a headphone port is the iPhone 8 I purchased in November. All my main computers and all the devices I’ve used the most in 2018 are equipped with a headphone port. And I can still quite happily use all my wired headphones and earphones with all of them (I usually leave a pair of earphones in every bag I use, and it’s a very practical solution). I have already purchased the mandatory dongle to use my iPhone 8 with regular wired headphones, and at the moment I don’t feel the same kind of everyday friction experienced by Greg Kumparak.

But that doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed by this trend of removing the headphone port at all costs.

As Kumparak says, there’s inherently nothing wrong with it. It just works. It’s practical. And its removal isn’t exactly necessary to improve a device in significant ways. With our computers we’re at liberty to choose wired or wireless keyboards, wired or wireless mice; why can’t we have the same with audio? I understand the convenience of not having wires that get tangled in your clothes or that are not long enough and they may limit your movements (seriously, headphones manufacturers: 1.2 m cables are too short), but on the other hand the price of not having wires is that you have yet another accessory you need to charge. Let people have both ways. I for one prefer a smartphone that gives me this kind of flexibility to a smartphone that lacks a headphone port because now it can be thinner or fully waterproof. (By the way, there are thin devices and waterproof devices equipped with a headphone port).

At the end of the day, it all boils down to what I tweeted almost a month ago: It’s 2018 almost 2019, and no one in tech has yet given a compelling explanation as to why getting rid of the headphone jack is a good thing. Getting rid of something because “it’s old” is a silly excuse. You get rid of something if its age has become a problem in some way, if its technology is clearly past being useful or practical (the floppy drive, I/O ports that only provide slow data transfer speeds, the CD/DVD drive from laptops because it takes up a lot of space that can be better repurposed, etc.). None of these examples applies to the headphone port. Its removal is largely arbitrary. And that’s what essentially makes me mad about it.