Apple is right to ditch the headphone jack

APPLE customers are angry and calling for the headphone jack to be returned to the iPhone. But they’re wrong to lament its disappearance.

Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller speaks on stage during the launch. Picture: Josh Edelson

OPINION

APPLE is right to ditch the headphone jack and will be looked upon favourably in the long run for doing so.

With today’s media environment consisting of everyone clamouring to have the latest controversial hot take, such an idea shouldn’t even be considered lukewarm. But yet it seems an overwhelming majority of people are peeved at Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone 7.

We all knew it was coming, but it took more than 90 minutes in the keynote presentation in San Francisco this morning before Apple got around to the elephant in the room — arguably because it was the most significant part of the launch.

It was also the most controversial part both before and after the event as legions of Twitter users went online calling on the company to #BringBackTheJack.

“Apple killing the headphone jack will be a mistake of historic proportions — a misguided act of hubris by a company so addicted to design and progress that it has begun to see them as ends unto themselves,” wrote Mashable hours before the iPhone unveiling.

But what’s wrong with a little hubris, or dare I say arrogance, from a leading tech company?

Sure the 3.5mm audio jack is one of the most widely used standards in tech today, but that doesn’t mean we have to stay wedded to it.

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs conceived some of the most revolutionary products of our time and was renowned for his arrogance. It was a part of what made him so great. You don’t invent the iPod, and take on the record label industry by creating iTunes without a tremendous amount of hubris — and that was basically the company’s argument this morning.

“Some have asked why we would remove the analog headphone jack from the iPhone. It has been with us a very long time,” Phil Schiller, Apple’s head of marketing told the audience. “The reason to move on. I’m going to give you three of them. Comes down to one word: Courage.”

Basically he said Apple wanted to extend its Lightning technology — which will be used in the new wireless headphones — to new things, further explore wireless delivery and claimed that “maintaining an ancient connector doesn’t make sense”.

As plenty of people were quick to point out, marketing a product to annoyed customers is hardly an overly courageous act. But there is something rebellious about knowingly annoying your customers — and I think it’s a move only Apple can pull off at this moment.

The company enjoys a cult-like dedication from its customers and a big part of that is due to its commitment to design and the echoes of its rebellious “Think Different” advertising campaign that solidified its counter culture image.

For a company that has been criticised for its lack of bold innovation in recent years, Apple can at least say it’s trying something new.

‘Still’ being the operative word.

It’s certainly not the first time Apple has led the way in abandoning ageing standards on its products.

In 1998 Apple released the iMac G3 with the floppy disk drive auspiciously absent.

As Endgadget noted, “at the time, many believed Apple was insane for leaving a floppy disk drive off the iMac, but did Steve Jobs care? Nope.”

The computer had a new thing called a USB port and the company had its sights set on the new thing.

Apple has since done the same with CD drives on its laptops. When it brought out its first MacBook Air in 2008 with no CD-ROM drive to make way for a skinnier design many people scoffed. Now it’s hard to find many laptops that remain loyal to the disk drive.

There is certainly different considerations to take into account with these examples, but it’s tough to argue with the track record.

A thinner design was posited as a possible reason to abandon the headphone jack, but the latest model is no different in size. It’s possible the extra space was used to beef up the guts of the phone, increasing battery life and processing speed.

The jack removal was also critical in allowing Apple to confidently produce a water resistant phone after Samsung had received complaints about the its recent water resistant offering with the Samsung Galaxy S7.

Aside from issues of convenience and the fact users will have another item to charge, there are also valid sound quality and performance concerns when it comes Bluetooth technology.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak raised such a complaint in August when he warned that a lot of Apple customers were going to be ticked off by the change.

“I would not use Bluetooth … I don’t like wireless. If there’s a Bluetooth 2 that has higher bandwidth and better quality, that sounds like real music, I would use it,” he said.

“But we’ll see. Apple is good at moving towards the future, and I like to follow that.”

That last sentence is important, and there is also a case to be made that such an idea is important when it comes to the image of Apple and, more importantly, investors.

In Michael Lewis’ book The New New Thing about Silicon Valley icon Jim Clark (a man remarkably similar to Steve Jobs in many ways), he wrote that Silicon Valley’s most valuable companies tend to be those that “exist in a state of pure possibility”.

What he was referring to is the idea that investors will often put a higher price tag on companies that seem to be shaping the future.

Ditching the audio jack is not a revolutionary move, but being seen to be driving the future of tech can help when it comes to the stock market. Mind you the markets did little in response to the iPhone 7 launch which saw the company’s stock price climb modestly.

Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Phil Schiller speaks on stage this morning. Picture: Josh Edelson

I forked out plenty of dosh for my beloved Bose noise-cancelling headphones and I am in no rush to upgrade my iPhone 6 to the latest model.

But if for some reason that happens, there’s no point lamenting the disappearance of the headphone jack when I can always use an adaptor to plug my Bose headphones into the charging port and keep using them.

Sure I can’t charge my phone and listen to non-wireless headphones at the same time, but there’s a bigger picture here — something the company’s former leader was notoriously good at envisioning.

After Steve Jobs was pushed out of Apple and went on to do amazing things at Pixar, there was talk about Jobs staging a hostile takeover to return to the company that he co-founded.

One Apple executive at the time, Michell Smith, sent Jobs an e-mail pleading with him not to come back to the company, fearing the volatility of the infamous tech mogul.

Jobs’ response was simple: “You may be right. But if I succeed, remember to look in the mirror and call yourself an asshole for me.”

It’s entirely possible that customers will vote with their wallet and stubbornly mourn the loss of the headphone jack. If so, Apple could easily return the option with the release of future handsets.

If that happens, I’ll make sure to look in the mirror and call myself an asshole.

Or feel free to do it here: @NWWhigham

In many ways, Tim Cook had a seriously tough act to follow.