New ones don't come.
The old ones don't go, and the new ones don't come. When people with wired headphones are angry about canceling the headphone jack, it seems that it is not the first time for Apple to feel at ease. The Yangtze River flows eastward, and the waves wash away heroes. ? Whether it is right and wrong or failure, it is empty now and has disappeared with the passage of time. We cancel the parallel port. Isn't it the same for floppy disks and mobile phone physical keyboards? ? BuzzFeed's inside story about Apple's cancellation of the iPhone 7 headset interface explains why Apple has made changes.
Apple VP Greg Joswiak smiled and picked up an iPhone adapter, which is undoubtedly the smallest one I have ever seen. It's as white as an iPod and as long as a matchstick. One end of it is connected with an earphone with an industrial standard analog socket, and the other end is connected with the lightning interface of Apple's latest iPhone, because the latest iPhone 7 has abandoned the industrial standard earphone socket.
Joswiak joked, "This time we will install an adapter for each box." In 20 12, apple also killed the widely used interface, which not only made countless peripheral devices designed to interact with each other incompatible-if you don't buy a $29 adapter, you also annoyed countless people in the process. This is a black tribute to the last practice.
It's not surprising that Apple kills everything people often use or even love. But do I have to cancel the headphone jack? This thing is different from a disk drive or an interface named after the number of pins. The headphone jack is not only older than Apple, but even computers should be called predecessors. And headphone jacks are everywhere. Therefore, when you want to kill a century-old standard set by the audio industry, it is very important to plan ahead.
Edison listened to the phonograph through original headphones.
Headphone interface was invented in the late 1800' s to cooperate with telephone exchanges, which is one of the oldest existing electronic standards. The original width of this interface was 6.35 mm, but it was reduced to 3.5 mm in the 1960' s. This change made the earphone interface permeate almost all audio devices you can think of-home stereo, car stereo, digital camera, guitar speaker, notebook computer, airplane entertainment system, cochlear implant, smart phone and iPhone in the past.
Apple believes that the future of audio lies in wireless, and the current assumption of mobile audio in the world is not only outdated, but also worth giving up immediately. In the world of Spotify and Sonos, it's hard to disagree with this. But now this future comes at a price: you have to abandon the already excellent headphones and buy new wireless headphones as iPhone accessories. Apple must convince everyone that this exchange is worthwhile.
Joswiak said: "Audio connectors have a history of over 100 years. The last major innovation was more than 50 years ago. Do you know what this so-called great innovation is? Just make it smaller. It hasn't moved since. It is a dinosaur. It's time to turn this page. "
Maybe, but when I have a pair of high-end headphones on my desk that need that connector, "Don't do it now or when" is hardly a good statement. Every audio device of mine has that connector. My car, my notebook, the plane I took last time, the alarm clock of the hotel I stayed in, the microphone, speaker, baby monitor, audio equipment and accessories I bought at every stage of my life, everything. This interface is everywhere.
Historically, Apple has been good at abandoning old standards and embracing new technologies. In the past, this was because no matter what new technology Apple adopted, the value it brought was several orders of magnitude higher than the value it was replaced. Many people take floppy disks as an example to illustrate that Apple is willing to kill widely used standards in order to pave the way for the future. But the problem is that when Apple abandoned the floppy disk of iMac, the floppy disk as a storage solution was already out of date, and it was a matter of course to be replaced.
However, the 3.5 mm audio interface is neither easy to use nor obviously needs to be replaced. Of course, sockets are prone to dust accumulation. But it is widely used and has no patent burden. You don't have to pay anyone to use it. The signal it sends does not need to be decoded. And because it is an analog rather than a digital standard, it will not be locked by DRM (Digital Rights Management). Just as the AC power socket decorates the wall of our house, the headphone jack is also a dumb interface. Even Apple admits, "The effect is good." Buy a pair of headphones in a video store or airport vending machine, plug them in, and you can hear any sound you want. Why throw it away to avoid a little dirt?
IPhone 3.5 headphone jack
For dan riccio, Apple's senior vice president in charge of hardware engineering, the iPhone's 3.5mm headphone jack feels like the last few years of a friendly but unfortunate relationship: familiar and comfortable, but it will eventually become an obstacle to a better life in the future. He said: "In order to provide an inflatable jack, we had to implant this connector, which has a history of more than 50 years. It takes up a lot of space and is worth thousands of dollars. "
Riccio has been working at Apple since 1998, and most of the company's hardware has passed through his hands. Regarding the company's statement about wireless, it fully supports: "In the world of mobile and wireless connection, the strange relic of wired remains is the headphone cable-why keep it?" He asked. But he is much more interested in the chain reaction caused by canceling the iPhone headphone jack.
Riccio said: "It hinders our efforts to put something into the iPhone. It is competing with camera technology, processor and battery life. Frankly speaking, it is crazy to keep this thing when there is a better and more modern solution. "
It is hard to imagine that Apple's hardware design team will be held back by such a legacy interface. But when you are dealing with a computing device with extremely high dimensional tolerance, it must be full of challenges. Riccio spent 15 minutes explaining to me why. Let me try to make it clear in two minutes.
One of the key functions of the new iPhone is the improved camera system, which is bigger than the camera on the previous iPhone. IPhone 7 now has optical image stabilization technology, which was only available in the previous Plus version of the iPhone. The iPhone 7 Plus has two cameras side by side, one is a fixed wide-angle lens and the other is a 2x zoom telephoto lens. Above the camera is the "drive wall frame"-a small printed circuit board that drives the iPhone display and backlight. In the past, apples placed here would not block the battery, leaving room for battery capacity improvement. But according to Riccio, driving the wall bracket will interfere with the iPhone's new and bigger camera system, so Apple lowered the position of the wall bracket. But this has caused interference to other components, especially the headphone jack.
So the company's engineers want to kill this jack.
In the process, they made some new discoveries. First of all, it is easier to install the "tactile engine", which is driven by the new pressure-sensitive Home button of iPhone 7. Just like the touchpad of Apple's latest MacBook, it uses vibration touch to simulate the feeling of clicking, rather than actually clicking. (We didn't mention that Apple killed the physical Home button? The vibration of the tactile engine is also used to provide a feeling of special attention-for example, it will vibrate when it reaches the end of the scrolling page. Given that Apple has opened the relevant API to developers, it is conceivable that this will lead to many things, especially in games.
SVP· phil schiller of Apple explained, "You can't make it feel like an earthquake, but the customizable range allows you to do a lot of things. Every project will have something surprising. Once you start using it, you will understand its meaning. The haptic engine API is one of them. It has become a bigger thing, bigger than we once thought. Really changed the experience of many softwares. You will see. "
Secondly, it also brings unexpected opportunities to increase battery life. The battery of iPhone 7 is bigger than before 14%, and the iPhone 7 Plus is also bigger than the previous version by 5%. From the actual situation, this is equivalent to an increase of 2 and 1 hour respectively. The results are not bad.
Even better, removing the headphone jack also eliminated a key point, which Riccio said helped the new iPhone finally meet the IP67 waterproof requirement that Apple has been pursuing for many years (it can be soaked in water below 1 meter for half an hour).
Now the 3.5 mm headphone jack has set foot on the road of no return. Even if iPhone 7 doesn't cancel, it will be killed in the next iPhone 8 (or maybe iPhone 6 has to make up its mind). Finally, this is a simple mathematical problem. Do you want to keep the single-purpose old interface, or embrace the future of wireless audio, and have the excellent new camera and waterproof function that people who have dropped their mobile phones in the toilet have always wanted? Calculate their respective costs and benefits at a glance.
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Personal library. Personal library [reference time 20 17- 12-27]