Hobbyist Gives iPhone 7 the Headphone Jack We've Always Wanted (engadget.com) 194
intellitech shares a report from Engadget: For those of you who miss the iPhone headphone jack, you're definitely not alone. But Strange Parts creator Scotty Allen missed it so much that he decided to add one to his iPhone 7. He just posted a video of the project's entire saga, with all of its many ups and downs, and in the end he holds what he set out to create -- a current generation iPhone with a fully functional headphone jack. It turns out, real courage is adding the headphone jack back to the iPhone. The project took around 17 weeks to complete and throughout it Allen spent thousands of dollars on parts including multiple iPhones and screens and handfuls of lightning to headphone adaptors. Along the way, Allen bought a printer, a nice microscope and fancy tweezers. He had to design his own circuit boards, have a company manufacture multiple iterations of flexible circuit boards and at one point early on had to consult with a chip dealer that a friend hooked him up with.
The final product works by using a lightning to headphone adaptor that's incorporated into the internal structure of the phone. However, because the headphone jack is powered via the phone's lightning jack with a circuit board switching between the two depending on whether headphones or a charger are plugged into the phone, you can't actually listen to music and charge the phone at the same time.
The final product works by using a lightning to headphone adaptor that's incorporated into the internal structure of the phone. However, because the headphone jack is powered via the phone's lightning jack with a circuit board switching between the two depending on whether headphones or a charger are plugged into the phone, you can't actually listen to music and charge the phone at the same time.
backlash from apple (Score:2, Insightful)
all we have to do now is sit back and wait to hear that apple tracked down his phone id, then his phone, and bricked it for carrying out "unsanctioned" modifications...
Re:backlash from apple (Score:4, Interesting)
all we have to do now is sit back and wait to hear that apple tracked down his phone id, then his phone, and bricked it for carrying out "unsanctioned" modifications...
If Apple did choose to "attack" a customer like this (who knows damn well they're voiding their warranty), it will be interesting to sit back and watch the backlash from Apples own engineering and design staff, who likely share much of this same maker/hobbyist/hardware hacker mentality.
Creative minds, make creative products.
Re: backlash from apple (Score:5, Funny)
Your comma offends me.
Re: backlash from apple (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe that was an imperative sentence: "Creative minds, I command you to make creative products."
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You forgot the "with headphone jacks" at the end of that sentence.
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And blackjack, and hookers. In fact, forget the headphone.
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Creative: minds make, creative; products.
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your offense, comments me
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If you're Fake Tim Cook, are you fake gay? What does it imply? You're a straight metrosexual?
No.
There is no such thing as a Straight Metrosexual.
That's Apple for you (Score:2)
Spending lots of bucks to get what you have for free in every other contemporary phone.
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Spending lots of bucks to get what you have for free in every other contemporary phone.
Um, not EVERY...
Apple wasn't even the first to delete the ancient 3.5 mm jack.
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>Apple wasn't even the first to delete the ancient 3.5 mm jack.
True. A few Android phones have done it, usually following rumors Apple was going to. 10-15 years ago many feature phones required an adapter to connect headphones. Nintendo tried it too, with the GBA SP. And every time it's gone about the same way: consumers quickly lost or broke the adapter if one was included, assumed you simply couldn't use headphones with the product if one wasn't, and almost universally hated the missing feature.
They didn't hate the adapter. They hated the entire PHONE.
Fffffffff (Score:3)
Holy $hit just show some photos of it FFS!
That vid goes for like 20min.
This just in: hobbyist give youtube FFWD feature (Score:2)
sheesh... you could have gotten your answer in the time it took you to post.
Unless complaining just to be heard in order to inflate your own ego was your objective all along.
It's ok, you could be president one day!
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> Life is more than a 140 character Tweet sometimes.
Not if you're the president.
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Please, try to develop an attention span.
My life is limited, my time is limited. If I wanted someone to bore me for 20min with completely irrelevant details while I waited to get to some form of conclusion I'd talk to my mother.
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"They showed icky details, including the parts WE DON'T NEED TO SEE like the scary circuit boards 'n' stuff."
"Mommy, Make Them Stop!!"
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"They showed icky details, including the parts WE DON'T NEED TO SEE like the scary circuit boards 'n' stuff."
"Mommy, Make Them Stop!!"
The circuit boards were the only good thing. Now some Chinese nerd in a beard driving though wherever the hell he was driving (I'm sure he said in the video) is a complete fucking waste of time that could have been better spent by showing more pictures of the "scary" details.
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Basically this!
If you want to look at datasheets, go to the GitHub link. Personally I'd just like a block diagram or a photo.
I'm all for modifying things but... (Score:2)
If I'm reading the summary correctly, this whole project merely created an internal version of the existing adapter. I'm sure a lot of difficult technical challenges were overcome, but so what, there'd be a lot of difficult technical challenges implanting a retractable microsd card into my pinky finger.
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I imagine that the internal converter plus jack would take up more space than just supporting the jack in the first place, so unless some parts of the iPhone had to be sacrificed it shows that Apple's excuse about needing to drop the jack to save space has no merit.
Aside from that, a hobbyist modded his phone so that he didn't need to carry around a converter.
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Aside from that, a hobbyist modded his phone so that he didn't need to carry around a converter.
Technically he's carrying the converter around inside his phone.
As an exposition of hardware hacking, the video is superb.
Re:I'm all for modifying things but... (Score:5, Funny)
... there'd be a lot of difficult technical challenges implanting a retractable microsd card into my pinky finger.
Just choose a less challenging and more cost effective location instead.
Inspire yourself from that guy with his headphone jack; you already have an easy adaptable port located in your lower back.
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Existenz already inspired me to take advantage of the port on my lower back ðYoe
https://youtu.be/W1fkINKMwHA [youtu.be]
any local gas station attendent can do it!
hehe
no way (Score:4, Interesting)
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My Samsung has a wireless charger and a standard phone jack.
You mean you can plug a landline into it? That's an odd feature for a cell phone...
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Mine has one too, but it can only be used to connect to a dial-up Internet connection.
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Your Samsung phone is awesome. Unfortunately it has one major flaw: Android. if you don't believe me, go look at Slashdot's own recent topics since last week as proof that it sucks.
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Linux is safer. The proof is the majority of websites on the planet. Android, on the other hand, is a pile of garbage built on top of Linux.
Waste of money and time (Score:1, Insightful)
Here's another brilliant guy with no common sense. Spending countless hours, and loads of money to basically come up with a lousy solution. Which isn't any better then just using the lightning adaptor in the first place. Personally if I wanted a headphone jack that bad, their are some really good Android phones or just buy a older iPhone that still has one? Why did the person buy a new iPhone knowing it did not have a jack? .....Idiot
Now I understand (Score:5, Funny)
Reading the ordeal and expense that is putting a microphone jack in an iPhone, I must say that now I understand the reason why Apple took it away. It's simply not worth it!
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Reading the ordeal and expense that is putting a microphone jack in an iPhone, I must say that now I understand the reason why Apple took it away. It's simply not worth it!
What a stupid comment. This ordeal and expense is entirely the result of doing something with a device that it wasn't designed to do. If you're at the design stage of the device this would have been incredibly trivial. Hell they would likely just have copied and pasted this part of the schematic from the previous iPhone and called it a day.
But it does really call out all of Apple's bullshit excuses such as no space for a headphone jack, trying to make it thinner, etc.
Inclusion (Score:2)
kudos for trying (Score:2)
would rather see a micro sd slot added, now THAT add all sorts of functionality to an iphone , and would likely gets apples attention
I'd be more impressed if... (Score:2)
While you'd still need either lightning headphones or a dongle to connect to regular headphones, you could then at least still listen while charging (plus you might even gain the ability to charge twice as fast if both lightning ports were plugged in at the same time, but I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some important logistical reasons why that wouldn't happen... I'm bringing it up only because I can imagne it as a possibility)
Without the ability to lis
...and (Score:2)
...and then he gets mugged...
So Apple lied? (Score:2)
Didn't they say there was no room for a headphone jack?
Did they only do it to give their up-coming Air Pods a sales boost?
God's work (Score:2)
This young man is doing God's work on Earth.
Idea for the next challange (Score:2)
No room? Why not a magnetic headphone jack? (Score:2)
Why not a magnetic headphone jack for their phones that's similar to the magsafe on their laptops?
This way they would need less interior space for a plug to intrude into the guts of the phone while making it easier and safer to connect your ear buds.
Re:Not impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
Gain: tons of Youtube views and bragging rights for proving Apple was lying
Re:Not impress (Score:3)
Gain: tons of Youtube views and bragging rights for proving Apple was lying
But Apple WASN'T lying, you tool.!
He simply traded the barometric sensor and water resistance for the ability to avoid taping an INCLUDED adapter to his favorite headphones. Even if he wanted to have the choice of multiple headphones/earbuds for different occasions, an additional adapter or two would take care of that, too.
You can buy a LOT of $9 Lightning to 3.5 mm adapters for what this guy spent,must so he could THINK he was going neener neener neener to Apple.
Yeah. That is one logical and practical thin
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But Apple WASN'T lying, you tool.!
He simply traded the barometric sensor and water resistance for the ability to avoid taping an INCLUDED adapter to his favorite headphones. Even if he wanted to have the choice of multiple headphones/earbuds for different occasions, an additional adapter or two would take care of that, too.
You can buy a LOT of $9 Lightning to 3.5 mm adapters for what this guy spent,must so he could THINK he was going neener neener neener to Apple.
THIS!!! Absolutely this! Also, after all his 'engineering', this is what he came up w/:
The final product works by using a lightning to headphone adaptor that's incorporated into the internal structure of the phone. However, because the headphone jack is powered via the phone's lightning jack with a circuit board switching between the two depending on whether headphones or a charger are plugged into the phone, you can't actually listen to music and charge the phone at the same time.
Wasn't that the main issue w/ the absence of a 3.5mm slot - that one couldn't charge and listen via a wired headphone/speaker at the same time? One still can't!
Or the other thing he could have done for a lot less money was buy an iPhone SE, or even an iPhone 6s/+, if the camera resolution and phone size were important to him
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'improved' iPhone? (Score:2)
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solid proof (Score:5, Insightful)
The guy falsified Apple's claim that the iPhone 7 has no the headphone jack because there wasn't room inside.
His mod has weaknesses because he used off the shelf circuits; Apple would have used purpose-built circuits without his compromises.
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It's the only logical reason to remove something as basic as the headphone jack. The only other reasons would be:
1. "Courage." Because taking away something that tons of people use, calling it a feature, and charging more for it takes real balls.
2. It interferes with waterproofing. Samsung managed to make theirs more waterproof and still has the 3.5mm jack.
3. To sell AirPods.
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Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA seems to confirm popular belief that Apple users don't care about how much it costs.
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Lose: Any warranty whatsoever, ability to listen while charging, lots o hard-earned cash
Gain: Ability to use a 5$ headphone
You forgot:
Barometric sensor
Water Resistance
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Could somebody please tell me why the h*** a phone needs a barometer? Are people really going to be trying to tell the weather on the phone? Downloading the latest barometric pressure data for the nearest airport so they can crudely approximate their altitude?
It seems like a useless novelty toy in search of a reason for existing, and in exchange for that useless novelty, they removed something that a decent percentage of users use every day.
I just got an Android phone as my work phone, and I've started u
Re: Not impressed (Score:2)
Could somebody please tell me why the h*** a phone needs a barometer?
The barometric sensor also gives you altitude. For things like HealthKit, it's how the phone counts flights of stairs. It also gives the phone a way of knowing what floor you're on for location manager. GPS gives you this in the open, but the other positioning techniques used indoors don't.
Re: Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? That's kind of insane. There are many possible ways to map your position in a building that will actually work reliably, such as proximity to wireless networks, Bluetooth devices, etc. Air pressure is not one of them. Not even remotely. Heck, even outdoors, air pressure isn't a very good way to measure altitude, because the pressure can shift drastically over the course of a day and over the course of fairly short distances, so you have to have a recent reference barometer reading from fairly close to where you are or else you can be off by hundreds or even thousands of feet. For example, during Hurricane Rita, the barometric pressure at sea level was equivalent to roughly what would normally be recorded at the top of Backbone Mountain (Maryland's highest peak).
Indoors, barometric pressure is complete crap. Air pressure inside a building is so highly variable that I would expect it to be nearly useless even under the best of circumstances. The air pressure inside a building is set by the inflow and outflow rates of the air handlers, and is thus not entirely dependent on altitude. In many commercial office buildings, opening a door can easily reduce pressure by half an inch of mercury or more, which is like being suddenly catapulted upwards by about five commercial-height stories. And the hardware engineers at Apple ought to know this. After all, unless they've fixed it recently, the air handlers in the Infinite Loop buildings produce positive pressure so intense that it frequently holds the exterior doors open for minutes at a time. I'd bet they see shifts of 10+ stories there.
So again, I ask, why the h*** does a phone need a barometer? SMH.
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Could somebody please tell me why the h*** a phone needs a barometer? Are people really going to be trying to tell the weather on the phone? Downloading the latest barometric pressure data for the nearest airport so they can crudely approximate their altitude?
It seems like a useless novelty toy in search of a reason for existing, and in exchange for that useless novelty, they removed something that a decent percentage of users use every day.
Honestly, I don't know what smartphones use the baro sensor for; but they all (or mostly) seem to have them. And considering that they are a bit of a pain to use, there must be a legit reason for the added cost and development effort.
I just got an Android phone as my work phone, and I've started using it. I don't like it as much as I like my iPhone, but I can plug headphones into it. For people who do music editing in the field, watch TV shows during lunch, and various other activities, being able to have one set of headphones that seamlessly connects to multiple devices matters. A lot.
And if you do music editing in the field, watch TV shows during lunch, and various other activities, Apple has INCLUDED a short little adapter cable; so you plug in your phones just like always. And if you are worrying about losing it, additional adapters are only $9; so you ca
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And remove it every time I plug those headphones into the laptop. It isn't the adapter that's the problem. It's the fact that my laptop won't take Lightning headphones, and my phone won't take real
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Only if you like carrying a potential fire hasard on you. I prefer this much better solution [amazon.com].
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I think his main point was that apple can do it, but didn't did on purpose, as well, he can fucking do it.
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you serious? Oh how the mighty have fallen. This kind of maker thing used to epitomize slashdot.
Sure it's of no practical value, but the experience and sheer geek joy he got from the project are priceless. This is slashdot where we used to glory in cool hacks like this. Have you hacked a board together from breadboard prototype all the way through to finished, miniature circuit board? Pretty neat stuff. This modern age of makers and youtube blows me out of the water. There's something about making something that is satisfying and always educational.
I thoroughly enjoyed the video and it was neat to see how manufacturing of those circuit boards works.
Just use Android (Score:2)
>> fully functional headphone jack
>> you can't actually listen to music and charge the phone
Nope.
It's not fully functionnal. It doesn't work when charging.
Just use Android.
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Lose: Any warranty whatsoever
Who the fuck cares
Gain: Ability to use a 5$ headphone
Also gain: ability to use $900 headphone.
So what's your point?
You don't care about the warranty on a $1k purchase?
Liar. Or idiot.
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Re: Not impressed (Score:2)
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I didn't say it was under warranty. I said phones are disposable and just because they cost $600-1000 doesn't mean I'd shed a tear if it broke as I have spare phones just laying around, and when the contract is up I get a new one automagically anyway.
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You don't care about the warranty on a $1k purchase? Liar. Or idiot.
On a disposable device like a phone? Not at all. Hell when my last phone died on me I just threw it away and used another smartphone I had laying around for the 3 months until my contract expired. If I wanted it fixed I could have paid some Chinese dude $50 to fix it for me.
Or are you saying that you don't get a new phone every time it comes out? If so you really are a very fake Tim Cook.
Nope. I am still rockin' a 6 Plus (with a cracked screen, no less! My prior (and first) iPhone was a 4s. I am waiting to see if the new phones are worth upgrading-to. So, it will either be this version, or the next, before I upgrade again.
BTW, my laptop is a 2012 non-retina MBP.
But if I had Tim Cook's money, I'd be on that Upgrade train, you betcha!
Re:Not impressed (Score:5, Insightful)
Somehow, you managed to be modded "insightful" on slashdot, for shitting what is literally a geeks's-geek's-geek technology hobbyist project. I'm not really sure you are clear as to what slashdot is.
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Well, yes and no. That's like say a 5% resistor DAC is the same as a 1% resistor DAC.
In IC DACs, there's differences in SNR, power noise, etc. Not all DACs are created equal and there's tons of variations in PCB design.
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The DAC in previous iPhones and in the Apple Lightning adapter is actually very good, it measures far beyond what's needed for audible transparency.
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I know I can hear the difference between my Mac mini's built-in headphone jack and a one-dollar-bought-on-eBay, made-in-China USB soundcard. Guess which one sounds better*?
* I'm 45, so take my "sound better" judgment with a grain of salt. It sounds better to me.
Hint: it's not the $600 computer built-in DAC.
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I have musician friends who hook their phones up to multi-thousand dollar sound systems where the difference between Internal DACs and the iPhone dongle ones is flagrant. That's why they use external DACs you ignorant AC fool.
For an Anonymous Coward's ears like yours even the cheapest DAC is overkill. Just plug in your local 110/220 AC directly.
Re:Not impressed (Score:4, Insightful)
What is "flagrant", is your grasp of language.
Your audiophiles with their setups are listening in a pristine environment and have trained their ears on hundreds of repeated listens to the same tracks to detect subtle variations in that
A. Do not represent "quality", but only difference from their own setup, which they assume is of the highest quality.
B. Simply do not matter in a typical listening environment.
The DAC in the iPhone dongle is good enough to drive a pair of Sennheiser HD 650s at high volume, converting from 48khz 24-bit lossless. Stick your audiophile friends in some random room and give them a double-blind test with those same headphones on their own amp and they WILL FAIL IT HALF THE TIME. I absolutely, 100-percent, GUARANTEE IT.
Here's a nice collection of similar studies done over the years:
https://www.head-fi.org/thread... [head-fi.org]
Your "musician friends" are just messing with you.
Re: Not impressed (Score:2)
Return NaN
(not a nerd)
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You can already use $900 earphones that only have a Jack for input on an iPhone 7 using Apple's dongle that Apple bundles with the iPhone.
Chances are you also need an adapter because $900 earphones don't come with a .25" connector, not a 3.5 mm.
Actually, that changed some time around the mid-1990s. These days, even recording-grade headphones use an 1/8" plug, not a 1/4". They come with an adapter to plug into all the equipment that uses 1/4". The reason for that change is robustness. As someone who has used adapters in both directions over the years, I would never touch any headphones that come with a 1/4" plug these days.
An 1/8" jack to 1/4" plug adapter puts a weak connector into a strong connector, and because it is easy to make a weak jack
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You can already use $900 earphones that only have a Jack for input on an iPhone 7 using Apple's bundled dongle
Hurrah Dongle!
Because using a free dongle is ___SUCH___ an enormous hardship that it merits destroying multiple iPhones to integrate it into an iPhone...
My dongle lives on the end of the headphone cable I use on the iPhone. No hardship.
ability to use $900 headphone.
Anyone who buys $900 headphones and doesn't use an external DAC is an ignorant fool.
Dumb comment.
Claiming (as you did) that it is impossible to use a $900 headphone on an iPhone because it lacks a jack is a Dumb comment because it is trivially proven false.
The modern integrated DAC chips have excellent performance. Beyond absolute trash sources in headphones 99% of the sound improvement is to be gained in the device producing the sound, in speaker setups less so as doing things with higher power is hard. Not to mention the idea of carrying around a DAC when people were critical enough of having to carry around a dongle is just plain stupid.
Phones have many exacting design/construction criteria but reduction of noise on the analogue outputs isn't generally one of their
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Let's assume you're an Android user. Let's assume all future Android phones also remove the headphone jack per requirement of Google.
Would you also be a crybaby?
Re: Not impressed (Score:2)
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You push the assumptions of my argument aside to make them void. That's not how intelligent discussions work.
If you want an iPhone, you have no choice but to buy what Apple makes.
What if only Google made Android phones and also removed the headphone jack from their smartphones?
Re: Not impressed (Score:2)
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>> Let's assume all future Android phones also remove the headphone jack per requirement of Google.
Bad assumption.
It doesn't FORK that way.
Bluetooth Case (Score:2)
For that amount of money he could have designed a Bluetooth enabled Otterbox type of case...with a headphone jack.
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Re: Not impressed (Score:2)
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How about a C for courage?
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Why not? Do you spend all your time only engaging in activities that purely benefit the entirety of mankind? Or do you sometimes do dumb stuff that doesn't really "help" but that you find enjoyable?
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Because it's a total waste of manpower
Well, then, what are you doing here commenting on Slashdot? Why aren't you out curing cancer, you lazy git?
fixing something that never needed to be broken in the first place
That is rather exactly the guy's point, surely.
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I'm sure you spend all your spare time making the world a better place.
Oh, wait! You're making sarcastic and degrading posts on slashdot.
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Yeah! Like that guy's modded iPhone 7!
Hurry, supplies are extremely limited!
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Everything on your list, with the possible exception of the CRT, has advantages in certain situations, and thus is still manufactured in one form or another today. What you call "mired in the past", I call "having specific needs that aren't met by newer technology".
No, but I think that record players sound better at playing your existing collection of LPs than CD players do. If you've ever tried to cut the
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I would have said equally bad, rather than equally good. CRTs are still phosphor-based just like LCDs, which is to say that they still very much have a fixed native resolution, and everything else is fuzzy. It's just analog-fuzzy (bleed) instead of digitally-resampled-fuzzy, which means it looks better than a sufficiently bad scaler algorithm.
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Just don't buy an iPhone you iTard morons, problem solved!
If you've been on the Apple upgrade program and don't like the 7 because of the headphone issue and don't care enough to spend several hundred dollars to fix it right now, then it's going to take a year to get to the point where you replace with an android that has a headphone jack and USB-C like nature intended.
That year isn't up yet. I'll be switching back to Android early next year probably.
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Times the number of headphones you own. Plus some sort of adapter keeper so that when you use the headphones with your Mac, you don't lose the adapter.