*Good* reasons? Do tell.

Post #420,436 by pwhysall 9/19/17 3:53:24 PM 9/19/17 3:53:24 PM Reply	Good reasons? Do tell.
Post #420,438 by Another Scott 9/19/17 4:28:28 PM 9/19/17 4:28:28 PM Reply	Heh. You know the reasons. People just disagree on the ranking. Cheers, Scott.
Post #420,440 by pwhysall 9/20/17 2:50:05 AM 9/20/17 2:50:05 AM Reply	No, I don't. Every alternative seems worse to me. Wireless needs charging (inconvenience, limited useable time, yet more batteries that are shitty for the environment) and compromises audio quality (no wireless solution is lossless). Other plugs are proprietary, so my existing stuff doesn't work. What is better than the 3.5mm jack, and how is it better?
Post #420,443 by drook 9/20/17 7:45:40 AM 9/20/17 7:45:40 AM Reply	Licensing aside, something like Magsafe It's sufficiently better that I'd buy adapters. -- Drew
Post #420,444 by pwhysall 9/20/17 8:53:13 AM 9/20/17 8:53:13 AM Reply	Yeah, but that's not a thing, is it? It's just something that'd be cool if someone made it.
Post #420,447 by drook 9/20/17 11:22:10 AM 9/20/17 11:22:10 AM Reply	You said "better", not "available" I'll conceded, though, that "available" is a pretty valuable feature. -- Drew
Post #420,445 by Another Scott 9/20/17 9:37:49 AM 9/20/17 11:20:21 AM Reply	We won't be using 3.5 mm jacks in 50 years. I'm willing to bet that something else will replace it. Audio isn't that tough a problem. Nyquist limit, etc., etc. Let's say we do 5x that for the audio purists - 100 kHz. That's slow - very slow. In-~~air~~ ear [sheesh] speakers don't need much power. Amplifiers are very good, so not much electrical power would be needed to send the signal from a phone to an in-car amplifier or whatever. BlueTooth bandwidth keeps expanding. Wireless audio is going to keep improving. Yeah, batteries are a problem, but batteries are getting better (slowly). [edit:] Also too, wireless power transfer is a thing, but TANSTAAFL. But even with the many benefits of wired connections, it's silly (IMHO) to believe that it's going to stay via 3.5 mm connections for the next 50-100 years. There are better ways to do it: 1) ways that don't take up so much space inside the phone. 2) ways that are more reliable (MagSafe - Apple's patents won't last forever, or could be licensed (but is a real problem)) 3) ways that enable additional functionality (e.g. power and audio and video via one smaller connection - e.g. a MagSafe Thunderbolt X) for VR, audio, brain-wave monitoring and tweaking, insulin monitoring and delivery, bill payments, etc., etc. I'll ask you the same thing I asked Drew - you still using your paper tape reader? Remember when Ethernet used huge ~ DB-25 connectors and taps into ~ 1/2" diameter coax? Sometimes it is indeed too expensive and too painful to change from existing standards. But 3.5 mm audio jacks aren't in that category, IMHO. Similar arguments were made against replacing micro-USB. My $0.02. Cheers, Scott. (Who expects BlueTooth will eventually get good enough that it won't matter (to all but the top 1% of audiophiles) if the 3.5 mm jack is gone, but that the 3.5 mm jack will also be supplanted by something better.) Edited by Another Scott Sept. 20, 2017, 11:20:21 AM EDT Expand All History
Post #420,448 by drook 9/20/17 11:34:17 AM 9/20/17 11:34:18 AM Reply	Micro-USB is a bad comparison The 3.5 mm jack has several advantages over micro-USB: * Omni-directional insertion. (Yes, along an axis, you pedant.) * Graceful degradation among various formats - mono, stereo, with and without mic. * Sturdy. * Can be made (reasonably) water-tight. ... and let's not forget ... * Ubiquitous as fuck. Micro-USB was only announce in January 2007, and became the most widely used by December 2010, though Apple users have been on Lightning since 2012. So there was maybe a 2 year window for micro-USB dominance. That's not ubiquitous. -- Drew
Post #420,449 by pwhysall 9/20/17 1:03:04 PM 9/20/17 1:03:04 PM Reply	Everything in that post is a bad comparison You forgot another feature: 3.5mm jack headphones can be DAB/FM radio antennae.

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