Ah, iPhones. There was once a time when the iPod reigned supreme over portable digital music, and the iPhone was the only ready-to-go choice for smartphones. When Apple products were genuinely worth the price – there were no 100$ Apple Pens, in two separate generations, that didn’t even work universally so you have to buy the right one for your iPad.
Now, it seems like Apple is in a constant battle with use vs. aesthetic – it looks nicer to have a mouse with no cord, sure, but to keep users from using it and charging it at the same time (which ruins the cordless effect, obviously), they moved the charging port to the bottom, so users couldn’t leave the mouse plugged in to charge while they were using it. Apple. Come on.
3.5 MM Aux-less
The aux decision. Apple removed the aux port in favor of the much clunkier charging-port aux converter. For those of you who don’t know, an aux cord, jack or cable is the standard for a great many devices to import or export sound. It’s compact and cheap without sacrificing quality, which is why most user devices have an aux port (in addition to Bluetooth, not instead of). Apple’s decision meant that people were forced into a few boxes if they upgraded:
- Users buy (or have) BlueTooth headphones, which they also have to charge to use.
- The user just doesn’t listen to music with headphones on while their phone is charging.
- Users buy (or have) headphones compatible with the lightning plug-in port. These headphones may not be compatible with other systems. You cannot charge your phone and listen on headphones at the same time due to a lack of free ports. Again.
- Users buy an adaptor with two plugs.
Today
The iPhone dominates the smartphone landscape. According to Asymco, the average iPhone is about four years old, a couple of model years behind the current one. On average, users have adjusted – Bluetooth devices reign supreme, in spite of the outrage at the time. The charging times have gone down, the battery lives have gone up – as long as you remember to charge your device before you expect to use it again, the change may actually be sort of convenient. A general sense of malaise around the disappearance of plugins in general hovers over the air in tech forums and on the blogs pushing for Apple to keep the aux. Approximately 1 in 3 active smartphones in the entire world are Apple – it clearly hasn’t slowed them down. While Android devices still hold on to the aux, the switch from Apple – which has everything from already-purchased and un-transferable music to saved passwords and map preferences – would be enormously difficult for most.
Sources:
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/heres-how-long-your-iphone-will-really-last/
https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/audio-jack
https://backlinko.com/iphone-vs-android-statistics
