Obsolescence! (Phone jacks)

Martin AA6E

The news today (from Apple) is that the 1/8" headphone jack is dead. Maestro designers take note.  Bluetooth is needed.

I won't say anything about 1/4" jacks or UHF connectors.  Nothing ever really dies in ham radio.  I think I've still got Fahnestock clips somewhere.

Mike va3mw

That is yet to be announced from Apple, but how does this affect Maestro? The sky is not falling and we still use 1/4" jacks too. Mike va3mw

Bill -VA3WTB

Keeping step? the Maestro has bluetooth. It is not yet implemented in software yet.

Gary L. Robinson

I would not be surprised if APPLE becomes obsolete before the 1/4" jacks :-)

Ross - K9COX

I believe there is a camera or two inside as well.

Steve K9ZW

The Apple "let's delete a feature and call it progress" has been spun to ignore that the near gear will come with Lightning and an 1/8"-to-Lightning adaptor.

In many ways Apple had nothing out of the ordinary to talk about other than combining the physical ports and expressing a preference for Bluetooth/wireless accessories.

It is to be seen if the iPhone 8 carries on with the no phone jack as a dangly adaptor which most likely will be difficult to use with a charger is kind of "non-Apple" in suddenly purposely being an inelegant solution for a need already solved.

Of what was announced the water resistance and further improved camera are the items that interested me.

Yet for the water resistance, knowing that my massive Otterbox has saved my iPhone 6+ from certain death by drops, water and impact, resolving the water resistance still leaves my phone in some sort of armored case. 

Big picture, one vendor even if one of the dominant vendors, in one market segment will not alone obsolete a connector across the board. 

The hassles of independent wireless accessories are pretty profound - non synchronized energy use rates and capacity, the need to manage charging multiple objects, all of the security and overhead issues of managing several wireless links especially in an RF-dense situation, physical retention (right now I drop an ear bud and it is dangling - I can quickly find it when I want and do not need to manage its temporary storage).

I am well please with the plethora of connector options with our Maestros, and look forward to the Maestro Bluetooth implementation being readied as an option for those who want to go that way.

All neat stuff!

73

Steve K9ZW

Ross - K9COX

Sorry Steve, I'm could not resist. No offence intended
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mTUmczVdik

Ria

I watch every event in its entirety. The jack was removed to make room for more stuff inside of the phone. Also, the direction they are going with the phone is clearly wireless. I am disappointed that they did not include wireless charging with this model. The AirPods are the start of what they are going on with this phone. 
Apple has taken out a few other things out of its past devices and has led the way. Floppy disk drives. RS232 serial ports. Optical drives. They did this to add more inside the device as well as making it smaller and thinner. 

W3PH

I'd love to see bluetooth enabled on the Maestro for keyboard & mouse for those who want such, but there might be noticeable latency with bluetooth audio.  I see this playing the audio part of things like youtube videos from my iOS and Android devices over bluetooth - the delay is enough to make the sound out of sync with lips.   Sometimes a wire is better.

Mike Smoot

I have never been favorably impressed by the quality of bluetooth sound.  To me it has never approached the level of fidelity afforded by a hardwired audio connection.  Steve Wozniak recently came out against Apple's plan to delete the 3.5mm jack from the I7, citing loss of fidelity over bluetooth. 

Bob G W1GLV

I use a bluetooth dongle on my Maestro and see no degradation of audio. As a matter of fact my ham audio is all Bluetooth and has been for the past year. No regrets

Ria

It can at best match that of a 320kBps MP3. Hardwired is still available via the lightning connector. For ham audio I think that BT audio quality is sufficient.

Michael Coslo

Does this move by Apple affect Flex radios in some way?

Mike Smoot

I should have clearly stated my concern relates to the loss of _music_ fidelity over BT. I think BT is just fine for voice and other forms of communications audio.
KB1MH

Tim - W4TME

We don't anticipate any issues.

Paul Christensen, W9AC

>"I am disappointed that they did not include wireless charging with this model."

Same here but I would like to see induction + solar charging implemented at the same time.  There's a lot of wasted back side surface area that can be used for efficient solar cells.  Presently, the entire back side is useless apart from the small rear camera.   

Whether the iPhone is sitting face down on a dashboard, under office lighting or pretty much a light source from anywhere, it will offer the ability to charge in between either wired or inductive charging intervals. 

Many of us have seen the dreaded message that prevents us from using the device when the case is too hot.  Although the iPhone presently can get excessively hot under direct sunlight, I have to believe Apple will find a way to avert that wasted energy by inclusion of the solar cells, thereby minimizing case heat.  In time, Apple will let us ditch the **** Mophie.   

With Apple including a Lightning to 3.5mm adapter, I just don't see the big deal with the loss.  In my case, I see it as more convenient since my headphones use right-angle plugs and always seem to add undue stress to the iPhone's fragile 3.5mm jack.    As long as there's a wired audio alternative, there's happiness here.

Paul, W9AC

Larry - WA7LZO

iPhone 7 looks great!

AA0KM

Jim Best

Love it!!

Jay -- N0FB

The same gnashing of teeth and predictions of Apple's demise are offered every time they shipped products which lacked some legacy hardware appurtenant. It happened with the parallel ports, serial ports, FireWire, floppy drives, and CD/DVD drives. With uncanny precision, Apple has been able to see over the horizon and profit from their decisions to stop producing products containing legacy hardware all despite the "expert" Naysayers prognostications of doom-and -gloom.

This is analogous to a Ham radios company developing an HF transceiver without physical knobs and switches. It will never catch on. . :-)

Steve W6SDM

Apple will be removing Bluetooth technology with the iPhone 8, due to be released in late 2017.  The new protocol will involve alpha wave technology that will send the audio signal directly to your brain.

Chris DL5NAM

... what brain ?

Steve W6SDM

That's optional.  You can buy one from Apple for $160. 

Ken - NM9P

I think I chuckled the most about the View-Master Slot and the Ear Trumpet jack! 

Additional features that were not labeled....
XLR Balanced in and out jacks;
usb mini and usb micro jacks,
Ethernet port,
RJ-11 telephone modem port,
VGA Monitor port,

Classic satire!   But where are the rotary dial and handset that were part of the first mobile radio-telephones?

KF4HR

Much to do about nothing.  Hard core Apple wired folks will still be able to plug in their wired headsets via a  port adapter.

Ross - K9COX

The Maestro caught on quite well :^)

KC9NRN

I know people will defend Apple no matter what they do. Apple is a closed system who LOVES to be as proprietary as possible so they can keep profits as close to home as possible all the while complaining about Microsoft.

I'm a capitalist so I don't begrudge companies making profits but Apple promotes the kind of closed system I hate and I also hate where they manufacture their devices and while many companies choose China, Apple leads the way in suicides and bad conditions and serves us talking points instead of  tangible changes (this is a whole post in itself, not worth getting into here).

I agree, the hard core Apples folks will spend the additional funds to get any adapter and Apple will smile all the way to the bank. I don't believe this will be the demise of Apple, I think the demise of Apple began with the death of Steve Jobs. Cook lacks the vision of Jobs plain and simple. 

Bad decisions continue to follow Apple and while Apple fan magazines/web sites and hard core types will buy everything and anything Apple sells, many are seeing them for what they are and switching.

Apple leads the way in dumping legacy, yep, and this planned obsolescence also pisses people off. Look at the previous G5's and how much people spent for a new one only to see them switch to Intel in '06 and updates for those G5's ceased pretty early on making them relics before they needed to be (I have a Dual CPU rig from 2005) so when Apple chose to stop using Flash the Apple faithful that upgrades quickly couldn't care less but others were left having to figure out how to use sites that had flash or Silverlight etc..

The Apple faithful will tell you that Apples reasons for switching to Intel had nothing to do with losing the performance wars after all they had people telling us on commercials how the Mac dominated PC in their benchmarks except they weren't. Intel based PC's were slaughtering the Mac and Apple switched to x86 out of survival but people believe what they believe facts be ****. 

The hard core will tell me I don't know what I'm talking about and will show me numbers for iPhone sales (not Mac sales of course) and I'll point to this article that shows Apple down overall since Jobs died. Apple is a closed system, sure there are a lot of accessories for their products but Apple products themselves are closed and that in the end along with less vision is what will do them in as it almost did before Microsoft bailed them out in 1997 and Steve Jobs was back at the helm. Left to their own, Apple would have died 20 years ago.

Samsung (and many others) has had wireless charging now for 3 or 4 generations of phones and iPhone 7 lacks it. Apple spoon feeds upgrades and the Apple folk buy the hype and pony up. I bought the iPad Pro, for work because the app I use there is IOS only and for remote use of my 6300, otherwise I would have gone Android.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-one-chart-how-microsoft-has-trumped-apple-since-steve-jobss-deat...

I'll put my flame suit on now.

Martin AA6E

As the OP here, I will just say that we're getting pretty far afield, when our main concern needs to be Flex and the options we have in ham radio.

My post boiled down to "let's get Bluetooth working on the Maestro."  I am sure that wired headphones and mics will exist into the 22nd century, but those wires are causing me some grief today, and the Maestro hardware has BT that just hasn't been turned on.  (I know, it's not quite that simple.)

73 Martin AA6E

KC9NRN

Martin,

Agreed, sorry about ranting on and I agree that BT should be something easy to use, this is Windows after all so not sure why it wasn't "easy" to implement.