I still miss my headphone jack, and I want it back
When Apple first removed the headphone jack I was a big opponent of what they had done. It didn&#x27;t affect me personally though, as I had an old laptop and phone both with headphone jacks and no plans to upgrade. Still I was quite vocal about how stupid it was to remove them.<p>At the time I was working at home, and had an old set of Sennheiser headphones with a 3m long cable that I usually used for music. Occasionally I&#x27;d end up tangled up in the cable, all attempts to prevent it failed. For calls I had a cheap Sennheiser headset which did the trick, and did (what I thought was) a pretty decent job of blocking out noise when travelling.<p>Earlier this year I went back to the office, and needed some noise cancelling headphones, so got Sony MDR-1000X which are Bluetooth. The noise cancelling really puts the old headset I had to shame, when on an aircraft if I play light music I literally can&#x27;t hear any outside noise. They are comfortable to wear all the time (a few times in summer my ears did get a bit sweaty) and I usually charge them once or a maximum twice a week, even though I&#x27;m using them most of the day. When they say they are low I still get a few hours usage, so just put them on charge at lunch when it first warns me.<p>Compared to my old headphones the noise quality is about the same, but these have built in volume and track controls, and a microphone. Bluetooth just works for me, and the range is not a problem. I can easily have my phone on one side of my apartment, and listen to music on the other. I have them paired with my phone and computer, and can easily switch the source without major issues. It just works (apart from some weird Linux bug where it uses the wrong audio profile, but on other OSes it&#x27;s fine).<p>A few months ago I got a new phone and it didn&#x27;t come with an audio jack. I tried to find one that did, but this had the best specs for what I wanted, so it was a sacrifice I would have to make. The phone come with a dongle, but I haven&#x27;t even removed it from the packaging in the box. I just haven&#x27;t needed it, and don&#x27;t care that it&#x27;s gone.<p>Same thing on my laptop, it has an audio jack (output only) but I don&#x27;t care if it&#x27;s removed as I never use it now. On my PC I had to buy a cheapo USB sound card as the built in audio jack had lots of static, so I don&#x27;t really care if that&#x27;s removed either.<p>Bluetooth is good enough, it&#x27;s just going to be a while until a $15 set of Bluetooth earphones are at a similar quality level to a $15 set of wired earphones. I do agree the execution could have been done better by Apple (e.g. lightning headphones, which you can&#x27;t use on all Apple hardware) and it was possibly a bit premature, but eventually we would have reached this point.<p>As for the so called audiophiles who need it, wouldn&#x27;t you be better off with an external soundcard, rather than relying on whatever $0.50 chip the manufacturer can find?