Comment by Rygian
4 hours ago
I understand the figured sense that you describe. It reverses the logical suite of cause and effect. Instead of describing the true cause (Apple chooses to drop the jack) and the consequence (customers "don't care", which I believe is wrong), the conveyed message blames those without a choice: "customers don't care, therefore we should drop the jack".
The survey that you link is built on the premise that "you can pick only three things at most" as a manipulative trick. And since the headphone jack doesn't make it to the top 3, you use it as claim that consumers do not care about the headphone jack. This is not reasoning or stating objective facts, this is just a cop-out.
My claim is that the vast majority of consumers still need at some point in their use of their phone a way to plug 3.5 jacks into their phones somehow, and just put up with the enshittified new way: either buy some bluetooth adapter dongle, or a USB-C low quality DAC, or just give up and find a different solution.
Why would Apple dropping the jack cause other phone makers to drop it, if their customers still want it?
What is the ??? if not "few customers care"?
"few customers care" is not the democratic ideal you make it sound to be.
It's the same as glued batteries, unrepairable phones. Few customers making it an absolute criteria for their phone choice still doesn't make mean the majority sees it as a positive thing nor they agree. At the time on the android side, only Pixel and Samsung's lines were serious about the camera or international NFC support, moving to other phones just for the jack came with huge compromises that had nothing to do with the jack itself.
The "???" is "hey, Apple are doing it! since we already copy so many ideas from them, let's shave a few cents on the amp and jack receptacle, and if anyone complains, just claim that it's the trendy thing to do now".
And why didn't any of the multitude of phone makers say "turns out that people actually want a headphone jack, let's spend a few extra cents and steal all of our competitors' customers"?
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