requires you to buy and use battery powered headphones
This is simply false though, we’d agreed that you are required to buy and use a dongle, and that this is an added inconvenience. But you are not required to switch to wireless headphones and your old cans haven’t suddenly become useless. People still have a choice between wired and wireless, wired has just become a little less convenient, that’s all. I completely agree with you that people shouldn’t go out buying new gadgets if their old stuff is still functional, but you can just continue using your old headphones if you get a new phone if you buy a dongle with it. Inconvenient yes, but not the end for wired headphones.
You keep arguing that people can just use a dongle. I can keep arguing that a dongle solution sucks ass. I have used a dongle and even the way it’s just used sucks because it’s pulled out of the socket with much less force than headphones, so it keeps getting disconnected. If you like it, fine. I don’t and I still think that removing the jack is a dumb decision. This is getting nowhere.
I already admitted a dongle is a compromise, I don’t like them, but don’t start claiming people are forcing you to buy Bluetooth headphones when they’re not.
I just explained how they are effectively doing that because a dongle is such a terrible solution that it’s essentially not usable. I can repeat my points, from charging over being pulled out, and add that they are either incompatible with some devices that don’t supply the analogue audio signal over USB (so you’re usually just buying one of those to see if they work, are happy if it does and then annoyed when you need to use it on another device where it doesn’t and boom you’re suddenly left without working headphones despite having one of those stupid dongles) or come with probably the cheapest, suckishest piece of shit DAC some underpaid Chinese procurement jerk could find anywhere on the market, so the audio quality will probably be terrible even when using wired speakers on a fucking dongle.
Is there a law that prohibits me from trying to keep using wired headphones? No, so you’re right there that they’re not technically forcing anyone. But in anything but making it technically impossible, they’re making it as unusable and unlikeable as possible, so effectively, there’s no way around using Bluetooth headphones.
They’re forcing a decision between two less desirable solutions when a better one already existed solely because it enables them to sell more shit. Removal of the 3.5mm jack is enshittification on a hardware level and people shouldn’t go around making excuses for it.
Agree with everything, but it’s not just that it existed, it’s that it was also already widely adopted for literal decades. This was an established solution that is now getting replaced with something worse. This isn’t betamax that just lost the adoption race against a competitor.
This is simply false though, we’d agreed that you are required to buy and use a dongle, and that this is an added inconvenience. But you are not required to switch to wireless headphones and your old cans haven’t suddenly become useless. People still have a choice between wired and wireless, wired has just become a little less convenient, that’s all. I completely agree with you that people shouldn’t go out buying new gadgets if their old stuff is still functional, but you can just continue using your old headphones if you get a new phone if you buy a dongle with it. Inconvenient yes, but not the end for wired headphones.
You keep arguing that people can just use a dongle. I can keep arguing that a dongle solution sucks ass. I have used a dongle and even the way it’s just used sucks because it’s pulled out of the socket with much less force than headphones, so it keeps getting disconnected. If you like it, fine. I don’t and I still think that removing the jack is a dumb decision. This is getting nowhere.
I already admitted a dongle is a compromise, I don’t like them, but don’t start claiming people are forcing you to buy Bluetooth headphones when they’re not.
I just explained how they are effectively doing that because a dongle is such a terrible solution that it’s essentially not usable. I can repeat my points, from charging over being pulled out, and add that they are either incompatible with some devices that don’t supply the analogue audio signal over USB (so you’re usually just buying one of those to see if they work, are happy if it does and then annoyed when you need to use it on another device where it doesn’t and boom you’re suddenly left without working headphones despite having one of those stupid dongles) or come with probably the cheapest, suckishest piece of shit DAC some underpaid Chinese procurement jerk could find anywhere on the market, so the audio quality will probably be terrible even when using wired speakers on a fucking dongle.
Is there a law that prohibits me from trying to keep using wired headphones? No, so you’re right there that they’re not technically forcing anyone. But in anything but making it technically impossible, they’re making it as unusable and unlikeable as possible, so effectively, there’s no way around using Bluetooth headphones.
They’re forcing a decision between two less desirable solutions when a better one already existed solely because it enables them to sell more shit. Removal of the 3.5mm jack is enshittification on a hardware level and people shouldn’t go around making excuses for it.
Agree with everything, but it’s not just that it existed, it’s that it was also already widely adopted for literal decades. This was an established solution that is now getting replaced with something worse. This isn’t betamax that just lost the adoption race against a competitor.