Flying Was Already the Worst. Then America Stopped Using Headphones.

Bring back the headphone jack. Dumping the 3.5mm jack is what brought this on.

It is simple as that. I do not want to worry about the headphones being charged and losing another charging case and making more room for another thing to charge where i charge everything else.

I do not want that at all.

It was the dumbest thing to make me need batteries for headphones. And I don't do any of this stuff that is in the article. But BRING BACK THE JACK.

I am still salty about this. I was generally neutral about Apple until the headphone thing, and now I just loathe the iPhone for forcing the bullshit of Bluetooth headphones in the world.
Hot take, but people that want 3.5 jacks back are just a (very) vocal minority. I've never met a single person IRL that prefers wired over wireless, I sure don't miss getting my cable snagged on things or just having it dangling around. I have a nice set of wired Sennheisers for my PC and then decent wireless buds I use when I'm out.
The headphone jack is not gonna come back. Buy an adapter if you care that much or just use wireless buds like 99% of people these days. Mine last a full 10 hour shift with battery to spare, a normal 8 hour shift isn't gonna kill the batteries on your buds unless you buy 10$ garbage.
Edit: also the 3.5 jack or cable generally stopped working or got fuzzy/bad connections long before the buds themselves started to go. Had to replace headphones so many times cause the jack got shitty or the cable wore out due to use. Sure the batteries in wireless buds will lose capacity over time but my current pair is over 2 years old and I only charge the case once a week with 40 hours of use per week.
- This is just stupid. The point is having options. It's not like having a 3.5mm jack stopped you from having wireless buds. What do you mean “prefer wired over wireless” when everyone had the choice of both since fucking forever
- Fun fact - a 3.5mm jack doesn't stop you from using Bluetooth!
- Instructions unclear. Ended up with a modern FLAC player with a headphone jack, now it's full of music and I'm pirating again. Yo ho ho!
- It's almost like that 99% is because they don't have an alternate option.
  I've had phones from the '90s that still work, so not sure what $5 headphones you were using or what you were doing with them. I'm fairly confident that no matter what price point none of your pod things will function 20-30 years from now. Is that mean you haven't lost them by then.
- absolutely incorrect you strange person. I will never use wireless headphones. I don't need to charge my wired ones and they always work
- When I worked for a phone manufacturer I learned that their market research found that features like a headphone jack and SD card slot were pretty exclusively needed at the budget end of the market while the higher end generally didn't care about the lack of these features. I don't know that I fully agree with this, but to some degree it kinda makes sense
People have been loud and obnoxious since long before Audio jacks were a thing, and they’re going to continue being loud and obnoxious long after your grandkids ask “what’s an audio jack?”
Your glasses are nostalgia-tinted. The jack or its absence didn’t prevent or cause this.
- Yeah I mean boom boxes existed in the 1980s.
Are those iPhones? Because I have an audio jack
- Most recent Androids don't have an audio jack either. Samsung dropped it from their flagship products back in 2020, and that change made it slowly throughout their line. The Google Pixels don't have headphone jacks, the Moto Edge I use doesn't have a headphone jack, etc.
  Honestly, if you have a a phone made in the last few years that does have a headphone jack, I'm curious to know what kind.
- I don't even use it but every phone I've owned had/has a jack.
- You're in the minority
Just buy a pair of USB headphones.
Phones still all have the tiny speaker for private listening tho

How do people not realize this?

Take your phone off speaker phone. It isn't a difficult concept. Entitled assholes. Keep your voice down so you don't irritate the hell out of others. I don't want to hear about your intestines. (BTW not aiming this at the op just at those that can't figure this out.)

Calling out rude people needs to be normalized. Stop being polite to those who aren't.
- Have fun with that...
  I have called out rude people both politely and bluntly. Always is a conflict. So, just prepared to get into it.
- In theory a great idea. But more and more people are walking around with guns and more and more people believe violence is the answer to everything and more and more people are just completely unhinged because they have main character syndrome. I'm not risking getting shot.
I had a flight back home from Vegas not too long ago and there was a loud woman who could not shut up near me. Even with my earbuds in I could still hear her going on about nonsense. And when we were trying to deplane there was a couple near me as well who were very vocal about how frustrated they were that it was taking so long for people to get off, because they just had to go smoke a cigarette 🙄
- Pro tip: if you want to get off faster, fly first class. Not many in front of you.
  For those that say it’s too expensive. That’s what credit cards and checks are for. (Yes I’m being a smart ass for the past part).
Say, your telephone is sounding."
"Oh!" Matt fumbled in his pouch and got out his phone. "Hello?"
"That you, son?" came his father's voice.
"Yes, Dad."
"Did you get there all right?"
"Sure, I'm about to report in."
"How's your leg?"
"Leg's all right, Dad." His answer was not frank; his right leg, fresh from a corrective operation for a short Achilles' tendon, was aching as he spoke.
"That's good. Now see here, Matt-if it should work out that you aren't selected, don't let it get you down. You call me at once and-"
"Sure, sure, Dad," Matt broke in. "I'll have to sign off-I'm in a crowd. Good-by. Thanks for calling."
—Space Cadet, Robert A. Heinlein, written in nineteen fucking forty eight!

Obvioisly if someone's on speaker phone it's because they want you to join in the conversation. It's your duty to gather round and give your loud & uninformed opinions

~~America~~ Ignorant, selfish pricks, stopped using headphones.

Let's be real. You have to be pretty self absorbed to not realize how ignorant it is to walk around playing your music out loud or having a conversation on speakerphone instead of putting the damn phone to your ear.

And its not just flights. Its busses, restaurants, waiting rooms, forest trails.

Oh there's an easy solution. Talk loudly right next to someone carrying on a conversation out loud on the phone.
- Join the conversation.
I don't think there's a big difference between using the speakerphone than talking to someone next to you.
- People who habitually use speaker phones do not understand the concept of "inside voice" that everyone else learned in 1st grade.
  And those people should be sent to The Hell of Infinite Screaming Babies.
My mother does the speakerphone thing but she's also half deaf from a lifetime of loud blue collar work. It's never as clear cut as you think

If it's on speaker they want you to join the conversation, so don't feel shy about joining and taking the conversation where you want it to go.

New iphones come with a USB-C cable.

That’s it.

They formerly came with cable, charger, and wired ear buds appropriate to the phone.

Airlines distribute 3.5mm jack ear buds, if any at all.

It’s already a potential failure point expecting people to remember to carry an accessory allowing them to listen privately even if one is provided with the device on an incredibly common connection type.

But now they’re not included, you have to buy specialty USB-C ear buds or expensive airpods. More points of failure.

Haven’t even touched on the asshole factor of individuals just not giving an F and listening to their devices on speaker without regard to their fellow humans.

Every single flight I’ve been on there has been at least one individual VoIP calling, video watching, or gaming on their cell phone speaker that needed to be told to stop by the cabin crew.

Many countries have made it illegal for phones to not use USB-C. Would be nice to also make it illegal for them to omit the 3.5 mm jack too

I can't stand going to a restaurant and having to hear a child's tablet playing a video.

It's a thing that inconsiderate people and just plain bad parents do
or a movie theater......
Do kids refuse to wear headphones?
- Their parents don't even bring headphones
- Half the electronics on sale don't even have a audio port and you have to do Bluetooth bs.

It only takes one asshole in a crowded subway car to ruin it for everyone. I like to read on the subway, but they're basically telling me that if I want to drown out their tiktok videos, I need to bring something with me with my own audio to listen to over headphones, just to not hear them.

Make America feel shame again.

People in this country are shit pigs and they resent anyone that tells them that obvious truth.

Why does that article feel so disjointed? Tgis paragraph was especially random:

“I engaged once with a guy who had a different opinion. He was like, ‘I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s bothersome.’”

No explanation or attribution for the quote. Just sandwiched in there

It's the text equivalent of a sixth finger.
they had to get some number of quotes from random people. It's just low quality reporting

I wonder if drug dealers also do this.

(Henry's phone rings with a machine gun ringtone. He answers it on speakerphone without a second thought.)

Yo, Peter! What's up, man?
Henry, we need to talk about the new shipment of snow.
Yeah, what about it?
Tom's got a fresh batch. Just crossed the border this morning. But we need to be careful, last time it was cut with too much crap.
Yeah, Tom is such a greedy bastard. What do you say we skip the payment part, and just paint the walls with his brains?
I thought you would never ask. I'll bring the shotgun. See you at the train station at 6.
Cool see ya there. Bye.
Bye.

(Henry looks at the bewildered people around him.)

What are you all looking at?

You jest, but I've spent a year+ homeless, often around fentanyl/meth addicts/dealers.
I've heard conversations very similar to this, albeit with more slang, many times, either just on speaker phone, or with the volume turned up so loud without the speakerphone on that you can hear the whole convo anyway...
I've heard this many times, on buses packed with people, at encampments, in shelters, at bus stops on the street, etc.
They don't look around bewildered and surprised afterward. They act jubilant, cocksure.
They don't give a fuck.
- This feels like something all the dealers who are selling openly on social media would do. Just stupid as fuck
- Reality is too absurd. You just can't make satire of it when life is already satire of whatever delusional fantasies I have in my head.
Sounds like an Ed Wuncler III spin off. “The fuck y’all looking at?”
It does make for a pretty good skit
- LOL, that was great!
  I can’t wait for the AI tools to get good enough for me to make my dreams come true. At the moment, I could probably make a comic book of it though.

My steam deck has a headphone jack.

The 3.5MM jack isn't coming back, but having USB-C adapters would be a good compromise. I don't see any major phone maker shipping them though, and you know Apple would charge $40 for it. Even Anker's is like $18, and they are the current "good, but not crazy expensive" accessory brand.

- A law. A law to mandate 3.5mm headphone jacks on cellphones.
  That's the dumbest thing I've read all week.
- Are you actually saying that social issues are less important then a headphone jack? Like, I would prefer a headphone jack, so much so that I simply buy phones that have them, but it's not that important.
- They could also bring back 24-pin serial connectors, the old ps/2 mouse and keyboard connectors and physical keypads.
  They’re not going to.
  The vast majority of people are going to be buying one version of Bluetooth headsets or another anyway. The wired headsets they’re not shipping were mostly just e-waste, and the jack represented another point of liquids ingress on your phone.
I wanted to joke that the Apple adapter would be way more expensive, but it seems to be 10€. Maybe that would work?
- Wow, I was NOT expecting that to be less than Anker. Granted it'll probably be the same with shipping tacked on.
  https://www.apple.com/shop/product/MW2Q3AM/A/usb-c-to-35-mm-headphone-jack-adapter
- funnily enough I've only heard good things about that Apple adapter, so yeah probably
There will always be a market for people like me who won't buy devices without a 3.5mm jack

This is not newsworthy

Damn so many Nextel push to talk ads just came rushing back into my memory.
Also, how the fuck are AirPods “unreliable”?????? I have a 1st gen pair that still works just as well as my other AirPod pro pair. They have hours of battery life and the case itself has an internal battery bank. How does profit have anything to do with wireless audio and the removal of phone jack??? They didn’t take away the jack to sell more headphones LMAO.
I hate wires and I’ll physically fight anyone who says we shouldn’t do wireless simply because some anssholes exist.
- Everything has its place. At my desk with my computer, I don’t want to worry about keeping something charged, and it’s only ever connected to my computer, so I’ll use wired. If I’m listening to music at home or playing games on the couch I’ll use wireless over the ear headphones, and if I’m out and about I’ll use my AirPods.
- I've wasted countless hours waiting for people on zoom calls to sort out their stupid air pod issues.
  They didn’t take away the jack to sell more headphones LMAO.
  That is absolutely why it was done.

I was flying back from Jersey and on one of the flights a passenger in the front had to be told three times by a flight attendant to silence her phone. The last time we were in the middle of takeoff.