Apple Jacks Another Victory (Premium)

Now OnePlus has succumbed to the false belief that removing the headphone jack from its smartphones somehow represents the "best experience." Well, they're wrong. And not for the first time we have to credit Apple with driving the industry in another direction.

I wrote about this phenomenon earlier this year in Apple Notches Another Victory (Premium), noting that the Android hardware ecosystem is so devoid of original thought that its members collectively trip over each other trying to copy Apple as quickly and thoroughly as they can.

Well, we've been watching the game groupthink---Apple is doing it, so we'll do it too---when it comes to removing headphone jacks. With the sole notable exception of Samsung, which, let's face it, is only a matter of time, the entire industry has been busy removing this crucial and now differentiating part from their handsets.

And it's a mistake. On many levels.

The worst issue, to me, is that it doesn't really cost a handset maker anything to keep supplying a headphone jack. I mean that in every way. It's not prohibitively expensive from a bill of sales perspective. And it doesn't cost anything from a design perspective: The USB port that all phones use is thicker than the headphone jack anyway.

But it's not just the obvious. It's not possible for any Android-based handset maker to get the experience right like Apple does. Apple was widely criticized when it removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. (By me as well.) But the thing is, their system works. There are no reports about people having audio issues over Apple's Lightning-to-headphone jack adapter. But there are tons of issues, compatibility and otherwise, swirling around USB-C. There just are.

So naturally, OnePlus is removing the headphone jack from its next phone.

"Making a great phone doesn't mean putting every component available into the device," OnePlus CEO Carl Pei told TechRadar this week of his decision. You've got to make decisions that optimize the user experience, and understand that at times things that provide user value can also add friction. We also had to think about the negative side [of removing the headphone jack] for our users. We found 59% of our community already owned wireless headphones earlier this year."

So. 41 percent of your users do not. And you are now closing the door on new customers who want this functionality. Smart.

Yes, Apple can get away with this. But the key is that Apple controls its ecosystem. And OnePlus and other Android hardware makers do not. In some cases, like Samsung, there is a degree of control that comes from being big and ambitious. But OnePlus? It's at the whim of a planet's worth of bigger companies with their own technologies and agendas. Apple can get this right because it's Apple. OnePlus does not have this ability.

Look, I love OnePlus and I love what it stands for. But with this move, I feel that the company has started to misunderstand the role it plays in ...

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