GADGET GURU
T3’s tech maestro conducts a new symphony of informed advice
Next job: look for that pesky needle in next door’s haystack
ILLUSTRATIONS: STEPHEN KELLY
Q EMILY, WARWICK
Why do people care about headphone jacks so much?
A It’s not about wired headphones, reader. It really isn’t. An eagle-eared listener may be able to tell the difference between Bluetooth and hard-line, but they must then contend with the constant rubbing of cable on clothes, the everpresent fear of snagging and having one’s buds inelegantly yanked from one’s lugs, the glaring fact that dangling wires are, in 2021, dorky as all hell. Besides, a USB-C DAC is going to output a finer signal than any headphone jack, if that’s what you’re really interested in. It’s not about wired headphones: it’s about choice.
Whenever a feature gets taken away, particularly if it relates to a not-quite-dead-yet technology, people get cross. It happened with physical phone keyboards, with the tactile home button, and so on.
Your typical puce-faced mouthfoamer might never actually want to plug a 3.5mm jack in, but the fact that they can’t – or that, to do so, they need to spend £9 on an ungainly adapter – grinds those guys to the point of apoplexy.
Whenever a feature gets taken away, particularly if it relates to a not-quite-dead-yet technology, people get cross