jdiamond

Even the new Mac Pro and Pro Display are really cool - they just are priced out of reach of home users, so they're more like what you'd put on a poster on your wall.

Seems like Android devices are ALSO talking to iPhones over SMS.  iPhone users don't get proprietary Android messaging features like tap back icons, full resolution photos and movies, etc.  For years, the most annoying thing was Android had a proprietary way to handling group message threads that iPhone's could not emulate.  As a result, everything broke apart - you received an initial group text, but if you replied, you were replying to one person, and all kinds of strange things happened from then on, where you'd get a reply from one person out of context, but not see the group replies.  It was crazy.  

ALL the hardware phone companies were not incentivized to collaborate on a unified rich messaging platform. Only software companies like WhatsApp tried to do that.  Which Apple freely allows on their platform.

danox said:

...

Full Mac OS on a iPad keep dreaming (maybe when Microsoft makes good competitve ARM hardware with an actual Apple level port of their Windows OS to a different chip architecture which is fully compatible to the systems of the past?)

That's how I've always felt - until I tried it.  You can try it, too - just run a VNC app that connects to the screen of your Mac Laptop.  It sounds like it would work well, but it just didn't.  The main reason was the screen size, the GUI element size, and accuracy of controls.  These are not impossible details to fix - and of course, the old 11" Macbook was somewhat useful.   But it's just not as big a win as you might think - I encourage you to give it a shot. The rumored 16" or 20" iPads might help this, but they won't be portable.  So does a touch based MacOS actually work, or are you really just looking for a 12" Macbook replacement?  (Those I found incredibly useful.)

Personally, I love the ATH-M50x headphones, and have a pair myself, but they aren't wireless, so I'm not sure why they're included in this article.

I also did many tests on my awesome car stereo and iPhone of wired vs bluetooth, and the bluetooth quality was horrible!  It was like throwing away the entire stereo and replacing it by a small boom box.  So I did some Googling and found out that there are many reasons you won't even get the 350 kbit/sec max of bluetooth 4.  First, the receiver and sender must support identical codecs.  And second, they must negotiate a minimum compatible transfer rate.  Some receivers, even if they could support the full rate, may just default to the 50 kbit/sec transfer rate.  And finally, there is the quality of the codec itself, which can be extremely lossy.

I really think Woz said it best - don't FORCE people into wireless until a standard exists that has quality comparable to wired.  That's why people throwing around the floppy disk analogy are wrong - when Steve ditched the floppy disk, there were new storage mediums that had higher capacity and were faster than flash.  What bluetooth needs is a STANDARD, LOSSLESS codec that can be supported across the board.

nolamacguy said:

who's "forcing" anybody? sounds like you and Woz need to look that word up. 

Apple removed the choice of wired audio.  The lightning adapter is acceptable, but then you can't charge.  Sure, we can choose to stop using Apple devices instead, but that's asking a lot.  So we are being "forced" to (1) give up on high quality audio, or (2) leave the Apple eco-system.  That sounds like a force to me.  In fact, modern Apple is acting like Microsoft - changing their products in a way that further's their own ambitions instead of actually making life better for users.  Steve Jobs didn't have to think that way - he knew that if you make a good product that people like, it sells well and you make profits.

Your arguement is like saying US laws don't "force" anyone to do anything because in theory you can always leave the US and go somewhere else.  Well, the "force" is saying "if you want to stay in the US, you HAVE to do this."

I really don't understand the people rushing to defend Apple in this - how is getting a device with no headphone jack improving your life?  Every poll I've seen online shows around 70% of iPhone owners have an issue with this.  Just because you don't care about audio quality doesn't mean that no one does.

I'm perfectly willing to turn my habits upside and buy all new equipment just to stay in the Apple Eco-system, but only when Apple can provide something that isn't a step down in quality or convenience.