maury markowitz

Hmmm. Well I, for one, find most of Apple's recent releases to be seriously "meh". While the ATV and iWatch have some obviously useful use-cases, they're certainly not universally useful devices, and they have definite flaws that make them less than useful in their intended roles (battery life in the watch, lack of live TV and usable in-home streaming for the ATV). So I, for one, am not really looking forward to Apple' take on the clock radio or refrigerator.

AppleInsider said:

 It's not clear why the endpiece would have to be so big, though one possibility is the presence of an authenticator chip.

Bluetooth audio is an alternative, but its quality is generally weaker and wireless headphones are often more expensive than wired options.

The size is obviously due to the DAC. And this is a problem, because it means it will have the possibility of snapping off. That's bad enough in a 3.5, but obviously worse in the only port on the device.

As to the second statement, sorry, that's utterly bogus. BT sound quality is far beyond the quality of the physical mechanism itself - in other words there is no actual advantage to a cable. You can get really nice sounding BT earphones for $20 on Amazon, ones that are seriously competitive with Apple's in-ear headphones, let alone the buds.

The first time I used a BT headset, from Aukey for $18 if you're looking, I immediately asked myself why anyone would live with a cable. I no longer will, and no one else should either. They snag, get statically charged, pull the phones out of your ear, and demand you be beside your phone. That last one might sound like a joke, but now when i work out I leave my phone on the counter and do a complete workout without touching it once.

The only thing that surprises me about this news is that it's newsy enough to reach the front page of anything.

There is something very seriously wrong with a discussion system when the header displaying the poster's name is almost always larger than the message itself, and when five messages is all it takes to fill the entirety of my CinemaDisplay.

You need to tighten up the layout, it's extremely difficult to read the posts now. Unless, of course, this was the idea.