Remember a year ago when Apple was about to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack and the internet lost it’s shit?
Good times.
Personally, I’m much more concerned about an iPhone with no more TouchID than I was ever afraid of one with only a lightening port, but that’s just me it seems.
Anyway, it’s been a year now and in case you were wonder if removing the audio port was a “death sentence” for Apple, it was not. Not even close. In fact, the iPhone 7 was the highest selling smartphone of the year.
So why then did the internet lose it’s shit over something that turned out to be a complete non-factor?
I have a theory.
The overlapping venn diagram of “audiophile” and “tech writer” is pretty big. Nerds are nerds; they’re defined by their intense love of topics- often technology- and so it should be no surprise that the same people who obsess about technology of a smartphone would likely obsess about the technology of sound recording and playback. Nothing wrong with that by itself, but this is great opportunity to explain how bias works in reporting; so stick with me.
The number of people who actually care about audio quality is pretty small. Maybe 1% or less of the total of people who actually buy smartphones. But, among the number of people who WRITE about smartphones, that percent is much higher; maybe even as much as half.
So, when half of all tech writers are complaining about the feature, it seems like a HUGE deal- like it could kill half of Apple’s potential market or something. But in reality, that population is just massively skewed and in the real world, the port removal didn’t matter at all.
This is how all media bias works. When a percent of the media thinks a way at disproportionate levels to the general population, it causes the issue to seem either bigger than it really is or more important than it really is.
In the end, reality will win out and in hindsight- as with iPhone 7- we’ll realize it was a media bias, not a consumer one.
Also worth noting is that their complaints are not delegitimized by this fact. The iPhone 7 is not good for audiophiles. It’s just that last summer you’d have gotten the impression that half of all buyers were audiophiles; when in fact they’re a small minority.
I wonder if on some level part of the hysterics around the port removal was the feeling by those audiophiles that their beliefs (regarding audio quality and it’s importance) lose a chance to go mainstream when the jack goes away. If on some level they feel like- “I believe that audio should be important to everyone and by removing the jack, not only am I inconvenienced, but I’ll have no future opportunity to change minds. I know I’m not a majority now, but this cements that I never will be.” I know that sounds weirdly emotional, but that’s because it is. It’s why they complained so emotionally.
Apple made the (courageous?) move to eliminate the 3.5mm jack. Turns out, the world didn’t mind at all. And to an audiophile, that may just be the worst part of it all- confronting the fact something so important to you is a non-factor to almost everyone else. Because when it comes to our values- our beliefs- the worst thing isn’t confrontation or opposition; it’s indifference.
Of course, everything I just said is true for politics as well.
