America Ignorant, selfish pricks, stopped using headphones.
Let’s be real. You have to be pretty self absorbed to not realize how ignorant it is to walk around playing your music out loud or having a conversation on speakerphone instead of putting the damn phone to your ear.
And its not just flights. Its busses, restaurants, waiting rooms, forest trails.
I blame apple. It’s a direct result of them fucking with 3.5mm jack.
It used to be simple - plug in wired headphones.
Now I have to have Bluetooth headphones with shitty battery life and skills to connect them.
Guess what - my mom was able to use wired, she cannot handle wireless it’s too complicated for her.
Thank you apple assholes. All because u wanted to sell another product - people can’t use headphones anymore.
Oh there’s an easy solution. Talk loudly right next to someone carrying on a conversation out loud on the phone.
I don’t think there’s a big difference between using the speakerphone than talking to someone next to you.
Make America feel shame again.
Ah, we’re back to the Nextel era, hooray! Which itself was caused by the fact that Nextel PTT was just more convenient to use by grab-and-talk than it was to bother opening the phone and switching to the handset speaker.
Tech bros and AirPods caused this current problem. Give a person something expensive, easy to lose, and unreliable that runs on batteries, they’re going to choose the safer loud option while traveling. Plain and simple. Tech bros see it as profit, completely ignoring the societal implications because that’s not their problem.
Affordable common wired headphones included with the device that don’t interfere with the power jack, nor require a battery, should always be the way.
Edit: Spelling
Damn so many Nextel push to talk ads just came rushing back into my memory.
Also, how the fuck are AirPods “unreliable”??? I have a 1st gen pair that still works just as well as my other AirPod pro pair. They have hours of battery life and the case itself has an internal battery bank. How does profit have anything to do with wireless audio and the removal of phone jack??? They didn’t take away the jack to sell more headphones LMAO.
I hate wires and I’ll physically fight anyone who says we shouldn’t do wireless simply because some anssholes exist.
Everything has its place. At my desk with my computer, I don’t want to worry about keeping something charged, and it’s only ever connected to my computer, so I’ll use wired. If I’m listening to music at home or playing games on the couch I’ll use wireless over the ear headphones, and if I’m out and about I’ll use my AirPods.
Where you at dawg? The whole city is behind us!
Gonna spend the rest of my response over the obvious triple question mark. (And I have a Motorola BT headset from 2006 that still works, AirPods are not that, for the record. They were always eWaste.)
Had a first gen pair that randomly die in sequence during meetings, they aged to uselessness in under 2 years. No way to replace the battery, obviously. Audio behaves weird sometimes. Unreliable - I also meant a meta-reason as to why people don’t use them in airports pre-flight. The battery life is unreliable if you forgot you used them earlier and didn’t recharge, or rather, short. So you aren’t looking at all-day wear and listen, you have a finite amount of time. I’ve also on a few occasions almost dropped the tiny buggers on flights when taking them out to hear flight attendants, which makes me avoid wearing them on some flights so I don’t lose them forever. Anker actually makes a pair of around-ear projection headphones that work all day, the battery is obviously bigger, and won’t bother mentioning the model because not trying to shill them.
Unrelated general stuff: AirPods were also an homage as their existence made every other company produce tiny firecracker ear devices. Samsung has a pair that one earphone just stops working as loud as the other, who knows if it was ESD or ear wax or fate. Not anything to do with unreliability mentioned above, obviously, that’s a Samsung thing.
Probably would be more usable if they were as cheap as they cost to make that a person could just own two or three pairs and just swap them from the charge case, but that would also accelerate eWaste.
Bring back the headphone jack. Dumping the 3.5mm jack is what brought this on.
It is simple as that. I do not want to worry about the headphones being charged and losing another charging case and making more room for another thing to charge where i charge everything else.
I do not want that at all.
It was the dumbest thing to make me need batteries for headphones. And I don’t do any of this stuff that is in the article. But BRING BACK THE JACK.
People have been loud and obnoxious since long before Audio jacks were a thing, and they’re going to continue being loud and obnoxious long after your grandkids ask “what’s an audio jack?”
Your glasses are nostalgia-tinted. The jack or its absence didn’t prevent or cause this.
Most recent Androids don’t have an audio jack either. Samsung dropped it from their flagship products back in 2020, and that change made it slowly throughout their line. The Google Pixels don’t have headphone jacks, the Moto Edge I use doesn’t have a headphone jack, etc.
Honestly, if you have a a phone made in the last few years that does have a headphone jack, I’m curious to know what kind.
FWIW, my last phone (until 3 weeks ago) was a OnePlus Nord N20. Absolutely stellar budget phone with a solid mid-range experience and features. It had a headphone jack AND an SD card slot, as well as dual SIM tray if that’s useful. I think it’s actually higher spec than the N30. You can still find those. OnePlus is pretty good about including a lot of that stuff, except on their flagship phones. Hope that’s helpful.
When I tried Sony’s 5 IV last year, it came with a headphone jack. Most of Sony’s lineup comes with it I believe.
I’ve got a Samsung A71 5G with a headphone jack - I recommend it highly except the lack of cases available for it. I shy away from non Samsung android solely due to https://apps.samsung.com/appquery/appDetail.as?appId=com.samsung.android.soundassistant
Which, without going to the trouble of rooting, let’s me tell apps to STFU regardless of their preferences.
Because I have an audio jack
Does it fit a standard 3.5mm headphone set? No? Then it’s a ‘jack’ and not a jack.
Hot take, but people that want 3.5 jacks back are just a (very) vocal minority. I’ve never met a single person IRL that prefers wired over wireless, I sure don’t miss getting my cable snagged on things or just having it dangling around. I have a nice set of wired Sennheisers for my PC and then decent wireless buds I use when I’m out.
The headphone jack is not gonna come back. Buy an adapter if you care that much or just use wireless buds like 99% of people these days. Mine last a full 10 hour shift with battery to spare, a normal 8 hour shift isn’t gonna kill the batteries on your buds unless you buy 10$ garbage.
Edit: also the 3.5 jack or cable generally stopped working or got fuzzy/bad connections long before the buds themselves started to go. Had to replace headphones so many times cause the jack got shitty or the cable wore out due to use. Sure the batteries in wireless buds will lose capacity over time but my current pair is over 2 years old and I only charge the case once a week with 40 hours of use per week.
When I worked for a phone manufacturer I learned that their market research found that features like a headphone jack and SD card slot were pretty exclusively needed at the budget end of the market while the higher end generally didn’t care about the lack of these features. I don’t know that I fully agree with this, but to some degree it kinda makes sense
This is just stupid. The point is having options. It’s not like having a 3.5mm jack stopped you from having wireless buds. What do you mean “prefer wired over wireless” when everyone had the choice of both since fucking forever
Instructions unclear. Ended up with a modern FLAC player with a headphone jack, now it’s full of music and I’m pirating again. Yo ho ho!
Out of curiosity what did ya get? Been looking into getting one myself, but its kinda a niche thing ya know.
It’s almost like that 99% is because they don’t have an alternate option.
I’ve had phones from the '90s that still work, so not sure what $5 headphones you were using or what you were doing with them. I’m fairly confident that no matter what price point none of your pod things will function 20-30 years from now. Is that mean you haven’t lost them by then.
How do people not realize this?
Take your phone off speaker phone. It isn’t a difficult concept. Entitled assholes. Keep your voice down so you don’t irritate the hell out of others. I don’t want to hear about your intestines. (BTW not aiming this at the op just at those that can’t figure this out.)
It’s Apple’s fault.
They took away easy to use 3.5mm headphones.
Bluetooth headphones are a lot more complicated to use. And 3hr battery life earbuds won’t help u on a 12 hr flight.
Calling out rude people needs to be normalized. Stop being polite to those who aren’t.
Have fun with that…
I have called out rude people both politely and bluntly. Always is a conflict. So, just prepared to get into it.
Lots of people are intentionally rude, hoping someone says something because they’re addicted to rage and want to be “attacked” for something they feel is acceptable.
They’ll immediately escalate, and especially in America you have no idea who has a gun. Making a reasonable request can be met with screaming and if you respond in kind then they feel “threatened”.
Doesn’t really matter what happens at trial, a crazy person that was looking for conflict just pulled their gun. The next 5 minutes matter more than the next five decades.
This means their current behavior becomes normalized, so now everyone is acting like it, people respond to anything with aggression because acting mentally unstable works. It makes the other person go away until you do it to someone even more unhinged.
A polite request to someone like that is a sign of weakness and guarantees an escalation, so even reasonable people stop being polite and start with direction.
The craziest are directing society.
It’s not new and it’s not the first time, but it rarely works out well for society.
I have, too, depending on the size of the person rude.
It’s weird… almost like rude people don’t like to be called rude and are happy to be rude in response to being called rude.
In theory a great idea. But more and more people are walking around with guns and more and more people believe violence is the answer to everything and more and more people are just completely unhinged because they have main character syndrome. I’m not risking getting shot.
An increasing number of people don’t mind risking getting shot, since there’s no longer any future.
Take your phone off speaker phone.
Kids and idiots base their phone usage off vapid camera-ready idiots on reality TV whose entire usage is to play for an audience. They don’t understand that holding their phone like a slice of pizza
- is against the design
- makes it harder to hear
- ruins the noise cancellation
- looks absolutely ridiculous
- may be delicious. Try it!
And so it’s “monkey see, monkey do.”
I don’t know about this. In my experience, the speakerphone speaker is way higher quality and easier to hear than the normal phone one. I just don’t make phone calls
The harder to hear might be true for the people they are talking to. But for the one holding the phone that we are talking about it is actually easier because of how the speakers are aimed. Personal experience on this.
But if they would take it off speakerphone then the speaker is at their ear.
I had a flight back home from Vegas not too long ago and there was a loud woman who could not shut up near me. Even with my earbuds in I could still hear her going on about nonsense. And when we were trying to deplane there was a couple near me as well who were very vocal about how frustrated they were that it was taking so long for people to get off, because they just had to go smoke a cigarette 🙄
Say, your telephone is sounding."
“Oh!” Matt fumbled in his pouch and got out his phone. “Hello?”
“That you, son?” came his father’s voice.
“Yes, Dad.”
“Did you get there all right?”
“Sure, I’m about to report in.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Leg’s all right, Dad.” His answer was not frank; his right leg, fresh from a corrective operation for a short Achilles’ tendon, was aching as he spoke.
“That’s good. Now see here, Matt-if it should work out that you aren’t selected, don’t let it get you down. You call me at once and-”
“Sure, sure, Dad,” Matt broke in. “I’ll have to sign off-I’m in a crowd. Good-by. Thanks for calling.”
—Space Cadet, Robert A. Heinlein, written in nineteen fucking forty eight!
