When Apple announced the iPhone 7 would be ditching the 3.5mm headphone jack, Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller said “It really comes down to one word: courage.” Now it seems the team’s courage might have run out, as the latest iteration of the MacBook Pros unveiled today has much less dramatic news on the ports front.
As the Apple leaders took viewers of the live event on a tour of the all-metal enclosure, they expected the audience to be fixated on the four Thunderbolt ports intended for universal connectivity to power, VGA, HDMI, and more. Instead, the world was breathing a collective sigh of relief that the old familiar headphone jack was still present.
Not that users haven’t found something to complain about anyway: The SD card reader is now missing, as are MagSafe connections for power and standard USB ports.
The things this laptop removes that I use:
— Keith Smiley (@SmileyKeith) October 27, 2016
– SD reader
– MagSafe
– USB
– Thunderbolt
– Escape
The things it adds:
– Easier way to type 💩
But for at least one more generation of laptops, tethered headphones will live on. And in the meantime, Apple will continue to receive endless grief for its choice on mobile.
My new app: You take a photo of any new hardware that you buy, and our AI replies via a bot that tells you whether it has a headphone jack.
— anildash.com (@anildash) October 27, 2016
The new Macbrook Pro has a headphone jack…. Awkward….
— Kevin Rose (@kevinrose) October 27, 2016
H/T the Verge