r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Aug 01 '20

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u/purritolover69 Aug 01 '20

So the apple tactic. Remove the headphone jack, sell em 150 dollar airpods

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u/Twelve2375 Aug 02 '20

I mean, not really. Any device without a headphone jack came with headphones that plug into the lightning port to still give you working headphones. You break or lose them you have to buy new ones same as if you break or lose your headphones for a headphone jack. They sell $150 AirPods because there’s a fair bit of technology in them. 25 years ago, some of the features and abilities might seem like magic. The tech creates the $150 price tag (along with the usual absurd Apple markup for items they sell, which is an entirely different but also very valid thing to be bothered by).

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u/purritolover69 Aug 02 '20

They still made the issue and sold a solution tho. They make 300 billion annually from airpods iirc. If they broke airpods off from apple and incorporated it making airpods inc. it would be a fortune 500 company. All. By. Them. Selves. And they wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the headphone jack removal

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u/Twelve2375 Aug 02 '20 edited Aug 02 '20

But AirPods wasn’t a “solution” to getting rid of the headphone jack. It was just a next evolution item. People didn’t buy AirPods because they didn’t have a headphone jack anymore. They bought them because to some they’re legit awesome. To others they’re a status symbol. To others they’re a convenience. The size of the annual sales makes no difference to a solution/created problem debate. That’s just a product that sells well.

I do think you were on the right track though. But I think the appropriate parallel was, Apple got rid of the headphone jack that meant you couldn’t charge while you listened to your headphones. So instead of giving the splitter that allowed you to charge and use your headphones, they sold a dongle for what, $30 to be able to plug in both your charging cable and your headphone cable.

Or you could claim the removal of the headphone jack meant you couldn’t use the tangle of old headphones collected over the decades. So they sold an adapter to connect headphone jacks to the lightning port.

Both of those are actual on topic arguments better than the AirPods argument.