iPhone 8 standards

So many great iPhone 8 and iOS 11 reviews out today. My favorite aside has to be the headphone jack mini-rant in Nilay Patel’s The Verge review:

And I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that there’s no headphone jack, which is still routinely annoying on every phone that omits it. Apple’s own headphone dongle is one of the lowest-rated products on the Apple Store, with just 1.5 stars. It’s been a year, and the Lightning audio ecosystem is still extremely immature.

When I was at STAPLE! last week I bought a t-shirt from an artist who had to enter credit cards into the Square app manually because he had lost his Lightning dongle for the Square reader. Minor inconvenience, and fixed with an extra $9 purchase from the Apple Store, but nevertheless a real compatibility issue that will never go away.

We’ll eventually get used to this. Many people already have, thanks to the AirPods. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the wrong decision, though. (I’m happy to give Apple full credit when they embrace a standard, like Qi charging or USB-C.)

Manton Reece @manton