- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
The US Department of Justice and 16 state and district attorneys general accused Apple of operating an illegal monopoly in the smartphone market in a new antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ and states are accusing Apple of driving up prices for consumers and developers at the expense of making users more reliant on its iPhones.
I don’t hate Apple but I do hate their influence. They release some wireless earbuds and then suddenly all the manufacturers “don’t have enough room for a headphone jack”, …get the fuck out of here.
i’m still angry about their initiatives on delicate phone bodies and non-removable batteries.
And “no physical keyboards”
Ehh, that’s ok. Slide out keyboards aside, having an on-display keyboard is a better idea by and large.
A keyboard without tactile feedback is objectively worse than a keyboard with tactile feedback, excluding other factors.
I’ve never had a physical keyboard lag out then send an entirely different keystroke because it thought I held a button, or send a single keystroke because I was typing too quickly.
I’ve never had to wait a moment for a physical keyboard to show up after selecting a text box.
I’ve never had the entire layout of a page shift to make room for a physical keyboard whenever I select or deselect a text box.
I’ve never had a physical keyboard prevent me from using the number pad and force me to use the full keyboard (or worse, vice versa) because of an improperly configured input box.
The way I see it there are exactly two real benefits to integrating a software keyboard into a touchscreen: reduced physical complexity (the entire device is essentially just one screen), and easier access to emoji. A touchscreen keyboard performs far worse as a keyboard. It’s a valid trade-off for a small mobile device, but it’s not objectively better.
A keyboard is not just to enter text It can do a multitude of things like emojis. Good luck remembering all the mappings on a physical one, or you end up with having them eat screen space. Might not be your use case, but a vast majority of the world uses it.
Additionally, this increases the overall screen real estate. Aside for sliding keyboards (which I did add a caveat for in my original comment), a physical keyboard would be in the way for most of the usage an average person makes on the phone, like watching videos, looking at pictures.
A physical keyboard would probably weight more as well (this is just a guess, based on the idea the membrane, and additional circuitry required for a keyboard would be more than the weight of a glass panel).
A physical keyboard adds an additional point of failure on your device as well.
I’m not saying virtual keyboards are perfect. Like any other thing, there are trade offs to make. But in the form factor phones work in, a virtual keyboard makes more sense according to me. The best of both worlds would probably be a sliding keyboard, but that does add more weight to the device.
There’s room for both in my opinion. Keyboards are good for accuracy. Touchscreens are good for custom inputs and slightly faster to type on. In an ideal world, we’d have both.
To be frank, I find touchscreens so abhorrently useless that I just use my phone less than I’d like to - for example, I’m much more likely to just flat out ignore messages because of how tedious input is on phones. I don’t know if a keyboard would make a huge difference for me since I think mobile devices are garbage in more ways than one, but the lack of a keyboard is by far the biggest issue.
A hercon keyboard, like in old military stuff, will last far longer than any touchscreen. Its feedback is weaker than for most keyboards, but still better than any touchscreen.
If we are choosing between a touchscreen alone and a touchscreen plus keyboard, then yeah, only this isn’t a fair comparison.
A fair one would be keyboard vs touchscreen.
Not all phones have gone to the dark side - https://www.fxtec.com
Actually it coincided with IPX rating for smartphones. The last headphone jack smartphones did not have water resistance, but the newer models did. People voted for a more sealed phone with their wallets.
These days you can get both, but my phone has a 3.5mm jack and NO ipx rating that I could find
LOL imagine if capitalism actually worked this way…
Edit: People seem to be missing the point. I am aware that phones with 3.5mm jacks exist. I also just understand that capitalism and “free markets” don’t actually work the way people seem to think they do. Maybe if the headphone jack was the most important feature to people, it would do better. Or maybe if it was an mp3 player and not a phone. Or maybe, simply, if it was manufactured by a brand people have heard of. Sometimes it’s literally that simple.
But that isn’t the case, is it?
There are still phones with 3.5mm jacks and they are not the best selling models
Maybe people aren’t spending $500-$1200 on a device just because it has a headphone jack. Like that’s anyone’s top concern.
Zen phone 10 has everything you need and a 3.5mm jack
Why isn’t it outselling the rest of them?
Are you asking me to explain microeconomics to you? Ask 100 people in the US if they’ve ever heard of Zen Phone, and 99 will tell you no.
And, again, that’s nobody’s top concern. Maybe if it was an mp3 player, rather than a phone, whether or not it has a headphone jack would be higher up on the priority list.
If it was that important, people would have heard about it
Exactly my point
But how is that Apple’s fault? Weird argument.
OC isn’t claiming that the shift in the industry is solely Apple’s fault:
The reality is that what OC said is exactly what happened. Apple removed the headphone jack to coerce people into buying AirPods. Everyone else released their own wireless earbuds to compete, and also removes their headphone jacks for the same reason.
But that’s not illegal. Apple can’t force competitors to be influenced by them. If Samsung, Google and the like choose to be sheep, that’s on them. I don’t use Apple products. They’re not impacting my life.
If you own a phone, Apple impacts your life. Don’t be naive.
That’s silly. I own a Samsung phone. Checking email and the weather on it hardly “impacts” my life. Furthermore, you have the option to move to another platform if it bothers you that much. If people don’t leave, that indicates their users are willing to tolerate these issues.
Apple impacts your life, if indirectly, by shaping the market that they control over 50% of. I haven’t owned an Apple product since my 4th gen click wheel iPod, and I’d be a fool to suggest that their decisions don’t have an influence on my life.
Influence and impact are not interchangeable. I would agree they have some influence (indirect) as they affect their competitors and I purchase products from their competitors. They don’t impact (direct) me as I do not use any of their services or products. Apple and I do not have a direct relationship.
Lol ok semantics.
“Impact” doesn’t mean “direct” necessarily, that’s why the word is often used with the word “direct” or “indirect” as a modifier.
That’s not Apple, that’s the free market. Samsung touted wired headphones and a headphone jack and the market still showed they wanted wireless.
Or maybe people just need phones and there are only like 3 actual options.
That’s simply not true. Have you been in a mobile phone store recently? There’s far more than 3 brands of phone let alone 3 models per brand.
No it’s definitely Apple.
Their propaganda you mean.
Deliberately degrading picture quality when the metadata says it’s from a competitor to push the narrative that they have the best cameras is also pretty low. Points for the sheer audacity, though.
Wait is there actually proof of this? That’s pretty damning.
The proof is the status quo. Video texts from Android users look bad on an iPhone. Apple could choose to fall back to RCS instead of SMS from iMessage. RCS would offer better video quality than SMS, which overall improves the interoperability of all phones. Because RCS is a standard and the natural successor to SMS, refusing to support the standard makes it less likely to succeed, with the intent of defending their dominant market share.