Re: Fingerprint/Home button
>Please, Sir, I know this one. The question was "How can we stop people buying cheap earphones and get them to buy much more expensive Bluetooth ones?"
Bluetooth headphones have fallen in price over the years, almost as if the silicon they are built around has fallen in price according to Moore's law. So I suspect it's a bit if both - yeah, Apple would rather you bought some pricey Bluetooth Beats, but at the same time a good number of users (not all by any means) had already abandoned wired headphones because Bluetooth earphones were cheap enough and they'd got fed up with detangling the bloody cables for the umpteenth sodding time.
I ran into an Asda the other day to buy some earphones (it was near the train station and I had half an hour, I wanted to listen to a podcast on my journey). Wired were £4, Bluetooth were £6. Yeah, I bought the wired ones, but still - it shows that the disappearance of headphone sockets can't be explained purely by a desire to upsell users to Bluetooth headphones.
Also, the last few pairs of wired earphones I've had have failed because I've caught the cable on something, or the cable has just died - making Bluetooth start to look like the cheaper option. Props to Samsung for using a *robust* 3.5mm socket though - the failure has always been in the earphones and not in the pricey phone. I once had a Creative Jukebox where the jack was soldered directly to the motherboard, leading to the inevitable failure.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
