KEY POINTS:
I've been doing a fair bit of flying around the US in the last couple of weeks and have a trip across the continent and a long haul flight from San Francisco to Auckland and the short hop to Wellington still ahead of me.
So it's nice to
have the iPhone loaded up with music and podcasts to stave off the boredom.
Still, I'm really annoyed that with it I can't use the Phitek noise-cancelling headphones I'm carrying or for that matter the Bose earbuds that are also floating around in my luggage.
Both deliver far better sound than the earphones that ship with the iPhone. But in Apple's wisdom, it decided to recess the 3.5 millimetre headphone jack on the phone so numerous headphone sets can't properly plug into it.
This problem quickly became obvious around the time of the iPhone launch but I expected there to me more of an outcry about it.
As well as the high-end headphones, I can't plug the iPhone into my stereo using the audio cable I currently own. What's the solution?
Well, I could pay US$19 while I'm here and pick up an Phone TTY adapter " which will allow the iPhone to connect to most headphones. But why should I have to spend extra just to use my own headphones?
I used to get pretty annoyed at mobile phone makers who put non-standard headphone jacks on their phones to force you to use the ones they supplied.
Apple had a standard connector from the very first iPod. But while the recessed housing for the headphones neatly hides away part of the connector of Apple's headphones you may be out of luck if you plan to get the best out of the iPhone by using better-quality earphones.
I'll have to get that adaptor, though it's going to make the iPhone look pretty ugly. The other option is to follow the advice of one Macrumours.com forum poster:
"Take an [Exacto] knife and trim the plastic around the end of the headphone jack - my QC3's fit perfectly now."
Has it really come to that? Apple's iPhone as Time magazine declared this week, is the invention of the year, but its recessed headphone jack is just plain stupid and an inconvenience for many loyal customers.
