Quote:
Originally Posted by stomachmonkey
The floppy drive was dropped because no one used it.
Optical drives could be dropped because a better alternative, The Apple Store, and lack of retail boxed product made it seamless.
Ethernet was not dropped, RJ-11 jacks could be dropped because you can run ethernet (as well as serial / parallel services) over other ports like USB. There is no difference in the user experience by replacing one cable with another.
And IMHO Apple have done a spectacular job at maintaining backwards compatibility. They did it through both OS as well as architecture changes. In my case I can't think of a single piece of legacy software that UI used that stopped being supported before it was grossly outdated.
Point being they have been pretty good about eliminating things that were simply no longer being used.
Sure they are providing a lightning port to 3.5 mm jack adaptor but that, unlike prior eliminated hardware, adds an additional step.
Adding steps to a process is not better UX.
|
When optical drive was dropped, many extra steps were added for many people - if you had software on CD, watched movies on DVD, etc, you had to buy an external optical drive, re-buy your software as download, sign up for Netflix, etc. Ditto when Ethernet port was dropped - everyone who used to plug an Ethernet cable into their Mac needed to find an Ethernet-to-USB adapter or a WiFi connection. These were meaningful hassles at the time, larger than simply putting a $9 Lightning-to-3.5mm dongle on your headphone cord.