If you’re someone who does the writing of the things, you will eventually get on a PR mailing list or two. Or, well, more like 800. It’s closer to 800. Congratulations, you will never be alone. On the downside, your inbox will be buried with product announcements about which you could not care less. They all start something like this:
Hey, [MAIL MERGE FIELD #FIRSTNAME], hope you’re having the best day ever! I just wanted to see if you were interested in writing about the hottest new product to come out of the burgeoning field of hamster-related technologies. Starting with nothing but a loan of $1.5 million from their parents (and several subsequent runs of seed capital from angel investors) and working from a garage in Brentwood, these three techbros have created what Hamstertech Weekly called “Echo Show for hamsters”…
They’re totally disrupting hamster monitoring, these bros of tech.
Now, the Macalope just deletes these things. All-day long. That is his second job now. Apparently. Some people are born to delete PR emails, others have it thrust upon them. By PR companies.
Some sites take practically all of these, type them up and let God sort them out. Others sift through them and write up only those ones they think might be of interest to their readers.
Sometimes, however, you get lucky and one of them is not only something your readers might be interested in, but also allows you to scratch a long-festering itch.
Take it away, The Verge.
“Belkin’s new $30 Lightning to 3.5mm headphone cables are your pricey escape from dongle hell.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Nick.)
“Dongle Hell” is the Macalope’s third favorite AC/DC song.
I’m tired of all this dongle drama
Says the site that has made dongle drama one of its signature moves.
Belkin has a new 3.5mm to Lightning cable out, which is, I suppose, a good thing.
So now you can more cheaply do audio out from an iPhone 7 and up if you invested heavily in mini-in equipment back in the aughts. Okay. But what about those of us who invested heavily in 8-track in the ‘70s? Where’s our cable?
But mostly, the whole thing just makes me feel tired.
I’m gonna write up this press release, but I’m gonna complain about it. Mark my words.
How did we get here?
This piece makes more sense if you sing it in a Morrissey voice.
Iiiii just wanted to plug in my headphones
But Apple won’t let me
They won’t let me
They won’t let me
Howww did we get here?
Does anyone really believe that this is truly a better system?
Well, the Macalope doesn’t know how you’re doing it but the combination of AirPods and an iPhone is substantially better than wired headphones, yes. Is it perfect? No, but having no cables to get caught in things or to have to wind up after using is extremely liberating.
But isn’t it better to have the option to use a 3.5mm connector? Not really! The horny one has said this many times but he still uses an iPhone SE which has a headphone jack and he never uses it. Having that jack is an opportunity cost. His phone could have more battery or be thinner and maybe more waterproof.
Anyway, congrats to The Verge for being able to take press release lemons and make a soothing ointment for that persistent headphone jack itch.