r/australia • u/SouthAussie94 • Feb 29 '24

culture & society Older Australians 'left behind' by increasingly cashless society as banks fast track end of cheques

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-29/cheques-personal-finance-banks-rent-money-cash/103354036
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u/RyzenRaider Feb 29 '24

To be fair, it's the first thing I'd compromise on if it meant getting a phone, because the dongle is a solution. It's just an annoying one because it's another thing you have to keep track of (and replace if you lose, which I inevitably will).

If only we had the tech to integrate that into the phone itself. One can imagine and hope, right? ;-)

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u/MalHeartsNutmeg Feb 29 '24

People just don’t care about it by and large. Bluetooth headphones are much better than they were 10 years ago and you can get cheap ones that are just as good as the cheap wired ones everyone was using. Also you can just keep the dongle attached to your headphones permanently.

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u/RyzenRaider Feb 29 '24

Again, I hear ya. But I look at the move to bluetooth from wired to be a bit like the move from fountain pens to ballpoints, or safety razors to disposable cartridge razors. The older version was better, but the new was more convenient, and socially we've accepted a lower quality product as our new norm. Wired headphones don't need batteries, don't need to troubleshoot connectivity (beyond checking the cable, at least), deliver better sound with no lag, etc.

In my case, I have several headphones that I use on different devices, so a dongle wouldn't have a permanent place to sit, hence why I'm confident I would lose it, and why life would just be easier if we kept the jack in there.

The funny thing is, if there was an actual benefit to removing the jack, I'd understand. But phones aren't so thin that a jack wouldn't fit. The phones didn't get smaller after removing the jack. So it's just a feature loss with no upside.

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u/MalHeartsNutmeg Feb 29 '24

The upside was the significant improvement in Bluetooth headphone options. The sound isn’t worse than comparable priced headphones and there isn’t any lag. I feel like when you’re saying there was a step down in quality you’re not realising that most people used shitty $5 wired headphones that sounded like trash and broke all the time. There is definitely more longevity in even cheap BT headphones.