Why Are Headphone Jacks On The Wrong Side Of Computers?

Why Are Headphone Jacks On The Wrong Side Of Computers?


This is a problem. It’s not the biggest problem in the world, but it’s just such a dumb, thoughtless, annoying design flaw that we need to address. Apple is doing headphone jacks wrong. Actually, no, most of them are doing it wrong.

Headphone cords almost uniformly insert into the left cup. Some still connect to both, but most good pairs will connect to just one. And the headphone jack on iMacs is on the right side, if you’re facing the screen, as do most other all-in-ones (Lenovo, Samsung, et al — though HP and Acer do get it right). That means when you’re wearing your headphones at your desk, you’ve got to either wear your headphones backwards or drape your cord across your workspace.

Again, this is not a Huge Deal. It is a sort of tiny deal. But it’s not like they don’t know that’s where the jack is supposed to go either. Basically, all laptops have the headphone jack on the left side. And for machines that are built with such attention to detail, especially Apple’s famously rigorous design team, this is basically inexplicable. So please, Sir Ive, could you take a moment to make this right?


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