I feel like it made the experience worse. Just like removing the headphone jack made things worse. Want to connect a midi keyboard to your iOS device and play some instruments on GarageBand? Do you also want to use external speakers without Bluetooth latency? Well too bad!
I don’t know that world (midi and music) but these seems solvable with a dongle/external device. Some quick googling shows at least a few such devices that seem to do the trick. Obviously those cost more money but even with a headphone jack you’d need an adapter for the midi input to the iOS device right?
Then again, you have to realize that your use-case is almost a rounding error. There just can’t be that people, as a percentage, that have that need and it makes sense (to me) to optimize for the largest pie slice and let dongles/accessories cover the gaps for everyone else.
Right so I need to buy new hardware for something I used to do for free? You don’t need any adapters, just plugin the midi keyboard into the usb port. With the old devices a lightning to usb converter was needed but that let you do lots of other things as well. Let’s be honest Apple removed the jack to get people to buy their shitty AirPods. My solution in the end is to stop buying iPhones and Apple products all together.
>Right so I need to buy new hardware for something I used to do for free?
>With the old devices a lightning to usb converter was needed
So it wasn't for free. You still had to get dongles.
Personally, I just need an audio interface to plug in a guitar, a headphones and speakers into my iPad. I need to buy something, but nothing that I wouldn't have had to buy with a PC either.
It's not like what you are describing is impossible today. With the switch to USB-C, iOS devices are compatible with a vast number of affordable adapters. Some of which add features and ports that realistically couldn't be physically on a phone like HDMI or RJ45.
What percentage of iOS users use a midi keyboard with their devices? 0.01%?
My desktop audio interface plugs right in an iPhone (USB-C to C), no hub or dongle needed, and provides audio in/out, 5-pins midi in/out, microphone preamp, etc.
If it comes to the flexibility of improvising a jam session with inexpensive gear, we are in a much better place today than 10 years ago when phones had headphone jacks. And I say that as someone who uses wired headphones extensively and carries a 3.5mm dongle everywhere.
The switch to USB-C was the whole reason I went to iOS personally. Lack of a proper headphone jack does suck (the Apple USB-C to 3.5mm is quite good however). Too bad we can't have both
