Dremel and the iPhone headphone jack

There has been a lot of talk about how dumb Apple was with this new headphone jack design, that is recessed and needs an adaptor to work with 99% of the headphones in the market.

Today, being one who could not listen to audio into his car due to said jack, took my dremel to my AUX extension cable and trimmed, oh 1/8″ of the plastic shealth off. The connector is still protected, no exposed wires and it fits snugly.

Observations:

Apple may have done this on purpose, to strengthen the jack via the narrower, metal top. I can’t tell that there is any play, and that seems like it would be less likely to break the solder on the headphone jack and mean fewer repairs.

The audio pops loud if I plug the cable in when the radio is on. I think my old ipod did this also, but I rarely used the headphone jack in the car due to my (now non-working) Monster charger/line out adaptor. Turn down the radio first!

The iPhonePod keeps different volume settings for headphones compared to the built in speaker, just like the Mac does. Nice.

The iPhonePod pauses the music when you disconnect the headphones, like iPods do.