> The audio out of my iPhone with good headphones is excellent.
Unless you're using a no-longer-supported older iPhone, you don't have an aux jack. Given the ongoing ubiquity of aux cables in cars, homes, planes, etc. and the ongoing unreliability and low quality of bluetooth headphones, I'm not sure you can call the audio out "excellent." I'm sure it works for many use cases. When you use an external DAC, I'm sure it's even great.
But considering the fact that Apple doesn't even support hifi codecs over Bluetooth, it might be that you just have a simple use case for audio. I know that between the car and my home speaker system, I couldn't live without an aux jack.
I am a lifelong audio nut, and I suffer from Headphone Acquisition Disorder.
The sound I get from my Airpods Max paired to my iPhone is easily as good as I get from the Sennheisers I have to plug into a headphone amp to use. So no, the idea that all Bluetooth is "unreliable and low quality" is not a true statement.
I don't use an Aux jack anywhere anymore. My car has Carplay. I don't use wired headphones anymore, because I haven't been able to hear a justifiable difference.
My guess is that most people who whine about things like "hifi codecs over Bluetooth" wouldn't be able to reliably choose the audio stack they think of as superior in a blind test.
As I said -- Bluetooth works fine for many people. But it does not cover 100% of the aux jack use case.
I'm glad it works for you. But it doesn't work for me, or everyone else. Think of people with older cars that only have an aux jack. Or who live in apartments with lots of interference on Bluetooth's limited channels. Or coworkers subjected to awful bluetooth earbud microphone quality. Or the million other use cases where bluetooth falls short.
You’ve moved the goal posts. First, it was “Bluetooth sucks generally” and now it’s “Bluetooth might not always be an option for various corner-case reasons.”
Interference I suppose exists, but I live in an urban area with close neighbors and it’s never come up. Nor has it come up on planes, or in other public areas I’ve been in with many Bluetooth users, so I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.
I dunno anything about “awful Bluetooth mic quality.” I prefer to do calls at my desk with a wired headset, but I’m not always there, and folks generally seem to think my AirPods sound fine. I know for a fact that many of my customer parties are using AirPods, and they sound fine to me, too —- better than any number of crappy wired headsets I also see in use on calls, for sure.
I recently bought an audio setup for my motorcycle helmet, which is of course Bluetooth; my wife reports that my voice is clear and clean from there at any speed below about 35MPH, at which point wind noise becomes an apparently insurmountable problem.
Bluetooth for audio is great. It sounds awesome with decent gear — far better than we got 15 years ago with wired buds, and (with good headphones) easily as good as the fancy needs-an-amp headphones I have around. Declaring that Bluetooth headphones are, as a class, unreliable and of low quality (as you did above) suggests you to have an axe to grind about Bluetooth, but it’s an axe without any substance.
This is entirely separate from the set of corner cases where Bluetooth isn’t viable, such as in an old car with no such connectivity. But that’s not a problem with Bluetooth itself, and doesn’t justify claiming Bluetooth is universally crappy.
Unless you're using a no-longer-supported older iPhone, you don't have an aux jack. Given the ongoing ubiquity of aux cables in cars, homes, planes, etc. and the ongoing unreliability and low quality of bluetooth headphones, I'm not sure you can call the audio out "excellent." I'm sure it works for many use cases. When you use an external DAC, I'm sure it's even great.
But considering the fact that Apple doesn't even support hifi codecs over Bluetooth, it might be that you just have a simple use case for audio. I know that between the car and my home speaker system, I couldn't live without an aux jack.