Why lose the headphone jack?
The steady fade of our analog past continued this month when Apple released its latest smartphone, the iPhone 7, without a headphone jack. Amid the hue and cry from those who use headphones to listen to music while running, talk on the phone while driving, or block out subway crowds, the Gazette tracked down Woodward Yang, the Gordon McKay Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, a University Fellow at Harvard Business School, and faculty co-director of the new master’s program in design engineering at the John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Graduate School of Design. Yang has kept an eye on the cellphone industry since he developed the CMOS image sensor that is common in cellphone cameras. He also testified as an expert witness in Apple’s patent infringement lawsuit against Samsung. Yang, an iPhone user, doesn’t count himself among the outraged — he confessed he barely...