I don't know how to solve this at all, i found an alternative and i'm using an external sound card to hear my music but its so annoying not being able to use my headphone jack. Please help me solve this, what can i do? Also i don't know how much apple will charge me to fix this kind of issue. Any help is appreciated, thanks.
MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)
There are no "good" solutions to this issue, only a choice of bad ones.
• you can spend a few hours with a minute sharp instrument such as a dental pick and attempt to tease the stump out of the jack.
• you can use a toothpick with a blob of crazy glue on it to attempt to "grab" the stump, allow the glue to dry, and then remove both together. One false move and the toothpick is cemented into the jack forever.
• Apple will replace the motherboard for you, at a cost of an estimated US$800. (there is no internal access to the "guts" of the jack, even if you remove the motherboard.)
If this is such a common problem, why charge so much for a fix? I've searched on google plenty of times to try to resolve the problem and i've had no luck. I don't get why it has to cost so much. Makes no sense to me.
Support forums such as this one are a lightning-rod for people with problems. Apple sold 20 million Macs last year, and I do not think you saw anywhere near 20 million complaints of broken headphone plugs. It is very difficult to tell how widespread a problem is by reading support forums. All you can accurately imply is that more than a handful of people are having a problem.
The jack is fully shielded (so there is no access to its "guts") and soldered to the motherboard. Apple does not solder boards in the field, they repair by replacement.
This is not a "defect in materials or workmanship", so Apple does not see huge costs of repairing these under warranty. Perhaps if they did, perhaps there would be better solutions.
I expect they would tell you to use only high-quality headphones (such as the ones they sell) that do not suffer from these problems. Or maybe the headphone jack should be on a peripheral device instead of directly on the expensive motherboard.
3.5mm tip of headphones, stuck in jack
