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Apple Preparing Fix for Glitch Causing Lightning EarPods Remote to Stop Working

Mac 128 said:
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It's not the quality - I am happy enough with the quality of a good bluetooth or Lightning connection, it's the actual connector that I have an issue with. Over the years headphone cords have gone from something you plug into your amp at home to a portable device that is often found in pockets. Headphone manufacturers have adapted and have created right angled plugs, or those that are very flexible as they exit the phone. Combined with the sturdiness of the 3.5mm plug inserted into the phone this made breaking the leads near impossible when put in a pocket and having lateral force applied to it

Fast forward to the Lightning connector which is huge, long, and not very sturdy. Applying force will easily snap the connector in the phone, and possibly damage the phone in the process, I have seen a minor news report already about people breaking the new earbuds, but cant find anything much from major news organisations, but it will happen.
 
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daviddth said:
It's not the quality - I am happy enough with the quality of a good bluetooth or Lightning connection, it's the actual connector that I have an issue with. Over the years headphone cords have gone from something you plug into your amp at home to a portable device that is often found in pockets. Headphone manufacturers have adapted and have created right angled plugs, or those that are very flexible as they exit the phone. Combined with the sturdiness of the 3.5mm plug inserted into the phone this made breaking the leads near impossible when put in a pocket and having lateral force applied to it

Fast forward to the Lightning connector which is huge, long, and not very sturdy. Applying force will easily snap the connector in the phone, and possibly damage the phone in the process, I have seen a minor news report already about people breaking the new earbuds, but cant find anything much from major news organisations, but it will happen.
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They already have Right angled lightning adapters. Don't know if they support audio, but you can bet someone is working in this now ...
 
JustMartin said:
Not really, I remember twisting a jack round to find the sweet spot because the wires in the plug had broken again. I remember spending a small fortune on headsets because of cable problems.
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Um, so the jack wasn't the problem, the *broken* headphones were then, right? So the fault wasn't the jack, so much as the defective/crappy made in china headphones.... right? And if the Lightning EarPods develop a similar fault at the connector end, you know, the stress point in most all headphones, they won't work at all.

How is this an improvement again?
 
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jwdsail said:
How is this an improvement again?
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Because it's digital? I agree though, you have a reasonably strong headphone connector that has developed and adapted over the years, and it rarely fails or puts undue stress on the device it plugs into.

Now how many of you here have had to replace a lightning cable? We have 4 iPh0nes and 3 iPads using the Lightning cables and one iPad with the old 40 pin connector. With chargers in 3 cars, at work, and a number at home I think I replace one cable every second week as it fails in some way. I gave up replacing them with Apples cables long ago as they were lasting only a few months in the cars before they failed (I think it was the heat of Australian Summers that killed them).
 
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Abazigal said:
That has always been the inevitable cycle of things. The rebels invariably become part of the system or the system itself. Those who go against the establishment become part of that establishment or replace it. There's no way to break the rules without also creating new rules in the process.

That said, I am interested to see what Apple can accomplish when it is at the height of its power, with all the wealth and influence at its disposal. Should be fun to watch.
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Aren't we all and I do wish them well, but inevitably internal politics and bureaucracy has a way of introducing feature-creep and blurry vision of the mission.

Unlike other big companies, Apple came back from the brink in 1997 and acted like a disruptor the 2nd time around.
They need to catch their 3rd wind, somehow, thru someone. Not sure that will be Cook, but whoever it is, hopefully that cash horde will be put to good use and not just a glorious spaceship HQ.
 
I guess I understand that new products can have unexpected issues, but it seems like they would have tested for this since it directly relates to one of the biggest changes in the phone. Feels a little shoddy to me. I can totally live without a headphone jack, as long as the alternative actually functions, which in this case is still up in the air. Good news is that while you can't listen to anything, at Least you have text message confetti!!!
 
WilliamG said:
I've never had once had an issue with Lightning ports being THAT filled with lint, and never had a connectivity issue with the port. 3.5mm? All the time.
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Very interesting. I never found lint in the 3.5mm jack in my phone, or the lightning port for that matter. However, have found a stray strand once in my father's iPhone (lightning) and on multiple occasions in my 4s 30-pin wide welcoming slot. 😀
 
MarkusL said:
Sound suddenly only being on one side is caused the cheap cable on your $3 set of airplane headphones. It has nothing to do with the jack, and quality headphones don't suffer from this problem.
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Except it happened once with a car (2014 Audi A3), and twice with different headsets on a rather expensive Sony Walkman. But thanks for trying to shoot down my comment so you maintain the feeling that your opinion is infallible.
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macintoshmac said:
Very interesting. I never found lint in the 3.5mm jack in my phone, or the lightning port for that matter. However, have found a stray strand once in my father's iPhone (lightning) and on multiple occasions in my 4s 30-pin wide welcoming slot. 😀
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I've had a 3.5mm jack fill with enough lint to cause issues, but nowhere near as quick as a lightning port.
 
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WilliamG said:
I've never had once had an issue with Lightning ports being THAT filled with lint, and never had a connectivity issue with the port. 3.5mm? All the time.
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Total opposite here. Always cleaning out the Lightning port, but never had to clean out the earphone port, and I use earphones a LOT on my 2 year old iPhone 6
 
falainber said:
But right angled lightning adapter will be more prone to breaking (than 3.5mm one) because it can't rotate.
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Neither can rotate, but at least the right angle reduces the height profile of the Lightning plug so it's less likely to be put into a situation to break.
 
Mac 128 said:
Neither can rotate, but at least the right angle reduces the height profile of the Lightning plug so it's less likely to be put into a situation to break.
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The 3.5mm can easily rotate as the shaft of the 3.5mm jack provides a perfect pivot point, so if the cord is pulled or bumped at a right angle the 3.5mm jack just rotates and you never notice. If the same thing happens to the lightning jack it resists the force until it simply breaks, possibly damaging the lightning connection in the process
 
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daviddth said:
The 3.5mm can easily rotate as the shaft of the 3.5mm jack provides a perfect pivot point, so if the cord is pulled or bumped at a right angle the 3.5mm jack just rotates and you never notice. If the same thing happens to the lightning jack it resists the force until it simply breaks, possibly damaging the lightning connection in the process
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Again, what's the use case? The whole point of the right angle connector is create a low-profile connection to take the strain and minimize pressure applied to a plug sticking straight out of the bottom. So there shouldn't be a lot of front to back motion to torque the connector, especially in a pocket. But in that same application there would be considerable opportunity for a long plug to encounter opposing forces.
 
Mac 128 said:
Again, what's the use case? The whole point of the right angle connector is create a low-profile connection to take the strain and minimize pressure applied to a plug sticking straight out of the bottom. So there shouldn't be a lot of front to back motion to torque the connector, especially in a pocket. But in that same application there would be considerable opportunity for a long plug to encounter opposing forces.
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Phone in pocket, or on table and pull cables at right angles to the plug. If you pull it towards the front of the phone then that's probably the worst way for the Lightning as it will create a twisting force on the plug itself, as well as the casing that will be required to house the electronics. The same thing with the 3.5mm and it will rotate and then put the strain onto the wires and cable attachment point in the plug. The pressure on such a long 3.5mm plug wont put excessive pressure on the audio plug due to the size and length

Now lets pull straight down away from the phone, so the phone is upside down in your pocket and you pull on headphone cord. The 3.5mm will simply disconnect - been there and done that hundreds of times. While I think the Lighting plug will do the same in its current design, the right angle plug might actually cause the Lightning plug to try to rotate across its width and thus jam it in a little tighter. We wont really know till we see this in the wild I guess

An option to counter this might be a Lightning plug with just the plug and a very low height very flexible rubber cable guard that can easily be bent 90/180 degrees just millimetres up the cable from the lightning plug. Then just a couple of cm up the lead have a small "lump" to house the electronics for the headphones. That way you move the mass in the lightning plug up away from the base of the phone where it would cause the issues. The only problem then is designing a small enough lightning plug with adequate flexibility and strain relief for the cables
 
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daviddth said:
Phone in pocket, or on table and pull cables at right angles to the plug. If you pull it towards the front of the phone then that's probably the worst way for the Lightning as it will create a twisting force on the plug itself, as well as the casing that will be required to house the electronics. The same thing with the 3.5mm and it will rotate and then put the strain onto the wires and cable attachment point in the plug. The pressure on such a long 3.5mm plug wont put excessive pressure on the audio plug due to the size and length

Now lets pull straight down away from the phone, so the phone is upside down in your pocket and you pull on headphone cord. The 3.5mm will simply disconnect - been there and done that hundreds of times. While I think the Lighting plug will do the same in its current design, the right angle plug might actually cause the Lightning plug to try to rotate across its width and thus jam it in a little tighter. We wont really know till we see this in the wild I guess

An option to counter this might be a Lightning plug with just the plug and a very low height very flexible rubber cable guard that can easily be bent 90/180 degrees just millimetres up the cable from the lightning plug. Then just a couple of cm up the lead have a small "lump" to house the electronics for the headphones. That way you move the mass in the lightning plug up away from the base of the phone where it would cause the issues. The only problem then is designing a small enough lightning plug with adequate flexibility and strain relief for the cables
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I can't imagine the phone on a table scenario -- what's holding the phone such that the cable could do any damage if pulled up 90 degrees? And the pocket is where I'm least concerned. Slip the phone in with the connector bottom down and there's no problem. There's far more likelihood of the Lightning connector snapping off if you carry the phone upside down in a pocket and sit down for instance.

I agree a better connector should be devised, but we're talking about what's available, and I'd rather take my chances with a low-profile, right-angle adapter. But since that doesn't exist either, I guess we'll see how many broken Lightning plugs there are reported soon.

Maybe something like this in the interim: http://www.mode-al.com/product_detail.php/product/iPad Lightning Reverse Cable

 
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