Apple Preparing HD Audio Playback for iOS 8 Alongside New In-Ear Headphones and Lightning Cable

[CylonGlitch]

Lightning cables don't break on their own, they get broken through abuse.

I hear people while about their cables breaking; yet have owned about a dozen apple branded lightning cables and never one broke (one for every car (4), wife and I have them at work (2), each have two at home (4), and the kids each have one (2)). Never had oxidation, never had fraying, never had any issue.

I've owned about a dozen off brand ones as well; most of which failed within a month or two.

I had a friend complain about how fragile iPods were. After going over it with him, it turns out that he always throws it into his backpack with the headphones connected, then the books on top of it. What would happen is the headphone jack would break off inside. Well, when you throw books on top of it, the rotational forces on the jack because you left the headphones in will easily break the solder. I told him to remove the headphones before throwing it in the backpack.... never had a problem again.

Don't abuse your electronics. But can't blame the company, but can't blame the people either, many times they just don't know about these things.

 

[osofast240sx]

But they look pretty!

I have a Belkin Lightning cable which is built like a tank in comparison

Apple lightning cable is superior belkin. All of my belkins are halfway broken pulled out.

 

[wizard]

Thank you. Your check is in the mail.
Lots of love
Sennheiser.

Worst people don't realize how personal the behavior of earbuds are. Slight repositioning, twisting or depth adjustments have a huge impact on sound quality. Often the difference comes down to fit.

 

[bbbb4b]

ive compared Beats pro vs. B&W new P7 headphones both run &399. For me it was a tie. With giving very little edge to B&W. Beats lower end headphones suck but once u spend some.money there awsome

It's really that way with, not only most headphone manufacturers, but with most manufactures of ANYTHING.

Sennheiser makes some of the worst headphones money can buy. (so what).
They also make some of the best.
People get too caught-up in the NAME of the brand.

 

[newcronos]

In-ear headphones are uncomfortable and hard to get right because people's anatomy vary (I personally couldn't get one to fit). The Earpods is one of the best Apple products ever (at least according to me). Why messing with a good thing? Unless they'll keep selling both products.

 

[wizard]

Please apple don't take headphone advice from 'fashion' headphones like beats.

Sennheiser all the way.

Beats are no more fashion headphones than Sennheiser. If one set of headphones was all that much better than all the others, all the audio professionals would be using the same headphones. They don't because of many reasons but one important one is that they simply don't sound the same to all people due to people not being the same.

 

[Reason077]

You're absolutely right. The ones that came with my iPhone 5 are completely unbearable. They're so big and hard plastic, they kill my ears to have them in for more than a few seconds. I think this is a great move by them.

I was talking about the in-ear headphones, not the 'EarPods' that come with the recent iPhones. I find those to be really good! Among the best fitting and most comfortable earbuds I've used.

 

[osofast240sx]

It's really that way with, not only most headphone manufacturers, but with most manufactures of ANYTHING.

Sennheiser makes some of the worst headphones money can buy. (so what).
They also make some of the best.
People get too caught-up in the NAME of the brand.

I'm about to buy a rhode Mic off Amazon and you get a free sennheiser headphones I know they must be really crappy, probably give them to my neighbors kid or something

 

[AppleScruff1]

And there lies the problem. Apple is too focused on chasing the 99% in 2014. That was never what Apple was about. This is a implementation that would cost nothing, add value to a lot of people and wouldn't even detract from Apple on their "capture the plebs" goal.

Its also worth pointing out that I have recently seen a few of my friends who are long term Apple users leave the ecosystem because of pettiness like this.

Excellent point, one of the best I have read here. Apple used to be for the 1%.

 

[wizard]

Here's the thing, when it comes to the hardware side of Beats, I'm probably not a fan.

I'd much rather Apple purchase Bowers & Wilkins and base their audio products on that and actually move into high-end audio in quite a big way. Except B&W is a British company and I'd, rightly or wrongly, like it to stay British.

What is the point in staying British?

Cake and eat it?

As for the quality if the hardware you need to consider many factors and largely have to ignore the label on the side of the headphones.

 

[NATO]

Apple lightning cable is superior belkin. All of my belkins are halfway broken pulled out.

I never understand how cables end up frayed like that - are you pulling it out by the cable or the connector?

 

[wizard]

Well they picked the wrong headphones if that was the case...

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Or for that money you could buy proper headphones like Sennheiser HD 650, Beyerdynamic DT-880 Pro, Focal Spirit Professional, Audio Technica ATH-M50X or
Sony MDR7509HD. All vastly to superior to anything "Beats", B&W or Bose will ever release.

Or you could just be gullible and fall prey to very effective marketing!!! In the end it is what you hear when you put on the headphones that makes the difference. That difference can vary widely from person to person.

 

[WinstonRumfoord]

These are the kind of updates I like to see, let's hope it's true!!

Listening to music is one of the main three ancillary uses for a smartphone, alongside Taking Pictures and Browsing the Internet. Bring on high def music!

 

[kokako]

You can play 24bit ALAC files in iOS, just not beyond 48khz sampling frequency.

You can play 24/96khz in iTunes too.

 

[cjbryce]

What is the point in staying British?

Solely emotional and not necessarily for any other reason. Given that MR is a US-based site and the US has a history of not wanting to remain British...

 

[osofast240sx]

Excellent point, one of the best I have read here. Apple used to be for the 1%.

That's one way to look at it the other way to look at it is that the hardware is still for the 1% and the average consumer doesn't use any of the Apple products to anywhere near their potential.

 

[kokako]

These are the kind of updates I like to see, let's hope it's true!!

Listening to music is one of the main three ancillary uses for a smartphone, alongside Taking Pictures and Browsing the Internet. Bring on high def music!

Since day one when iTunes started - labels artists were uploading there CDs as lossless AIFF files and later ALAC so maybe what we've already purchased as mp3 will at least be available in cd quality 16/44.1 not great but better than AAC 256, poor old Neil Young and Pono and HDTRacks neither have a future when apple flicks the Hi def switch

 

[osofast240sx]

I never understand how cables end up frayed like that - are you pulling it out by the cable or the connector?

I am super anal with my stuff I have a severe case of OCD. I got about 10 apple lightning cords that all perfect

 

[mistafro]

I would never purchase another iPhone if they removed the 3.5mm jack.

Keep living in the past buddy... Suppose you still have SCSI drives as well?

 

[wizard]

I would hope that if Apple are getting serious about audio again, they would put some effort into fixing the problems with the Music app in iOS7.

Yep a bit flaky app wise.

And if we're going to be getting larger files from iTunes, how about that 128GB iPhone?

They need to do this no matter what, they have stayed at the current flash size way to long even after the price on flash has dropped significantly. At this point they should institute a 3X increase in storage capacity.

 

[kokako]

SONY PHA-2 plus Shure SE 846 equals sublime auditory experience; if you want an optimal setup, you could do far worse.

Love the se535 and demo'd a pair of the 845 pretty unique but still to me uncomfortable - I think the most comfortable IEM is the klipsch x10i ( yup a private equity owned co now yuck) but a great sound and comfort compromise - sure they don't sound as great as the 535 but they have a built in mic unlike the SHUREs horrible mic adapter, sadly they come wih silicone ear tips. Itchy ears? That's silicone, foam = no itch, etymotic do nice comfy IEM but contrary to what some say they don't produce realistic bass if any at all.

 

[mistafro]

Yes we need a "Remote App" esque Music App...

 

[kokako]

Or you could just be gullible and fall prey to very effective marketing!!! In the end it is what you hear when you put on the headphones that makes the difference. That difference can vary widely from person to person.

MDR7509 were great but discontinued 2 years ago any floating around "new" and are knockoffs and sound terrible so avoid buying from eBay and Amazon third party resellers.
People ought to stop buying expensive consumer headphones and but what music engineers musicians in studios use they're cheaper and they're the best most accurate representation of what you're listening too so think: Sony MDR7506, Senn HD25-1 II and the Beyerdynamic, audio tehnica equiv industry standards - professional headphones like these will give you the best bang for your buck and give you some street cred, if you become and sh a musician, a sound recordist a mixer whatever you have pro cans for everyday use already.
Buy once buy right, don't by consumer over exaggerated bass stuff in the long run it's not a solid investment.

 

[wizard]

I wonder if such a feature will be available for iPhone 5S.

I don't think the Beats acquisition will be done in time do deliver new "apple" branded products, which means that either Apple will stick to current headphones or that Apple will heavily promote Beats headphones in their stores (online or not).

There is nothing to stop them from having two lines of products.

Or that they already had something in the pipeline, not taking into account their purchase of Beats.

There is always something in the pipeline.

High fidelity audio sounds good to me (ha) but the question is: how much space will these files eat up?
Will apple leverage on the acquisition of the company (can't remember the name though) that was working in the field of file compression?
Will this require a new file system?

IOS is UNIX why would they need a new file system?

Will this mean that new "storage tiers" will be made available (starting at 32 GB bare minimum and having a 128 GB iPhone 6 as an option?)

The storage tiers as you call them are and have been obsolete for years now. The price of flash has dropped so much that the only proper description for Apples tiering is "Rip Off!!!"

This is interesting because:
- Apple is negotiating a price increase of the basis iPhone 6 with carriers (could mean more storage available)
- Better music
- Better camera (pictures and movies become bigger)

All of this leads me to think the new iPhone will have more storage.

Adding more storage would cost Apple nothing as the price of flash has dropped so much you could triple the amount of flash in each tier vs what flash cost when Apple first created the different iPhone configurations. In the more expensive upper tier models the extra you pay for a little bit of flash is especially a rip off. I mean really $100 for 32 GB of flash is just nonsense these days.

And eat bandwidth when listening to iTunes Radio in High fidelity... Carriers smell opportunity for selling more data related subscriptions (also iCloud will take more and more of a central role, with all the data exchange involved (such as Photostream)

Streaming is just stupid, it wastes bandwidth and kills battery life. The answer as you have indicated is lots of internal storage. This is why I'd like to see an AppleTV with significant storage capacity and an ability to output high quality audio, I just don't need nor want to be streaming music across RF connections.

 

[OceanView]

These new Apple earphones look like the Samsung earphones.
I bet no one will accuse Apple of copying Samsung.