Didn't think they released the QC 35 wireless noise-cancellation headphones recently? They might not care and would want to sell new ones to replace perfectly good headphones...
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Apple Supplier Cirrus Logic Releases Kit for Creating Lightning-Based Headphones Ahead of iPhone 7
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Didn't think they released the QC 35 wireless noise-cancellation headphones recently? They might not care and would want to sell new ones to replace perfectly good headphones...
"For example, digital connectivity with an integrated, high-performance DAC and headphone driver delivers high-fidelity audio to the headphone speakers. "
The question for me is, where will the masses be getting this high-fidelity audio? Tidal? Apple selling/streaming lossless? With the current music quality available on AM, Google, Spotify, etc., what would be the advantages of listening through lightning? As for wireless... I have personally never heard a wireless headset that sounded as good as a comparable wired headset.
Not an audiophile so I genuinely don't know. Maybe a head-fi geek could chime in.
The question for me is, where will the masses be getting this high-fidelity audio? Tidal? Apple selling/streaming lossless? With the current music quality available on AM, Google, Spotify, etc., what would be the advantages of listening through lightning? As for wireless... I have personally never heard a wireless headset that sounded as good as a comparable wired headset.
Not an audiophile so I genuinely don't know. Maybe a head-fi geek could chime in.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Or people just roll with the shortcomings because they want the rest. That doesn't mean 99.999% are right or that .001% are wrong... but just that all 100% must deal with whatever is delivered if they want the other benefits exclusive to an Apple product. Does that make Apple right 100% of the time because sales are high? Drug dealers sales can be very high- and much more profitable- too, but I don't think most of us would deem them brilliantly right because of their sales or profit numbers.
What happens here is maybe it plays out as you imply. So maybe Apple is then emboldened to try jettisoning something else because the loyal fans of the product will roll with that too. Maybe next time it's the camera or the battery or both? Maybe the masses DO roll with that change too? It seems eventually they would go too far and the "go with the flow" sentiment would shift. At that point "the rest" would no longer be enough to roll with the latest change.
I recall a time no so long ago when the first brand I would think of for AV equipment was Sony. If Sony made one, it was probably better... because it was made by Sony. Then Sony started playing the proprietary this and proprietary that game. "Innovations" seemed to be increasingly more about maximizing profits for Sony than delivering value & utility for Sony customers. Today, I typically DON'T think of Sony first for anything AV. That's not necessarily saying the same will play out for Apple here... but is this really any Apple customer's problem that begged for THIS "innovation." I can't recall ever seeing even one thread full of 3.5mm jack bashers prior to this particular rumor getting some legs under it.
And for more than a year now, the option of connecting via Lightning AND Bluetooth has been available to those who argue so (increasingly) passionately for those connections. So it's not like 3.5mm being in existing iPhones is some obstacle to either "better(?)" option getting utilized to it's maximum by those who think either is superior.
What is in this particular change for us consumers? And why does 3.5mm have to go to realize that/those benefit(s)? There's a pile of recurring spin that appears to be trying to answer those questions but most of it seems to revolve around buyer ignorance. For example, "waterproof" is tossed often. But does water only want to enter round holes? Not the bigger rectangular hole just millimeters away... or the smaller (speaker) round holes? "Digital > Analog" keeps getting slung... yet our ears only hear analog. Etc.
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Yes. I fully expect Apple to include a Lightning port on the Macs soon after the 3.5mm headphone jack is dropped.
If you tale a look at those renders, there is also a blank space on the opposite side of the MBP from the headphone jack. It would be a minor thing to mill a Lightning port into the aluminum where the logic board is otherwise prepped for the addition. My guess is they were planning for an earlier release, but have postponed it. Even if they do end up releasing it prior to the iPhone it will have a 3.5mm jack, with a Lightning port added later, just like they switched the iPad 3 to Lightning mid-cycle.
Of course there will be a USB to Lightning adapter. But the larger issue is that there won't be Lightning only headphones with a fixed cord. All cords will be easily switched from one connector to the other allowing the same set of headphones to be used with 3.5mm, Lightning, USB-C, or whatever else comes along, just by changing the cable. Even wireless headphones have options cables for when the battery runs out.
How so? You get a Lightning to RCA cable. Done deal.
Why do I suspect that some/most/all of the motivation for dropping the 3.5mm jack was for Apple to be able to extract licensing fees from everyone who makes Lightning headphones? Please correct me if I misunderstand how this works.
Take a look at these Audeze Lightning headphones, pictured with the optional Lightning cable. Note the Lightning technology is built-into the volume controls. So they can definitely build a Lightning adapter cable which works in the same way.
Sure we will. I have history on my side (100's of predictions of low iPhone sales for this or that reason) and NONE of them has come true yet.
If an apple phone can push a set of headphones properly I wouldn't consider those headphones hi-end.
Ha! Every time I see waterproofing (pedantically - water resistance{snipped some good stuff - nice post}
What is in this particular change for us consumers? And why does 3.5mm have to go to realize that/those benefit(s)? ... For example, "waterproof" is tossed often. But does water only want to enter round holes? Not the bigger rectangular hole just mm away... or the smaller (speaker) round holes?...
) listed as one of the reasons for getting rid of the headphone jack I lmao. The illogic behind that "reason" boggles the mind. Current iPhones are fairly water resistant - has headphone jack. Samsung's phones are IP68 rated - has headphone jack. Same with other water resistant phones. But to list waterproofing as a reason for removing the smaller headphone jack and completely ignoring the larger lightning port is... .
Take a look at these Audeze Lightning headphones, pictured with the optional Lightning cable. Note the Lightning technology is built-into the volume controls. So they can definitely build a Lightning adapter cable which works in the same way.
And they charge $50 for the one for the Sine. Not an outrageous price considering it's an AMP, DAC and DSP (and can also have its firmware updated for new features) for a high-end set of headphones.
Only thing Apple needs to do now is to increase the maximum current that a device can pull from the Lightning jack to that cable/AMP makers can take full advantage of more difficult to drive headphones. Something I expect Apple will do with the next version of iOS.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
That's my #1 guess too. Licensing fees + higher profits at retail + maybe some Beats volume should they be among the few early players with "approval" for some particular bit of this to work differently than how Lightning-terminated headphones today work with iDevices.
Another that doesn't get much discussion is DRM. I suspect some of this might be about closing the so called "analog hole." In a nutshell, one could buy a subscription to Apple music and then use audio highjack tools to "capture" all of the music they can possibly like. If they are willing to go to the trouble of cataloging all those captures, they can dump those songs into their music library and they are basically offline available forever... even if they quit paying the subscription. One could build a huge library of songs this way, quit the subscription and enjoy "their" library. Legal? No. Easily doable? Yes.
However, switch to pumping digital out of either a Lightning or USB jack and along with a DAC and AMP you can have another piece of technology in the chain that pushes HDMI-like protections of content to complicate and maybe even prevent this scenario. I suspect some of this might be about that too.
But we'll see. Maybe there's something else at play here that makes this a far better move than meets the eye (or ear) today? I hope so. For me, all the cumulative rationale spun so far doesn't overcome the apparent hassle of adapters- be that rectangular pieces of plastic or interchangeable wires with various kinds of terminators on their ends. Personally, I don't buy the spin of "lighter" if I have to carry the same utility in an extra accessory with me. For me, the weight of the accessory counts too.
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Wouldn't that have an adverse affect on battery life of the iPhone unless Apple would put in a bigger battery? Verge wrote an overwhelmingly positive set of arguments for this change a few weeks ago but they did make the passing reference of the "greater draw on battery" (of the phone).
This is a disaster in the making…. as if people only use headphones/earbuds with Apple products! Anyone with a half-decent stereo system and home-theatre receiver uses the regular headphone jacks. Not to mention the headphones that DJs around the world (!) use. And the recording industry…. What are we supposed to do, always carry around the Apple-brand "just in case"? Time for a certain knighted hardware designer to retire.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
Ha! Every time I see waterproofing (pedantically - water resistance
Yet every thread tosses it in there... meaning some of us are too dumb to not know better... or too smart to think we can put one over on at least some of the other readers of each of these threads. I'm not sure which it is myself. But I do know that this CANNOT be about "waterproofing" unless the other holes are going too. Else, Apple can surely waterproof 3.5mm just like Apple competitors have.
How about we get rid of every single port on all Macs? If you disagree, you sound like the people who were holding onto floppies.
Besides the headphone jack being totally ubiquitous, the Lightning cable freaking sucks. It falls out randomly, frays easily due to its design, has stupid DRM protection that glitches out, and is super proprietary. Bluetooth sucks too. Never works right. Don't compare this to open standards replacing each other. If anything is going to replace the headphone jack, it's USB.
And by the way, the lack of an ethernet port just means that I have to use a dongle now. Wifi sucks, whether I need a nice connection for SSH or just want to load a webpage without it taking forever.
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e.g. using an older iPhone or an iPhone SE.No you won't
There will be alternative solutions, maybe not very elegant or convenient.
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You buy an adaptor. Have you not yet seen how this is supposed to work? I assure you Tim Cook and his bank manager have discussed it at length.
How many iPhones do Apple sell? Tens of millions. The percentage that fall into the categories you mention probably reflect fractions of fractions of a percent of the total user base! Also those groups you reference presumably use headphones with 1/4" jacks vs 3.5mm so this will give an option to buy a high end lightning to 1/4" adapter!
I have a pair of $100+ Shure in-ears and a $200+ pair of Sennheiser cans, so dropping the 3.5mm port would impact me, but I also accept that the world needs to move forward. HDMI replaced RGB. Disk drives of any sort are a thing of history, as are audio cassettes and video tapes. CRTs have been replaced by flat panels, you no longer have a rotary dial telephone and you can't buy leaded petrol.
Hopefully in the first year Apple will package the phone with a lightning to 3.5mm adapter to ease the transition, but if they don't a $30 adapter is still preferable to dumping $300+ on new headphones...
Fail. All they need to do is enable the lightning port that exists on the iDevice already and leave the headphone jack as is. That way they still have the 21st century tech.
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U. S. B. C. the answer is already there. Talk about an additional way to create waste.
HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
I think something like that has to be the rabbit in this particular hat. I haven't seen any rumors about it but higher quality source seems to be almost necessary to sell a "higher quality" jack connection. I can kind of see that being a real scenario too as higher quality source means bigger files, bigger streaming files means more data burn, more data burn makes those who sell (and cap) data in tiers happier, happier partners co-promote Apple's most important product more.
So I suspect THAT is a part of this not yet rumored much. Of course, we've been told that 256K AAC is pretty much the same to our ears as uncompressed CD quality, so apparently whatever THAT will be is going to have to spin either evolutionary gain (miracles) in our ears or something else that closes the gap between CD and better-than-CD. Is that doable? Well "retina" was spun as beyond the maximum our eyes can see... but that didn't later get in the way of "retina HD." So again, I see this as a likely rabbit.
I'm tired of Apple forcing it's users to jump through their collective arses and spend more money for their own convenience. At some point, people will look elsewhere. This isn't removing a CD player, it's forcing customers to spend more money in order to make useless design point - "our phones are thinner...."
If they include an adapter with the phone, different story, but it will likely be another $49 accessory sitting on the shelf at the applestore. If the latter is the case, then the iPhone 7 will be a sales laggard.
Been an Mac user since 1985, but this ***** is getting old - restricting expansion and upgrades, specifically. There shouldn't be a bunch of customers sitting around hoping Apple doesn't kill platforms without replacing them. Aperture vs Photos, etc.
If they include an adapter with the phone, different story, but it will likely be another $49 accessory sitting on the shelf at the applestore. If the latter is the case, then the iPhone 7 will be a sales laggard.
Been an Mac user since 1985, but this ***** is getting old - restricting expansion and upgrades, specifically. There shouldn't be a bunch of customers sitting around hoping Apple doesn't kill platforms without replacing them. Aperture vs Photos, etc.
So, what happens when I want to listen and charge at the same time?
It's too bad they are device specific. I carry both Apple and Samsung kit (work vs play) and don't want to buy two pairs (one lightning and one micro USB). Oh well. BT it is for now...
FWIW
DLM
Please, tell me more about this world you live in? I love internet logic... "We will do this! MILLIONS FEWER!"
It won't happen.