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Apple Will Still Include a Lightning to Headphone Jack Adapter With This Year's iPhones, Says Barclays
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HobeSoundDarryl
macrumors G5
No there's issues... but people just roll with it because "the rest" keeps them clinging to iPhone instead of rejecting the entire product because the hassles of a decision regarding this one part. Of course, it's not "life ending"- just an added nuisance ... for no significant tangible gain for us consumers. Apple got something(s) out of it- internal space or perhaps lower unit costs & a high-profit accessory to sell. What did we consumers get out of it? Another piece of hardware to have to keep in the bag just in case we need it. I don't know about everyone else but being an Apple consumer seems to now mean needing more and more accessories in the bag. I don't think "thinner & lighter" makes sense if one pretty much needs to carry some other stuff to make the latest "just work" as readily as it used to work when such functionality was built inside.
For all the pro-Bluetooth or even pro-Lightning connection arguments, all iPhones ALREADY offered BOTH of those options. If they were more appealing to those who will argue so hard for them, all such people could readily go that way without any hinderance. If they were genuinely better than 3.5mm, the masses would migrate for genuinely better too (contrary to popular spin, people don't have to be forced to embrace genuinely better if they can see (or hear) that it is genuinely better).
What this did do is remove something useful and thoroughly ubiquitous that "just works" with pretty much anything & everything and shift to a fragmented mix of options involving adapters or trying to embrace either alternative but make that work everywhere else one wants to use such alternatives or just carry along adapters plus TWO sets of headphones/buds everywhere one goes to be ready for any scenario. Even the ready ability to use any type of phones/buds between iPhone and Apple's own Macs is complicated unless one chooses the Bluetooth option, which then fails when trying to enjoy the easy connections to all kinds of other audio stuff without Bluetooth. We Apple people used to ridicule competitors on their forced fragmentation decisions, but now that Apple has made choices to do it, we spin it as positively as we can... every chance we get.
And "best selling" arguments don't really prove such points. It just proves that consumers want "the rest" enough to put up with such aggravations. That works just fine... until it doesn't. Should Apple decide to eject the camera or battery out to an accessory, they might be able to get away with that too. But eventually, there is the proverbial straw that makes people give up. Look through most threads here- especially Mac threads- and you see admissions of "always Apple until..." people who reached their brand loyalty breaking point because Apple did or didn't do something to meet such users wants or needs.
Apple is not forever immune to such brand defections... no matter how much some of us will spin that any such decision that disappoints chunks of the Apple consumer base proved inconsequential because Apple keeps rolling in the dollars. Sony, Palm, Blackberry and countless others used to have best-sellers beating their best-sellers year after year. And then their customers tired of seemingly out-of-touch or losing-touch corporate decisions and migrated to something more connected to their wants & needs. Record revenues & profits are not automatic and guaranteed but earned... and part of earning them is not losing too much touch with the source of the money. Blackberry once had such a passionate following, their product was referred to as crackberry. Where did all of those crack-heads go and why?
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i would love to have option of L shaped adapter untill someone makes bluetooth headphones with decent audio quality. it's easy to break this one and bluetooth headphones (yes, i've tried MANY) sound like **** (and have to be charged every few hours)
LOL! Sorry, sometimes these things fire me up! But seriously, you have to admit, that placing USB-C on all your other products, and then leaving your top selling product as lightning port makes no sense.
Just what we DO NOT WANT... another fricking dongle to carry and loose!!!!!!!!
they should put AirPods instead in the box and add a 100 dollar more price tag since you want us to go wireless
Apple really has to choose the lesser of two evils.
1. Make a proprietary connector that does everything you want it to do, design it to be as future-proof as possible, and be in total control of that connector. On the flip side, it will be more expensive and less convenient for your customers due to the proprietary nature.
2. Use the standardized connector which will be less expensive and more convenient for customers. On the flip side, it requires giving up control and accepting whatever requirements and rules that the standard-setting organization forces on you, said organization being primarily controlled by Intel, and paying royalties and fees for every device sold. Also, there is no guarantee that future revisions of the standard will include features you want.
Is there a 3rd choice? Between these two, I would also make a proprietary connector if I was in charge at Apple. USB-IF is a mess of an organization.
Well good for you. A lot of people like lightning, myself included. Also, a lot of people don't miss the headphone jack, myself included.
A discount for those that choose Airpods makes more sense money wise. You get a crappy adapter bundled in or if you upgrade Airpods for $99 is fair. Only for the top model of course.
I have no complaint when it comes to headphones, as I have a couple decent Bluetooth pairs for different activities.
Where this becomes annoying however, is in my car, which does not have CarPlay and terrible Bluetooth. It does have an Aux input, but I of course want to keep my phone charged while playing. So I have to have my $40 third-party adapter which allows both simultaneously.
This is a serious shortcoming for such a common use case, Apple.
Where this becomes annoying however, is in my car, which does not have CarPlay and terrible Bluetooth. It does have an Aux input, but I of course want to keep my phone charged while playing. So I have to have my $40 third-party adapter which allows both simultaneously.
This is a serious shortcoming for such a common use case, Apple.
I wonder why the headphone adapter is the only lightning accessory with silver pins. Every other lightning cable I've seen has gold pins. The headphone adapter might be more prone to corrosion than other lightning accessories.
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Irony considering every thread on a RUMORS site is hypothetical.
Spot on, as I always suspected the adapter would persist through the 7s. It will be interesting to see if the "8" or whatever it's called will have the adapter or something else like AirPods.
I could get behind the loss of the headphone jack a little more if Apple would support Lightning headphones on anything else besides iOS. It seems to be a real mixed message the way they've approached this problem. There's still no way to easily share a movie on an iPhone 7 with someone wearing headphones, among other inconveniences that headphone jack users took for granted. Obviously Apple is pushing wireless, but at the moment, that's a single user experience with headphones, of lower quality than available with the adapter and 3.5mm wired headphones.
You don't buy Macs either, just illegally install their software on your own hardware.
Bluetooth audio is just not yet an better alternative because of audio latency and degraded audio quality.
Apple dropped the headphone jack way too soon before they could come up with a better solution.
Apple dropped the headphone jack way too soon before they could come up with a better solution.
