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That probably has something to do with the fact that wired headphones come with most devices but bluetooth ones always have to be bought separately. I have never needed to actually buy a set of wired earbuds because I have a set from every smartphone and iPod I have ever owned.

A very large number of people toss the included headphone and get actually good ones, wired or otherwise.
 
The mini headphone jack is a dumb holdover from the 60s.

Good riddance.

These kinds of comments don't refute or even speak to any of the points raised in the video that this thread is based on. In fact, these comments are why I posted it.
 
If you want to use headphone jack wired headphones, can't you use the included adapter?

You can. But then you are merely subbing one connector for another.

Where the progress in that really?

But I glad that Apple includes it. Remains to be seen if they will for next year and so on.

Price could be lowered a little. Would send a better message to the public.
 
Right. At work and at home but once you are plugged in you are not walking around. So buy a dock and sit down and listen to music while you charge.

I'm almost always on a portable charger by the end of my workday, where I'm listening to headphones, and moving around a kitchen cooking / photo studio styling and shooting food photos. I'll listen to 14 hours of podcasts straight on a normal workday.

On a separate note, lots of talk in this thread about being able to upgrade DACS later by buying better Lightning headphones. This same argument could have applied to Apple. They could have upgraded the iPhone's DAC rather than giving up and passing the buck onto us. We've seen year after year of camera upgrades as other phones gained the ability to output higher resolution audio. You can get better sound by buying better equipment other than the phone, but that's always been possible and nothing Apple should be applauded for. A $1,000 DAC plugged into the Lightning port should sound great, but so does a $1,000 stereo system. Neither were made by Apple, so let's save our praise.

My 5D Mark iv DSLR can wirelessly send photos to the iPhone, yet Apple still includes cameras in the phone, and puts the R&D into improving the heck out of them. There will one day be an iPhone that blows this DSLR out of the water. There will never be an iPhone that has better audio, ever again. The iPhone is now a portable hard drive, simply sending audio files to other devices. You might as well just store the music in the headphones and skip the phone entirely. Or simply use the phone as a wireless remote, the same as I do with my DSLR.
 
Except now I have to carry two sets of headphones in my work bag. Does my Macbook Air have a lightning port? No.

Last week and for the last FOREVER I could use one set of headphones everywhere. That is no longer the case.

Or use Bluetooth headphones. Mine work with my ipad, macbook air, iphone, appletv, dell computer. I use the jaybird x2 and they sound better than the apple headphones by miles. You can swap out the earbuds to comply or silicone. Look into them.
 
Or it's because people like the convenience of wireless and are realizing that the sound quality trade off is a lot lower than it used to be.

A very large number of people toss the included headphone and get actually good ones, wired or otherwise.

The sheer number of stock Apple earbuds I see coming out of iDevices (and non-iDevices) on a daily basis suggests that while these statements are true for many people, it's probably not the majority. Apple, like most companies, doesn't like just throwing money away. If a significant amount of people simply discarded the earbuds that are packed with their devices, Apple would have stopped including them long ago.
 
Now I have to wonder if you're confusing the terms as well since the EarPods - while having the Lightning connector on them this time instead of the traditional 1/8" inch (that's 3.5mm to non-Americans) - are the same internally as the circuitry is inside the Lightning connector itself.

No I think you still are (or we both are). The 3.5mm EarPods, and Lightning EarPods are likely identical from the plug up. However that Lightning plug is a significant change from the 3.5mm plug.

There are two possibilities here --

1) Apple is for the first time allowing MFi specs to output analogue audio from the Lightning port. If that's the case, then 4 analogue signals are streaming out of the 8 Lightning pins, and directly into the EarPods. Or;

2) Apple has put a miniaturized ADC, DAC, and amp inside the Lightning connector that takes a single digital audio signal and converts it to 4 analogue signals for the EarPods.

That's part of the debate here. And if it's performing #2, which Apple's current MFi specs demand it is, then the question is what is the quality of the DAC and amp that's decoding the signal now? Is it as good as the DAC and amp inside the 6s which converted analogue signal is being output through its headphone jack?

The quality of the transducers in the EarPods themselves is only part of the quality issue, the DAC and amp are at least as important as the hardware they're driving. And right now, nobody knows what exactly Apple has put in there ...
 
The sheer number of stock Apple earbuds I see coming out of iDevices (and non-iDevices) on a daily basis suggests that while these statements are true for many people, it's probably not the majority. Apple, like most companies, doesn't like just throwing money away. If a significant amount of people simply discarded the earbuds that are packed with their devices, Apple would have stopped including them long ago.

Apple has never been a great headphone maker. Probably why they bought beats, which aren't that great either. I have used jaybirds for the last couple years, and they sound better than anything apple or beats ever produced.

Before i bought the jaybirds, i bought the bluetooth beats. They had tons of lag on video even after a firmware update. I did my research, returned the beats and bought the jaybirds. No firmware update needed, they worked perfectly and I am on my third pair. The only reason I keep buying more, is they are such good headphones I buy every upgrade they make.
 
That's nifty. Thing is? I stand by my opinion, even in light of your video. So...

Then why did you even comment? This is a discussion forum. Your opinion doesn't have to change but if you're not actually going to discuss why, I'm afraid you haven't contributed to the conversation, so why post?
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Apple has never been a great headphone maker. Probably why they bought beats, which aren't that great either. I have used jaybirds for the last couple years, and they sound better than anything apple or beats ever produced.

I never said anything about them being good or not, I just said most people use them regardless because they're there. I don't think that it's accurate to say that most people just throw them away, and yet Apple keeps including them.
 
Your right. Here is your video.


Apple was very conservative on the water ratings. It beat the IP68 of the S7 Edge.

If by soon they mean 2-3 decades from now, sure, I completely agree. :)



The iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are IP67 rated, that means water-resistant up to 3 feet (that's 1 meter for the non-Americans) for up to roughly 30 minutes. Any phone rated IP67 will match that so, I don't know what the idea behind your saying the iPhone 7/7 Plus "do it deeper" since that's somewhat silly to state (I'm sure you'll offer up some video on YouTube as proof) because any other phone rated IP67 will offer the same level of water-resistance.

In the past I owned a Samsung Galaxy S4 Active, the first consumer smartphone that had an IP67 rating. It had a removable back (with a water-seal on the inside) and a cover over the microUSB charging port (a flap of rubberized material) - the headphone jack had no such seal, it was always completely open meaning I didn't have to remove any kind of cover to plug in headphones.

I point out the GS4A because one time I was at a pool with my Wife and the phone was laying on one of our towels. When my Wife grabbed her towel, the phone slid off into the deep end of the pool, the 12 foot end. I didn't notice because I was swimming at the time in the middle, goofing off and splashing her so the waves were distorting the water around me and I couldn't see the phone about 30 feet from where I was situated (given the depth of the water and distance).

I got out of the pool maybe 15 minutes after she did and then noticed the phone wasn't where I thought it was, looked around, moved my clothes, her clothes, then realized it wasn't there and the only place left was... of course the pool. Sure enough I turned around, saw it on the bottom, dove in and grabbed it. Got back out of the pool, dried it off on the outside and hit the Home button (it has physical buttons) and voila, fired up just fine, no harm, no foul.

Now because the phone was IP67 rated and that states immersion up to 3 feet/1 meter for up to 30 minutes I got lucky I suppose since mine was far deeper and for less time so I beat both of those limits in every respect. I also constantly made sure the back cover was properly situated - the GS4A had one particular little point just under the camera assembly that, if you didn't press in hard enough to ensure it snapped closed, would cause the water-resistance to not be complete. If I hadn't done that consistently that phone would have been dead 10 seconds after it went into the water.

I'm not saying every phone can do that in terms of time or depth but, the IP67 rating does have specific requirements to get it and the iPhone 7 and 7 Plus are just that - IP67 rated - and there's no reason to think that "Oh, Apple is doing IP67 better than anyone else just because they're Apple..." or words to that effect.

Besides, anyone that would purposely take an IP67 device deeper than 3 feet/1 meter pretty much deserves to have their phone die because of water damage. :D
 
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Apple was very conservative on the water ratings. It beat the IP68 of the S7 Edge.

From what I saw, the iPhone was damaged in the testing. It might not have died in most respects like the S7 did but it still failed and the water-resistance was compromised when it was pushed past the stated specs. IP68 does not mean waterproof either which is what confuses some folk out there.
 
Then why did you even comment? This is a discussion forum. Your opinion doesn't have to change but if you're not actually going to discuss why, I'm afraid you haven't contributed to the conversation, so why post?
[doublepost=1474221977][/doublepost]

I never said anything about them being good or not, I just said most people use them regardless because they're there. I don't think that it's accurate to say that most people just throw them away, and yet Apple keeps including them.

I would love apple to stop including them and drop the phones price by $30. Heck, take out the charger wire and brick, and have a package option for $100 less. I have so many un-used power bricks and headphones laying around. My kids sometimes use them, but we don't "need" them for sure.

They wont do that because the wires cost them next to nothing to include most likely and keep the price at a premium.
 
This is factually incorrect. Wireless headphones have for the first time earned slightly more profit than wired ones, but wired headphones still outsell wireless ones by a substantial margin.
True, but it is probably mostly due to price.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-7-wireless-headphones-sales-chart-2016-9
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I scanned though the video. Very interesting, but it's not really a scientific test, especially considering that he tested just one unit of each. You can't draw conclusions with a sample size of 1.
Ummm sure buddy,.
 
It's not obsolete at all. This was Apple's way of forcing people to buy its new products, and they did so before releasing (or helping third-party manufacturers release) any good, affordable wireless headphones. A bit sleazy, if you ask me. To be fair, the only upside is that it probably helped them make the phone more waterproof.
Any thoughts after the word "forced" concerning consumer products have no validity.
 
I would love apple to stop including them and drop the phones price by $30. Heck, take out the charger wire and brick, and have a package option for $100 less. I have so many un-used power bricks and headphones laying around. My kids sometimes use them, but we don't "need" them for sure.

They wont do that because the wires cost them next to nothing to include most likely and keep the price at a premium.

Yeah, I'm sure that most of us have a lot of spares knocking around, but the thing is, what if it's someone's first device? I would feel ripped off if I had to buy such basic accessories separately. I wouldn't mind paying a little extra to have them bundled.
 
I'm almost always on a portable charger by the end of my workday, where I'm listening to headphones, and moving around a kitchen cooking / photo studio styling and shooting food photos. I'll listen to 14 hours of podcasts straight on a normal workday.

On a separate note, lots of talk in this thread about being able to upgrade DACS later by buying better Lightning headphones. This same argument could have applied to Apple. They could have upgraded the iPhone's DAC rather than giving up and passing the buck onto us. We've seen year after year of camera upgrades as other phones gained the ability to output higher resolution audio. You can get better sound by buying better equipment other than the phone, but that's always been possible and nothing Apple should be applauded for. A $1,000 DAC plugged into the Lightning port should sound great, but so does a $1,000 stereo system. Neither were made by Apple, so let's save our praise.

My 5D Mark iv DSLR can wirelessly send photos to the iPhone, yet Apple still includes cameras in the phone, and puts the R&D into improving the heck out of them. There will one day be an iPhone that blows this DSLR out of the water. There will never be an iPhone that has better audio, ever again. The iPhone is now a portable hard drive, simply sending audio files to other devices. You might as well just store the music in the headphones and skip the phone entirely. Or simply use the phone as a wireless remote, the same as I do with my DSLR.

The fact Belkin worked closely with Apple before the iPhone 7 was announced, to create an adapter to provide the same functionality previously offered in the 6s to charge and listen, proves that Apple KNEW this was something many of its customers needed, just like the headphone adapter included in every box confirms Apple knew how great the need for that was. SO debating it is pointless.

However, your specific need I would agree is likely extremely niche, and worthy of some debate for the general use population. The specific solution for you, would be to purchase a charging case, like APple's Battery Case, which would allow the phone to continue to be powered while allowing you to listen with the Lightning port.

So just out of curiosity, why would you cook and work on earbuds instead of a speaker?

As for your upgrading the internal DAC -- it's not quite that simple. The 3.5mm headphone jack is already compromised. It outputs a marginalized hybrid signal intended for both headphones and line level devices. So it's merely good enough for both, and not optimal for either. The DAC in the iPhone is actually pretty good. Putting a slightly better one inside for a few extra cents won't really impact quality for most. But the amp could be improved, except it can't as it's limited by space and power. An external DAC and amp of comparable quality in a set of headphones would actually provide higher quality sound just by being optimized for the use case, and offering a battery to drive the amp and transducers. The customer would also benefit from a set of headphones that sound identical on any digital device they're plugged into, rather than subjected to the wide variances between DACs and amps in use now. Bus noise on computers for instance, would be a thing of the past since the analogue signal would be electrically isolated.
 
True, but it is probably mostly due to price.

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-7-wireless-headphones-sales-chart-2016-9
[doublepost=1474222855][/doublepost]
Ummm sure buddy,.

What's that supposed to mean? It's basic scientific method that you don't test one sample just once and draw conclusions. Sorry if it sounds like I'm being overly picky, but I teach science for a living, so I habitually consider the limitations of testing methods before drawing conclusions, as we all should. I'm sure that tests are repeated with several different units when water resistance ratings are assigned. One can always be an anomaly.
 
Yeah, I'm sure that most of us have a lot of spares knocking around, but the thing is, what if it's someone's first device? I would feel ripped off if I had to buy such basic accessories separately. I wouldn't mind paying a little extra to have them bundled.

I would like to have a bare phone option and a bundled option.

Either way, the headphones they give us are junk. They in no way are a quality set of headphones to go with such a premium phone upgrade. The phone hardware is the best on the market, and they include $30 junk headphones.

No one I know actually use those headphones, most of them upgrade to a wireless set, or at least a better quality wired set.
 
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Dynamic drivers for speakers are obsolete by the same definition. There are multiple speakers in both the iPhone and headphones. Even the wireless ones. Buttons are obsolete and the iPhone still has several.
 
I would like to have a bare phone option and a bundled option.

Either way, the headphones they give us are junk. They in no way are a quality set of headphones to go with such a premium phone upgrade. The phone hardware is the best on the market, and they include $30 junk headphones.

No one I know actually use those headphones, most of them upgrade to a wireless set, or at least a better quality wired set.

I agree. Giving a choice wouldn't be bad.
 
The sheer number of stock Apple earbuds I see coming out of iDevices (and non-iDevices) on a daily basis suggests that while these statements are true for many people, it's probably not the majority. Apple, like most companies, doesn't like just throwing money away. If a significant amount of people simply discarded the earbuds that are packed with their devices, Apple would have stopped including them long ago.

Would they? I suppose it depends on what one considers "a significant number."

But since you mention it, notice how Apple stopped bundling the case for the buds and pointedly includes the worst ones in their lineup. Now that they're pushing wireless I think there's a chance they won't bundle any headphones at all with the iPhone 8.
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Then why did you even comment? This is a discussion forum. Your opinion doesn't have to change but if you're not actually going to discuss why, I'm afraid you haven't contributed to the conversation, so why post?

So I could enjoy watching you get agro for no particular reason?
 
The problem is people are making this a blanket argument about the obsolescence of analog audio headphone jacks. Really, though, there are two issues here.

1. Are headphone jacks obsolete FOR CELLULAR PHONES?

2. Are they obsolete for everything else?

The answer is 1. maybe 2. never. Analog audio jacks will never go out of style for home use.
 
The problem is people are making this a blanket argument about the obsolescence of analog audio headphone jacks. Really, though, there are two issues here.

1. Are headphone jacks obsolete FOR CELLULAR PHONES?

2. Are they obsolete for everything else?

The answer is 1. maybe 2. never. Analog audio jacks will never go out of style for home use.

^^^

This.

The single most important data point is the usecase. The headphone port in both sizes is still perfectly fine for use with audio equipment of just about every variety. But we're not talking about just about every variety of audio equipment. We're taking about a palmtop computer that happens to have a phone and a music player in it.
 
Would they? I suppose it depends on what one considers "a significant number."

But since you mention it, notice how Apple stopped bundling the case for the buds and pointedly includes the worst ones in their lineup. Now that they're pushing wireless I think there's a chance they won't bundle any headphones at all with the iPhone 8.
[doublepost=1474224186][/doublepost]

So I could enjoy watching you get agro for no particular reason?

I think you overestimate how much I care. This thread is basically just my way of procrastinating so as not to do any work this Sunday afternoon. :D
 
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