For those of you saying you need 3.5mm jack for your car, what year/make/model do you have? I'm guessing it has to be 5+ years old, as it seems that all new cars have USB ports for hooking up phones/thumb drives for listening to music. Some new cars are even ditching the 3.5mm input altogether (Honda has for most newer cars). Do you really expect Apple to keep supporting your 8+ year old car?
Same thing with home stereos, what do you have? Does it really not support USB input or Airplay? If not you should really think about upgrading as you are missing out on this and likely missing out on Dolby True HD and DTS HD-MA etc.
So let's see ... airlines, I guess Airbus and Boeing should upgrade all their designs, and Delta, Untied, American, etc. should upgrade their fleets. OK how about laptos, Dell, HP, Apple (yea Apples uses the 3.5mm in their laptops), Lenova, Asus, etc. all those need to change ... but wait, is everyone going to adopt Apple's proprietary connector, not likely. How about other mobile phone manufactures using the 3.5mm plug, they gonna adopt lightning ... not. OK what about desktop computers, again HP, Dell, Apple, etc., not likely. What about music player manufactuers, stereo manufactures, autos, etc., nope.
The fact is the 3.5mm adapeter is way more universal across computers, phones, music, players, cars, commercial aircraft, stereo manufactuers, on and on and on. This is not simply moving away from the floppy disk or the CD, this standard touches all kinds of companies, effecting hundreds of millions of consumers around the world who have collectively spent billions on headsets, earbuds, etc.
This is a garbage move in Apple's cult quest to gain a fraction of a millimeter in thickness. Better waterproofing you say, bull I say, they can make a waterproof 3.5mm jack.
Wouldn't it be ironic if two groups of future mobile phone users emerged, those who used phones that have the 3.5mm audio jack standard and those who use "the other" standard. It will be like those who use Windows and those who choose MacOS. I would say, thank you Apple for creating the audio jack culture war of standards where we once had harmony.
) - I was an anti-Mac person for the longest time. Then came OS X and my love of all things Unix and I was a believer. Never enjoyed such a level of stability outside of the enterprise Unix's on big iron. btw...I worked at BlackBerry for 8 years and wore a 3Gs on my hip next to my corporate BB, trying to get Lazaridis pissed off enough that he would wake up and make the changes that were needed.
