And if Wilbur and Orville were going to make an airplane, they would have put jet engines on it because those are better that propeller-based engines. Just because someone didn't do something in the past, under different circumstances and conditions, doesn't mean they won't do that thing in the future, for potentially different reasons, or because the tech is now easier to implement.
Except that wasn't the issue here. I don't refute that it's possible Apple may do this, but at the time Lightning was introduced, it was designed to provide exactly that functionality, to dynamically reassign pins to offer whatever signal was required of whatever was plugged into it. If they wanted to allow Lightning to output an analogue signal from the iPhone, they could have specifically developed that as part of the initial implemenatation -- especially since they knew they would need to adapt existing 30-pin equipment. In fact nothing would have been more possible or easier for Apple to do than to pass the analogue signal output to the 30-pin adapter, and lightning docks. What Apple seems to have done is seek to standardize the Lightning output from the iPhone. Developers may expect only a digital signal. Now a Lightning device meant to be plugged into an iPhone is a whole different deal, and it is uncharted territory as far as being adapted for use with analogue signals, so anything is truly possible there. But as you say, we shall see.
Many scenarios in which it would cost Apple more, e.g., Apple provides new lightning headphones with 3.5 adapter with new iPhone, or Apple provides new headphones and sells adapter at cost. We could go on all day, but I think the point is made.
Don't forget the inevitable loss of sales which Apple knows are coming. It's going to cost Apple a lot more than any subsidies they may offer.
Last month BT overtook wired headphones in sales revenue for the first time. New ones are released almost every day. Many of those already have as good or better sound than the existing ear buds.
Need to qualify this -- current BT may be as good or better than some low-quality earbuds, but I'd argue current BT isn't even as good as the earbuds bundled with the iPhone. Then again, Apple isn't likely removing the headphone jack without offering something much better than what we have now.
Completely wrong. There is currently no lossless Bluetooth codec, so any existing Bluetooth earbuds (even aptX Bluetooth, which Apple doesn't and won't ever support) will always sound worse than equivalent wired buds. And just add to that the issue of EMI and RFI noise, dropouts, the inconvenience of having to charge your wireless earbuds and the risk of them running out of juice during an important call.
From what I've read Apple already supports aptX under OS X. Noise and dropouts seem to be mostly a thing of the past, and people have to charge everything now. As for running out of juice during an important call, I'm not sure why that matters unless you're climbing Half-Dome at the time. If the battery runs out (which will give you advance warning), you switch to the handset, just like I do whenever I exit my car mid-call. Of course if you're listening to music, you just plug a cable into your wireless headphones. But it's a minor inconvenience for the enormous benefit of otherwise being able to listen to music and make phone calls without being tethered to a device.
If Apple was doing this as you intimate for purely technical progression and a "better" solution to a (unknown) problem, then it will be repeated on every single Apple from this point forward...wouldn't it? I suspect that will not be the case and we will see the headphone jack on their products for a long time to come. In reality, removing it would a much easier on virtually every other product they make to remove it rather than their phones? Why didn't they remove from the SE where the space is even more valuable?
What's clear is that Apple and other mobile device makers will increasingly move toward wireless connections, which is the future of everything. It's already the mobile standard for data. Audio is next, and then power. There's no argument that wireless is the future, especially for mobile devices. It's simple why the headphone jack wasn't removed from the SE -- Apple's not going to tip their hand before they're ready to launch a complete wireless audio solution on their flagship device. Besides, the SE didn't add any new hardware (aside from NFC), merely updated what was there. So there wasn't a substantial need to reclaim any space from what had already been engineered for that case. 3.5mm jacks aren't going away, but fewer manufacturers will likely make them an essential connection on products going forward as the standards change, and more devices gain BT and USB.
But if a device has room for both, I'm all for it. Apple is going about this the right way -- the iPhone is the highest selling product they make. It will be engine that drives change, many the Mac will support that change once it takes hold. People who use iPhones will want their Macs to have Lightning ports for convenience. But Apple also sells Macs to Android customers, so they can't just remove the headphone jack until Android has begun to offer other options. And there's no reason to, Macs have a lot of room to accomodate them, so do iPads.
quite clearly though that exhaust is at least attached from left to right?
Personally there is zero point having two speakers only half an inch apart producing left and right audio. Stereo will not affect your experience of music and might actually cause more audio artefacts. I don't see apple putting in two speakers especially if space is so tight they are considering removing the audio jack that takes up zero space comparatively. Removing the audio jack is a huge mistake IMHO and they will defo backtrack for the first time in apple history with the next one.
Actually if Apple were to backtrack, it most certainly wouldn't be the first time. The removal of FireWire from the MacBook was one such example -- it was back within a year. And there are others.
