Bluetooth has been around for several years, but if you walk up to a random device and want to use your bluetooth headphone with it, it's much more complicated than just pressing a button. For example with current bluetooth standard, if you walk up to a random ATM, you would have to put your bluetooth device to pairing mode, pair it with the ATM, do your thing, put your headphone back to pairing mode and pair it with your phone/computer/what have you.
But if could instead just walk up to a random machine... and it would ask you "Do you want to play the audio through your headphones?" Answer "yes" and it would just work. And afterwards you could just walk away and your phone would automatically continue playing music through your headphone.
I believe that's essentially what the W1 chip aims to do. Apple is on the Bluetooth SIG board, and had a major hand in devloping BT 5. The W1 is likely a direct result of their work on BT and I would bet that the SIG board will be looking at ways to implement this kind of feature into the next BT upgrades. By that time Apple will have made their use of W1 to draw in new customers and leverage Beats for the Apple base, and then Beats will be poised to take advantage of the new tech for everyone.
Frankly, reliable wireless audio tech that does as you describe for blind customers at ATMs would be a step in the right direction. Imagine expanding it to cross walks -- instead of chirping signals one has to hear over traffic: guided instructions. Landmarks that identify themselves and so on.
Did you even read the post? How does a person requiring accessibility plug their lightning headphones in to an ATM?
Apple provide a 3.5mm to lightning adaptor but not a lightning to 3.5mm.
You should realise the amount of negativity towards Apple is a direct result of the path Apple is taking.
Would be nice if you communicated in a nicer tone
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Sure create a standard and switch to that, that would be great, bluetooth is one like you mention, so too is 3.5mm or usb-c.
Lightning is not.
Apples Lightning headphones can't even be used with Macs. There's literally no adapter of any kind that allows it to be used on anything other than and iPhone 7 and some newer iOS devices. So this is a bit moot.
Anyone who needs to connect their headphones to multiple devices throughout the day is going to be using the 3.5mm adapter with their old headphones, assuming they bought an iPhone 7 in the first place. Those that don't need or prefer wired headphones will be using AirPods -- oh wait ... I guess Apple screwed that one up too.
Oh well. Looks like it's adapter city for a while, or stick with the 6s. By the way USB-C is not like 3.5mm or Bluetooth. There is literally nothing on the market that supports it for audio. So what good does switching the USB-C do now? The same problem would still exist for the ATM user, except the headphones might also work on a new MBP.
Apple is pushing wireless, though they're not doing a very good job at the moment. Lightning appears to be a bridge for their devices, and clearly at the moment isn't for everyone considering how limited the support it has even with Apples own products. So wireless it is, and the W1 chip seemingly is going to make a difference as to how most people receive it. As I pointed out above, a wireless ATM makes much more sense for the blind.
By the way, in order to use TTY, a special headphone adapter is required already. So adding an adapter to the iPhone for use with the impaired is not any bigger problem than it was before. Wireless would certainly solve that problem for everyone, and eliminating headphone jacks from mobile devices will hopefully push the industry in that direction.