Samsung Mocks Apple's Decision to Remove the Headphone Jack in iPhone 7

[Feenician]

These posts make me feel like some of you didn't read a darn thing. The technology isn't "outdated" (zero improvement removing it) and the argument is NOT "because it's there now" but rather what they're proposing to use instead locks you into the eco-system and/or requires batteries (Bluetooth which also has low bandwidth and therefore is INFERIOR to an analog headphone jack).

They are using lightning, in addition to bluetooth. Both of which you can already use today. Lightning is not inferior, not does it require batteries.

Some of us are electronic or electrical engineers (I am with two degrees) and reading what is basically NONSENSE from people that have no clue about the things they use

Extremely ironic

 

[Michael Goff]

I truly hope the removal of the 3.5mm port is just a well played rumor.

It's going to happen eventually. I could see it being a rumor for every year until they pull the trigger, though. This isn't the first year we've speculated about the removal of the jack.

 

[H2SO4]

They are using lightning, in addition to bluetooth. Both of which you can already use today. Lightning is not inferior, not does it require batteries.


Extremely ironic

So what? Move to USB3, you know let’s go for a global standard that means we don’t have to ship a charging lead or adaptor with every device. Less waste.
This decision to go lightning only is driven by money and money alone. That’s the point that’s being made.

 

[MagnusVonMagnum]

They are using lightning, in addition to bluetooth. Both of which you can already use today. Lightning is not inferior, not does it require batteries.

You apparently didn't read my post or you don't know what and/or means. I never said a Lightning connection was inferior either. I said it wasn't better. I said Bluetooth is inferior (too low bandwidth for even true Redbook CD). I never said Lighting requires batteries (it requires either an eco-system locked headphone or an adapter that probably costs a small fortune and that can easily be lost). It's obviously Bluetooth that requires batteries. I also said people don't read carefully. People like you keep proving my point.

 

[redhawk87]

You need to learn to read more carefully, IMO. I said CD-ROM, not music CDs. In other words, CD-Roms are obsolete in the sense that they don't store enough information to be very useful these days. That is why the floppy disk died as well (plus lack of speed). Yes, Apple killed ALL optical discs shipped with Macs in the process. That makes it difficult to get your music CD collection onto your Mac (or DVDs, let alone Blu-Rays) which is why I said I had to buy an external BD/DVD/CD burner for my 2012 Mac Mini Server (implying that in order to transfer my music and movie collection over, I needed a USB3 drive to do it and yes, that includes any new music CDs I might buy as well.



I have NO desire to store ANYTHING on Blu-Ray. Other people's needs may vary, but my ONLY use for a BD drive (as I already said if you had actually read my post) is to transfer BD movie purchases over (and of course any music CD or possibly the odd DVD, although I don't buy DVDs anymore normally as they are standard definition and I have moved on to high definition).

Why would I want to buy a Blu-Ray? AGAIN, I already spelled this out my previous post which you clearly chose to NOT read very carefully. iTune movies are LOWER QUALITY (higher compression) and most of the time they cost MORE MONEY. I've picked up most of my favorite older movies for $4-8 a movie on BD in superior quality. Once transferred to my Mac, they are not locked into the Apple eco-system either (huge bonus if I don't want to be tied to AppleTV forever, although there are ways to remove Fairplay as well out there). In short, WTF would I want to buy an inferior iTunes movie that is locked into Apple's iTunes system when I can get a BD that I can rip at full BD quality and which will play on Amazon's FireTV or any other number of players should I choose to move back to Windows or even run a Linux server?

What's funny is that you think I watch BDs directly. I don't even OWN a regular BD player, just the USB3 BD player/burner for my Mac Mini. But like I said, you apparently didn't read my post very carefully at all before spewing off some giant post of nonsense.



Some people have data caps and my upload bandwidth is 5Mbps. It would be an utter waste of time to buy/rent space in "The Cloud" when a 2.5" 3TB hard drive will do the job faster and more secure. I can take that drive with me to "my friend's house" if need be or I can bring the original BD if that's what his system has (if they aren't set up to play movies on their main system from "The Cloud", it wouldn't be very helpful. You make too many assumptions about what everyone else around me might have/use. Having the BD *AND* a digital rip gives me far more flexibility than say just buying an iTunes movie (which short of removing the encryption won't work on non-Apple products).



A ton of people? What's that 10 people weighing an average of 200 pounds each? LOL.



I find your rant hilarious in that all my movies are on a 2.5" hard drive and I don't own an Playstation (1, 2 or 3) for that matter and again, I don't even have a single Blu-Ray player in my house, just the BD-Rom drive. Oh and they are backed up including an off-site backup so there's no danger in losing them or tens of thousands of photos I've taken and/or scanned from photo albums, etc. LP record transfers, VHS tape transfers, etc. ALL my media is stored digitally now (and yes it was a lot of work scanning old film negatives and cleaning them up via Photoshop, etc. and transferring old VHS home videos, Hi8 home videos, etc. from a time long ago when digital was something imaginary for video. I even have a few 8-Track transfers from albums that had differences (e.g. Pink Floyd's Animals 8-Track where Pigs on the Wing is one song combined from the two on the LP/CD with a bridge solo guitar part that exists nowhere else). I have plenty of records that are STILL not available on CD or digital. They've been transferred of a high-end deck/cartridge and cleaned up with iZotope RX. You'd be hard pressed to tell they are from records at all in many cases.



You'd "guess" wrong.



Full bandwidth output capability in regards to human hearing means it can never technically be "obsolete" for a stereo headphone jack. We've got a long way to go for video in terms of the limits of human vision (where you couldn't tell the screen from a window), but human auditory capability is far more limited. Try a binaural recording with headphones. It's "holographic" sound that you won't be able to tell from real life (some scary sounding crap with a sound effects recording; I've got one where bees land in your ear. That's fun to play for someone and watch their reaction.



By market, do you mean Apple? I don't really see any evidence of the mainstream other platforms gravitating away from headphone jacks and hence the topic of this thread where Samsung MOCKS APPLE for doing so (because it's an IDIOTIC MOVE). If Bluetooth EVER gets to even full red-book CD bandwidth without compression and EVERYONE ON EARTH only uses those headphones, you'd have an argument to ditch wired jacks altogether. Otherwise, if you need a jack, it might as well be a compatible one. At the very least, they should include a free adapter, but those do tend to get lost rather easily.



I'm not assuming their device is GOING TO BE thinner; I'm trying to figure out WTF they can't manage to add the extra stereo speaker without ditching the audio jack when everyone else on Earth already has managed it. What other possible reason (than thinner) could they have? Oh yeah, that's right. I already stated it. It's to trap you in their eco-system better and/or increase revenues. Those aren't good reasons unless you're Apple.



Apple already has piss poor storage and battery life compared to nearly everyone else out there. I've got a cheap-arse $48 Microsoft Lumia phone for god's sake and with a micro-SD card added, I have 208GB of storage on it! That's higher than anything Apple offers. It's got two cameras including an 8MP HD camera and full 1080p video. It plays Bluetooth audio in my car if I want (and for the phone) and has the power of a $300 Android phone. Other than a lack of certain Apps I don't use, it's the freaking bargain of the century. Oh and the battery is fully removable (quite easily at that) as well and lasts like 3x that of a typical iPhone regardless. Yeah Microsoft blew it with their phones (for market share), but then that's been true of the Mac for long periods of time as well. I use what works best for me ($17 a month for a smart phone that cost less than $150 total means I can buy another Macbook Pro every other year instead of giving it a cell phone carrier).



The only thing important to Apple is MORE $$$$$$$$$$$$$$. They are already behind most of the phones out there in almost every category (storage, memory, camera quality) and yet those phones already have stereo sound in both orientations and still manage to keep a headphone jack. Just how do they do it? I guess you're saying Apple is too incompetent too keep their headphone jack AND fit another speaker in it (their speakers suck BTW and Beats headphones are noisy inaccurate bloated bass makers; they SHOULD have bought Grado instead, but it seems street appeal was more important to Apple than having the best possible product kind of like how having a pretty ultra-thin case for an iMac is more important than having a good graphics card despite the fact that a desktop doesn't need to be anywhere near that thin period. I don't like a lot of Apple's choices since Steve died. They are choosing fashion over function, but then Mr. Cook is a fashionable kind of guy.



All horse manure. They didn't trade the headphone jack for a larger battery. They put a speaker there instead. If they wanted more battery time, they wouldn't have kept making the phone needlessly thinner (which got them a lot of criticism for short battery life leading them to release that obscenely stupid looking external battery "hump" case. Yeah, great design choices Jony Ive! Keep it up buddy.



Nothing, as numerous posts have indicated in numerous threads have indicated including this one that I already do have them on a hard drive....



As I already pointed out, I don't "store"; I BUY and I get higher quality and a hard backup that can run on "friends" systems that "only" have BD players. I use Kodi on Amazon FireTV these days. That gives me full DTS-HD/DTS/AC3/etc options and even a 3D playback option. Kodi's picture viewer can zoom in and rotate photos. AppleTV's built-in players cannot. But you can get a variation of Kodi for the newer ATV now.



No, you don't get it at all. You need to actually carefully read posts. You're wasting my time.



I don't like change? I've got vinyl. I moved it using 24/96 transfers to Apple Lossless. I used a Firewire box and a professional Panasonic VHS deck to transfer my home movies off VHS and Hi8 and even some movies that aren't available on DVD/BD/Digital to this very day. I'm the freaking definition of change.



Yeah, those thin little discs take up LOADS of space on a shelf in my closet. Mine aren't manually anything. They're transferred to my Mac already. iTunes movies are limited to what devices they can be played on, not BDs (they play just fine on my Mac with a free player if I really want to view them live), let alone the transfers which will play on any digital media player not just iTunes. BD video quality is VASTLY SUPERIOR due to less compression than ANY streaming format out there and nearly every single digital storage format (i.e. iTunes uses FAR more compression). When transferring a BD yourself, you can choose how much compression to use or just dump it to MKV at 100% quality. In other words, other than taking up space in the house, your other points are just plain incorrect.

oh, you want to digitize your collection! My bad... I completely misread your post. I thought you were trying to store your digital collection on Blueray disks which just seemed preposterous to me. Yeah, storing them on an HDD would be ok too . It is hard to get enough free Cloud space to store everything. I am not a fan of paying for cloud space, so I would probably just stick it on an external HDD also.

Anyways blueray is somewhat of a tangent. I hope we can both agree that there are a multitude of advantages to keeping the headphone jack on the iPhone. I listed a fair number of those advantages and so did you. I agree with them too. In todays world, there are several ways you can listen to your music without using the headphone jack. Because of this, I think it is feasible to have a world devoid of the headphone jack. Also, a report recently came out that bluetooth enabled heaphones pulled in more revenue than non-bluetooth headphones for the first time. This leads me to believe that Bluetooth headphones will eventually be the standard. At some point wireless will replace wired. This is an overall trend that is happening across our technology driven world and has been happening for the past 20 years or so. Wireless keyboard? Wireless mouse? Induction charging? wireless charging? Wifi? Oh BTW, do you use Wifi? Wifi is a good example of a technology that is sub-par, but has become ubiquitous because of its ease of use and lack of cables. Sure, ethernet is technically faster, but it is now only used in niche settings where you need faster speeds than your wireless router can provide. I think Bluetooth headphones will follow the same fate. There are going to be audiophiles that swear by a wired connection, but those people will be few and far between. Maybe 1-2%? So, if you happen to be one of those 1-2% then you are rightfully going to cause a ruckus when the headphone jack disappears. But, is that ruckus going to be enough for mainstream phone manufacturers to keep it around? No, because if you are an audiophile, you can still buy a wired connection, it will just be in the form of a lightning cable instead.

 

[0007776]

Aren't they removing it for space and you get better audio quality with the lightning connection?

Quality all depends on the DAC that is built into the Lightning headphones that you buy. Cheap headphones likely will be worse than the current built in DAC and you can already buy expensive ones that bypass the built in DAC. It is only being removed due to Apple's unhealthy obsession with thinness.

 

[Mac 128]

So what? Move to USB3, you know let’s go for a global standard that means we don’t have to ship a charging lead or adaptor with every device. Less waste.
This decision to go lightning only is driven by money and money alone. That’s the point that’s being made.

Right, and then over half-a-billion iOS customers can take the four years worth of accumulated Lightning cables and accessories they've purchased and throw them in the landfil. Much better plan.

 

[Burger Thing]

Right, and then over half-a-billion iOS customers can take the four years worth of accumulated Lightning cables and accessories they've purchased and throw them in the landfil. Much better plan.

Why? You would need to buy just one adapter.

They will be very cheap. Imagine if the chinese manufacturers jump on board. You will be able to buy one at every drug store.

 

[kdarling]

Right, and then over half-a-billion iOS customers can take the four years worth of accumulated Lightning cables and accessories they've purchased and throw them in the landfil. Much better plan.

We can use a universal to lightning adapter

Personally speaking, considering how many ridiculously costly lightning cables that I've bought because they break under my family's usage, I'm all for less expensive, more universal cables.

 

[0958400]

Some people argue for the headphone jack as if it were something worth dying for, while I have mixed feelings about it myself, I don't have a problem with it if there's an adaptor and while at it, I might even enjoy buying new headphones with bluetooth.

I still do believe they are pushing toward waterproofing it - removing slots and contacts is the way to go and I guess, that soon the lightning adaptor will be replaced by the three dots the iPad Pro has, adding touch control at the sides (volume) Thus making it a robust entity without any water entry points. Two years, max.

 

[H2SO4]

Right, and then over half-a-billion iOS customers can take the four years worth of accumulated Lightning cables and accessories they've purchased and throw them in the landfil. Much better plan.

The glaring hole in your reply is that there are vastly more devices out there, (not just phones remember), that communicate with USB.
Apple may have sold 1 billion iDevices but add up the devices of all the other phone manufacturers, then add cameras, calculators, dongles of all shapes and loads of other things that interface over USB etc. etc and you should come to the realisation that in this metric Apple really are small fry.

 

[Mac 128]

The glaring hole in your reply is that there are vastly more devices out there, (not just phones remember), that communicate with USB.
Apple may have sold 1 billion iDevices but add up the devices of all the other phone manufacturers, then add cameras, calculators, dongles of all shapes and loads of other things that interface over USB etc. etc and you should come to the realisation that in this metric Apple really are small fry.

Right. And how many USB-C devices are there out there right now? I'll guarantee you for the next several years, Lightning will be anything but "small fry" -- and there's the glaring hole in your reply.

I have drawer full of 30-pin dock cables and accessories after a decade of investing in them. I'm not eager to repeat the experience of replacing them all after only 4 years with Lightning. Besides, Lightning is perfectly suitable to the task, and I actually prefer it to USB-C.

The idea that somehow we're going to do the planet any favors in the short-term by having Apple switch a billion customers to a new "standard" when in another 6 years, our iOS devices will most likely be entirely wireless anyway, requiring no new cables is kind of short-sighted. In the beginning its not like USB-C cables are going to be significantly less expensive anyway -- and considering how little regulation there is of these open standards, I'm not sure I want to risk my equipment with cheap cables which have already been reported to cause problems with what little USB-C equipment there is.

 

[Dmunjal]

Right. And how many USB-C devices are there out there right now? I'll guarantee you for the next several years, Lightning will be anything but "small fry" -- and there's the glaring hole in your reply.

I have drawer full of 30-pin dock cables and accessories after a decade of investing in them. I'm not eager to repeat the experience of replacing them all after only 4 years with Lightning. Besides, Lightning is perfectly suitable to the task, and I actually prefer it to USB-C.

The idea that somehow we're going to do the planet any favors in the short-term by having Apple switch a billion customers to a new "standard" when in another 6 years, our iOS devices will most likely be entirely wireless anyway, requiring no new cables is kind of short-sighted. In the beginning its not like USB-C cables are going to be significantly less expensive anyway -- and considering how little regulation there is of these open standards, I'm not sure I want to risk my equipment with cheap cables which have already been reported to cause problems with what little USB-C equipment there is.

Can Lightning provide 60W of power like USB-c can? USB-c is the future as it covers all devices from laptops to tablets to phones.

 

[Mac 128]

Can Lightning provide 60W of power like USB-c can? USB-c is the future as it covers all devices from laptops to tablets to phones.

I'm not sure anyone knows what Lightning 2 will support yet. But I would be surprised if it didn't, and don't know why it couldn't.

Also, by the time USB-C achieves any market saturation, Apple may remove the Lightning port altogether as wireless charging may become the norm, making USB-c irrelevant for all but large bandwidth and data transfers on pro desktop applications.

Lightning had a four year head start on USBc, and has given Apple that much more time to think about it with real world data from a billion users to refine it. Unless the wireless future never comes, I don't see any physical connector being launched this late in the game gaining significant adoption in the long term, especially for mobile devices like phones, tablets, and laptops.

 

[Dmunjal]

I'm not sure anyone knows what Lightning 2 will support yet. But I would be surprised if it didn't, and don't know why it couldn't.

Also, by the time USB-C achieves any market saturation, Apple may remove the Lightning port altogether as wireless charging may become the norm, making USB-c irrelevant for all but large bandwidth and data transfers on pro desktop applications.

Lightning had a four year head start on USBc, and has given Apple that much more time to think about it with real world data from a billion users to refine it. Unless the wireless future never comes, I don't see any physical connector being launched this late in the game gaining significant adoption in the long term, especially for mobile devices like phones, tablets, and laptops.

Why did Apple go with USB-c on the Mac Pro and not Lightning?

 

[H2SO4]

Right. And how many USB-C devices are there out there right now? I'll guarantee you for the next several years, Lightning will be anything but "small fry" -- and there's the glaring hole in your reply.

I have drawer full of 30-pin dock cables and accessories after a decade of investing in them. I'm not eager to repeat the experience of replacing them all after only 4 years with Lightning. Besides, Lightning is perfectly suitable to the task, and I actually prefer it to USB-C.

The idea that somehow we're going to do the planet any favors in the short-term by having Apple switch a billion customers to a new "standard" when in another 6 years, our iOS devices will most likely be entirely wireless anyway, requiring no new cables is kind of short-sighted. In the beginning its not like USB-C cables are going to be significantly less expensive anyway -- and considering how little regulation there is of these open standards, I'm not sure I want to risk my equipment with cheap cables which have already been reported to cause problems with what little USB-C equipment there is.

You’re still choosing to miss the point. As many lightning devices as there are in circulation it’ll be a massive amount less than USB. This makes Apple the small fry in relative terms.
If you want to over pay for your device, that’s up to you but it’s wasteful and stupid.

You know, safety aside we all have a standardised connectors for our powered devices. We should be aiming for that with low power peripherals. How annoying would it be to have a drawer full of adaptors to plug in your TV and washing machine and toaster becasue some idiot company decides they’d rather have license fees than be ecologically sound?

 

[Mac 128]

Why did Apple go with USB-c on the Mac Pro and not Lightning?

I'm not arguing the superiority of USB-C to Lightning. I'm debating your question about charging. If Lightning 2 supplies 60w power, then it's the perfect port to add to the MacBook, as it will add compatibility across all of Apple's products, where they have consistently doubled down on Lightning as a preferred method for charging their devices.

But Lightning 2 wasn't ready when they introduced the MacBook, and it's still not ready despite prepping the iPad Pro port for it. Apple also hasn't removed the headphone jack from the iPhone, and that alone will make adding the Lightning port to the MacBook worth it for many future iPhone users. And Apple isn't going to tip their hand until they have to.
[doublepost=1470766609][/doublepost]

You’re still choosing to miss the point. As many lightning devices as there are in circulation it’ll be a massive amount less than USB. This makes Apple the small fry in relative terms.
If you want to over pay for your device, that’s up to you but it’s wasteful and stupid.

You know, safety aside we all have a standardised connectors for our powered devices. We should be aiming for that with low power peripherals. How annoying would it be to have a drawer full of adaptors to plug in your TV and washing machine and toaster becasue some idiot company decides they’d rather have license fees than be ecologically sound?

Sorry no, you're ignoring the facts. Apple has over a billion devices with Lightning in service. I wonder if there are even 10 million USB-C devices on the planet at the moment?

You're now making straw man arguments, which I'm not interested in debating. You already have to have a drawer full of adaptors to plug anything into anything. And I maintain that by the time USB-C achieves market saturation Apple will likely have moved on from physical ports. In the meantime, USB-C is late to market, and isn't worth trashing all of those Lightning cables and accessories just to accommodate the latecomer.

 

[H2SO4]

I'm not arguing the superiority of USB-C to Lightning. I'm debating your question about charging. If Lightning 2 supplies 60w power, then it's the perfect port to add to the MacBook, as it will add compatibility across all of Apple's products, where they have consistently doubled down on Lightning as a preferred method for charging their devices.

But Lightning 2 wasn't ready when they introduced the MacBook, and it's still not ready despite prepping the iPad Pro port for it. Apple also hasn't removed the headphone jack from the iPhone, and that alone will make adding the Lightning port to the MacBook worth it for many future iPhone users. And Apple isn't going to tip their hand until they have to.
[doublepost=1470766609][/doublepost]

Sorry no, you're ignoring the facts. Apple has over a billion devices with Lightning in service. I wonder if there are even 10 million USB-C devices on the planet at the moment?

You're now making straw man arguments, which I'm not interested in debating. You already have to have a drawer full of adaptors to plug anything into anything. And I maintain that by the time USB-C achieves market saturation Apple will likely have moved on from physical ports. In the meantime, USB-C is late to market, and isn't worth trashing all of those Lightning cables and accessories just to accommodate the latecomer.

Jesus wept, how many times? Let’s go for a standard that works everywhere. That’s the point. You know we all HDMI on our TVs now we don’t have Apple making a proprietary connector that only works on Apple devices. This way you have the option to sell the device on its own and not speed up landfill with lots of things we don’t need.

If you keep your head in the sand for much longer you’ll suffocate.

 

[Mac 128]

Jesus wept, how many times? Let’s go for a standard that works everywhere. That’s the point. You know we all HDMI on our TVs now we don’t have Apple making a proprietary connector that only works on Apple devices. This way you have the option to sell the device on its own and not speed up landfill with lots of things we don’t need.

If you keep your head in the sand for much longer you’ll suffocate.

Using your argument, why don't all TV manufacturers immediately switch to USB-C and drop HDMI? Imagine all those HDMI cables and products in the landfills, or all those obsolete products that only have HDMI, as well as all those adapters needed to be compatible with new USB-C products? Because you know, USB-C can do it all, no need for people to keep investing in technology that only works on certain devices.

Again dodging the bullet. Jesus has nothing to do with it. Lightning pre-dated USB-C by 4 years, when USB offered nothing that met Apple's needs. Apple is probably embracing it far more than any other manufacturer at the moment anyway. No need to relegate Lightning to the landfills, replace them all again with USB-C, and then ditch those adapters, cables and accessories again in a few years, when all wires in mobile applications will likely be obsolete.

 

[H2SO4]

Using your argument, why don't all TV manufacturers immediately switch to USB-C and drop HDMI? Imagine all those HDMI cables and products in the landfills, or all those obsolete products that only have HDMI, as well as all those adapters needed to be compatible with new USB-C products? Because you know, USB-C can do it all, no need for people to keep investing in technology that only works on certain devices.

Again dodging the bullet. Jesus has nothing to do with it. Lightning pre-dated USB-C by 4 years, when USB offered nothing that met Apple's needs. Apple is probably embracing it far more than any other manufacturer at the moment anyway. No need to relegate Lightning to the landfills, replace them all again with USB-C, and then ditch those adapters, cables and accessories again in a few years, when all wires in mobile applications will likely be obsolete.

Never conversed with anybody so obtuse. Last post to you.
Doesn’t matter if it’s USB1, 2, 3 or 96, lightning, or 30 pin dock, ADC or DVI. Let’s go for a common standard instead of some proprietary crap.

 

[Mac 128]

Never conversed with anybody so obtuse. Last post to you.
Doesn’t matter if it’s USB1, 2, 3 or 96, lightning, or 30 pin dock, ADC or DVI. Let’s go for a common standard instead of some proprietary crap.

Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, eh? Doesn't matter who gets hurt, or how much damage it does. Good plan.

 

[rjohnstone]

Full speed ahead, damn the torpedoes, eh? Doesn't matter who gets hurt, or how much damage it does. Good plan.

It didn't bother Apple when they dumped the 30 pin for the Lighting connection.
A lot of gear, not just cables, became obsolete almost over night.
Normalizing on a single standard would reduce waste and be more beneficial in the long run.
Short term pain for long term gain.

 

[Mac 128]

It didn't bother Apple when they dumped the 30 pin for the Lighting connection.
A lot of gear, not just cables, became obsolete almost over night.
Normalizing on a single standard would reduce waste and be more beneficial in the long run.
Short term pain for long term gain.

Apple had no choice but to dump it then. 30-pin dock had been around 10 years by that point. Few standards last that long in the electronic industry. USB-A has only been a standard for 18 years.

Read what I proposed. I'm not opposed to a single standard, but what's the point if all those wires and cables are gone in 5 more years? Then Apple's customers have unnecessarily dumped four years worth of accumulated investments, for another , only to dump them too.

I'm happy to see USB-C be successful. So let them work with the video industry to replace HDMI, and the telecom industry to replace Ethernet, and the audio industry to replace digital optical, and 3.5mm, and the appliance industry to replace electrical, etc. And when they get all that going, I'll be powering my devices with wireless energy transfer, listening to music over wireless headphones and speakers, streaming video over wireless to my wireless TV, surfing the web on my Tbit/s wireless connection, all without having to have replaced my current Lightning cables and accessories in the process.

 

[a02]

I don't think you or most people understand the reasons behind moving away from the 50 year old technology of the 3.5mm analog headphone jack. All music files played on any handheld device today are digital. The audio jack requires an analog output, so every device has to have a digital to analog converter chip to convert the file on the fly. It makes sense to just keep the flow of digital to digital. And the biggest port now on any device is the audio jack, so it limits the size to which a device can be manufactured. So why should we stick with 50 year old technology and limit the size of our devices, just for nostalgia? Heck, let's just put the 8mm headphone jack on there too. When you have a look at old pc laptops of the 90's and see the massive serial ports on the back, you cringe. The same will go for the headphone jack.

You do realize that your brain and ears are analogue correct? There has to be an analogue to digital converter in the chain somewhere. Whether its in the phone, which will still have one regardless to handle the two speakers, or in the headset its still there somewhere. With the headphone jack you have have the assurance that Apple has put a reasonably good quality converter in there. When the converter is in the headset you could have anything from a cheap lousy sounding chipset, to a audiophile grade one. Personally I also prefer a commodity jack that is old enough not to have a license fee attached to it anymore, unlike the lightning one which you will be paying for along with every headset. Its going to be great to not be able to use the same headset on both your iPhone and your Mac (or other devices) on top of it all.

 

[Mac 128]

You do realize that your brain and ears are analogue correct? There has to be an analogue to digital converter in the chain somewhere. Whether its in the phone, which will still have one regardless to handle the two speakers, or in the headset its still there somewhere. With the headphone jack you have have the assurance that Apple has put a reasonably good quality converter in there. When the converter is in the headset you could have anything from a cheap lousy sounding chipset, to a audiophile grade one. Personally I also prefer a commodity jack that is old enough not to have a license fee attached to it anymore, unlike the lightning one which you will be paying for along with every headset. Its going to be great to not be able to use the same headset on both your iPhone and your Mac (or other devices) on top of it all.

Your premise seems to be that anyone who is foolish enough to pay a few extra bucks to buy a pair of headphones with a licensed Lightning equipped connector, is too affected by Apple to actually try those headphones on to decide if they like them before they buy them? The average customer has never bought a pair of headphones based solely on a spec sheet, and new Lightning equipped headphones won't be the exception. They will try various pairs on and ultimately chose the one that sounds the best to them, with the music they listen to, exactly the way they do now. If a customer buys a pair of headphones that have a cheap lousy sounding chipset in them, then they never had a very good appreciation of Apple's own built-in. And ultimately who is to say which sounds better to them, especially if it costs less than a similar 3.5mm pair? Savings on products can make things sound very sweet indeed for some. In the end, headphone makers who don't aspire to maintain the minimum standard Apple has established only potentially cost themselves sales. They won't be pulling the wool over anybody's ears here, since that's exactly what customers will be using to choose their headphones, Lightning or otherwise.

Your main objection seems to be about the potential license fee for the connector, and not realistically the audio quality. Fortunately for you, there's a non-proprietary choice which is Bluetooth, which is also compatible most any device a customer is likely to plug their headphones into currently, including your iPhone and your Mac. Of course you seem to be missing the forest for the trees. You realize your iPhone is full of proprietary technology that Apple is licensing from other manufacturers, and you are paying extra for all of it. So maybe you currently live in a world where all of the patents and technologies are owned 100% by the OEM of your products, but in my world it doesn't work that way.

Then there's the fact that future headphones will most likely be platform agnostic, with a simple cable swap making them 100% compatible with whatever devices a person most often uses. In fact many BT headphones can already be plugged into devices with a cable to continue listening when the batteries run low. So there's no reason such cables can't be hybrids to plug any set of headphones into any device, be it 3.5mm, USB-C, or Lightning.