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Trademark Filings Seemingly Confirm Apple's Work on Upcoming 'AirPods'
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Look, there are definitely parallels and analogies that can be taken from the various tech transitions.
The floppy drive was used by millions of people every day when Apple removed it from the Mac. And just like the headphone jack, it was cheap and inexpensive and a ubiquitous standard across all platforms.
At the time they discontinued it, recordable CD media was ridiculously expensive, and that was write-once! CD-RWs were unaffordable for most, the media even more expensive, and were not universally compatible with all drives. Add to that an 8MB USB thumb drive was $40! That's $5 a MB! And no other computers had USB to even share it with. In addition, most internet service was still 33.3K modems, with unreliable connections, and prone to data corruption during file transfers.
Most people just wanted to go back to what was cheap and just worked. USB floppy drive sales shot through the roof, so people could keep using the cheap ubiquitous floppy. In the end, everyone put up with these problems of adopting new media because it led to something more useful, and people being forced to upgrade to it created demand that helped drop the price and increase quality as well as cement standards.
So while I agree the headphone jack is different, there are many applicable similarities. In particular, be it delivered by Lightning or USBc, or even the headphone jack, digital audio offers improvements over traditional analogue audio. This is especially true as mobile devices get smaller, and the on-board amps have to be compromised further. Moving the conversion and amplification process outside the phone, allows many more options than were available using a straight analogue signal delivery system. There really shouldn't be any argument over that point. What the debate seems to be about is primarily the inconvenience such a change will result in, and whether it's worth it. Point for point, is the benefit comparable to that of moving from floppies to DVDs, to flash drives? And I would agree, not to the same degree. But it is a benefit nonetheless, and one worth pursuing, if only to prepare for the eventual future.
We were given something better when all of these things were taken away. It was measurably better. Despite not being rewritable I could load some like 100x (edit: it's actually well over 400x. Damn!!!) the data onto a disc. A single disc replaced over 100 floppies. I don't consider Bluetooth audio better in the current condition hardware is in. That is the difference for me.
If we get some amazing buds from Apple or someone else, great. Right now I just don't see them (in terms of sporting which is all I use them for). I'd say I'm a niche market but I think hundreds of thousands of not millions of people enjoy using their bids in the same situations I do.
I'm completely open to Apple (or another company) giving me usable buds (which I have defined above). Taking something away and forcing me to effectively pay hundreds of dollar to replace it means that thing better be clearly better than what it replaced in all measurable ways.
What I dot want is for apple to remove
Something today for a measurable improvement 2-5 generations down the line. I'd like to see the measurable improvements now. If those improvements come tomorrow, wait until tomorrow.
Im also happy to wait until I see those measurable improvements. At this point you and I have crossed paths many times so I'm sure it is not news to you that I'll be keeping my 6s plus unless I'm given a very compelling reason to upgrade, at least this generation. I don't claim to represent anyone here but myself, fwiw.
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Thats not necessarily true. Apple said no unsigned apps. The world still didn't follow.
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I agree with you to an extent. However, it's only fair to yearn for a new MacBook, it's past due and Apple's followers want what Apple started with, computers. Until Apple releases a refreshed Mac Book, those comments will not cease until Apple meets their needs.
Hopefully, October will bring some new Hardware besides the iPhone 7.
To make a great product - you could make this argument about any premium component or material in the phone where a cheaper option was available
What about frequent fliers, who can't use Bluetooth devices in flight?
While I fully understand that, and empathize, that's exactly what Apple did when they took away the floppy disk. They did not put a writable drive back into the iMac for 4 years. And in the meantime, USB thumb drives were expensive and buggy, and few had the ability to use them. And the internet was hardly a substitute for file transfers at the time. Floppy disk users were forced to get adapters to continue using their cheap reliable old media. Yes Apple gave them something better, but before it was reliable, widely available, or affordable. In the meantime they took something very useful away. That's the analogy here.
Frankly, I will be just as upset as anyone if Apple removes the headphone jack now, only to replace it with a 2nd speaker and nothing else, which seems like a massive inconvenience for many with little gain.
But this idea that the new, affordable, reliable, improved technology needs to be in place before the transition takes place is unreasonable, and indeed has never been the case. It wasn't true when Apple removed the floppy disk, and it wasn't true when they removed the ADB, serial and SCSI ports. Just like Lightning headphones, USB and CD-R/Ws had been available, but there was nothing driving adoption of them. Unfortunately, I will be the first to agree that the level of improvement is not likely to ever be to the same degree as the floppy to CD, but it is improvement nonetheless.
I have no intention of upgrading my SE either, until Apple offers another 4" flagship phone. Which may be never. Some people can't understand that either. And the reality is that when the 7 comes out without a headphone jack, there will still be the very capable 6s and SE for customers who want to remain within the Apple ecosystem.
This really only becomes a concern for Apple in that they will likely lose sales, and Android makers will likely try and capitalize on that prior to dropping the headphone jack themselves. But Apple has to be prepared for that. Indeed if the phone turns out as uninspiring as the rumors suggest, they surely are expecting that -- and we'll get a good indication of that next week, when Apple provides guidance on their 4th quarter sales which includes the next iPhone release.
The problem with BT LE is it's LE because of extremely low bandwidth not suitable for audio. I'd like to have better sound quality from BT first before I feel ok getting rid of the cord. Then they can work on making it "thinner."
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Oops, Siri can't hear you without her D/A converter. Can't talk back either. Guess she can turn on the screen and write you a note. Good thing the phone still has a camera or we'd have to change her name to Helen.
That's not quite right. BT LE can transfer data fast enough for audio. The problem is that it's not designed for continuous data transfer (like streaming audio). It's designed for short bursts of data: power up > transmit > power down. This is achieved through the very fast pairing/connection times. And when it's transmitting it's not really low power. LE (low energy) is referring to the amount of power it consumes over a long period of time, not when it's transmitting (where power consumption goes way up). Which is why it's ideal for battery operated devices (like beacons).
Do you have a reference? I was curious and checking out the wiki. Max power is half and application throughput 0.27Mbps. But maybe that's outdated.
With it looking more and more like Apple is going to remove the headphone jack on the iPhone 7, we've seen considerable speculation and discussion about the transition to either wired Lightning headphones or Bluetooth options. Looking at the wireless possibilities, the first iPhone 7 headphone jack rumors immediately reminded us of an "AirPods" trademark filing we discovered last October that seemed likely to be linked to Apple, although conclusive proof could not be found at the time.
That AirPods trademark application was filed by a previously unknown company by the name of Entertainment in Flight LLC, which carried many of the hallmarks of being a shell company operated by Apple for the purposes of hiding its true identity. Apple has used such companies on many previous occasions, including for "iPad" and "CarPlay" that were ultimately used in product names and others such as "iWatch" that ended up scrapped in favor of other names.
As the AirPods trademark has continued through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review process, additional documents have been filed that we believe confirm Apple is behind the filing while providing evidence Apple continues to have interest in protecting the name.
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Article Link: Trademark Filings Seemingly Confirm Apple's Work on Upcoming 'AirPods'
Nice Detective work, MR.
No, that's about right. The RF signal is running at 1mbps, but because of overhead the theoretical maximum is 270kbps. There's also a limit to packet size of 20 bytes, which means a lot of that throughput is protocol and other data just used to maintain the connection (not your actual data). This goes along with the idea that BT LE is designed for really quick transfers of small chunks of data, not for something like large file transfers or audio streaming.
You REALLY think Apple is going to dump Siri? You are hopelessly deceived. Bye now.
Mac4Brains, don't you think that Apple will offer a Lightning/3.5mm adapter just for the reason of continuity? It makes a lot of sense to remove an analog feature from an all digital iPhone as it makes the iPhone a better product and will serve to improve the quality of music that can be played from the iPhone. Change is constant. Image the state of mobile phones today if Apple had never decided to change the way we bought and used them.
Funny thing is, while other manufacturers have tried this, once Apple does it, the whole industry follows suit.
That's why everyone's always pushing Apple to come up with 'the next big thing', so the whole industry can copy them.
As for Lightning ear buds… is this all we've got to talk about? Let's move on and just ignore the story.
If it happens, we won't have any choice and we can grumble all we like afterwards, but we won't have a headphone socket and that's that. We welcome our digital music copy protection overlords — and the music industry will sink without a trace due to its own protectionism.
Apple really needs to leak a few more ideas or MacRumors will go out of business.
This is a dead issue.
Omg, could you possibly drum up any more false drama????
You'd "have" to buy new headphones??! Lol, so if Apple includes a free adapter that allows you to happily use your stellar $50 cans, are you going to come back here & sheepishly admit that your forty paragraph diatribe was a bit much??
You're confusing me. I use Siri on my iPhone through a Bluetooth earpiece just fine, every day.
Now where did I say that? I was responding to a comment about loss of D/A converters and a useless phone. Some people think removing the headphone jack unloads all this other legacy baggage from the phone. I know Siri is here to say.
