Hey, who wants opinions on Apple ditching the headphone jack in the next iPhone?!
What? No one? Eesh. Well, the next 9 months are gonna be a little uncomfortable for you, then.
Writing for the Forbes contributor network and Kylo Ren school of emotional maturity, Erik Kain complains that “Apple Ditching The Headphone Jack Could Be Bad For Consumers.” (Tip o’ the antlers to Grant Winkler.)
If the rumors are true…
Are they ever wrong?!
…and Apple really is about to ditch the traditional 3.5 mm headphone jack in its next wave of iPhones…
Then why are all these tables still upright?
…there could be real environmental ramifications.
Also moral, political, geographical, theological and cheese implications. (The cheese implications could be the most alarming.)
Losing the headphone jack has its benefits, of course. As Gordon Kelly points out, the iPhone 7 could use the extra space for a larger battery and a slimmer design. Apple may also be moving to wireless charging.
But the real reason the company would move to Lightning-port based audio is simple. “Sway customers,” writes Kelly…
There are a lot of benefits to getting rid of the headphone jack. Apple is, of course, only doing it for nefarious reasons. Naturally.
The thing about Apple is that it’s actually quite good at finding things that benefit both the customer and itself.
Meanwhile, all those old headphones—many of which work perfectly fine—will more than likely find themselves unused and trashed.
The 3.5 mm headphone jack is an industry standard that Apple would be foolish to ditch because everyone has a multitude of headphones with that jack that they prefer to use. But at the same time if Apple did ditch it, everyone would throw those headphones into a landfill. See how that works?
Despite the fact that some rumors point to Apple using Bluetooth for headphones instead of Lightning, Kain assumes it’s going to be Lightning because once you assume rumors are true you can also assume which ones, in which capacity, when, how and by whom and also make yourself a roguish, straight-shooting cop on the edge who doesn’t play by the rules because why not at this point? It’s your fantasy, after all.
Of course, Apple could also ditch Lightning in its iPhones down the road, moving to something like USB-C… That might be a good move for consumers in the long run, but not if Apple abandons its headphone jack and replaces it with Lightning-based headphones first. That’s a potential disaster waiting to happen, as consumers would first have to upgrade to Lightning-based headphones and then USB-C based headphones.
Actually, what the Macalope heard is that first Apple’s going to go with Lightning, then USB-C, then Bluetooth, then back to Lightning and finally it’ll settle on those big honkin’ jacks that were in that bitchin’ Technics receiver you had in 1979 that made the Zeppelin sound so boss, man…
And then they’ll go back to the 3.5 mm jack.
The Macalope would like to advise everyone to hold their table flipping until we actually see the iPhone 7, but he knows how this stuff works. Nature abhors a vacuum and Apple rumors abhor logical consideration.
