While it’s a bit early to call the death of the headphone jack just yet, we sense that Apple’s interest in thinner, sleeker designs means that the 3.5mm connection is likely living on borrowed time at this point.
via PC magazine
Here’s my prediction:
- Apple will indeed drop the standard headphone port on the iPhone 7. Or 8. Or at some point. Guaranteed to happen eventually.
- There will be an immediate uproar from the tech community when this phone is announced (despite the discussions we’ll be having over the next few weeks already, thanks to this rumor), with special emphasis on Apple’s “obsession with thin”. Much gnashing of teeth will ensue. Hundreds of hours of podcasts and tens of thousands of words will be committed to the outrage.
- A $19.99 headphone jack to Lightning connector will be immediately available, solving the short-term issue in an albeit clunky way. Beats headphones, meanwhile, will be the first to come with the Lightning adapter standard.
- People will survive.
- Apple will sell more of the iPhone 7 (8, 9, or whatever) than they have of any previous model.
- There will be some awkward years with headphone manufacturers offering free adapters, then offering two models of their headphones. Amazon will begin to sell the reverse Lightning to 3.5mm audio jacks. Bluetooth headphones will get better.
- Moving forward, whenever Apple releases any new product that packs incredible power into a teeny tiny package for good reason (like the Watch, or the Pencil), the tech community will continue to fail to see the connection between Apple’s insistence on always driving things thinner and lighter everywhere and those new products. They will assume that Apple could just as easily make those teeny products alone in a vacuum, rather than making miniturization a core value of the company and continually shrinking everything they design in small increments over the course of many, many years.
