Apple Supplier Cirrus Logic Releases Kit for Creating Lightning-Based Headphones Ahead of iPhone 7

If Apple had started with a lightning connector headphone and then the industry came along with a headphone jack, everyone would be singing praises along the lines of

* No external DAC or amp required - it's built into the phone!
* No external battery or charging - it works off the phone!
* Uses a small, inexpensive standardized plug/jack, requiring only a small round hole in cases, etc.
* So cheap that earplugs can be disposable - especially handy around wet or sweaty environments
* So cheap that if you lose your device, this isn't a factor
* No dongles!
* Can charge my phone and use external headphones or speakers at the same time!

Sigh.

Are they gonna put a female Lightning port on Macs?? How else do they expect us to use Lightning headphones across devices?

The day Apple gets rid of the headphone jack is the day I stop buying iPhones.

No way I want some pathetic lightning cable that frays even when stuck in one place and isn't moved.

This will not convince me to buy an iPhone that does not have a headphone jack. We need a packet no headphone jack no buy. Let Tim stew on a few million useless iPhones that no one wants. That will teach apple to be more consumer aware

For the love of God, I pray Apple does not remove the 3.5mm headphone jack from the whole line of phones.

Reasons

I am a musician. Bluetooth audio is too laggy to play live so I use a 1/4" audio cable to jack into the iPhone.

On stage I keep a portable battery plugged into the lightning port to keep the device charged while I perform. Losing the ability to charge the phone and play music at the same time would be catastrophic for me.

At festivals I wear a small portable amp on my belt and wear the iPhone on my arm or around my neck. I wander through crowds, synth-bombing bluegrass circles etc. At every event, I lose one or two cables to the general chaos of everyone being drunk etc. I use a long cable 3.5mm extender cable so I can wrap it around my arm a few times to where if it gets pulled on, it won't get unplugged out of the phone. I use the kind with a special, thin connector so that they work even if my iPhone is in a hefty case.

Fortunately, 3.5mm to RCA cables are cheap and ubiquitous at stores. I always bring three so I have a backup if one stops working, and/or one gets lost. If all three vanish I can always find one a nearby Walmart or Radio Shack etc. Sometimes I have to settle for ones with a thicker end on them, but I have never had a problem finding something that works for just a few bucks.

However, Lightning-to-1/4" adapters that support charging and audio will be:
• overpriced
• difficult to find at stores
• short and stubby
• poorly made unless you buy the even more overpriced Apple brand ones
• easy to lose
• you won't have any way to know in advance if audio quality or latency (lag) will vary between models of these
• cheap knock-off ones could be rendered inoperable by iOS updates

A lot of them will be made solely with the purpose of headphones in mind, so they'll have volume and mute controls on them which will actually be a huge disadvantage for me due to the fact those buttons could get pressed accidentally whether the dongle is in my pocket or hanging out where the chaos of crowds can affect it.

Conclusion

I sincerely hope Apple does not remove the 3.5mm jack from the whole line of phones. At least leave it on the "Plus"-sized model. I could understand removing it from the smallest of the models, but removing the 3.5mm jack from the whole line is just nuts.

If this turns out to be true, then I will surely know that Apple has completely lost its soul as a company and, instead of increasing profits by innovating and creating exciting new products in new categories, they are resorting to forcing everyone to buy even more expensive proprietary stuff even at the cost of making their products far less useful. They are standing on the sidelines of VR, AR, and gaming; they waved goodbye to many of the niche pro markets they once dominated; and they don't even make a decent monitor anymore.

I may just be done with technology all together. Screw it.

Sure. People ALWAYS say this about the next iPhone (or the next Galaxy over dropping SD card support or removable batter), and yet it NEVER seems to have any affect whatsoever on sales. I guess 99.999% of the population just doesn't think the same way.

Or people just roll with the shortcomings because they want the rest. That doesn't mean 99.999% are right or that .001% are wrong... but just that all 100% must deal with whatever is delivered if they want the other benefits exclusive to an Apple product. Does that make Apple right 100% of the time because sales are high? Drug dealers sales can be very high- and much more profitable- too, but I don't think most of us would deem them brilliantly right because of their sales or profit numbers.

What happens here is maybe it plays out as you imply. So maybe Apple is then emboldened to try jettisoning something else because the loyal fans of the product will roll with that too. Maybe next time it's the camera or the battery or both? Maybe the masses DO roll with that change too? It seems eventually they would go too far and the "go with the flow" sentiment would shift. At that point "the rest" would no longer be enough to roll with the latest change.

I recall a time no so long ago when the first brand I would think of for AV equipment was Sony. If Sony made one, it was probably better... because it was made by Sony. Then Sony started playing the proprietary this and proprietary that game. "Innovations" seemed to be increasingly more about maximizing profits for Sony than delivering value & utility for Sony customers. Today, I typically DON'T think of Sony first for anything AV. That's not necessarily saying the same will play out for Apple here... but is this really any Apple customer's problem that begged for THIS "innovation." I can't recall ever seeing even one thread full of 3.5mm jack bashers prior to this particular rumor getting some legs under it.

And for more than a year now, the option of connecting via Lightning AND Bluetooth has been available to those who argue so (increasingly) passionately for those connections. So it's not like 3.5mm being in existing iPhones is some obstacle to either "better(?)" option getting utilized to it's maximum by those who think either is superior.

What is in this particular change for us consumers? And why does 3.5mm have to go to realize that/those benefit(s)? There's a pile of recurring spin that appears to be trying to answer those questions but most of it seems to revolve around buyer ignorance. For example, "waterproof" is tossed often. But does water only want to enter round holes? Not the bigger rectangular hole just millimeters away... or the smaller (speaker) round holes? "Digital > Analog" keeps getting slung... yet our ears only hear analog. Etc.