There was some big news around Apple’s latest product launch: the iPhone 7. They decided to drop the 3.5mm headphone jack in order to make place for an extra speaker and some other improved tech. ‘Why maintain a space-taking single purpose analogue connector, which has been used in tech since 1964?’, stated Apple. They showed great courage deleting this jack, taking into account that almost every person with an iPhone often owns multiple pairs of 3.5mm connected headphones. But soon, this courage ended up in jokes going viral throughout the internet…
To compensate for the removal of the headphone jack, they are selling their iPhone 7’s with special headphones that connect with the Lightning-port, as well as a Lighting adapter that creates a headphone jack. But on the other hand, the bundled headphones now only work with Apple devices and are only sold by Apple. And considering the headphone jack adapter, it just doesn’t look great, gives an extra cable to carry around, could annoy people when listening to music and if you lose it it will cost you some money as well. Besides this, both the new headphones and the adapter will not allow simultaneous listening to music and charging/updating your phone.
There is another solution. Buying wireless headphones. For example the new Apple AirPods, which look the same like the well-known EarPods but then without a cable. I think I would lose them rather quick… And they sell for the insane amount of 159 dollars as well. And they need to be charged.
The viral, false video of drilling a headphone jack into the iPhone 7, is a great sign that their are many people hoping to get back their 3.5mm jack. Even as the video itself states that the trick is not working, several videos appeared of people that still tried it out. And failed. In my opinion, people are not ready for a wireless world yet, and the Apple that created a world of mobile music with its iPods and iPhones, made a mistake through early innovation.
What do you think?
Sources:
http://www.techradar.com/news/phone-and-communications/mobile-phones/iphone-7-headphone-jack-the-story-so-far-1324866
People Are Drilling Headphone Jacks Into the iPhone 7
http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/7/12823596/apple-iphone-7-no-headphone-jack-lightning-earbuds
Hi Jorn, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this highly recent and interesting subject. I actually had quite the same reaction when I heard they removed the headphone jack. I really thought ‘Apple guys you made a huge mistake!!’ However though, letting some time pass by and sharing my thoughts with others, I am now convinced that it is not that huge of a mistake. The new kind of headphones presented on the market are almost all becoming ‘wireless’. By removing the headphone jack Apple is able to compete with these headphone brands and in the meanwhile expanding their product range (read: additional profits). This new product introduction is I believe the most important part, it is not an evolution but with this Apple will be able to start revolutionising the music experience again with complete new headphone designs and I would actually not be surprised if sooner or later this will in turn let them rethink the iPhone completely.
Unfortunately we are not yet able to test them ourselves since they will only be sold in the NL end of October. But thanks a lot for raising this topic and I would also be curious to know what others think!
Thank you for your inspiring blog. As you already mentioned, last time people were only talking about this new feature Apple came up with alongside the presentation of the new iPhone 7. I like it a lot that you ended your blog with a question. It makes it easier for the readers to start a discussion.
Your opinion states that people are not ready for a wireless world yet. I just partly agree with it. I share your opinion that people are against the launch of wireless AirPods. Like you said, the reason behind this resistance, is the fear of people losing their AirPods, which forces them to buy new ones. It would be pretty harsh to people if losing 2 small objects would result in spending another 159 euros.
However, in your last sentence you mentioned that “Apple made a mistake through early innovation”. I disagree with this statement. I think, for the last 10 year, Apple has been a great innovator and was most of the time having advantage of their first mover advantage. They were often the first ones with an emerging innovation that changed people’s lives. At the time these innovations were lauched, people were not always immediately encouraged that it would definitely be an improvement. An example of this kind of improvement is the fully touchscreen mobile phones. Not everyone was really happy with it in the first place. Now, years later, the mobile phones without touchscreen are very rare.
So, wrapping up, I think although it is an innovation that is not widely supported, in a couple of years it is way more usual that we listen music without headphone jacks. Anyway, I am really curious about the acceptability of those AirPods in a few years.
Dear Jorn, thank you for your post! I am still amazed that many people actually drilled holes in their very expensive iPhone… In any case, I was having a discussion with a friend about the wireless headphones. At first I was not convinced, my friend explained that when you wear headphones, the only thing that makes them fall out is when you actually pull out one of the cables. You often have to buy new headphones because one of the cables broke, not to mention taking the cables apart when you have once again thrown them in your bag. There are also some videos out there of people wearing the wireless headphones, and it shows that they actually do not fall out. Thus, I think Apple is one step ahead. While the average person may not be ready for wireless headphones, I think in the future it will become the norm.
Hey Jorn, interesting post about an interesting topic
Apple gave us 3 reasons why they removed the headphone jack:
1. Analog headphones can still be used by using an adapter connected through the lightning port
I don’t think this is a good reason by itself, as you can’t charge your phone and listen to music at the same time. It would also reduce the durability of the lightning port, and charging is quite vital 🙂 And you have to have the adapter on you all the time.
2. The headphone jack uses a lot of space that could be otherwise used for other tech
This makes more sense, but the competition enjoys similar new stuff like the iPhone 7 (bigger batteries, IP67 certification, optical camera stabilization etc), but with a headphone jack.
3. Apple believes wireless is the future
I agree that the future is wireless, but that doesn’t have to be the reason to remove the headphone jack and force every iPhone user into that future. Btw, most competition supports wireless charging, but that doesn’t mean it’s smart to remove the charging port. Ironically, the iPhone 7 doesn’t even support wireless charging! How’s that for a wireless future?
I think they really removed the headphone jack because they want to sell their airpods, which are extremely expensive. The Airpod project started at the same time as the Apple Watch project, so why didn’t the Airpods come out sooner? They are compatible with older headphone jack equipped iPhones. Apple waited to launch the new Airpods alongside the launch of a new iPhone, which happened to not have a headphone jack, kind of forcing customers to buy them.
In any case, we’ll soon find out if Apple is too early with this ‘innovation’, which I think it is. And from Apple we know that they’re not afraid to admit that they were wrong. Maybe they’ll put the headphone jack on the iPhone 8? Kind of what they did with the firewire ports on the MacBook a decade ago.