Your Headphones May Soon Be Useless

When Apple introduced the original iPhone in 2007, the first-generation device technically had a headphone jack. However, the port was set so deeply inside the phone’s body that it didn’t work with most headphones already on the market. If someone wanted to listen to music through an iPhone using a previously owned pair of cans, they’d have to buy a bulky third-party adapter. A year later, the iPhone 3G added a headphone jack that could work with standard headphones, and with more than 1 billion iPhones sold to date, those early hiccups have been largely forgotten.

In November 2015, rumors began to circulate in earnest that Apple planned to do away with the headphone jack entirely in the next version of the iPhone. As each tidbit of speculation trickled out in the months that followed, reaction was predictably intense, despite the literal littleness of the issue.

Today, of course, Apple confirmed those long-floating rumors by announcing that the iPhone 7 will no longer have a standalone headphone jack. Instead, the new iPhone will ship later this month with earbuds that connect directly via Apple’s Lightning connector, which until now has most commonly been used for charging purposes. As in the iPhone’s earliest days, users who still want to plug in their old headphones can use a special adapter, although this time Apple is including the Lightning-to-3.5mm dongle with each new phone. Another option will be to listen via wireless headphones; typically, this means via Bluetooth headphones, which work with current iPhones, but Apple didn’t utter the B-word in its announcement. Not coincidentally, Apple also today announced a new line of wireless headphones called AirPods, and Apple-owned headphone maker Beats unveiled its own products using the same wireless technology as AirPods.

The message is clear: Apple, at least, believes the age of headphone jacks will soon be behind us. 

by Marc Hogan

taken: pitchfork.com