http://www.macrumors.com/2015/11/27/iphone-7-no-3-5mm-headphone-jack-lightning/
I assume this would mean wireless charging is in the Iphone 7
Apple May Replace Headphone Jack on iPhone 7 With All-in-One Lightning Connector
- Thread starter soxhop411
- Start date
I assume this would mean wireless charging is in the Iphone 7
I would hope not. Wireless charging is still incredibly inefficient. It just sounds like the charger and headphones will plug into the same hole.
Use wireless headphones (please ignore the draw on the phone, the lower audio bandwidth and the fact that you now have yet another device that needs charging...). Remember the Apple Way is to limit choices, treat the consumer as sheep and always lock you into proprietary hardware with higher profit margins.
They will be more than happy to sell you an adapter for that for the low and reasonable price of $59.99.
You plug into the connector that would presumably be built in. I don't know. Wireless charging is far from being more than a mode to waste electricity while saving a whole two seconds it takes to plug in a charger into your phone.
Forget the adaptor, think of all the new proprietary headphones they could force you to buy!
It seemed too good to be true when started moving over to USB-C. Then again, slightly more recent rumors still have them testing out USB-C, that would be a much better move.
It seemed too good to be true when started moving over to USB-C. Then again, slightly more recent rumors still have them testing out USB-C, that would be a much better move.
Apple takes in a huge royalty on every Lightning connector sold by third party manufacturers. There is no way Apple is going to give up that revenue stream for USB-C. Also, USB-C is larger than the lightning connector. USB-C would put a damper on Apple's top priority of launching the "thinnest iPhone evah!!".
This is Apple's current solution to simultaneous charging and video on the iPad. Expect something similar.
also, please note, the output from the Lightning connector is digital. That means the adapter or any headphones that use it directly must include a DAC chip which allows them to exclude virtually all existing headphones and substainially increases the cost: why have a single, quality DAC chip inside your phone when you can force everyone to multiple chips in every headset....
In other words, giving consumers what they want. I have too many choices. I appreciate Apple making them for me.
And there you have it...sheep who have been convinced that limiting choice and being herded is good for them....it's no wonder fascism can be so damn popular
The paradox of choice is real. Most people want to be herded. That's fine when it comes to consumer electronics. Save your agonizing for another topic.
This rumor's been around for 2+ years. I wouldn't put it past Apple to do something this dumb, but I can't see this one.
Android makers are giving people more freedom and picking up the scraps Apple left behind.
There's plenty of choices on the market from Apple to Android to Windows Phone. They're all capable of doing what their market wants.
Now if we want to talk about Apple's degrading quality of software, that's a whole other thread.
Apple isn't limiting any choices. They're offering their phones the way they want, just like every other maker. I personally like Apple's model (most of the time) because I don't want to screw around with my phone. I want it to work as expected, I don't want to mod it, hack it, root it, tweek it or change the UI. I don't want 90 different keyboards. I just don't care. They make a product at a huge premium and are making about 90% of the profits in the smartphone industry.
Android makers are giving people more freedom and picking up the scraps Apple left behind.
There's plenty of choices on the market from Apple to Android to Windows Phone. They're all capable of doing what their market wants.
Now if we want to talk about Apple's degrading quality of software, that's a whole other thread.
We are not in disagreement. Of course you can just buy something else and btw I mostly use my Moto X as a phone and mostly for business so I also have never hacked, rooted or otherwise messed with Android mods. I was just characterizing what the choice of Apple entails. Your characterization of Android as 'picking up the scraps' of the market seems a bit unfair considering worldwide 79% of mobile hardware runs Android and trends quoted in Forbes last month predicts Apple's share will decline by more than 2% in the next year. Now..is the Apple share mostly the top of the market in terms of price/profitability ?....yep. But as the market matures it's fun watching Apple struggle to prevent the commoditization of yet another product. These days they seem obsessed with thinner phones (well that's the nonsense excuse for removing the standard audio jack...) Aside from obviously making it harder and harder to keep the phone rugged..is the market clamoring for a phone you can use to slice cheese or is the ultimate goal a phone where you need to buy the accessory case to prevent slicing your fingers each time you reach for it ?
I'm an Android guy, but yeah, small form factor is a lot more of a selling point to me than wasting time on the camera or NFC or other crap. Unfortunately it conflicts with a higher priority goal (increased battery life), but it's definitely important.
Plus Apple users spend 3-5x on apps vs what they do on Android. Huge marketshare is great, but if everyone is just getting it for free apps and cheap phones, the only people are winning are those supported by advertisers.Android dominates the worldwide unit share, but all the profits go to Apple. You can't really pay the bills and invest in innovation on the backs of units.
Numbers I've seen is Apple's AppStore has paid out far more to developers than Android, despite market share numbers.
How do you exactly define "struggle"? Apple sold 48 million iPhones in the summer quarter, before the new iPhones came out. They're up 25% YOY and are making all of the money in the smartphone market. Apple's lost a lot of things in the past, but struggling they aren't. They took in $51 billion and made 11 billion in 3 months.
Samsung on the other hand made $6 billion and a good chunk of it was from profits on making chips for Apple, or selling displays not actually selling phones.
Google took in $11.8 billion in mobile ad revenue in 2014. $9 billion of that came from iOS devices, not Android. Google is one of the biggest benefits of iOS, despite Android. Apple moving the default search from Google to Bing / Yahoo would be a huge blow to Google.
We are in the minority...as I believe you noted elsewhere and as I see in all phone reviews now, they review pretty much everything except how the phone performs at keeping a connection when you're talking on the thing. This is, of course, largely because they have no way of testing this at all. It's almost becoming as much of an anachronism to call these devices 'phones' as it has been to say you 'dial' a number. A phone that had far better radios, no camera and a formfactor of 2 years ago with the resultant far larger battery would be an awesome communication device and sell about as well as Blackberry's last offerings...
Which was...and android! I'm just joking. I've been very vocal on here as other places that I'd love an iPhone 6S MAXX type device. Make it 30% thicker, add a larger battery and I'd be a pig in shit. I have a 6 and the battery life is far better and less of an issue vs. the 5S but I'd love a larger form factor that's a bit thicker and not a 6S Plus.
Remember how pissed off everyone was when Apple went from 30 pin to Lightning? Everyone all up in arms about that?
Apple's laughing all the way to the bank. Sure folks are going to be pissed about having to buy new headphones and all that. But buy them they will.
Apple's laughing all the way to the bank. Sure folks are going to be pissed about having to buy new headphones and all that. But buy them they will.
At each launch I've shook my head and asked why Apple didn't "invest" every mm of reduced thickness to battery. The damn things were thin enough several generations ago.
The 30 pin to lightning thing was a dumb debate. Apple had to do something after all this time in order to meet new needs.
Combining the lightning port and head phone port is a dumb idea because of usability, not due to people getting mad about their iHome clock radios. Not being able to use my iPhone's headset while plugged in without an adapter is a major clusterfuck. I use it constantly plugged in with the headset due to long conference calls and recharging the phone in my car while on calls. If they include two lightning ports, then i'm cool but that seems to defeat the purpose.
I'm not putting it past Apple to do it, but it's a pretty dumb idea in general unless they have some huge breakthrough as to why it's absolutely needed. Who really needs a phone thinner than a 6S at this point?
I generally respect Apple's desire to reinvent the wheel even if they're generally conspicuous attempts to make their own standard connectors. Audio and visual stuff I think it's crappy, though. Apple is never going to own the stereo world and headphones are a major part of that. There are times it makes more sense for them to play along with the game that already exists and this is absolutely one.
I generally agree but the gap is a lot smaller than it used to be. I use DuckDuckGo a lot and rarely use Google anymore. Google is still the best, but if you switch it over many iOS users won't care or notice. My wife hasn't noticed that her search isn't Google on her new iPhone at all and it's set at Bing.
I swapped to DDG as soon as Apple made it an option as default search engine in Mac and iOS Safaris. I've been happy with it overall, and it's easy to use the !g bang to do individual searches directly on google whenever I might feel it's necessary. DuckDuckGo has amazing flexibility with the bang system.
Apple, whose products I own and like quite a bit (I am 110% with Bowiac. I would like to limit my decisions to things I give a shit about. I think it's probably ok that I don't give a shit about computer phones), chose style over substance in the audio sphere when they purchased Beats. It was is and never will be a secret that Beats makes incredibly shitty, cheap products and spends its money paying athletes and entertainers to wear them as a fashion choice. I thought it was a pathetic choice by Apple because Apple is the best marketing company in the world --- you don't need to purchase a company whose core competency is marketing cool, you have that in-house. But, then again, I guess Apple buying Beats is about like me buying a $0.50 pack of Nabs at lunch. I don't need them and they're bad for me but it doesn't really matter either way, it's a small pack and the money is couch cushion shit.
You say this, but people said the same thing about selling MP3s, phones, tablets, etc. What was the time Apple made a product that was an abject failure? Even Google has those. Apple? I guess you could say the Shuffle iPods, or even FireWire.... but FireWire at least got used for over a decade (and was faster than USB for a very long time). I'm not an Apple fanboy by any stretch, but you can't count them out on anything.
Still, doing this would be stupid.
iPod Hifi would be another one.
If we're talking software Mac.com, MobileMe, Ping.
I wouldn't include Firewire, it was pretty great.
They could have just had one slide that said "Nearly Every Apple Product 1990-1998" It was a pretty ugly period.
I had a Performa 6300 what a POS that thing was.
1. If you think I'm a fanboi of any other option you clearly never look at the Screw it ! thread here.
2. MS has stayed out of the hardware business, except for XBox until recently and so far the Surface stuff has been decent but way overpriced, can't imagine where they got that strategy from...
3. Flop is a relative term: all the Apple TV offerings have so far been underwhelming and the market reflects that, and while the jury is still out and they won't lose money...the whole watch fad may not have legs considering just how useless they really are...
Me too, but I was coming from DOS (and Win in its infancy) so I thought it was great.
1. Oh, it wasn't a dig directed at you personally, just the article that couldn't come up with anything that came out after the 486 processor.
2. I think the Surface is an interesting device, as is WinOS, particularly the latter where MS took a chance and didn't come out with a clone. I wish (as an non-FB Apple user) that some of the competition had seen the light sooner and been able to get greater traction early. Price is a funny thing...if the Surface was $199 for exactly the same product, would they gain more in market share than they would lose in perception of quality?
3. I think it's pretty specious to label the ATV as a flop considering Apple's own view on the product. It's essentially been a hobby project/public beta for a "real" product that's certainly coming down the road. Haven't the watches sold very well?
Edit: to add some content to the original point of the thread, we heard similar outrage at the floppy and CD drives getting axed, as well as the aforementioned 30-pin connector...I haven't heard much about those things since pretty much the weeks each was announced.
As headphones go, if you think in 5 years people will still be connecting headphones by analog 3.5mm cable, I have a Mac Cube to sell you. There's groundbreaking work being done on batteries by multiple groups that will radically change the need to have plugged-in-things and they don't seem very far off. As things stand today, how much do you really use headphones that you are unable to charge the things in enough time for them not to die? Seems like quite an edge case.
Last edited:
If Couperin wasn't, you know, him, he might have brought up the XServe, or even made an argument for the garbage-can Mac Pro that's gone over like a wet fart. But you are dealing with a fanboy, so fanboy reactions are to be expected.
On the other hand, I will take this bet on just about any terms you want to make it. Apple is big, but Apple's not big enough to turn that ship by themselves and there's no value prop to everybody else dropping the miniplug just 'cause Apple says so. And carrying around a bulky Lightning dongle as an adapter for non-Apple headphones (and this will be no better if they go to USB-C because they'll need to include a full sound chip or use Alternate Mode, itself not free) is not going to be a thing.
I don't care about choice when there is no different and the prices are similar. It's quite another thing when they put in a worse option and charge a LOT more for it, and force you to buy things that are fine with a new cable.
USB-C cable is not utter shit and costs nothing, Apple chargers are what 5-10 times the price of competitors because they're different and no one can make them knock off. This only costs you and makes money for Apple. If you're ok wiht that ebcause you can't handle the stress of what socket option to choose from then I think the criticism of sheep is fair.
No one pushes back while writing completely unnecessary checks. But to force you to buy beats - which as you say are shit- via their choice of charging station is another whole level. They are expensive and shit - as opposed to expensive and no benefit, these are actively worse for more.
I don't know I wish people pushed back on this nonsense, no thanks we'll keep paying 30 bucks for a 6 inch cable because thinking is hard.
Not going to weigh in on the merits of Apple vs. Android or whatever, but certified third-party lightning cables on Amazon are actually cheaper than USB-C cables.
I think if they do this they would quickly move to a single USB-C port for everything instead of Lightning. The reason to switch would be to promote adoption of the USB-C standard, which Apple developed and which can do everything Lightning can do.
In 5 years I'd predict ports won't matter much - the phone is completely waterproof and virtually wireless. Most people use Bluetooth for audio (and charge their headphones when necessary from the phone). Wireless phone charging is ubiquitous and battery life gives you a few days' charge at a time. Once ports don't matter, or maybe just before that, they can switch to USB-C. It will be the only port and rarely used at that.
In 5 years I'd predict ports won't matter much - the phone is completely waterproof and virtually wireless. Most people use Bluetooth for audio (and charge their headphones when necessary from the phone). Wireless phone charging is ubiquitous and battery life gives you a few days' charge at a time. Once ports don't matter, or maybe just before that, they can switch to USB-C. It will be the only port and rarely used at that.
The program that Apple uses to certify 3rd party products, Apple MFi, has many faces. The pros are that it ensures that these products live up to the quality expectations of Apple and its customers. It also levels the playing field and puts a partial barrier to entry on cheap knock offs. Apple charges manufacturers, and therefor consumers a pretty penny for this. At one point in time the licensing fee per lightning connector was $4. It has come down since then, but is still high. I don't begrudge Apple for making a profit, but they also use the program to steer the 3rd party market the way they want. At device launch time there is a scarcity of lightning connectors. Apple allocates the scarce resource as they see fit and it isn't first come first served. Gaining a license means passing a series of technical tests and adhering to Apple's strict packaging guidelines, but losing a license can be much more random. When Monster sued Apple for patent infringement around the Beats products, Apple retaliated by pulling their license. Not only could this hurt sales, Monster can no longer claim they are certified to work with Apple, but could cost the company tons of money. All the Monster packaging would have to be scrapped and redone to remove the Apple claims.
So, even when Apple claims to have product design and customer satisfaction at the heart of everything they do, know that there is a ruthless side of the story that isn't immediately evident. That is part of the company's DNA as much as design is.
So, even when Apple claims to have product design and customer satisfaction at the heart of everything they do, know that there is a ruthless side of the story that isn't immediately evident. That is part of the company's DNA as much as design is.
Last edited: