> When you plug an audio cable into a smartphone, it just works.
No, hardware-wise you're still going through a DAC, and the complex audio subsystem of the OS is still deciding, upon receiving the connection signal, to re-route the application audio through that headphone DAC. Or not. Jack or Lightning doesn't change this.
> Apple can choose which manufacturers get to create Lightning-compatible audio devices.
Sure. Or you can use the included lightning-jack adapter and just use normal, un-DRM'd headphones.
>Once Apple gets the ability to add DRM, the record industry gets the ability to insist that Apple use it
See my first point: the audio jack wasn't your last guardian of freedom.
>In other words, if it’s impossible to connect a speaker or other audio device to an iPhone without Apple software governing it
Use the adapter. And see the first point.
> the only way to connect an iPhone 7 to a recording or mixing device will be over the suboptimal Bluetooth connection or a dongle provided by Apple.
Aha! They finally acknowledge the adapter! But do they acknowledge that it's functionally identical to a built-in DAC?
> It's possible that iOS or specific apps will be able to disable the dongle.
It's also possible the phone will halt and catch fire if you run an unapproved app. But disabling the dongle would be moronic. For one thing, they'd be incurring the wrath of ADA-defender groups.
>the converter you rely on to hear your phone on your hearing aids—just became less useful.
See previous point.
>But you shouldn’t have to depend on a manufacturer’s permission to use its hardware however you like.
Then don't even buy Apple. They've been locked down in so many other ways for a long time.
Anyhow.
The simple explanation (see Occam's Razor) is that the designers noticed that they were using valuable internal space for a redundant connector (considering the hardware has been able to route audio over Lightning for a long time), and figured they could reclaim that space for something else. Clearly, people disagree with this change. The market will tell.
If a device has an audio jack with the aim that its owners make use of it, it has to provide audio when "something" is plugged in. It's not able to discern what's there. That is what "just works": not that audio is supplied, but that audio is supplied without the possibility to discern what (merely whether, and that a hack) it is being supplied to. That the software may disable the port when it's empty or just on a whim doesn't make the port "just work" any less.
if your phone only has a 3.5mm jack, you will have to provide high quality audio through it (if you want to be able to sell it to people interested in listening to music on high quality earphones)
if your phone only has a digital jack and a certification process, you can decide to provide high quality audio to your digital headphones and low quality audio to the 3.5mm adapter.
It's not guaranteed that the DAC you are getting in the 3.5mm adapter is as good as the DAC that you were getting before inside the phone (and given that the 3.5mm adapter costs $9.99 I would be surprised if it was)
I am personally really interested in somebody testing the new external adapter DAC against the 6s internal DAC and see what the quality loss is like. Maybe these days you can create a quality DAC and sell it for super cheap, but it might also be the case that the adapter DAC is going to be much worse than it was before, and in that case there's not much you can do about it if Apple does not license the technology to 3rd parties to create their own.
This is how I see all the Cory Doctorow/BoingBoing fear mongering. He's made a career out of scaring people and being as disingenious as possible, but because he picks on "the man" the typical college/highschool types praise him as some sort of freedom fighter. Internet fandom really deserves better heroes. The EFF itself is almost as bad and is run by seemingly the most paranoid and reactionary people out there. I imagine their hearts are in the right place but angry and poorly sourced hit pieces hurt their reputation.
>Then don't even buy Apple. They've been locked down in so many other ways for a long time.
Once in a while my Nexus will piss me off, but then I remember what the realistic alternatives are. I do like Apple products, but the lock-downs become a hassle. I can't imagine having to carry around yet more adapters for them. The market probably won't even punish them as the Apple brand is so strong and BT headphones so common, that it'll just royally piss off only a very small percentage of buyers. They're welcome to buy a Nexus/Pixel/Whatever. Apple isn't changing its ways for us. That's fine because we have a choice in mobile OS's.
> Besides, with only Apple earbuds currently supporting the Lightning audio connection, the only way to connect an iPhone 7 to a recording or mixing device will be over the suboptimal Bluetooth connection or a dongle provided by Apple.
If you are recording stuff from your iPhone using the 3.5mm jack you are already suboptimal perhaps even to the bluetooth.
For one you are going through the iPhone DAC (luckily the iphone DACs are pretty descent) then through a generally crappy mini amplifier. If you are doing this you are expecting suboptimal or really don't care about the music quality. I'm not audiophile and hardly care about extreme music quality but If you are mixing/recording you shouldn't be adding artifacts.
If you do care about quality recording you either tranfer content off the iphone, bypass the phone jack (aka amplifier), or bypass even the DAC (and get a stream directly). There are several products that already do this on the market for the existing iPhone.
(It would be nice if some one would comment instead of downvoting. I don't know if my comment is inappropriate or factually wrong... or just in the way... seriously who records stuff off their iPhone? I'm not disagreeing with the intent of the article just that I doubt audio/music experts are going to be affected by this change)
I understand the argument that forcing content through a proprietary jack opens the door for controlling said content and has huge implications for hardware manufacturers and the way people use their stuff.
What I am having a hard time understanding is why is that any different than the OS influencing what gets sent to the 3.5mm jack? It isn't like apps running in iOS had to interact with APIs to do all the other things (e.g. camera) but not the jack. Is it?
>why is that any different than the OS influencing what gets sent to the 3.5mm jack?
Their issue seems to be that it is not analog. The lightening port and bluetooth connection are two-way data connections, and the phone will be able to identify what is attached (rather than just outputing an analog signal). Here's the quotes that make that clear-
> But intentionally or not, by removing the analog port, Apple is giving itself more control than ever over what people can do with music or other audio content on an iPhone.
>With Bluetooth, the phone can distinguish between different types of devices and treat them differently. Apple can choose which manufacturers get to create Lightning-compatible audio devices.
Apple has been very good at predicting (or perhaps directly causing) the demise of certain technologies: the disk drive, the CD drive, the ethernet port. They removed them much to the chagrin of many a loyal customer, and a few years later they nearly ceased to exist across the entire industry (we're still waiting on the ethernet port to go away but give it time).
How many times will it take you forgetting your dongle to just pony up and buy the apple approved headphones? How long will it take you using the non-default, non-apple, non-sleek, clunky dongle as you show off your fancy new iPhone 7 to your friends before you decide it's got to go? What if they're using it the apple-intended way?
How long will it take before nobody buys headphones anymore? A few generations until they deprecate the dongle since nobody is using it? Where you can no longer buy a $10 set of headphones at a drugstore and plug them in? Where 'every audio device must provide analog audio output in a universal format that every device has been able to read since audio was invented or it is functionally useless' is no longer a maxim?
Long-term, we are giving up a universal and open protocol that all devices work with for a proprietary one. If you don't expect companies to abuse this to make money and to stop you from doing what you want with your equipment, well, I've got a bridge to sell you.
My understanding is that it is about what is the output. The 3.5mm jack outputs the regular audio data. You could just make it output encrypted data, but that is the same as removing it, all the headphones won't work. If you replace it with a proprietary system you can add in DRM, like not outputting anything if the connected device (which can be an adapter) is not certified. Everything has to get transformed into regular data at one point, but the content mafia is trying since many years to control as many parts of the system as possible. This is one further step.
Exactly; Apple has always controlled what can be sent to the DAC on the audio jack. (I don't know if it has a dedicated DAC, but even if it shares with the speaker, the device knows when something is plugged into the jack).
How secure are these dongles? Will we see third party ones, or do you need key material from Apple before they will light up?
The Xbox is full of this kind of thing, btw (most peripherals require a "security chip" that just needs to handshake; purely revenue protection, and nothing to do with security).
Apple products have always been built with a Walled Garden approach, so nothing new here. The same ios software/hardware combo has always been fully controlled by Apple.
I'd think that the OS is irreparably "blind" to devices connected to the 3.5mm jack, unable to identify them, and unable to discriminate among them, unable to send audio output to some of them, and not to others. A proprietary audio standard might include a way to identify devices (since manufacturers would likely have to use some kind of ID in the devices they make with Apple's blessing).
The discussion seems to be easily diverted into one about audio, but I think something that I've not seen in discussion about this issue is the way some app makers have used the analog audio port as a data jack. I've long had the impression this was a workaround that was begrudgingly tolerated by Apple. Though we've all heard about how heavy-handed their app store policies are, so maybe I'm imagining things. But anyway, how does this new port affect the use of those devices and how does it affect future devices? Are there Lightning-only devices in the works, does Lightning allow the same sort of communication that the analog port did?
Plugging the audio jack seems to be Apple closing a loophole. It's not at all different from soldering RAM on motherboards to close the after-market RAM upgrade loophole and force customers to decide at purchase time how they'll use the computer in the future. Either they'll by too-low spec'd machine and have to upgrade sooner, or buy high spec'd and pay more upfront. Either way Apple wins. Their phones don't have card slots but my $50 LG phone does, so it's not a question of capability. When you can add 32GB of storage for $15, that money doesn't go to Apple.
The truly bothersome thing is how in denial people are about Apple's true intentions, or maybe it's simply that they own Apple stock. Apple's a public company, this is profit motivated pure and simple. Whether this move will also coincide with the interests of the customer remains to be seen.
I'm not convinced. The record industry has already given up on DRM except for streaming. A lot has to happen before DRM is applied to headphones.
Audio is not like video, where it's hard to get a decent copy from the screen. With audio you can always just hook up to the analog output to the speakers themselves and get a copy indistinguishable from the original
Fighting for DRM on headphones would be an uphill battle in so many ways, and I'm not sure the record industry is stupid enough to waste the effort. They've already seemed to learn what everyone know: piracy is solved by making the content easily, universally available at a reasonable price. Piracy is tedious. Just make a better service and the customers will come to you.
Agreed; Apple has a very cozy relationship with the major music industry (see also: paying for exclusive content to best its market-competition) and while yes, this proprietary lock-in does have genuine DRM concerns, I don't think it's nearly as overwhelming as portrayed. I appreciate staying 'concerned' with DRM creep and issues of ownership vs. licensing (something the EFF loves to conflate when convenient for their arguments), but going "Chicken Little" is a bit much. They've already got their DMCA 1201 case in progress to kill DRM.
Back to the headphone lock-in: Is it profiteering from customers who really like the Apple ecosystem? For sure! Is it just another instance of using music to sell something else with even higher profit margins? Sure! Will it result in a doom-and-gloom future where thousands of music fans are rounded up, sued, and punished for finding a work-around on their own? Seems very unlikely.
That Apple wants their users to only use 'approved' peripherals with their stuff (i.e. only those from which they get a share of the profits) under the guise of 'user experience' and 'convenience' does not mean the rest of the world will suddenly give up on their analogue headphones. Apple users will be able to buy dongles (which have to be Apple-approved, so Apple will still get their share of the profits leading to higher prices which Apple-users are willing to bear to be part of that exclusive community) to connect their analogue headphones, the rest of the world will happily keep plugging those 3.5mm jacks into their phones and tablets and radios and other devices.
As an aside, what a strange creature is man that he wants to replace a device which is analogue by nature - ears not being digital after all - with a digital counterpart which is clearly sub-optimal, overly complex and fraught with potential restrictions. Meanwhile that same man will brag to his friends about the analogue turn table he purchased on which he plays his analogue records for that true analogue experience, claiming a much warmer sound that is clearly superior to that produced by digital players which 'chop the sound into bits which takes away from the experience'.
The lack of a headphone jack is simply yet another excellent reason not to buy an iPhone. What confuses me is why so many people continue to buy Apple products when they're overpriced, locked-down and treat developers like crap.
Other people getting screwed: Custom IEM wearers. I had a $300 set of Alclair Audio IEMs made so I can use an in-ear audio system on stage while making live music. These use impressions that an audiologist takes of your ear canals for an _exact_ fit that completely seals your ear.
There's not a snow-balls chance in hell I would have these be wireless, or a proprietary standard:
1) Latency. Anything over 2ms is not acceptable for live music. That's the difference between a band sounding "in-time" to "needs practice"
2) We use various tablets, phones to control the mix to our ears, and sometimes in between sets, listen and review music.
3) Removing the 3.5mm pretty much means Apple is exiting professional audio because it's now incompatible with 100% of everything.
4) There is no way in hell my $300 pair of custom-molded IEMs bound to a standard that Apple is going to change in 3 years. Not only would I have to replace my IEMs, but any equipment that's not Apple would have to be updated to match. Not going to happen.
This reads slightly hyperbolic. I suspect Apple will fight against DRM on music for quite some time having made the decision to remove it.
In the past the Apple's designs needed to respect a vast pre-existing ecosystem of headphones, amps and assorted other audio gear. Dropping the socket largely takes them out of that ecosystem, but today the success and reach of their devices exerts pressure on that ecosystem to move in Apple's direction too. That pressure does the rest of the ecosystem a significant disservice: the interoperability of the devices, cables and practices in that ecosystem provides so much utility!
You can order laptops now and they are talking about a phone. They even negotiate with OEMs, such as Intel,[0] to provide more open versions of their products, diligently trying to create widespread change. They aren't all the way there,[1] but seem committed to the long run.
(I'm not affiliated, and all I know about them is what I read.)
As long as we're listening to music via physical speakers manipulating air pressure, there will always be an unencoded electrical audio signal somewhere in the system.
Now, when we start getting DRM-enabled bone conductors implanted in our jaws...
Except that there are adapters that convert to that same old jack, and so you haven't really lost anything.
Yet, anyhow. If they ever lock you down to only approved headphones, then we've got a real problem, and not just for being able to do what you want with your music.
HeadphoneJackGate is really a damning indictment of the tech industry. The usability of Apple products for ordinary people has been sliding downhill for years due to trendy-but-idiotic features like hidden UI, flat UI, and gestures (and various abominations combining the three). But the lack of a headphone jack (a total non-issue thanks to the included adapter) is what the tech press gets worked up over...
What about the fact that Apple ships a Lighting-to-3.5mm-stereo-analog adapter in the box? As far as I can tell, there is no practical difference from the previous scenario, other than that you need to plug in the dongle to make analog recordings.
I agree with a lot of what EFF does, but in light of the adapter provided, they're blowing this issue way out of proportion.
The real issue here is this might be anti-competitive, and go as far as being an anti-trust issue. Apple can now limit who makes headphones for the iPhone and the ones that are "allowed" could end up seeing their headphones far more expensive than the Apple and Beats brands. This is all because 3rd party brands will have to pay licensing fees to Apple to use the port. So we could end up seeing headphones that are 20%+ more expensive compared to Apple or Beats headphone units.
> It advertises that the move helps make the phone more water-resistant.
Absolute, utter nonsense. I have a 3 year old Samsung Galaxy S4 Active that sports an open headphone jack and can be SUBMERGED in water without any problems.
I don't want to have any heavy batteries sitting over, on or in my ears. Let alone the trash DAC and amplifier that these bluetooth devices have.
I think removing the headphone jack is stupid. But it has zero to do with DRM. Moving the DAC to the other side of a connector changes nothing at all about Apple's ability to implement DRM.
There was an Apple controlled DAC in your phone before, now its in a dongle 2cm away. Its annoying but not a diabolical plot.
So, apple gets rid of the headphone jack and the fear of the END of headphone jacks propagates. . .
This is somewhat depressing and frustrating; depressing because one companies' decision has the potential to influence other companies implementations that therefore will affect us all? Frustrating because homogenization is apparently that simple to implement?
I guess this quote by who knows who is ever so true. . . "there is no profit in the current paradigm. . .you have to create problems to create profits", unfortunately.
I don't disagree, but I believe the 3.5 millimeter jack was destined to be replaced eventually (not universally, but in common usage) by USB type-c regardless of Apple's move.
I am paranoid I know, however the first thing I thought is that, as headphone can be used in a reverse way as microphones, that Apple made a secret deal with the NSA (or else...) so they will be able in a Bluetooth range to connect (as Bluetooth is far away from being secure) and listen to people. Those plugs all around are just free and easy tool for spies.
Of course they could also listen to non encrypted conversations during phone calls between people using encrypted channels/tools.
Am I the only one thinking about that?
1. Apple has already publicly stated this is not about DRM and, at least when it comes to music, they have been very anti-DRM for a long time.
2. Apple earbuds aren't the only one's you can use. There are lots of lightning compatible headphones and they've been around a while.
3. This is not 'The End of Headphones Jacks'. It's one phone manufacturer. Globally iPhone market share is less than 20% so if you want a headphone jack you have a lot of great options.
[+] [-] AceJohnny2|9 years ago|reply
No, hardware-wise you're still going through a DAC, and the complex audio subsystem of the OS is still deciding, upon receiving the connection signal, to re-route the application audio through that headphone DAC. Or not. Jack or Lightning doesn't change this.
> Apple can choose which manufacturers get to create Lightning-compatible audio devices.
Sure. Or you can use the included lightning-jack adapter and just use normal, un-DRM'd headphones.
>Once Apple gets the ability to add DRM, the record industry gets the ability to insist that Apple use it
See my first point: the audio jack wasn't your last guardian of freedom.
>In other words, if it’s impossible to connect a speaker or other audio device to an iPhone without Apple software governing it
Use the adapter. And see the first point.
> the only way to connect an iPhone 7 to a recording or mixing device will be over the suboptimal Bluetooth connection or a dongle provided by Apple.
Aha! They finally acknowledge the adapter! But do they acknowledge that it's functionally identical to a built-in DAC?
> It's possible that iOS or specific apps will be able to disable the dongle.
It's also possible the phone will halt and catch fire if you run an unapproved app. But disabling the dongle would be moronic. For one thing, they'd be incurring the wrath of ADA-defender groups.
>the converter you rely on to hear your phone on your hearing aids—just became less useful.
See previous point.
>But you shouldn’t have to depend on a manufacturer’s permission to use its hardware however you like.
Then don't even buy Apple. They've been locked down in so many other ways for a long time.
Anyhow.
The simple explanation (see Occam's Razor) is that the designers noticed that they were using valuable internal space for a redundant connector (considering the hardware has been able to route audio over Lightning for a long time), and figured they could reclaim that space for something else. Clearly, people disagree with this change. The market will tell.
[+] [-] ChoHag|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tetraodonpuffer|9 years ago|reply
if your phone only has a digital jack and a certification process, you can decide to provide high quality audio to your digital headphones and low quality audio to the 3.5mm adapter.
It's not guaranteed that the DAC you are getting in the 3.5mm adapter is as good as the DAC that you were getting before inside the phone (and given that the 3.5mm adapter costs $9.99 I would be surprised if it was)
I am personally really interested in somebody testing the new external adapter DAC against the 6s internal DAC and see what the quality loss is like. Maybe these days you can create a quality DAC and sell it for super cheap, but it might also be the case that the adapter DAC is going to be much worse than it was before, and in that case there's not much you can do about it if Apple does not license the technology to 3rd parties to create their own.
[+] [-] _ph_|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bluegene|9 years ago|reply
What prevents Apple from obsoleting the adapter in the future and making analog jack incompatible with lightning jack?
[+] [-] drzaiusapelord|9 years ago|reply
>Then don't even buy Apple. They've been locked down in so many other ways for a long time.
Once in a while my Nexus will piss me off, but then I remember what the realistic alternatives are. I do like Apple products, but the lock-downs become a hassle. I can't imagine having to carry around yet more adapters for them. The market probably won't even punish them as the Apple brand is so strong and BT headphones so common, that it'll just royally piss off only a very small percentage of buyers. They're welcome to buy a Nexus/Pixel/Whatever. Apple isn't changing its ways for us. That's fine because we have a choice in mobile OS's.
[+] [-] agentgt|9 years ago|reply
If you are recording stuff from your iPhone using the 3.5mm jack you are already suboptimal perhaps even to the bluetooth.
For one you are going through the iPhone DAC (luckily the iphone DACs are pretty descent) then through a generally crappy mini amplifier. If you are doing this you are expecting suboptimal or really don't care about the music quality. I'm not audiophile and hardly care about extreme music quality but If you are mixing/recording you shouldn't be adding artifacts.
If you do care about quality recording you either tranfer content off the iphone, bypass the phone jack (aka amplifier), or bypass even the DAC (and get a stream directly). There are several products that already do this on the market for the existing iPhone.
(It would be nice if some one would comment instead of downvoting. I don't know if my comment is inappropriate or factually wrong... or just in the way... seriously who records stuff off their iPhone? I'm not disagreeing with the intent of the article just that I doubt audio/music experts are going to be affected by this change)
[+] [-] mead5432|9 years ago|reply
What I am having a hard time understanding is why is that any different than the OS influencing what gets sent to the 3.5mm jack? It isn't like apps running in iOS had to interact with APIs to do all the other things (e.g. camera) but not the jack. Is it?
[+] [-] sigmar|9 years ago|reply
Their issue seems to be that it is not analog. The lightening port and bluetooth connection are two-way data connections, and the phone will be able to identify what is attached (rather than just outputing an analog signal). Here's the quotes that make that clear-
> But intentionally or not, by removing the analog port, Apple is giving itself more control than ever over what people can do with music or other audio content on an iPhone.
>With Bluetooth, the phone can distinguish between different types of devices and treat them differently. Apple can choose which manufacturers get to create Lightning-compatible audio devices.
[+] [-] wfo|9 years ago|reply
How many times will it take you forgetting your dongle to just pony up and buy the apple approved headphones? How long will it take you using the non-default, non-apple, non-sleek, clunky dongle as you show off your fancy new iPhone 7 to your friends before you decide it's got to go? What if they're using it the apple-intended way?
How long will it take before nobody buys headphones anymore? A few generations until they deprecate the dongle since nobody is using it? Where you can no longer buy a $10 set of headphones at a drugstore and plug them in? Where 'every audio device must provide analog audio output in a universal format that every device has been able to read since audio was invented or it is functionally useless' is no longer a maxim?
Long-term, we are giving up a universal and open protocol that all devices work with for a proprietary one. If you don't expect companies to abuse this to make money and to stop you from doing what you want with your equipment, well, I've got a bridge to sell you.
[+] [-] onli|9 years ago|reply
I could be a bit off the mark here, not my area.
[+] [-] kabdib|9 years ago|reply
How secure are these dongles? Will we see third party ones, or do you need key material from Apple before they will light up?
The Xbox is full of this kind of thing, btw (most peripherals require a "security chip" that just needs to handshake; purely revenue protection, and nothing to do with security).
[+] [-] acagle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] domador|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] michrassena|9 years ago|reply
Plugging the audio jack seems to be Apple closing a loophole. It's not at all different from soldering RAM on motherboards to close the after-market RAM upgrade loophole and force customers to decide at purchase time how they'll use the computer in the future. Either they'll by too-low spec'd machine and have to upgrade sooner, or buy high spec'd and pay more upfront. Either way Apple wins. Their phones don't have card slots but my $50 LG phone does, so it's not a question of capability. When you can add 32GB of storage for $15, that money doesn't go to Apple.
The truly bothersome thing is how in denial people are about Apple's true intentions, or maybe it's simply that they own Apple stock. Apple's a public company, this is profit motivated pure and simple. Whether this move will also coincide with the interests of the customer remains to be seen.
(edit for typos and clarification)
[+] [-] audunw|9 years ago|reply
Audio is not like video, where it's hard to get a decent copy from the screen. With audio you can always just hook up to the analog output to the speakers themselves and get a copy indistinguishable from the original
Fighting for DRM on headphones would be an uphill battle in so many ways, and I'm not sure the record industry is stupid enough to waste the effort. They've already seemed to learn what everyone know: piracy is solved by making the content easily, universally available at a reasonable price. Piracy is tedious. Just make a better service and the customers will come to you.
[+] [-] gpvos|9 years ago|reply
The record industry has made so many stupid attempts at DRM, I don't think anyone has been able to keep count.
[+] [-] taeric|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
Back to the headphone lock-in: Is it profiteering from customers who really like the Apple ecosystem? For sure! Is it just another instance of using music to sell something else with even higher profit margins? Sure! Will it result in a doom-and-gloom future where thousands of music fans are rounded up, sued, and punished for finding a work-around on their own? Seems very unlikely.
[+] [-] Yetanfou|9 years ago|reply
As an aside, what a strange creature is man that he wants to replace a device which is analogue by nature - ears not being digital after all - with a digital counterpart which is clearly sub-optimal, overly complex and fraught with potential restrictions. Meanwhile that same man will brag to his friends about the analogue turn table he purchased on which he plays his analogue records for that true analogue experience, claiming a much warmer sound that is clearly superior to that produced by digital players which 'chop the sound into bits which takes away from the experience'.
Bizarre, but profitable.
[+] [-] aroman|9 years ago|reply
This is just factually incorrect.
Even before today's announcement lightning headphones have been available from multiple independent headphone makers, including Bose and Phillips[0].
https://www.google.com/amp/www.mirror.co.uk/tech/dont-panic-...
[+] [-] csense|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] exabrial|9 years ago|reply
There's not a snow-balls chance in hell I would have these be wireless, or a proprietary standard:
1) Latency. Anything over 2ms is not acceptable for live music. That's the difference between a band sounding "in-time" to "needs practice"
2) We use various tablets, phones to control the mix to our ears, and sometimes in between sets, listen and review music.
3) Removing the 3.5mm pretty much means Apple is exiting professional audio because it's now incompatible with 100% of everything.
4) There is no way in hell my $300 pair of custom-molded IEMs bound to a standard that Apple is going to change in 3 years. Not only would I have to replace my IEMs, but any equipment that's not Apple would have to be updated to match. Not going to happen.
[+] [-] the_other|9 years ago|reply
In the past the Apple's designs needed to respect a vast pre-existing ecosystem of headphones, amps and assorted other audio gear. Dropping the socket largely takes them out of that ecosystem, but today the success and reach of their devices exerts pressure on that ecosystem to move in Apple's direction too. That pressure does the rest of the ecosystem a significant disservice: the interoperability of the devices, cables and practices in that ecosystem provides so much utility!
[+] [-] ourmandave|9 years ago|reply
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/0/apple-iphone-7-full-...
Maybe this is an evolution to a super thin iPhone 8.
[+] [-] hackuser|9 years ago|reply
https://puri.sm/
You can order laptops now and they are talking about a phone. They even negotiate with OEMs, such as Intel,[0] to provide more open versions of their products, diligently trying to create widespread change. They aren't all the way there,[1] but seem committed to the long run.
(I'm not affiliated, and all I know about them is what I read.)
----
[0] https://puri.sm/posts/petition-for-intel-to-release-an-me-le...
[1] https://puri.sm/road-to-fsf-ryf-endorsement-and-beyond/ - Note that's from Aug 2015
[+] [-] PaulHoule|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nlawalker|9 years ago|reply
As long as we're listening to music via physical speakers manipulating air pressure, there will always be an unencoded electrical audio signal somewhere in the system.
Now, when we start getting DRM-enabled bone conductors implanted in our jaws...
[+] [-] wccrawford|9 years ago|reply
Yet, anyhow. If they ever lock you down to only approved headphones, then we've got a real problem, and not just for being able to do what you want with your music.
[+] [-] rayiner|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] otterley|9 years ago|reply
I agree with a lot of what EFF does, but in light of the adapter provided, they're blowing this issue way out of proportion.
[+] [-] em3rgent0rdr|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] electic|9 years ago|reply
Sounds anti-competitive to me....
[+] [-] Kenji|9 years ago|reply
Absolute, utter nonsense. I have a 3 year old Samsung Galaxy S4 Active that sports an open headphone jack and can be SUBMERGED in water without any problems.
I don't want to have any heavy batteries sitting over, on or in my ears. Let alone the trash DAC and amplifier that these bluetooth devices have.
[+] [-] noonespecial|9 years ago|reply
There was an Apple controlled DAC in your phone before, now its in a dongle 2cm away. Its annoying but not a diabolical plot.
[+] [-] slicktux|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jshevek|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zonovar|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|9 years ago|reply
2. Apple earbuds aren't the only one's you can use. There are lots of lightning compatible headphones and they've been around a while.
3. This is not 'The End of Headphones Jacks'. It's one phone manufacturer. Globally iPhone market share is less than 20% so if you want a headphone jack you have a lot of great options.