Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors:
Apple is planning to remove the 3.5mm headphone jack on the next-generation iPhone in favor of an all-in-one Lightning connector, according to often-reliable Japanese website Mac Otakara. Apple may also release Lightning-equipped EarPods to support the new audio output on future iOS devices.
The report, citing a “reliable source,” claims the new same-sized Lightning connector will support Lightning-equipped and Bluetooth headphones, and have a DAC, or digital-to-audio converter, for backwards compatibility with wired headphones using standard 3.5mm stereo jacks. A 3.5mm to Lightning adapter would be required.
This will cause some waves, as does any change from one connector type to another. Will this enable ear buds with better sound? Will the move from the standard 3.5mm plug to a lightning connector allow for headphones with more sophisticated control modules?
Clearly, there is a trend for manufacturers (Apple included) to reduce the number of ports on a device (e.g., the USB-C port on the latest MacBook), push all signals through a single port, if at all possible.
Apple is not going to offend people who spent $300 and up for noise-cancelling headphones and other expensive peripherals. They will either provide an adapter, or they won’t do it. There’s little chance they’re going to put up a barrier to upgrading, now that they have a program where people are incentivized to get a new phone every year.
Note that this is in fact not quite like the new Macbook, in that they decided to keep the headphone connector there. I’m not surprised about Apple’s long-term trend, which is to promote wireless for all connections, as Phil Schiller told Gruber. I am surprised this would be the first device to do it, as opposed to the Macbook.
Now I’m really curious why they keep the Lightning connector at all, as opposed to going connectorless. Why not wireless charging? I assume Apple considers having to carry a charging “mat” at all times too much a burden and/or it doesn’t work if the phone is completely depleted.
Why would Apple go with a headphone jack that’s incompatible with their own Beats headphones? And if it’s all about making a thinner iPhone because the headphone jack is (suposedly) the thickest component, why is the iPod Touch a millimeter thinner? It uses the same headphone jack.
Are they just going to keep rolling this rumor out before every new iPhone and hope it sticks this time?
They need at least one connector for connecting to the desktop for iTunes, updates, backups, servicing, etc.
For argument’s sake: why can’t you do all of what you said via the cloud? They could also deploy a special wireless network to do the same at Genius Bars in case we can’t trust the public cloud’s reliability. As it is, you can now restore Macs over the cloud.
I’m not saying it’s entirely ready yet, but it’s not like Apple hasn’t gone with the not-quite-ready case before. Older iPhones depended on an activation server that reliably crashed on launch day…
Well, so this is the best argument against it. The other possibility (as mentioned elsewhere) is that they’re testing the waters by floating the idea in the public (and/or internally) to see how much pushback they get.
I do think a future exists where Apple will move the Beats lineup to entirely wireless, though. Maybe not just yet…
They need the port during manufacture to get the OS on there. They can’t do it wirelessly if there’s no OS on the device to manage the setup. The Apple TV even has a USB port for this sole purpose.
Not necessarily. One could build a firmware that, on first POST, connects to an internal WiFi network and downloads the necessary bootstraps. It’d be an incredibly primitive system, but that should be enough…
We did this years and years ago with TFTP on the original Sun network computers, just with Ethernet. Admittedly, WiFi is a lot more complicated than Ethernet, but not by modern standards.
(You’re probably right, but as an engineering thought experiment, this is a solvable problem.)
I hope not. I don’t need another obstacle between me and my music. And having to keep headphones charged is an obstacle.
One could have said similar things about the floppy drive, CD drive, DVI ports, ExpressCard slots, SD slots, USB ports, FireWire ports, and so on, and that was just the Mac. I remember all the folks screaming about the lack of removable battery and SD slots on the original iPhone…
I get why it might be frustrating, and I think Apple does too—which is why they kept the headphone port in the new Macbook even when they jettisoned just about everything else. But Apple has been relentlessly, for decades, pushing against extra connectors. This would be the logical next step.
“Why not wireless charging?”
Given there’s still a wire to a pad that a device has to sit on for a longer period of time, a better question would by “Why wireless charging?”.
The only positive would be to have a completely sealed device that no air/dust/water can penetrate. Which is why it does make more sense for the watch, especially when it takes so little time to charge.
Also, Apple took over a decade to replace the 30 pin connector. I doubt they want to toss the lightning connector overboard so quickly.
Mostly because Apple is obsessed with reducing the number of ports and making their devices one seamless whole.
But, yes, in practice it will likely not happen soon for the reasons you state (alongside other technical challenges).
Will this enable ear buds with better sound? Will the move from the
standard 3.5mm plug to a lightning connector allow for headphones with
more sophisticated control modules?
Why on earth would those be sufficient motivation compared to the actual lack-of-user-story for the change?
(I mean, you can already do a UDB DAC over Lightning, and nobody seems to be rushing to integrate that into their headphones, because zero demand.
The audiophile types all seem to want a separate amp and headphone, not an all-in-one.
The mobile types all use Bluetooth, not wires.
I am not convinced anyone wins in dropping the standard headphone port for Lightning.)
(Just as a note, Macs can do that, too.
Network install of OSX from an empty machine, all from firmware.
Can’t remember when the easy mode of that got in – a year or three ago.
Netboot ala the old Suns was supported as early as the first OpenFirmware PPC Macs, and IIRC still works in some guise or other.
Ah, the “good” old days of trying to get a SparcStation 1+ to netboot from Linux…)
Well, you can always get a Bluetooth audio DAC that has a headphone jack, if Apple dumped the 3.5mm jack.
And dump Beats for real headphones anyway…
Having to keep a Bluetooth DAC charged is the same obstacle.
Sure, though I really meant that as a way to cope with “not charging the headphones”; I was thinking of the desktop use case, not the mobile one.
For mobile use, nothing’s as trouble-free as “just plug in to the device”, no.
(And you could do that with the Lightning or USB-C connector, directly, for that matter, and power off the device…)