“Apple VP Greg Joswiak is grinning as he holds up what is easily the smallest iPhone adapter I have ever seen,” John Paczkowski reports for BuzzFeed News. “iPod white and about the length of a matchstick, it’s designed to connect audio headphones with an industry standard 3.5-millimeter analog plug to the Lightning port on Apple’s newest iPhone, which no longer bears the industry standard jack they require to work.”
“‘This time, we’re putting an adapter in every box,’ Joswiak quips, a wry nod to the backlash evoked in 2012 the last time Apple killed a widely used iPhone port — a move that rendered thousands of peripherals designed to interact with it incompatible without a $29 adapter, and pissed off legions of people in the process,” Paczkowski reports. “Apple is arguing that the future of audio is wireless, that the world’s current assumptions about mobile audio are not only antiquated, but worthy of immediate abandonment.”
“But right now that future comes with a price: You’ve got to leave behind the perfectly good headphones you own and you’ve got to purchase the new wireless ones as an iPhone accessory,” Paczkowski reports. “‘The audio connector is more than 100 years old,’ Joswiak says. ‘It had its last big innovation about 50 years ago. You know what that was? They made it smaller. It hasn’t been touched since then. It’s a dinosaur. It’s time to move on.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s over. It’s done. You even got a free adapter, so quit yer bitchin’. Stick it on the end of your wired headphones and you’re good to go. It’s past time to move on. Let’s get the damn anachronism off iPads, iPods and Macs, too!
Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. — Steve Jobs
SEE ALSO:
Apple kills the headphone jack – September 7, 2016
Apple reinvents the wireless headphone with AirPods – September 7, 2016
Apple’s iPhone reveal: Death of antiquated 3.5mm headphone jack heightens anticipation – September 7, 2016