Your worst fears have been confirmed: the beloved headphone jack will not be in the iPhone 7. Apple revealed that the 3.5mm headphone jack would be replaced by wireless Bluetooth headphones and if you just can’t let go of your constantly entangled wires, you’ll have to use an adapter or plug lightning-based headphones into the charging port.
The reaction has been palpably furious, with Apple even admitting that it took ‘courage’ to follow through with the upgrade. The exclusion of the headphone jack affects anyone with a pair of headphones or a speaker- so pretty much everyone. And just when you think you’ve accepted the loss of your darling headphone jack, Apple slaps a £140 price tag on the new wireless ‘Airpods’.
This new breed of headphones are the same size- minus the wiring. So basically they’re just begging to be lost. With a strong susceptibility to every drain, nook and cranny, the new Airpods will take you from anxious technophobe to an aspiring amateur magician in seconds as your new wireless headphones disappear without a trace.
Furthermore, for me personally, headphone wires are literally lifesavers- I’ve lost count the amount of times my headphone wires have saved my phone when it has slipped from my grasp. So all in all, Apple are charging their customers five times the amount they did for the headphones’ previous incarnation and you’ll probably lose them before you get home from the store.
But you ,the fickle consumer, will probably buy one anyway because your new iPhone will be thinner, slicker, sexier, and of course, easier to use. Apple’s history of revamping their technology argues that you will too.
Steve Jobs’ removal of the floppy disk drive in 1998. The Macbook Air’s arrival in 2008 that saw the CD-ROM drive’s complete amputation. Every time Apple revolutionise their products the customers growl and grumble, but over time (probably about 3 or 4 months, maybe half a year) they forget and move on.
Because of Apple’s gold standard and ubiquity in the market, millions of customers sign up at the sniff of a new standard of technology. It’s essentially a momentum shift of avalanche proportion.
Third-party companies scramble to produce accompanying technology so they can cash in on the demand for Apple’s latest iPhone or Mac. The rise of the iPhone 7 and therefore the demise of the headphone jack is inevitable. Apple are cutting your wiry umbilical cord and you’re going to love it.