Apple iPhone 7 might drop the 3.5mm headset jack that has been a standard on phones and gadgets with audio in general for as long as we can remember. The change is said to force users to use wireless, Bluetooth-connected headphones or, alternatively, headphones that connect via the proprietory Apple Lightning port.
And the sheer possibility of such a move has caused a kind of outrage we have never seen ever since... wait... since those times when Apple dropped the CD drive in the Macbook Air, since the time we learned it does not support Adobe Flash in the iPhone, since the time... Let us just list some more: Apple was the first (or in some cases, not first in purely historical perspective, but first on a mass scale device that matters) to kill console-based UIs for graphical user interfaces, the first to kill FireWire in its iPods in 2005, the first to kill the floppy drive in the iMac, and the list just goes on. Each one of those moves was accompanied by a public outcry that had faded to acceptance and often to subsequent realization that the move was actually beneficial to the development of the industry.
We're not arguing the killing of the 3.5mm headset jack is such a move (it would depend a lot on whether Apple provides good enough wireless earbuds and whether the market will come up with enough affordable, decent quality Bluetooth headphones), but we would not rush to condemn Apple's drive to get us rid of wires in audio.
We're sure the discussion is just starting and we'll be hearing a lot more about this as the time for the fall 2016 launch of the iPhone 7 approaches, but in the meantime, we can just look at the wonderful sketch that always entertaining Joy of Tech have come up to show what the iPhone 7 would look like if Apple listened to all the suggestions and followed the rules of a democracy. Nice having MagSafe and MagSafe 2 on the same device, isn't it?
PhoneArena
