wiggin

cnocbui said:

Soli said:

cnocbui said:

lkrupp said:

My opinion is that an adapter will not be included. Apple has never, to my knowledge, included any adapter when it switches ports. My iMac 14,2 did not include a Thunderbolt-> Firewire adapter when Apple got rid of Firewire. When the iPod went from Firewire to USB there was no adapter. Including a 3.5mm adapter would defeat the entire purpose of moving to a digital port. The idea is to firmly nudge user to the new port, not enable them to stay put. There will indeed be an adapter but it will not be included free. You will have to buy one separately. Only a few days before we find out who’s right. 

They have included an adapter:

 

6 pin to 4 pin Firewire adapter.

With what machine(s) did they ship this adapter? I ask because I don't recall Apple ever using a 4-pin FireWire.

3rd Gen iPod.  They also included a set of earbuds, power adapter, a dock, a soft draw string bag, a well made clip on holster/case, 30 pin - firewire  cable, and a really good wired remote / headphone cable extender.  Then they invented iGreed.

I have never found anything that took the 4 Pin Firewire.  My best guess is that some Windows laptops might have had such a port.

Yes, some Windows laptops had the unpowered, data-only, 4-pin FW port. I believe it was to allow connecting video cameras back when FW was the standard for transferring video from cameras to your computer.

TurboPGT said:

chazbcn said:

I'm OK with the audio jack removal as a departure from old tech and so. However, using EarPods while charging seems like it'll be not possible at all. That's an important compromise in my use case: charging my phone while I listen to music/podcasts at the office. I really doubt the bundled adapter will allow simultaneous charge and using the headphones, so I guess I'll have to wait for the phone to charge before I can listen to music at work. It's a rather small annoyance, but we use to resist change until we're 'forced' to. I guess this shake in use habits will be worth it, with improvements such as better water resistance and sound quality (though I doubt the latter will be quite noticeable with Apple's earbuds).

I just don't buy this argument at all.
There is no reason to charge and listen to music via wired earbuds at the same time. None.
iPhone is rated for 24 hours of music playback.

Why are you not charging your phone at night and arriving to work with a fully charged phone?

There is an entire industry of portable battery pack manufacturers that would laugh as your assertion that people would never have a need to charge their device while on the go (including actually using it at the same time!).

You also conveniently limit your argument to music playback. There aren't too many silent movies made anymore so I'm fairly certain I might need headphones to listen to video soundtracks as well. Or game audio. How many hours of video or game play can you get? Ever been on a long flight or have kids in the back seat of your car on a long drive watching video?

80s_Apple_Guy said:

I wonder if Apple needs to get rid of it for next year's major redesign and has decided to take the heat and lower sales this year so it doesn't detract from next year's phone. 

I wonder how much in Lightning licensing fees Apple is going to collect from headphone manufactures. I'm sure Apple's accounting department already has a number in mind.

thrang said:

larrya said:

Wrong!  The cost of the dongle is almost irrelevant. It's the fact that you will never have it with you when you need it, and it's overall inelegance that offends me.  It seems acceptable on paper, but in the real world it sucks. I had a win CE phone that required one and the end result was I could not use it to listen to music. 

Once you connect the dongle, it becomes an extension of the existing headphone cable. There's no reason to separate it and leave it behind. I do that now with a 3.5 extension. Its not some complicated problem...

Except, of course, in the case where you may have more than one set of headphones. I know that's not the majority of people, but I'm guessing it's not a trivial number either. I'm also wondering if the adapter will work with Lightning ports of older iPhones, iPods, or iPads? If not, if I want to use the same headphone on multiple devices I will have to remove (and keep track of) the adapter. And whether it's the included earbuds (which based on past experience won't work for me) or if I buy an expensive new set of Lightning port headphones, am I going to now need to carry multiple sets of headphones if I'm traveling with both my iPhone and iPad?

lkrupp said:

rogifan_new said:

I'm seeing posts on Twitter pretty much confirming this rumor. Lightning earbuds and an adapter in the box. Boy Apple sure does love it's adapters. I'm surprised they're throwing it in the box and not charging extra for it. They better have a good marketing pitch for why proprietary lightning headphones are better than the current ones. I'm not sure making the phone more water resistant is good enough ( if that's even why they're doing it).

My opinion is that an adapter will not be included. Apple has never, to my knowledge, included any adapter when it switches ports. My iMac 14,2 did not include a Thunderbolt-> Firewire adapter when Apple got rid of Firewire. When the iPod went from Firewire to USB there was no adapter. Including a 3.5mm adapter would defeat the entire purpose of moving to a digital port. The idea is to firmly nudge user to the new port, not enable them to stay put. There will indeed be an adapter but it will not be included free. You will have to buy one separately. Only a few days before we find out who’s right. 

Well then, let me update your knowledge...I have received adapters with my Apple purchase on at least three occasions. When I purchased my first MacBook Pro it came with a video adaptor to allow the DVI-I port to connect to a VGA monitor. My second Mac mini also came with a video adaptor (although I forget the exact conversion it was making). Also, when I purchased Apple's sport case for the very first iPod shuffle it came with a headphone jack adapter to allow non-Apple headphones to connect to the shuffle through the case.

One difference for some of these cases is that the adapter was to allow you to connect an essential component to your Apple device, without which major functionality would be lost. Your example of not including a Thunderbolt-FW is not the same because there really weren't that many people who needed FW connectivity. And even those who had FW devices, in most cases those devices were hard drives which also had USB ports so the impact was minimized.

One could argue that when Apple switched the iPod from FW to USB that they did include an adapter but it was built into the iPod...you could still use an old FW-dock cable/device to charge the iPod which was probably the more important function. It wasn't until later generations of iPods that FW support was dropped completely. So Apple provided a transition period before completely abandoning FW so you didn't instantly lose all of your investment in accessories. (Besides, to the best of my knowledge, there is no such thing as a FW-USB adapter, so Apple couldn't have included one if they wanted to.)

Finally, as far as "Including a 3.5mm adapter would defeat the entire purpose of moving to a digital port"... Consider that the vast majority of headphones people own are analog, including some fairly expensive ones, you aren't "nudging" them to a new port, you are shoving them into having to purchase all new, and likely more expensive, headphones because a digital-only option is completely useless to them without an adapter. Including a 25-cent part in the box to address this is pretty much a no-brainer. Then you drop the adapter from future versions of the iPhone after consumers and headphone manufactures have had time to adapt (no pun intended).