hill60

Crazyoldranga said:

Tap and go with my card works well enough for me. Quicker and easier than pulling a phone out and starting the app etc, etc.

slprescott said:

That's one heck of a high limit on his credit card!

mac_128 said:

I would never buy the Philips-M2L-27, or any Lightning headphones without a detachable cable (for that matter I wouldn't buy a wireless one without it either). Phillips didn't think this one through. As long as a customer will only be using a recent iOS device with a Lightning cable, they're fine. But otherwise, these headphones are incompatible with anything else, requiring a separate set of headphones just to use a Mac, to say nothing of anything else. At least the Audeze headphones have a detachable cable, for use with a 3.5mm analogue cable, however inconvenient.

I still feel like Apple botched the headphone jack removal, despite the strong iPhone 7 sales, and this is one of the reasons. The included Lightning EarPods can't be used on any other non-Lightning device, including the Macs. There isn't even a USB-C adapter, to say nothing of a 3.5mm adapter to use the Lightning EarPods on any current audio equipment. So for anyone who plans to use these EarPods with anything else, they are useless. Essentially the only option out of the box for a customer who only wants to carry one set of headphones with them to use with their Mac and iPhone is to use the 3.5mm adapter with their old set of 3.5mm EarPods. Where's the logic in that? Add to that the fact that Apple and Beat's simple to use W1 chipped headphones still have no definitive release date. Only one $300 pair of Beats Solo 3, are currently available for someone who might want to switch to BT headphones, the only other way to connect to both an iPhone 7 and Mac. And with BT comes its own set of quality and convenience compromises, despite the improvements Apple has made with the W1 connectivity enhancements. At least they can be used with a 3.5mm cable, to connect with a non-BT device when necessary. From my perspective Apple is virtually encouraging customers to continue using their old headphones with the added inconvenience of an adapter, rather than consider other options.

But the total lack of support for higher quality wired Lightning headphones out of the starting gate, makes the whole transition away from 3.5mm frustrating at best. And there's no hint on the horizon of how this facet of digital sound's backward compatibility is going to be handled, which should give a Lightning audio developer, not to mention a customer for the products, pause. How does Apple plan on supporting Lightning audio outside of the iPhone 7, if at all?