Apple explains in detail why it killed the 3.5mm headphone jack
Apple unveiled its latest smartphones – the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus – at a grand event in San Francisco on Wednesday (September 7). Both new iPhones go on pre-order in the U.S. on September 9 and will be going on sale in the country on September 16.
For some time now, the world’s biggest tech company had been widely expected to kill off the headphone jack at the launch of the iPhone 7 in San Francisco. So, it was no surprise when the iPhone 7 was revealed without 3.5mm headphone jack, and has been replaced by headsets that plug into the device’s Lightning adapter, which is also used for charging. The Lightning adapter will be provided for free inside of every iPhone 7 box to help smooth over the transition away from the 3.5mm jack.
However, Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack that has been around and in-use for decades as part of an underlying push towards wireless, is likely be a topic of heated debate for months to come.
Yesterday, Phil Schiller said that Apple was deserting the headphone jack because it was the only company “courageous” enough to make such a drastic and bold decision. In short, Schiller’s hyperbolic joke became a point of laughter across the web.
Further, defending the company’s decision for removing the headphone jack, Apple’s SVP of hardware engineering Dan Riccio told BuzzFeed News, “We’ve got this 50-year-old connector — just a hole filled with air — and it’s just sitting there taking up space, really valuable space.” He adds, “It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone. It was fighting for space with camera technologies and processors and battery life. And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s crazy to keep it around.”
Removal of the headphone jack has allowed Apple to increase the size of the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 battery by 14%, finally offering users with an extra two hours of battery life. Further, removing the 3.5mm jack has also helped Apple deliver a more water-resistant iPhone, Riccio explained.
Apple executive, Greg Joswiak said, “The audio connector is more than 100 years old. 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,” justifying that there is no convincing reason to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack active.
In the meanwhile, another Apple executive Phil Schiller said that the shift to wireless technology is “inevitable.”
“You’ve got to do it at some point,” Schiller added. “Sooner or later the headphone jack is going away. There are just too many reasons aligned against it sticking around any longer. There’s a little bit of pain in every transition, but we can’t let that stop us from making it. If we did, we’d never make any progress at all.”
Whether or not Apple has made a sensible decision to do away with the 3.5mm jack on the iPhone only time will tell.
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