Apple may be set to end its use of the standard 3.5mm headphone
connector — the mini plug — in favor of its proprietary connector, the .
If they were to do that, new iPhones, iPads and iPods wouldn't work
with old headphones. It's had more than a few industry folks and Apple
fanatics upset, to say the least.
To make sense of the issue, All Things Considered contacted a couple writers in the field. Host Audie Cornish spoke with Gordon Kelly, a contributor to Forbes,
about the technological and business implications of Apple's switch. He
says the Lightning port could theoretically improve audio
specifications and additional "smart headphone" functionality, and that
the company has little to lose — with a lot of profit to potentially
gain. You can hear that conversation at the audio link above.
Cornish also recently sat down with
writer Jordan Kahn to discuss why the Lightning port might be good for
consumers in the long run and how Apple has always been ahead of the
industry game. You can read a transcript of that conversation below.
Explain how you learned about this. What's the sign that Apple might make this change?
Apple's
introduced these new guidelines for manufacturers that allow them to
build headphones that connect to an iPhone or iPad through the Lightning
connector. That's the same, small connector on the bottom of an iPhone
or iPad that is currently used to charge the device. Apple first
introduced the connector a couple years ago with the iPhone 5 to replace
its old 30-pin connector.
Now that Apple's allowing companies
to build headphones that connect with the Lightning connector, that
might be the first hint that Apple could remove that old, legacy
headphone jack from devices down the road.
Even the
hint or rumor of something like this seems to put a scare in markets,
right? Because essentially you can leave a bunch of devices orphans when
they change technology. Everyone else's devices can become obsolete.
It's
a possibility. If we look at past examples of similar things Apple has
done, usually they come out with an adapter solution that will allow
these new Lightning headphones to work with your legacy device that
still uses the headphone jack or vice versa. I'd imagine we'll see
solutions like that at least for a few years, until people make the
transition to the new technology.
No comments:
Post a Comment