When the rumour of Apple dropping the headphone Jack hit the internet , more than 300,000 people signed a petition pleading Apple to keep the 3.5mm audio jack for the iPhone 7, but it wasn’t enough to stop the tech company.
First we did away with the floppy disk, then the USB port, now Apple has just removed the headphone jack from it’s flagship device-Iphone 7. The rumour that Apple’s next flagship smartphone—the iPhone 7 will not feature the standard 3.5mm headphone jack have been circulating for months.
In its absence, owners will have to use Lightning or Bluetooth headphones, both of which will be more expensive than a pair that ends in the traditional 3.5mm connector.
The tech company where prepared for plenty of criticism that would follow the announcement. Apple tried to address the jack’s removal onstage by laying out three reasons for its removal of the headphone jack:
- A Lightning dongle can adapt older devices
- It frees up space inside the phone for other tech
- It furthers Apple’s vision for better audio
Phil Schiller said that Apple was abandoning the headphone jack because it was the only company that is “courageous” enough to make such a drastic and very bold decision.
On Tuesday, Apple executives Phil Schiller, Greg Joswiak and Dan Riccio sat down withBuzzfeed whereupon they explained more candidly why Apple believes we should put the 3.5mm headphone jack behind us.
“It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” Riccio explained. “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.”
What’s more, removing the headphone jack enabled Apple to increase the size of the 4.7-inch iPhone 7 battery by 14%, ultimately providing users with an extra two hours of battery life. And last but not least, Riccio explained that removing the 3.5mm jack finally helped Apple deliver a more water-resistant iPhone.
All that said, Joswiak believes that there’s really no convincing reason to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack up and running.
“The audio connector is more than 100 years old,” Joswiak said. “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.”
Schiller, meanwhile, said that the transition over to wireless 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.”
Make sure to check out the full Buzzfeed interview as the trio of Apple executives go into even more detail regarding the design of the iPhone 7. The piece is well worth checking out in its entirety.
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