John Gruber asks the right question about Apple’s plans to drop the analog headphone jack for the new iPhone:
John Gruber, Headphone Jacks Are the New Floppy Drives
Should the analog headphone jack remain on our devices forever? If you think so, you can stop reading. If not, when? Maybe now is the wrong time, and Apple is making a mistake. I don’t know. None of us outside the company seem to know, because all that has leaked is that the new iPhone won’t have the port, with no explanation why. But I say at some point it will go away, and now seems like it might be the right time. Also, historically, Apple has proven to be very good at timing the removal of established legacy ports.
We’ve lost floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, different electrical adapters… it’s a constant swirling mess. But Apple has been, as Gruber says, good at timing these transitions.
Maybe they will release some really great new headphones? And Apple is mostly focused on compatibility across its own devices, so we should expect analog headphone jacks to disappear from iPads and Macbooks. Note that Apple Watch has no analog headphone port.
from Stowe Boyd http://www.stoweboyd.com/post/146304965857
