Can you not currently use apple ear pods in other phones then?

They would surely make two versions for lightning and the 3.5mm jack.

I think that if they were to do this there would be a backlash as headphone connectors have been universal since back in the day.

As I said earlier, I'd be very surprised if it happened, and I'd certainly be looking for a different phone. I want to be able to pick up any set of headphones and use them, rather than using only Apple's own earphones or those from a very select set of manufacturers who've chosen to go down the Lightning route.

Yes you can. I thought you had apple devices. how would you not know this.

This is not the apple way.

But not since time immemorial... they do shrink every 60 years or so and (1950s!) and 1/4 inch jacks are still in use on professional gear. So we are probably about due for another shrink but what I object to is Apple going it alone.


Exactly and that is the main reason why I will NEVER buy an Apple product that's locked into their proprietory stuff. It just stifles competition and raises prices.

Professional gear often uses XLR, or 1/4 inch as you say.

Well I know what I meant. Insert "semi" if you like, anyway not all pro gear uses XLR. Oh... OK... you edited, oops!

I have an iPad mini which does not come with apple ear pods.

You stated that "apple never make their products available to other platforms" so I wasn't sure if the ear pods worked on other platforms.

Every radio station I have ever visited uses headphones with a 1/4" Jack plugged into the mixing desk. Some of those have XLR outputs but all I have seen have 1/4" for headphone monitoring. I have used Senheisser, Bayer Dynamic and AKG professional headphones and every pair had the same 1/4" jack.

This is one crazy story. The real story was enabling the lightning socket to do more and people inferred they must be killing off the headphone socket (no way they are doing this).

iPhones will simply now have two sockets that can output audio.

Fair enough, every one I used to work in or visited had XLR Global, prior to that GCAP, GWR, Absolute / Virgin, Classic etc.

Maybe more have moved to 1/4" these days, the benefits of XLR is they lock in place.

But that isn't very interesting. It is far better to add a little speculation onto the end of a story in the hope that someone will believe it.

I wouldn't be surprised if they pulled a stunt like this. Remember all those iPad 3 owners who were left high and dry when Apple replaced that model with an iPad 4 with the Lightning connector, just 6 months after the iPad 3 was released?

I agree would be total and utter lunacy to do this.

Not sure i would however have total confidence that they wouldn't. As I said they are always seeking ways to make the ecosystem more treacly. There are plenty of things that Apple don't provide/change and seem to get away with it so why not.

How were they left high and dry? I think it is very wrong to upgrade devices on too quick a cycle, but the change of connector surely had no effect on those who had an iPad 3.

That £30 is reason enough for Apple to want to run with it.
Every little helps the profits grow.

Other companies must be well jealous. They can't even find a persuasive way to get everyone to abandon useful SD memory expansion.

I thought the nexus range had been quite successful. Lots of posters on here praise them.

The folks at Apple are not stupid, there is no way they would make a bone headed move like getting rid of the 3.5mm headphone jack. It just would not make any kind of business sense.

face time, imessage, itunes

non of these will run on say android. to me this demonstrates that apple is prepared to compromise the availability of it's offerings to force the ecosystem. they would rather you bought an iPhone than bought music from itunes. that is their model.

buying beats, to me is a couple of billion dollar spoiler, USP and advert.

Oh, I totally agree. Apple provide features unique to their devices in order to encourage you to buy them and stay with them. Pretty much the same a other phone providers (sony, htc, samsung, etc) and in fact many other products in many other markets.

I assume what you want is for every supplier to just make their designs and functions available to everyone?

I'm not sure why you want the mobile phone market to be different to others, but I'm sure you have some logic behind it.

Of course judging by some of the IOS users posts on recent threads in which they find choice a bad thing, perhaps the myriad of 3.5 headphones is very confusing and they would be happier if Apple told them they could no longer be used.

What utter nonsense and anti-Apple hysteria. I was an iPad 3 owner and don't remember being left "high and dry" when Apple came out with the iPad 4. Please tell me in what actual way the new model impacted on my use of the previous model ?

Unique is often 1 step forward and 2 steps back with Apple.

And they certainly do their best to keep the web backwards moving.
Even Microsoft is acknowledge Android as a cloud platform that needs to be serviced for its users.

Apple hangs on hard to being a hardware company, not a software service company.

That's true, but I think that was one user so I wouldn't expect Apple (or anyone else with any sense) to over react to those sort of comments.