It’s not just headphones though that use the socket. I have a wind meter for my drone that plugs into the 3.5mm port, how will all those sorts of niche items work?! Hopefully these are all just rumours, but if the rumours are there generally there is truth to them somewhere.
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Ming Chi Kuo seems to have a pretty solid track record at being right with his predictions though.
@Oldmacs - True, however, you’re forgetting that 1mm of thickness being saved 
.
As I said earlier, I think that Apple are readying lightning only Beats and want to steer their consumers in that direction or to their more expensive wireless options.
hahah 
If the rumours are true, the iPhone 7 is going to have the same form factor that the iPhone 6S had - possibly with dual sim cards, possibly with no sim cards, and a different antenna band…
All I was ever wanting was better battery life. Looks like they will go with thinner, instead. IF the rumours are true, I guess my iPhone life will come to an end with the SE or 6S (still undecided)
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Hopefully they continue to update the SE - It has better battery life than the 6S!
That’s true and it caused me to spend extra for an external 3.5" floppy drive grr
Then it caused me to spend extra for an external CD/DVD drive grrr!
Then it caused me to spend extra for a USB to ethernet adaptor grrrrr!!
So yes, whilst all of the above did happen they weren’t good things, they were premature, too early and bloody annoying!
This time however I can’t see the adaptor being water proof which would be a deal breaker for me.
Unless there are motorcycle helmet compatible water proof iPhone adaptors available by the time my iPhone 6S+ becomes ‘worn out’ then I’ll have no other alternative (much as it would pain me) but to buy an Android phone (and no blue tooth isn’t an option, none of Harley Davidson’s various Boom! audio systems stream Music via blue tooth only phone calls and GPS).
I’d hate to give up my iPhone but not as much as I’d hate giving up my motorbike so if the phone had to go to keep the bike then the phone would go 
Yeah, because those companies have been using a hack, the cheapest possible workaround. You want to know what the official way to transfer data between your iOS device and an accessory is? The Lightning port.
So… tell me… what’s the official way to transfer music between a Harley Davidson Boom! audio system and an iOS device then?
Maybe I should have clarified. For non-audio data transfer, you should be using Lightning.
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Yes, as annoying as they were, I’m of the opinion that they caused the wider computer market to sit up and take notice and realise that they weren’t really needed any more.
Perhaps, we’d still be using 3.5" floppy drive etc if Apple hadn’t have ‘prematurely’ bit the bullet and decided to stop supporting an outgoing standard.
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I had a floppy drive in my PC’s for a long time (usually just swapped from machine to machine) but it’s not something I really used, it was more there “just in case” or so I could support people that needed stuff on floppies (since I did a lot of tech support in those days).
Even when I got rid of it (and even today, although I don’t know exactly where) I had a USB floppy drive in a drawer. Probably used twice.
I did buy the Apple USB DVD drive and I think I’ve used it to burn DVD’s for other people. Occasionally I used it to rip a CD… It is actually handy to have this around every now and again, although I’d probably swap it for a tray loading version since I do hit one of those mini CD’s occasionally, although I’ve usually had a PC floating around with a tray loading drive to copy or image the disc if needed.
BUT
In all these cases the adaptor was STANDARD! USB could work with anything and was useful, a lightning headphone adaptor does what?? No one else uses lightning, total dick move for headphones…
But if they go USB C and that somehow lets you use headphones in a standard way… well then maybe thats leading the charge to a new standard (that no one really wants or needs).
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I still use the Apple USB DVD drive every month because the paper 4 wheel drive magazine I’m subscribed to includes a DVD with each issue, to be honest it’s the best part 
Same - I occasionally have the need to rip DVDs and CDs into iTunes.
It’s easy to forget though that USB only became a standard after Apple pushed it into people’s faces. It had been around for a couple of years before they released the iMac but hardly any PC makers were offering it and nobody was building peripherals with it either. When Apple made it successful, everybody whinged about having to leave their ADB and Serial Port devices behind. I was as hurt by it as anyone, having just spent $1500 (around $3k in today’s money) on an HP 6MP printer that we had hoped would last us for years. The tough old thing still works now but there are no machines to plug it into and it’s useful life was significantly shortened by Apple adopting USB. It really bugged me that we had to buy a new printer and especially that we could never get another one as solid and reliable as the 6MP.
Someone has to herald the future and I’d rather it be Apple than Microsoft or Samsung. Apple creates demand for forward looking technologies by adopting them early and it’s a painful process. But if it were up to the “legacy support trumps everything” brigade, we would still be turning off our computers just to plug a mouse in and backing up to floppies. Lots and lots and lots of floppies.
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USB unlike Lightning was always meant to be an open standard, and it had so many advantages over SCSI/ADB - Lightning over 3.5mm has so few its not funny. Its an inconvenience more than its a connivence in terms of poorer durability, having to be inserted one way or another etc.
I’ve had computers since before the Commodore 64 was first released in Australia and I’ve never had to back up on floppy disks since hard disks became semi-affordable.
Back in the day we backed up to tape drive, then cartridges and later CDs, these days it’s across the net to off-site storage or to the cloud for home use.
But I don’t have a problem with Apple ‘heralding the future’ as long as the legacy product they replace is replaced by hardware with improved functionality.
That was the case with USB replacing serial and you could argue that USB sticks replacing CDs was also but wireless replacing ethernet reduced performance and more seriously the 3.5mm headphone socket being replaced with Lightning is more about locking people into the Apple eco system and forcing manufacturers to buy licenses from Apple than it is about improving function.
Only a few high end audiophiles with expensive lightning headphones will benefit, everyone else will be worse off or at best no worse off.
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What?
So why aren’t you using Bluetooth? It’s an “open standard” (not really, but OK), is vastly more convenient (no cables has to be a convenience, plus it can also connect to multiple devices simultaneously), and can even support the data transfer function that people seem to think they’ll be losing with the removal of the 3.5mm jack.
Because 3.5mm headphones are the most convenient option. I hate bluetooth audio, connectivity issues, more battery drain, more batteries to charge, having to turn bluetooth on and off again. The only advantage is not having a cable, but in every other way it is easier just to plug in a jack and be done with it.
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And soon enough, Lightning or Bluetooth will be the most convenient option.
Modern Bluetooth devices shouldn’t have connectivity or audio quality issues. Some might, but there’s probably other factors at play.
Do we not think that Apple will offer some kind of adapter for you to plug your 3.5mm headphones in? You’re all acting as if you’ll be expected to switch to Lightning or Bluetooth at gunpoint — anything but the dreaded 3.5mm headphone jack — when in reality, the likelihood is that you’ll be able to plug in an adapter and go about your merry business.
Until every device in the world has lightning then it won’t be the most convenient option. It will be an expensive and easily breakable option. Till bluetooth magically does’t require a second set of batteries or cause any battery drain than it won’t be the convenient option.
Why on earth would I want an adaptor? Adaptors are inconvenient and easy to loose, easy to break, probably expensive and a waste of resources that doesn’t need to occur. I swap between devices all the time during the day and taking adaptors on and off and so on would be a freaking annoyance. Oh and want to charge your phone while listening to music, Oh thats right another adaptor.
Another wasteful scheme from the so called ‘environmentally friendly Apple’.
Loosing the 3.5mm headphone port does no good whatsoever - introduces a whole level of inconvenience. The solution now is fairly perfect - Want lightning headphones? You can use them now. Want bluetooth headphones? again you can use them now and the rest can use 3.5mm headphones.
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