If they remove the 3.5mm headphone jack, I won’t be at the least bit concerned.
Why? Because if Apple does it, it’s not going to just be done on a whim.
Having owned most iPhones ever released since I bought my first in 2009, Apple hasn’t always been perfect, I’d be lying if I said I’ve never once had a complaint about something Apples done with their iPhone. Bottom line, I trust that if they do go through with it then the majority of iPhone users won’t be disappointed.
Little bump 
So I’m getting quite nervous now about the iphone 7, the rumours about no socket are getting worse. Anyone who thinks a lightning adapter to use existing headphones is a good idea… needs their head read. They got lost, or break, or cause damage to phone while it’s in your pocket. Plus you can’t listen to music while you charge your phone. And although people say “Apple know what they’re doing”, I think we’ve had numerous examples where people looked at what Apple were doing and said “WTF?”
My iphone 6 is dying. I’m thinking of either getting a 6S, though it’s obviously now quite old technology, or otherwise… switching full time to Android. Which, these days, isn’t that big a deal. Plus it would be way cheaper.
I think this is Apple being Apple.
Don’t forget, they have a history of being at the forefront in removing ‘legacy’ items. They led the way with the first iMac omitting a 3.5" Disk Drive, then they did away with FireWire, ethernet ports, optical drives, and now the 3.5mm headphone jack.
Although, I must admit that the 3.5mm is still an extremely popular (if not the only) connection and I really can’t see it dying anytime in the distant future. Personally, I can’t see this being a move that will be widely followed and I think it’s Apple pushing people towards wireless headphones of any brand or towards their lightning equipped Beats range, which surely would be somewhere in the works if these rumours have any credibility to them.
I can’t wait to see the backlash over this though, should be very popcorn worthy.
Exactly.
If you have lightning headphones, then you’ve got to have an adaptor to use it with any other device, and that means adaptors you’re regularly taking on and off. You’ve then got to get another adaptor to charge the phone at the same time. Lightning jacks are also easily broken, compared to 3.5mm jacks that can usually swivel.
If you have 3.5mm headphones and need an adapter, then thats an easily breakable adaptor, easily lost, easily snapped and expensive. Then you also need another adapter to charge as well.
If you have l bluetooth headphones then thats another battery to charge, more drain on the internal battery of using bluetooth, connectivity issues, the headphones themselves are expensive and connecting bluetooth headphones is far more annoying (tuning bluetooth on, waiting for a connection) than just plugging in a jack.
At the current time, we already have the ideal solution - if you want lightning headphones, you can have them. If you want bluetooth headphones, you can have them, if you want 3.5mm jack headphones you can have them.
Removing the 3.5mm jack removes connivence at just about every turn. It is not an environmentally friendly move (creation of unnecessary adaptors, more battery consumption an dumping of 3.5mm devices) and it serves probably purely as a money maker to Apple (ca-ching expensive adaptors, proprietary devices).
I absolutely detest the idea of a proprietary headphone jack… 3.5mm jacks are one of the few triumphs in the computer world of standardisation. If the entire computing industry was moving towards USB-C headphones (which I don’t see happening just yet) I’d say ok, replace the 3.5mm headphone port with a USB-C port and also have the lighting port but thats never gonna happen. I hate the fact that Apple has so much power in the industry. Literally the only reason other manufacturers will remove headphone ports (besides ultra thinness) is because Apple is doing it - not because it is a good move, but simply because Apple is doing it so it must be trendy.
Theres a bit of a difference there though. The iMac was a desktop machine and thus adaptors were far more practical. USB and Firewire were huge improvements over ADB and SCSI in almost every single way (Speed, connector size, reliability, hot plugging) - Lighting/bluetooth vs 3.5mm is no where big a leap. Same with the floppy drive - I remember when we brought home our first iMac, it was annoying having to purchase an external floppy drive, but at the end of the day, CD-ROM was such a huge improvement and again, the desktop nature of the machine meant it was not as big a deal and we didn’t really use floppies that much, where as people use their headphones so often.
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.
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 
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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)
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.
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.
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).
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.