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Apple To Unveil 'AirPods' That Use Custom Bluetooth Chip (macrumors.com)
It's no secret that Apple is planning to remove the headphone jack in its upcoming flagship smartphones. A new report from KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, which confirms rumors that Apple will indeed remove the headphone jack in the iPhone 7 to improve the device's water resistance, suggests that Apple is developing earbuds called "AirPods" that will employ its own Bluetooth-like communication chip. Mac Rumors reports: "First and foremost, as has been rumored, Kuo suggests Apple is working on its own Bluetooth-like communication chip and its own Bluetooth headphones. Previous information suggests the Bluetooth chip will improve battery performance for longer battery life. The chip may be included in the wireless earbuds Apple has in development, which are said to be Bragi Dash-style wireless Bluetooth earbuds that are entirely wire free. The earbuds will be called "AirPods," based on trademark filings that have been discovered, and the product could be unveiled as early as September 7 alongside the iPhone 7. According to Kuo, Apple will sell its Apple-branded Bluetooth headphones alongside its Beats line of headphones, targeting the high-end market with the "AirPods" and the mid-range market with the Beats headphones. Kuo does not believe the company will package Bluetooth headphones with the iPhone 7. Instead, Apple is likely to ship the iPhone 7 with Lightning-based EarPods that feature a Lightning connector instead of a 3.5mm headphone jack."
"Earlier, everyone could sell headphones for our devices, now we found a way to 'fix' that to 'improve device's water resistance'".
It's brilliant and simple. Apple customers will buy anything. They buy ridiculous "special" Apple chargers now. Why wouldn't they also buy "special" Apple headphones? Of course they will. By the tens of millions. Apple will make hundreds of millions on just these dumb, superfluous gadgets.
I don't respond to AC's.
Lightning based headphones are just going to be an unreliable PITA.
OK, the 3.5mm jack isn't perfect. However they are pretty solid. Actually these days they're really really solid. The lighting connector is pretty well known for reliability issues. Now compare how the two are used. The 3.5mm jack is used while listening to music, often carrying the phone, where it gets knocked. It still works. The lightning connector is not unknown for breaking and that's used for charging where the phone tends to be on the desk.
Yes, I know neither of those are universals, but the common case for the 3.5mm jack is much harsher than the common case for the lightning connector and yet the former is still much more reliable than the latter.
Personally I reckon we'll be hearing about lots of broken and unreliable headphones when the go that route.
Or there's bluetooth ones. They've been around for years and while they're available, they are not currently anything like as popular as analog headphones despite just about any system now supporting both fine. Because among other things, they're more expensive and it's super fun when your headphones run out of charge too.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
'improve device's water resistance'
Several phones have already been released (eg: Sony Z5) with exposed headphones sockets without compromising water resistance. Poor justification is poor.
If this solution of Apple leads to hq audio over wireless earpods I am for it. I really like standards, but current standard bluetooth wireless audio earpods don't deliver.
This is basically what Chinese manufacturers have tried (and failed) to do with the Lightning connector. I bought two or three of these "uncertified" cables for EUR 2-3 EUR, that refused to work or stopped working after a week or so. I bought a couple of "certified" cables from Amazon (EUR 8, non the insane EUR 19 Apple is asking) and they work well.
How long will it be until there are compatible headsets available? And how much will they cost? And will they even work or have acceptable battery life?
I have a sinking feeling that I'm going to have very few options for my smartphone headset in the future. Not much choice and stupidly high prices.
Why is this happening? Because the two manufacturers who matter, Apple and Samsung, are having a pissing contest over who's phone is thinner. So Samsung has to recall phones that are catching fire and Apple has phones where the touch interface fails because the case flexes and solder pads disconnect from a chip. Both these engineering failures happen because cramming reliable electronics into such a slim case is nearly impossible.
Given a choice between a phone as thick as the previous generation that was reliable and had a longer battery life, pretty much any human being on the planet would choose a thicker phone. I bet that a phone twice as thick with really long battery life would sell in vastly greater numbers then any of the current crap. But we don't get that choice. Marketeers and designers who are completely out of touch dictate what choices we have, and they don't give a damn about what we want.
Just another case of pretend capitalism. Nothing to see here, move along.
Why is Snark Required?
Oh good, the battery life is going to improve.
How about not having a battery in the first place?!
So, basically the protocol has been reverse engineered and successfully implemented but that manufacturing quality is sub-par? Because protocols usually don't "break" after a week.
I don't know if this is how it works or not, but I seem to remember that lightning connectors used some kind of chip which handshakes with the phone using Apple-provided signed key.
Knockoff vendor manages to sniff licensed cable and phone handshake, steals the keys used in the exchange and puts them in their cable. Cable then "works" at the time of manufacture. Apple lightning licensing enforcement buys knockoff products, checks keys used, and revokes "stolen" vendor keys and knockoff cable stops working.
Ordinarily this would be a problem if the licensed product was only issued a single key. But maybe Apple issues 10 keys to each licensed product and the handshake protocol involves the chip providing keys to the phone until a "good" key is found.
This way the licensed product keeps working because it has a set of backup keys and the odds of them all being used by knockoff vendors are low as the secondary keys aren't provided in the handshake unless the previous ones are rejected during handshake.
Even if all of a vendor's issued keys for a product are used in knockoffs, maybe Apple agrees not to revoke the last product key with the idea that it will take so long to reach this point that it won't matter. Maybe vendors are required to refresh their chip and keys every N units or N months so that a good, unrevoked key is very hard to find and Apple could revoke the last vendor key for a product after N years with the idea that by then the majority of legitimate cables will be worn out or no longer in use.
I just made all this up off the top of my head, so don't kill me over the lack of feasibility or holes, but it does conceptually at least seem to provide a process by which Apple could enforce lightning product licensing yet still account for knockoff cables which seem to work. My wife has a knockoff cable that worked fine for a few months and then quit working. She was using it on her bedside stand with a quality charger, so wear and tear wasn't an issue but both her iPhone and iPad still work fine with licensed cables.
Do. Not. Want.
Then Do. Not. Buy.
Seriously if you don't like what Apple is doing buy something else that suits you. Apple products aren't supposed to be all things to all people. Personally the 3.5mm port of of little value to me (I'm not a big music listener) but I get why folks appreciate having it built in. What I think will happen is that you'll see a bunch of cases with an integrated 3.5mm jack. Since almost everyone puts a case on their phone anyway it makes reasonable sense. Then you don't have to carry a dongle with you if you use that jack routinely. Perhaps not quite as elegant as having it built in but a better solution than a dongle for many.
Let's not forget that Apple is no longer driven by the idea of making better products. Nobody is screaming that they want better water resistance - most would probably want them to take a step backwards and offer larger, replaceable batteries. That, of course, would mean more people keeping their phones longer. Seriously, did anyone that that a nonreplaceable battery was an advantage to anyone except Apple? If it's so great, why not do it with their laptops. This should properly be framed as a restraint of trade issue.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Apple works very hard to track down and disable such unlicensed devices. There is usually a few unlicensed accessories knocked off with each each update.
I suspect one of the reasons for changing to the lightning connector was that the unlicensed accessories had gotten too difficult to defeat.
YMMV.
Apple has always been that way. Steve Jobs always wanted to make things into appliances that you didn't dig into the internals of from the beginning. Partly from aesthetics, partly out of making it feel magical, and partly because it makes people need to replace that stuff with new Apple products. Replacing your battery would never have made it into an iPhone. Ever. Not while Steve Jobs was alive, and probably not while Tim Cook is CEO either.
If you know what you are getting with an Apple device, you will never be surprised. I personally have no issue with their philosophy, with the understanding that if I don't want to spend the cash on their stuff, I need to go get an Android phone.
Of course, I note that all of my iPhones other than my first, have been provided by the place I work. So, I am not trying to suggest that the Apple way of buying things all the time is a great idea. I might have an Android phone now if my iPhone was not provided. Although I should point out, I do have other Android devices, and they have some big, if somewhat different, problems too.