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I have non-anecdotal evidence that people definitely buy the Lightning to headphone adapter. We sell them in our stores and it's one of our biggest accessory sa

I have non-anecdotal evidence that people definitely buy the Lightning to headphone adapter. We sell them in our stores and it's one of our biggest accessory sales. You know why people buy them all the time, though? Because, frankly, it's a terrible design. It's tiny, easy to lose or forget, and they break easily. That's why it has such terrible reviews in the Apple store site--it's not a good product for what it is. I deal with Apple products on the daily, and the removal of the headphone jack is still one of the things that irritates me most about Apple. The others would be: the whole battery scandal where Apple slowed down older phones without explaining that the battery, a replaceable component, was the issue. And the 2016-2018 MacBook keyboards, which are an absolute travesty. The headphone to Lightning adapter may be a "marvel of engineering", but it was a completely unnecessary one. It doesn't create more room inside the phone, and Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. It's basically designed to force you on to more expensive wireless headphones.

LeoPanthera 8y ago
> It doesn't create more room inside the phone Can you elaborate on this? Because it seems like it obviously would. 3.5mm jacks have got to go somewhere.
- ericabiz 8y ago
  Sure. A lot of people thought when Apple removed the headphone jack that it would make room for a bigger battery, specifically. But Apple didn't use the space that way. They put the Taptic Engine there instead. The bigger Taptic engine on e.g. an iPhone 8 vs. 6 is used for two things: 1) 7/8 series have a home button that doesn't actually push. The Taptic Engine mimics the feel of a button push. 2) It allows for different types of vibration, e.g. when hitting the corner of the screen while dragging or for more subtle notifications. (https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2018-and-android-phones-still-cant-compare-iphones-taptic-engine https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2018-and-android-phones-s...) The iPhone 6 battery is 1810mAh, whereas the 8 is 1821mAh. So they didn't increase the battery size; they added the Taptic Engine instead, and got rid of the mechanical home button. Articles gush about the Taptic Engine, but I'd still rather have my headphone jack back. And I liked the clicky home buttons.
  - chrisoverzero 8y ago
    > It doesn't create more room inside the phone […] > They put the Taptic Engine there instead. It sounds like it created the room for the Taptic Engine.
    - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
      The 6S had a taptic engine AND a 3.5mm jack.
      - chrisoverzero 8y ago
        And ~100 fewer mAh than the models mentioned above, which precede and follow it. Seems like Apple did use the space to increase battery size, then.
        JustSomeNobody 8y ago
        Maybe? Would have to look at side by side of 6S and 8. The 8 is a tad thicker, but that may be the glass.
        LyndsySimon 8y ago
        I wonder what the net change in weight and volume was with the removal of the home button and expansion of the display.
    - nsriv 8y ago
      The Taptic Engine existed because they decided to do away with the mechanical home button, ostensibly for "waterproofing." The decision to retain tactility led to necessity for a larger more precise vibration motor, and then punting the headphone jack out of the phone became the obvious thing to do, with a bunch of post-rationalization externally and internal justification hinged around accessory sales.
      - ummonk 8y ago
        So they did create space by removing the headphone jack; you just think they used that space unwisely (or that that space would have been best used for a headphone jack).
- millzlane 8y ago
  I was curious so I started looking at teardown images before and after the removal. It doesn't look like it was an issue with space. I also found this article. https://bgr.com/2016/09/16/iphone-7-teardown-specs-headphone-jack-repair-waterproof/ https://bgr.com/2016/09/16/iphone-7-teardown-specs-headphone...
joshe 8y ago
Still on an iPhone 6S for just this reason (and a slight preference for touch id over face id).
baddox 8y ago
The article doesn’t provide any evidence about sales figures. The “nobody wants” phrase seems to just refer to the low reviews on the Apple store website, which are almost certainly due to people complaining about the lack of headphone jack in newer iPhones.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  Nobody wants it, but they have no reasonable alternative to it. There are so many disparate factors that differentiate an iPhone from its competitors that the lack of a TRRS-barrel headphone jack is likely insufficient to change the whole-product buying decision. You just have to pay for the headphone dongle replacements for as long as you own the phone, or the licensing fees and brand-based price differentials for every pair of headphones you buy--the "Apple tax" in action. As long as someone gets more than $3/month in personal benefit from owning an iPhone instead of the next-best alternative, they will suck it up and buy the $9 audio dongle every 3 months. If they didn't realize that much benefit, they wouldn't have bought the iPhone in the first place. Anecdote time. I told my family long ago that if they bought Apple products, I would not support those products in any way. If there is ever a problem, take it to the Apple store instead of telling me about it. Two of them chose iPhone anyway--one within the last year. And lo, surprising no-one, or at least not me, those earbuds with the lightning connector broke after ( N < 12 ) months. A conductor is loose between lightning connector and left earbud, the break occurring near the lightning connector. Because that part of the cable has zero strain relief. A flexible cable coming off of a rigid bit of plastic--of course it's going to break there. It's either that, or wearing out the insulation on the cable within 15cm of the connector. So, this happens: "Hey, logfromblammo, please come with me to the Apple store and hold my hand while I try to get a warranty replacement for these headphones that are otherwise $29 to replace?" "No. I told you 'no' years ago, and I have not changed my mind since; if the problem has an Apple logo on it, it is entirely your problem." And this somehow makes me a jerk. I knew this would happen--I tried to stop it by telling people "don't buy anything with an Apple connector (except MagSafe)". This is why, when Apple first made the announcement that they were removing the TRRS barrel jack from their phones, I raged for days, despite not owning an iPhone, because people around me own iPhones, and knew I would have to hear their pleas and complaints. It has happened over and over and over again. Apple makes a shit sandwich, puts it in a white box with a silver logo on it, and people just... eat it? Why do they eat the sandwich? That guy just got seconds! It even says "poop sandwich" on the box! Why are they doing this?! The engineering solution may be technically elegant, but it is an answer to a problem that Apple created for itself--a problem that never needed to exist.
bigbadgoose 8y ago
What about the touchbar?
nacho2sweet 8y ago
I lost 3 of them until my current ones have "lasted" a year. If I move the cord at certain angles, the phones voice control switches on, podcasts skip, pause, or run at 3x speed. I don't mind the cord, I don't see why $200 shitty earpods that I have to charge every 5 hours and battery runs out after 1.5 years is better.
- Shish2k 8y ago
  > If I move the cord at certain angles, the phones voice control switches on, podcasts skip, pause, or run at 3x speed. It is incredibly reassuring to hear somebody else find these symptoms - it took me weeks to narrow down the cause to the dodgy adapter, and then I ended up buying a $80 bluetooth adapter for my wired headphones, because I couldn't find an "ignore the stupid commands that the broken lightning adapter is sending" option...
  - layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
    >I ended up buying a $80 bluetooth adapter for my wired headphones What's the point of a headphone if you're listening to MP3/AAC → A2DP transcoded music?
    - grkvlt 8y ago
      it turns out that even mp3 encoding audio doesn't actually stop it being audible to other people nearby when played through speakers, the headphones on the other hand, mean only the wearer can hear it...
      - layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
        True, but I was talking about a headphone being pointless for A2DP because the transcoding would degrade audio quality to the point that even a cheap earphone would be sufficient. Or if someone wants the headphone form factor, then 80 bucks is more than enough for an ok pair of Bluetooth headphones that won’t sound worse than the A2DP transcoded stream already is.
majormajor 8y ago
Mine constantly produced crackling noises with my noise-canceling earbuds I travel with unless I fiddled with the headphones->adapter connection for several minutes until it was just so. Gave up on it and finally got some bluetooth earbuds.
- myrandomcomment 8y ago
  I have the exact same issue. Took the phone to Apple and they cleaned out the lightning connector and it work great now.
dstroot 8y ago
> It doesn't create more room inside the phone, and Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. It's basically designed to force you on to more expensive wireless headphones. Well I was told that Apple viewed the removal of the headphone jack as a necessary step to a sealed, water proof phone. The two key reasons for phone failure are drops and water damage. Water damage will eventually be handled by a sealed device. So it’s not about “more room” AFAIK.
- daniel-cussen 8y ago
  > Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks
basch 8y ago
Apple didnt "slow down phones with old batteries", they capped the power output to the cpu of batteries that couldnt deliver reliable peak power anymore, so the phone didnt panic and crash as the cpu usage redlined. Their actions are much preferred to the alternative.
- setr 8y ago
  What he means is that they did that silently, without informing that an possibly preferred alternative existed: replace the battery.
  - basch 8y ago
    I agree, "your battery health is reducing performance, have it replaced", should have been part of the original feature.
    - JeremyBanks 8y ago
      The situation was awful. I had a battery that was chronically failing (shutting down with 40% battery day after day) and Apple wouldn't even let me pay for a new battery if I wanted to, because their old battery health tool couldn't identify any problem. They refused to take my money under any terms! I had no choice but to use a warranty-invalidating third-party repair service (which did indeed resolve the problem).
      - sholnay 8y ago
        I had the exact same issue and I still get angry thinking about the phone call I had with a support manager at apple. He blamed me, or possibly my backups. His solution was to factory reset the phone and to never restore my phone or my backups. He seriously wanted me to troubleshoot the issue, app by app, on a clean phone. I can't even imagine how long this would take, weeks? He told me that even if I take it to a store, they probably won't replace the battery because the app says it's fine. Thinking back, I remember how I basically had Stockholm syndrome with my phone. The performance was incredibly terrible. Swiping on the screen took two or three attempts, opening any app took 2 or 3 touches for it to register. Scrolling was stuttered in any app. I remember my partner deemed my phone unusable (it was 3+ years old, so I certainly expected some sluggishness). I had just built in muscle memory to use my phone, swipe swipe, press press press to open an app. Sigh, and I'm still with Apple.
stcredzero 8y ago
The others would be: the whole battery scandal where Apple slowed down older phones without explaining that the battery, a replaceable component, was the issue. And the 2016-2018 MacBook keyboards, which are an absolute travesty. Apple needs to face it: They have an arrogance problem. ("Courage") This applies to a lot of SV: An over-willingness to dismiss the voices of the many. EDIT: Apple under Steve Jobs didn't succeed by simply going against the grain. Apple at its best knows when it made sense to go against the grain, and when it made sense to cater to the masses. It hasn't been at its best in recent years.
btreecat 8y ago
>Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. Don't forget replaceable batteries, up-gradable storage, and an IR blaster.
- neves 8y ago
  Unfortunately, no more IR blasters since S5!
kanox 8y ago
It gets negative review from people who don't like dongles, and those people don't care about the quality of chips inside the dongle.
hnick 8y ago
Since you sell them and I'm having trouble finding an answer, do the adapters work with 3rd party microphones (such as a clip-on lavalier)? We bought a lightning microphone advertised to work with the XS but when we sent back video evidence that it didn't they just refunded us with no further explanation. What should be a relatively simple and cheap purchase is wasting a lot of our time. Most answers we see are typical of Apple searches - should work with the Apple products, YMMV with 3rd party.
- thirdsun 8y ago
  Mine works flawlessly with the integrated microphone of the Sennheiser HD 598SR headphones. So I assume it works with any third party mic.
  - hnick 8y ago
    Great, I'll head to the glass church of Steve later to buy one :D

LeoPanthera 8y ago

> It doesn't create more room inside the phone Can you elaborate on this? Because it seems like it obviously would. 3.5mm jacks have got to go somewhere.

ericabiz 8y ago
Sure. A lot of people thought when Apple removed the headphone jack that it would make room for a bigger battery, specifically. But Apple didn't use the space that way. They put the Taptic Engine there instead. The bigger Taptic engine on e.g. an iPhone 8 vs. 6 is used for two things: 1) 7/8 series have a home button that doesn't actually push. The Taptic Engine mimics the feel of a button push. 2) It allows for different types of vibration, e.g. when hitting the corner of the screen while dragging or for more subtle notifications. (https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2018-and-android-phones-still-cant-compare-iphones-taptic-engine https://www.androidcentral.com/its-2018-and-android-phones-s...) The iPhone 6 battery is 1810mAh, whereas the 8 is 1821mAh. So they didn't increase the battery size; they added the Taptic Engine instead, and got rid of the mechanical home button. Articles gush about the Taptic Engine, but I'd still rather have my headphone jack back. And I liked the clicky home buttons.
- chrisoverzero 8y ago
  > It doesn't create more room inside the phone […] > They put the Taptic Engine there instead. It sounds like it created the room for the Taptic Engine.
  - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
    The 6S had a taptic engine AND a 3.5mm jack.
    - chrisoverzero 8y ago
      And ~100 fewer mAh than the models mentioned above, which precede and follow it. Seems like Apple did use the space to increase battery size, then.
      - JustSomeNobody 8y ago
        Maybe? Would have to look at side by side of 6S and 8. The 8 is a tad thicker, but that may be the glass.
      - LyndsySimon 8y ago
        I wonder what the net change in weight and volume was with the removal of the home button and expansion of the display.
  - nsriv 8y ago
    The Taptic Engine existed because they decided to do away with the mechanical home button, ostensibly for "waterproofing." The decision to retain tactility led to necessity for a larger more precise vibration motor, and then punting the headphone jack out of the phone became the obvious thing to do, with a bunch of post-rationalization externally and internal justification hinged around accessory sales.
    - ummonk 8y ago
      So they did create space by removing the headphone jack; you just think they used that space unwisely (or that that space would have been best used for a headphone jack).
millzlane 8y ago
I was curious so I started looking at teardown images before and after the removal. It doesn't look like it was an issue with space. I also found this article. https://bgr.com/2016/09/16/iphone-7-teardown-specs-headphone-jack-repair-waterproof/ https://bgr.com/2016/09/16/iphone-7-teardown-specs-headphone...

joshe 8y ago

Still on an iPhone 6S for just this reason (and a slight preference for touch id over face id).

baddox 8y ago

The article doesn’t provide any evidence about sales figures. The “nobody wants” phrase seems to just refer to the low reviews on the Apple store website, which are almost certainly due to people complaining about the lack of headphone jack in newer iPhones.

logfromblammo 8y ago
Nobody wants it, but they have no reasonable alternative to it. There are so many disparate factors that differentiate an iPhone from its competitors that the lack of a TRRS-barrel headphone jack is likely insufficient to change the whole-product buying decision. You just have to pay for the headphone dongle replacements for as long as you own the phone, or the licensing fees and brand-based price differentials for every pair of headphones you buy--the "Apple tax" in action. As long as someone gets more than $3/month in personal benefit from owning an iPhone instead of the next-best alternative, they will suck it up and buy the $9 audio dongle every 3 months. If they didn't realize that much benefit, they wouldn't have bought the iPhone in the first place. Anecdote time. I told my family long ago that if they bought Apple products, I would not support those products in any way. If there is ever a problem, take it to the Apple store instead of telling me about it. Two of them chose iPhone anyway--one within the last year. And lo, surprising no-one, or at least not me, those earbuds with the lightning connector broke after ( N < 12 ) months. A conductor is loose between lightning connector and left earbud, the break occurring near the lightning connector. Because that part of the cable has zero strain relief. A flexible cable coming off of a rigid bit of plastic--of course it's going to break there. It's either that, or wearing out the insulation on the cable within 15cm of the connector. So, this happens: "Hey, logfromblammo, please come with me to the Apple store and hold my hand while I try to get a warranty replacement for these headphones that are otherwise $29 to replace?" "No. I told you 'no' years ago, and I have not changed my mind since; if the problem has an Apple logo on it, it is entirely your problem." And this somehow makes me a jerk. I knew this would happen--I tried to stop it by telling people "don't buy anything with an Apple connector (except MagSafe)". This is why, when Apple first made the announcement that they were removing the TRRS barrel jack from their phones, I raged for days, despite not owning an iPhone, because people around me own iPhones, and knew I would have to hear their pleas and complaints. It has happened over and over and over again. Apple makes a shit sandwich, puts it in a white box with a silver logo on it, and people just... eat it? Why do they eat the sandwich? That guy just got seconds! It even says "poop sandwich" on the box! Why are they doing this?! The engineering solution may be technically elegant, but it is an answer to a problem that Apple created for itself--a problem that never needed to exist.

bigbadgoose 8y ago

What about the touchbar?

nacho2sweet 8y ago

I lost 3 of them until my current ones have "lasted" a year. If I move the cord at certain angles, the phones voice control switches on, podcasts skip, pause, or run at 3x speed. I don't mind the cord, I don't see why $200 shitty earpods that I have to charge every 5 hours and battery runs out after 1.5 years is better.

Shish2k 8y ago
> If I move the cord at certain angles, the phones voice control switches on, podcasts skip, pause, or run at 3x speed. It is incredibly reassuring to hear somebody else find these symptoms - it took me weeks to narrow down the cause to the dodgy adapter, and then I ended up buying a $80 bluetooth adapter for my wired headphones, because I couldn't find an "ignore the stupid commands that the broken lightning adapter is sending" option...
- layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
  >I ended up buying a $80 bluetooth adapter for my wired headphones What's the point of a headphone if you're listening to MP3/AAC → A2DP transcoded music?
  - grkvlt 8y ago
    it turns out that even mp3 encoding audio doesn't actually stop it being audible to other people nearby when played through speakers, the headphones on the other hand, mean only the wearer can hear it...
    - layoutIfNeeded 8y ago
      True, but I was talking about a headphone being pointless for A2DP because the transcoding would degrade audio quality to the point that even a cheap earphone would be sufficient. Or if someone wants the headphone form factor, then 80 bucks is more than enough for an ok pair of Bluetooth headphones that won’t sound worse than the A2DP transcoded stream already is.

majormajor 8y ago

Mine constantly produced crackling noises with my noise-canceling earbuds I travel with unless I fiddled with the headphones->adapter connection for several minutes until it was just so. Gave up on it and finally got some bluetooth earbuds.

myrandomcomment 8y ago
I have the exact same issue. Took the phone to Apple and they cleaned out the lightning connector and it work great now.

dstroot 8y ago

> It doesn't create more room inside the phone, and Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. It's basically designed to force you on to more expensive wireless headphones. Well I was told that Apple viewed the removal of the headphone jack as a necessary step to a sealed, water proof phone. The two key reasons for phone failure are drops and water damage. Water damage will eventually be handled by a sealed device. So it’s not about “more room” AFAIK.

daniel-cussen 8y ago
> Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks

basch 8y ago

Apple didnt "slow down phones with old batteries", they capped the power output to the cpu of batteries that couldnt deliver reliable peak power anymore, so the phone didnt panic and crash as the cpu usage redlined. Their actions are much preferred to the alternative.

setr 8y ago
What he means is that they did that silently, without informing that an possibly preferred alternative existed: replace the battery.
- basch 8y ago
  I agree, "your battery health is reducing performance, have it replaced", should have been part of the original feature.
  - JeremyBanks 8y ago
    The situation was awful. I had a battery that was chronically failing (shutting down with 40% battery day after day) and Apple wouldn't even let me pay for a new battery if I wanted to, because their old battery health tool couldn't identify any problem. They refused to take my money under any terms! I had no choice but to use a warranty-invalidating third-party repair service (which did indeed resolve the problem).
    - sholnay 8y ago
      I had the exact same issue and I still get angry thinking about the phone call I had with a support manager at apple. He blamed me, or possibly my backups. His solution was to factory reset the phone and to never restore my phone or my backups. He seriously wanted me to troubleshoot the issue, app by app, on a clean phone. I can't even imagine how long this would take, weeks? He told me that even if I take it to a store, they probably won't replace the battery because the app says it's fine. Thinking back, I remember how I basically had Stockholm syndrome with my phone. The performance was incredibly terrible. Swiping on the screen took two or three attempts, opening any app took 2 or 3 touches for it to register. Scrolling was stuttered in any app. I remember my partner deemed my phone unusable (it was 3+ years old, so I certainly expected some sluggishness). I had just built in muscle memory to use my phone, swipe swipe, press press press to open an app. Sigh, and I'm still with Apple.

stcredzero 8y ago

The others would be: the whole battery scandal where Apple slowed down older phones without explaining that the battery, a replaceable component, was the issue. And the 2016-2018 MacBook keyboards, which are an absolute travesty. Apple needs to face it: They have an arrogance problem. ("Courage") This applies to a lot of SV: An over-willingness to dismiss the voices of the many. EDIT: Apple under Steve Jobs didn't succeed by simply going against the grain. Apple at its best knows when it made sense to go against the grain, and when it made sense to cater to the masses. It hasn't been at its best in recent years.

btreecat 8y ago

>Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. Don't forget replaceable batteries, up-gradable storage, and an IR blaster.

neves 8y ago
Unfortunately, no more IR blasters since S5!

kanox 8y ago

It gets negative review from people who don't like dongles, and those people don't care about the quality of chips inside the dongle.

hnick 8y ago

Since you sell them and I'm having trouble finding an answer, do the adapters work with 3rd party microphones (such as a clip-on lavalier)? We bought a lightning microphone advertised to work with the XS but when we sent back video evidence that it didn't they just refunded us with no further explanation. What should be a relatively simple and cheap purchase is wasting a lot of our time. Most answers we see are typical of Apple searches - should work with the Apple products, YMMV with 3rd party.

thirdsun 8y ago
Mine works flawlessly with the integrated microphone of the Sennheiser HD 598SR headphones. So I assume it works with any third party mic.
- hnick 8y ago
  Great, I'll head to the glass church of Steve later to buy one :D