Tech

Apple’s wireless headphones: Headache or huge step forward?

Against

This is going to be a huge headache for a lot of people.

Apple’s decision to ditch the standard headphone jack is self-serving — and will prove to be wildly inconvenient.

Shifting to the latest Lightning headphones won’t be the seamless switch Apple says it is, as many users are already attached to their current headphones.

Sure, there’s an extra adapter, but consumers don’t want to be forced into carrying around extra accessories — or forking over the cash for the new wireless headphones.

People love the conventional headphone jack almost as much as they love their iPhones.

Is the transition impossible? No. Will people kick and scream during the transition? Absolutely.

— Kris Ruby, tech expert and founder of the Ruby Media Group

In favor

Apple’s move to oust its obsolescent headphone jack is a huge step forward.

Old technologies are constantly replaced by better ones. Blu-rays replaced DVDs, CDs supplanted records. Streaming has replaced them all.

And now it’s time to ditch the jack, which has been around since the Sony EFM-117J radio was released in 1964.

Removing it provides significant benefits, like an unprecedented level of waterproofing. And the jack was an unreliable mess. The plug would fail on one or both channels — as you know if you’ve ever tried twisting the jack in its socket to fix it.

Eliminating the headphone jack is a practical solution — one that won’t seem like a big deal after the next tech breakthrough.

— Samuel Ballantyne, consulting engineer at Offline, a tech startup based in Brooklyn