Apple’s latest product, the iPhone 7, has no 3.5mm headphone jack and is seemingly a ploy to corner the market and force both consumers and other companies to adapt.
Startups across the country, however, are coming up with solutions to help alleviate customer concerns of losing the wireless headphones that come with the product or not being able to plug their traditional headphones into the device.
The Fuze Case, developed by Diego Prince and Troy Osinoff, attaches to the phone and provides fortification, a built-in battery pack, and most importantly the 3.5 mm audio jack. Its crowdsourcing page has already reached the goal of $50,000, and the two founders expect the case to be available by December.
“A lot of people were bummed when Apple took the headphone jack away,” Nick, the creator of iLDOCK, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in an email. The iLDOCK allows people to use the wired headphone while simultaneously charging the iPhone 7. Nick is already well ahead of his fundraising schedule with $21,000 collected so far, after an initially set goal of $5,000.
Another upcoming accessory is the Yostand, which is a slim all-in-once case for the iPhone 7, iPhone 6s, and iPhone 6, according to the product’s website. This add-on is a stand that also provides the 3.5 mm headphone outlet.
Apple, which does provide an adapter that can plug into the charging port, claims that the headphone jack is an inhibitor to more advancements and features.
“We’ve got this 50-year-old connector — just a hole filled with air — and it’s just sitting there taking up space, really valuable space,” Dan Riccio, Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering told BuzzFeed.
“It was holding us back from a number of things we wanted to put into the iPhone,” Riccio explained. “It was fighting for space with camera technologies and processors and battery life. And frankly, when there’s a better, modern solution available, it’s crazy to keep it around.”
It’s also possible that Apple wanted to corner the market for technologies that require the 3.5 mm audio outlet. And losing the wireless headphones will require further purchases of Apple’s audio technology because there simply aren’t that many wireless products compatible with the iPhone 7.
Nevertheless, the 3.5mm headphone jack has been around for generations — it’s unclear if the newest technology can change the status quo.
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