There's a great anecdote I like to tell at parties about how music has changed over the past couple of decades, and I find it particularly relevant on the eve of the iPhone 7 launch.
In Brooklyn, where I used to live, people sell their used junk at "stoop sales" -- as opposed to garage sales, which is the norm in the rest of the country (where having a garage is actually possible). One sunny Saturday afternoon, my friend Lauren was checking out a few of these with her 13-year-old daughter, Sylvia (names have been changed).
At one stoop, the seller had put out, amongst various knick-knacks and baggy T-shirts, a stack of old records. Sylvia picked up one of the albums and innocently asked her Mom, "What are these?"
"Those are records. That's how people used to listen to music."
Lauren grinned and realized Sylvia -- a "digital native" if there ever was one -- had no reason to know what vinyl records were. She patiently answered, "Those are records. That's how people used to listen to music."
"Music?!" Sylvia replied, incredulous. "How … How big was the player you carried around with you?"
It's a great anecdote because it really captures how we, and young people especially, think about music now. To them, music has always been portable. The thought of bulky record players and listening rooms is alien. Sure, it's not like they've never seen speakers in fixed positions, but the music, and the experience, travels with them wherever they go.
Apple and the ubiquity of music
This way of thinking is a testament to Apple. Certainly the Sony Walkman deserves full credit for making music mobile, but it was the iPod that made it ubiquitous, truly moving music out of our houses and into the streets. Seeing headphones on the New York City subway went from unusual to commonplace to pretty much everybody within a scant few years.
In a matter of hours, if rumors are to be believed, Apple will kick off another sea change in how we listen to music. The iPhone -- the most popular smartphone (and thus music player) in the world -- will lose its headphone jack.
The 3.5mm audio jack may be the most widely used standard in tech today.
A little background on the headphone jack: The 3.5mm audio jack (sometimes called a minijack to differentiate it from its larger 6.35mm brother) has been around since at least the 1960s. It's no exaggeration to say it's been built into billions of individual devices, including laptops, TVs and, yes, smartphones. The 3.5mm audio jack may be the most widely used standard in tech today.
Apple is now poised to throw out that standard for its flagship device, the most popular smartphone on the planet. We don't know why yet, but ostensibly it will free up space within the iPhone, allowing for more components with better features -- even potentially a better battery.
And Apple has certainly thought about how its customers will listen to music with the iPhone 7 and future devices. According to very credible reports, there will be new headphones in the box that connect via the Lightning port. For other headphones, Apple will also provide an adapter cable (or "dongle," if you must). And there's always the option of going wireless.
The arrogance of progress
None of these solutions is perfect or even particularly good. In sum, listening to music on the iPhone 7 will be a compromised experience: You'll either get inferior performance, or you'll be inconvenienced in a significant way. And that's why Apple killing the headphone jack will be a mistake of historic proportions -- a misguided act of hubris by a company so addicted to design and progress that it has begun to see them as ends unto themselves.
Some apologists for this move have pointed to Apple's record of discarding other aging standards. Apple was one of the first computer manufacturers to move away from CD-ROM drives in laptops when it unveiled the first MacBook Air in 2008. Many scoffed, but soon after the Air's debut, other laptops dropped it, too, and today it's hard to find a model that has one.
But that was different. When Apple dropped the CD drive, the world was solidly on course toward a future where data was either on your hard disk or easily accessible online. Also, hard disks and the cloud are fundamental, open technologies, not proprietary ones like the Lightning connector.
Lightning headphones, which are sure to be included with the new iPhone, are a fine idea. In fact, since the connection will be more robust, music quality may actually improve. But the second you want to start listening to a different device -- even a Mac -- you'll out of luck. And for the vast majority of devices, that won't change. As much as Apple might like to think differently, the world will never be Lightning-only.
Wireless audio is the polar opposite of technology that "just works."
Of course, wireless headphones are an option, but that's arguably the worst of the three choices. It's well established that streaming over Bluetooth compromises sound quality (it's possible Apple could use another audio standard, but then we're back to the universality/proprietary issue).
At the same time, wireless audio is the polar opposite of technology that "just works." Pairing is a chore, and even when wireless headphones work, they don't work. To see what I mean, try this: If you have wireless headphones paired to your iPhone, see how long it takes to switch the pairing to your Mac. I'll wait.
If you're really, really tech-savvy, you might have done that in a matter of seconds, not minutes. But I'll bet you it still took more time than just switching your headphone cable. And if you think easy switching of wireless connections is an option for most people, you're living in a dream world.
Then there's that adapter. I can see the pitch now: "Use any headphones you want! Just attach them to this adapter included with every iPhone." This solution is actually the worst, since that adapter is only so good as often as you don't leave it in your other jacket, forget to get it back from Phil, or drop it in the street. (All of us who had an original iPhone remember.)
By giving you one more thing to worry about, an adapter actually does the opposite of what technology is supposed to do: it makes your life more complicated.
Listening the Apple way
Despite all these very legitimate reasons Apple shouldn't discard the iPhone's headphone jack, it's pretty much a done deal. I'm still holding out a little hope that this is the greatest misinformation campaign Apple has ever taken part in, and that tomorrow, at a little after 10 a.m. PT, Tim Cook will unveil an iPhone 7 with a headphone jack.
The chance of that happening is pretty low, though. More than likely, around the same time, Cook will be explaining why an iPhone with no headphone jack is a great idea. Perhaps he believes the issues aren't that serious. Perhaps he thinks Apple has invented some new technology or approach that will solve or at least mitigate those problems.
We'll wail about the inconveniences a headphone jack-less iPhone will bring, but we'll deal.
We'll see. And we'll also see how the world responds to this forced change to our listening habits. Although Apple's competitors are surely salivating, I suspect many iPhone owners are like me: They have, and will continue to have, grave concerns about losing the headphone jack, but they'll buy the iPhone 7 anyway.
As much as audio still maters, the overall user experience is why we are iPhone users. Yes, we'll wail about all the inconveniences a headphone jack-less iPhone will bring, but we'll deal.
And Apple's indisputable influence will change audio once again. As the iPhone 7 takes hold, we won't just need to get used to a new way of listening -- we'll have to accept an audio world that's fragmented (to borrow a derisive term from the Android side). We'll each make individual decisions on which compromises to make and which workarounds to adopt.
We'll go forward, listening to music the Apple way. Though we'll probably clutch our iPhones a little less tightly than we do now.
