bitflipper
Sennheiser had this to say: "in the audio world we've seen different connection standards come and go for many years".
 
Excuse me? What connection standards would those be? The quarter-inch plug and jack date back to the 1800's, starting with telephone exchanges with manual operators. The 3.5mm version has been around since the late 50's, with the advent of the transistor radio. The XLR connector goes back to 1950, the RCA phono plug to the early 40's. So WTF is Sennheiser talking about?

You might have forgotten about the use of DIN connectors, as they kinda came and went. 
 
But Apple is Apple and they are to HW what Microsoft is to file formats for Word and Excel.

drewfx1
You might have forgotten about the use of DIN connectors, as they kinda came and went. 

You mean like Midi plugs that no one uses anymore because we've all fitted USB ports to our '80s synths....
 
 
And then there's SCART connectors for your VTR...

Karyn

drewfx1
You might have forgotten about the use of DIN connectors, as they kinda came and went. 

You mean like Midi plugs that no one uses anymore because we've all fitted USB ports to our '80s synths....
 

Similar connectors, but for audio not Midi (I still use Midi - does that mean I've come and gone? ):
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIN_connector#Analog_audio
 

How's about "banana" plugs? Ludicrous thingies those be izzen.

bitflipper
 
Sennheiser had this to say: "in the audio world we've seen different connection standards come and go for many years".
 
 So WTF is Sennheiser talking about?

 
Perhaps they are speaking in a geological time frame reference..... if so, yeah.... the quarter inch jack thing was a blip on the screen..... a passing fad.

sharke
Apple has definitely gone downhill since Jobs died. I've been using iPhones for a good few years now and they have always been rock solid for me until the last year. The 2 most recent major iOS updates have made my relativey new phone more sluggish and less responsive, and they also introduced some horrible bugs related to text selection/copy/paste which make working with text a frustrating nightmare. No sign of them correcting or even acknowledging the bugs.

If they really do go with this connector change I think I will jump ship. As an audio enthusiast there is no way I am going to have a limited range of compatible headphones imposed on me, and using an unwieldy adaptor with my favorite headphones is not an option.

Ditto.
 
In fact, ever since Jobs died, the rate at which they pump out OS upgrades has doubled. And yet, a lot of the same issues that were present when I switched to Mac 5 years ago are still not addressed. Not to mention that some of those upgrades introduce bugs which they cannot NOT know about prior to release - AirDrop not working at all under El Capitan is not something that could go unnoticed, it's not like it's an obscure functionality affecting only certain configurations... And yet, they released it.
 
In the meantime, every new update of iTunes seems to break something, while, there too, bugs (such as iTunes randomly splitting albums) remain unfixed. Seemingly forever. 
 
The one thing I can't complain about is Logic X. That was indeed a stellar release. Even though they have yet to make it as rock solid as version 9. But then, that one was phenomenal.
 
And yet, every time I pick up my Android or mess with our Samsung TV, I am reminded of how much there still is to love about Apple products for me.
 
That being said, in the case of the headphone jack, I can't say a positive thing about them. A very bad idea, which has no motive I can think of except greed. I wonder how my wife will like that news... Her iPhone is actually a work tool for her, and has been ever since iPhones came out. It's not like she could switch w/o loosing a lot of data - and wasting a lot of time and energy getting used to a new phone (not to mention incompatibility w/ iTunes and all).
 
The catch is that my wife NEVER use Apple earbuds as they don't fit her ears. So now, she'd have to buy some expensive ones that are designed exclusively for her phone... 

drewfx1
You might have forgotten about the use of DIN connectors, as they kinda came and went. 

I can still buy 5-pin DIN cables at Target. If I want any of the hundreds of other DIN connectors I have to go downtown, but they're available.
 

Rain

sharke
Apple has definitely gone downhill since Jobs died. I've been using iPhones for a good few years now and they have always been rock solid for me until the last year. The 2 most recent major iOS updates have made my relativey new phone more sluggish and less responsive, and they also introduced some horrible bugs related to text selection/copy/paste which make working with text a frustrating nightmare. No sign of them correcting or even acknowledging the bugs.

If they really do go with this connector change I think I will jump ship. As an audio enthusiast there is no way I am going to have a limited range of compatible headphones imposed on me, and using an unwieldy adaptor with my favorite headphones is not an option.

Ditto.
 
In fact, ever since Jobs died, the rate at which they pump out OS upgrades has doubled. And yet, a lot of the same issues that were present when I switched to Mac 5 years ago are still not addressed. Not to mention that some of those upgrades introduce bugs which they cannot NOT know about prior to release - AirDrop not working at all under El Capitan is not something that could go unnoticed, it's not like it's an obscure functionality affecting only certain configurations... And yet, they released it.
 
In the meantime, every new update of iTunes seems to break something, while, there too, bugs (such as iTunes randomly splitting albums) remain unfixed. Seemingly forever. 
 
The one thing I can't complain about is Logic X. That was indeed a stellar release. Even though they have yet to make it as rock solid as version 9. But then, that one was phenomenal.
 
And yet, every time I pick up my Android or mess with our Samsung TV, I am reminded of how much there still is to love about Apple products for me.
 
That being said, in the case of the headphone jack, I can't say a positive thing about them. A very bad idea, which has no motive I can think of except greed. I wonder how my wife will like that news... Her iPhone is actually a work tool for her, and has been ever since iPhones came out. It's not like she could switch w/o loosing a lot of data - and wasting a lot of time and energy getting used to a new phone (not to mention incompatibility w/ iTunes and all).
 
The catch is that my wife NEVER use Apple earbuds as they don't fit her ears. So now, she'd have to buy some expensive ones that are designed exclusively for her phone... 

I'm the same with the earbuds, no matter how firmly I mash them in there they just slip out like a couple of overgrown M&M's. I can't even make a phone call with them, even if I sit perfectly still. 
 
Yeah there's still loads to love about iPhones, I run a good proportion of my business on mine and apart from the crap that's gone wrong over the last few updates they do work really well. If they didn't, there's no way I would have switched from BlackBerry because I had a love affair with that keyboard. How many years on and I still can't type for crap on a touch screen? Doesn't make things any better that the iOS autocorrect is one of its worst features (plz stop changing "etc" to "Eric" thnx). 
 
Maybe if this headphone crap pulls off I'll give an Android phone a whirl. Fortunately for me I don't store any data on my phone without it being on the cloud (e.g. all my calendars are Google calendars) so technically I'm not tied to iOS. 

Has anyone got a link to an actual announcement by Apple about this? All I can find are reports about reports about rumours about rumours from unnamed sources with no named reliable source at Apple for any of it.

It might even make sense on the phones, especially if the rumoured noise-reduction technology is included.

Apple didn't get where they are by making nothing but bad decisions, and the cynic in me does wonder if having lots of stuff about all going on about the iPhone 7 months before it will see the light of day might even be a marketing ploy.

Does anyone but me remember the widespread rumours that MS were going to make us use USB sticks as RAM in Vista? Rumours based on a complete misunderstanding of what the "turboboost" function would do with a USB stick - use it for virtual memory when the size of the data to be written to virtual RAM meant a stick could handle it faster than a hard disk because a stick has faster access times than a rotating platter. Worked rather well as I recall.

Then there were the rumours that you would have to rent Windows. Or that all your data would have to be stored on MS servers, or in iCloud if you use a Mac. Or that applications would no longer be storable locally but everything done by running them on MS servers. Or that PCs would only be available as "black boxes" built by Intel and licensed corporations because every component would need to be soldered to the motherboard to make the i7 chip work.

Unless and until it has a verifiable source I regard these kind of rumours with a little scepticism.

Just to declare an interest, we've three Macs, two iPads and an iPhone5 here plus one PC, and Mrs TLW's work-issue Dell Windows 7 laptop which is a continual pain in the neck. Just happen to find OS X (or any Unix) preferable to Windows, Retina screens superior to Windows monitors for graphics work in particular and the integration between everything works pretty well. Including Airdrop :-)

sharke
Maybe if this headphone crap pulls off I'll give an Android phone a whirl.

The android grass may look greener but it comes with perils of its own. Just bought a cheap android phone for my 80 year old father in law and my wife is setting it up. My brother and sister in law use Android and they've just sent her an email of all the Android updates to avoid because they break something.

Some telecom companies apparently limit making Android updates for their phones available to the first 12 months of a phone contract, so that might be worth checking out.