Analyzing the top reasons to remove the headphone jack from the next iPhone, from better audio quality via Lightning to thinness, more
Jason Snell / Six Colors : Tweets: @jsnell , @stevesi and @lukasb Tweets: Jason Snell / @jsnell : Count me as a “remove the headphone jack” skeptic. https://sixcolors.com/... Steven Sinofsky / @stevesi : How about: Apple can keep a 1950s plug if it uses location services to prevent headphoneless use on airport tarmacs? https://sixcolors.com/... Lukas Bergstrom / @lukasb : “'It's a very old standard, so it's time to kill it.' What is this, Logan's Run?” https://sixcolors.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The headphone-jack debate had been building all year: back in January, more than 200,000 people signed a petition asking Apple to keep the jack after reports surfaced that the next iPhone would drop it. By late June, the argument had split into camps — one holding that ditching the jack frees space for a larger battery rather than serving thinness or DRM, while critics countered that removal solves a problem no one asked about and carries real compatibility and accessibility costs.
This Six Colors roundup captures the punditry at its peak, with Jason Snell declaring himself a skeptic and Steven Sinofsky and Lukas Bergstrom weighing in against the 'kill the old standard' logic. Two months later, Apple made the call official, framing the removal as 'courage' against an 'ancient analog' jack that wasted internal space.
First-order effects
- iPhone buyers face an immediate accessory decision: existing wired headphones need Lightning adapters or replacement, the exact poor-compatibility outcome critics like The Verge flagged.
- Apple takes direct ownership of the backlash it previewed in the petition coverage, betting that its track record of timing legacy-port removals outweighs user resistance.
Second-order effects
- The removal shifts audio accessory demand toward Bluetooth, a market where Apple's Beats is the leader — making the move, as The Verge argued, a business decision that funnels customers toward Apple-owned peripherals.
- Lightning becomes the mandatory connector for iPhone audio accessories, forcing headphone makers to choose between new Lightning products, Bluetooth lines, or bundled adapters.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple's willingness to remove a universal standard under 'courage'-style framing sets a template for dropping other legacy ports, with competitors forced to follow or differentiate on compatibility.
- Audio shifts structurally from an open analog standard to proprietary and wireless ecosystems, raising the longer-term questions about interoperability and accessibility that critics raised from the start.
The trend: Smartphone makers are trading universal analog standards for proprietary connectors and wireless ecosystems, with Apple's legacy-port removals setting the cadence the rest of the industry follows.