If you’re like me, somewhere in your house you imagine there must be a pile of lost white iPhone earbuds. The pile is probably right next to the stack of single socks. It’s one of several reasons I never liked wireless Bluetooth headphones. They’re smaller and even easier to lose.
But, if the rumors are true — and most likely they are — Apple is about to get rid of the headphone jack on its latest smartphone, the iPhone 7, and tip the scales toward wireless Bluetooth headphones. The company has scheduled a press event in San Francisco on Wednesday.
“Getting rid of the headphone jack is panic worthy,” says usability expert Joshua Porter of the design firm Rocket Insights. “It’s going to be a hard argument to make.”
Porter says like a lot of iPhone users, he personally has several headsets that will immediately become obsolete unless there is a way to connect them to the new iPhone.
Apple is likely to make an adapter that lets users plug their earbuds into the lightning jack. But Apple users with headphones aren’t going to like it if they have to drop extra cash on buying a special adapter.