[ArmyDicked]

When I was young, my mother made me eat LIVER & ONIONS because she said 'IT IS GOOD FOR ME".  That was a L-I-E.  Liver & Onions not only smell bad, it tastes as bad as it sounds---Prarrie Oysters, anyone?!!! Now Apple's CEO Cooke has done the same thing as my mother did. He made airplane noises and picked up a technology fork and said "B29 requesting permission to land---open up wide for the B29!!!  To which I cried "THAT AIN"T NO B29, Mr. Cook---them's LIVER & ONIONS which tastes disgusting!!!"  
 
COOK became INDIGNANT:  There are PLENTY OF PEOPLE IN INDIA starving for this Intel Lightening Technology---You need to accepted it. Its' good for you!!! This was then followed by me crying like a STUFFED PIG "But, But, But---my new car has a 3.5mm Line Out. My New Music Server has a 3.5mm LINE OUT. Hell, my SOTA HeadPhones are UNBALANCE AND HAVE A 3.5MM mini plug. What am I supposed to do, Mr. Cook? Throw out all of my Hella Expensive Audio Equipment?  
 
DO I LOOK THAT S-T-U-P-I-D to you, Mr.COOK?
 
COOK: "Number One, the 3.5mm Tip & Ring Sleeve is a dated 1878 telephone technology that is too old to work with. Number TWO, the new INTEL Lightening offers 20meg data through put and is GOOD FOR YOU. Number Three: As for you BEING STUPID---Did   Y-O-U not replace your perfectly good iPhone 6 for a iPhone 6S having only owned it for less than four months? The defence rests!!!. We at Apple 'LIVE FOR S-T-U-P-I-D PEOPLE'!!!  Stupid people like YOU are our best customers!!!  Let the world make fun of you---APPLE PRIDES ITSELF ON BEING NON-JUDGEMENTAL?!!!
 
OK, so what are we supposed to do? There are no cars, music servers, laptops or Smart Phones with Lightening Connectors save for a handful of APPLE PRODUCTS. Apple already burned me with its FIREWIRE technology so, like why should I jump off the same clift again simply because everyone else is doing it?  Go ahead HEAD-FI; What are we supposed to do with all of our legacy products with their dated 1878 phone technology 3.5mm interfaces?
 
DOES OPPO or Krell or STAX or BEATS or whatever MAKE LIGHTENING CONNECTOR PRODUCTS?  Can HEAD-FI list outboard DAC/Headphone Amp makers and Headphones with INTEL Lightening Connectors? I h-a-t-e wireless technology and will never use it for HIFI because it can never sound as good as 'good old straight wire with gain' connections. Your Thoughts, Please. 

 

[jrflanne]

You need to buy a phone not made by Apple.

 

[franzdom]

Seriously not this again. I got over it and bought an apple 7 this weekend. Either you are staying Apple or you aren't. If you are, may as well get used to the fact that they aren't going to have that jack. Main issue for me is listening in the car, as one of my cars ipod adapter wouldn't work with Lightning. So I have been using 3.5 to RCA there. Since I also like brightness up while commuting (sunglasses), I don't see just being able to use the new adapter. All this caused me to do something I should have done ages ago, get a 3.5 to BT adapter. The Anker one is coming this weekend, should work a treat. Only issue I see is losing BT phone, perhaps it's not that big a deal switching between the 2 or perhaps even using the audio BT adapter for phone calls (will the phone's mic be good enough?).

 

[DougD]

Ultimately it boils down to a binary choice: you stay with Apple or you don't.
 
Apple made a product and financial decision that they can make more money on the people who stay within their ecosystem than they lose from people who bail.
 
That's their calculation.
 
Your calculation of what's best for you is your own. That depends on how much you value the convenience of the Apple UI and your comfort with it, vs your desire for high quality, value and choice on the audio side. 
 
(You could assume that if enough people vote with their feet, Apple will recant this decision. But I doubt that will happen.) 

 

[Crimguy]

The reality is that audiophiles are a niche. Which makes headphone audiophiles a niche within a niche.

While I am not happy with the loss of the 3.5mm jack, I am the only person I know. The others either are using Bluetooth already, or view this as a opportunity/excuse to buy Bluetooth headphones. They don't care. At all.

 

[ArmyDicked]

So, It all boils down to me making a 'BINARY DECISION---embrace APPLE or DTMFA?  Well, I rejected the CD and stayed with my beloved LPs in 1980 and by 1988 there were no new LPs to be had (although LPs are making a slight comeback as a nitche product). I chained myself to the audio fence and stood tall with 8 track tape which was superior to Cassette Tape in sound quality---only to be forced to crawl back to the Cassette format in three years when the 8track format was abandoned. And don't get me started by my choosing Toshiba's HDDVD vrs Blu Ray.
 
I L-I-V-E to make BAD LIFE CHOICES!!!  I studied to become a SYSTEM MGR for a DIGITAL HYBRID PBX with Integrated Voicemail & Door Access technologies---only to be laid off when all that functionality was migrated to the COs. Last year, I had HeadHunters BEG ME TO COME BACK TO TELEPHONY--as there is a crushing need for ON SITE PBX System Managers due to VOIP (Voice over Internet Phones) which I sneered 'Yeah, but how many nanoseconds will it take before AT&T or Frontier migrates those services to their CO's and I am out on the streets again with no job?!!!
 
Apple threw down the Technology Gauntlet and sided with INTEL's Lightening cable system. INTEL dominates the CPU market and can push-pull all INTEL users/vendors (and MicroSoft) to use Lightening interfaces over that of USB 2 or 3. My business is APPLE-CENTRIC so it wouldn't make sense for me to abandon the platform. Apple is right---we need to dump the 1878 telephone technology known as TIP & RING SLEEVE (TRS) and perhaps IEEE needs to get involved (I hate dueling technologies---pick one and then let the vendors push it to the max.).
 
My question is What other vendors are using LIGHTENING?  I applaud COOKS' bold decision to dump the 3.5mm mini plug because, well, it makes sense to do it.  WHAT I H-A-T-E is the way he did it---sneak it in as a product feature.  COOK should have pushed the technology with INTEL in a consumer blitz before 'acting like MICROSOFT' and up and changing things without comment or user input.