Hello,

My next iPhone will be the SE unless Apple releases a newer 4 inch phone when I finally decide my 5S is retired. I don't particularly like the idea of proprietary wired and wireless connections. If they're going to do this, why not put two ports on the device so you can charge and use wired headphones at the same time? Also, why the hell are they charging $159 for a pair of wireless earbuds. They'd better be really good earbuds or I'll be pissed. I'm not spending that kind of money on headphones ever again after my experience with Bose. Also, do these EarPods offer low latency as compared to bluetooth? Do they address the issue of crummy 8 KHZ mono audio when using the microphone? I'm sorry I'm being so harsh. I'm just in a bad mood right now. I can't believe they went from open standards to more proprietary ones. I guess I really shouldn't be surprised anymore. I like Apple, but this proprietary nonsense is really irritating!

I'm sticking with my 6S as long as possable to avoid this no headphone jack rubbish. I'm hoping that no one buys the new iPhone and they add it back but I'm not holding my breath. The future of iPhones looks grim indeed.

I paid close to that amount for a wired headset a few years ago. The headset was and is pretty good, but they do or did worked on everything I want to use them on. I guess they will not work on the new IPhone 7. rofl. I really don't like the fact they removed the jack. I do wonder if the camera system of the IPhone 7 plus will over come that for alot of people. Some may choose to take alot of pictures with their phones. As for hooking headphones in to phones, the only use for that is to listen to some stuff. The IPhone has the music app and there is and or was audio games for the IPhone that depends on having no delay over the headphones. If all you do is to talk on it, then headphones are not require, but if you are texting, you might want some hooked in so that you are not overheard when it comes to VO reading what you type. Ugg is pretty much what I got to say about it.

I read that removing the headphone jack made the phone more water resistant.
The iPhone 7 will be sold with  a 3.5 mm to lightning adapter for those with headphones.
I use headphones when playing stereo games, but the iPhone 7 will have stereo speakers so the headphones might not be necessary.
It will also have a variable vibration so the vibration pattern might tell you who is contacting you.

A lightning adapter might present its own set of issues. It will basically be like plugging your wired pair of headphones into a splitter. I'm not sure if this issue is because I have a really old splitter or not, but whenever I've plugged speakers into one especially, the volume was decreased by at least half, and I had to crank the speakers way up to get the same amount of sound out of them. There is also the issue that the audio sometimes crackles and is generally unpleasant to listen to. This adapter seems like it's basically the same concept as a splitter, so who's to say it won't present these issues? Also, there are quite a few situations where this will be an inconvenience at best and a major pain in the ass at worst. Say you're playing an audio game, and your phone is about to die, destroying all the progress you've made. Should you really have to stop playing just because your phone needs to charge? i know, that's a first world problem, but frankly, it's dumb. And then there are privacy issues. Someone talked about texting, and, while I think that's a valid point, the huge elephant in the room is really that, if you're in a location where people might overhear what you're typing, someone very well may be able to sniff out your passwords. And who wants to carry around an extra accessory just so that their logins, banking transactions and so on can be more secure?

welp, I'm done. When this iPhone craps out on me, I won't be buying another, not a 6s, 6 Se or whatever. I'm not giving my  money to a company that's willing to be this greedy. This  removal of the headphone jack was entirely motivated by greed imo.
First of all, We did it to give you a more water resistant phone guys, We totally care about you! Not true, Sony have been managing to put fully waterproofed headphone jacks on their devices without loozing IP68 certification for quite a while now. Apple could only manage IP67 even without the headphone jack.
Secondly, Our advanced taptech enjin meant that we couldn't fit in the headphone jack and keep the device's thinness (TM)! You guys love thinness (TM) Who want's a big fat old iPhone anyway? Well, funny you should mention that, my device has a hairline crack up the screen from being dropped, the result of thinness (TM) and the raw DropPhoneium that they construct their devices from. I'd have taken an  increase in thickness  any day, Better grippability and more room for battery being far more important to me than having the thinnest  device in the world. Also, Wasn't that advanced vibration enjin thingy in the iPhone 6s? That phone that's... Y'know... Thin, has a headphone jack and is widely being known as being as water resistant as the first apple watch?
Thirdly, Oh The lightningport! It's totally a super cool way of delivering audio! it can do soooooo much! Well, Yeah it can, probably will and has been able to for a long time now. All apple's done here is force everyone into using the damn thing.
Fourth, But... But... We gave you a converter adapter! stop riding our asses already! Remember the old pop ports on nokia phones? Remember how you had to plug that stupid converter in to use 3.5mm headphones? Remember how much of a raging pain in the ass it was? We can now do that again! It's time to party it up like it's 2004.
Fifth, Everyone will have to build their  headphones, wired or wireless using apple patented parts lightning ports, w1 chips, their all gonna get apple a nice little chunk of cash on the side I bet.
Sixth, People will now no longer be able to listen and charge. I mean apple will probably release an adapter that'll allow you to do exactly that, but it'll be an extra that'll cost and your getting charged for something that up until the iPhone 7 you could do without having to put down more money.

This is why I'm done  it just seems like they've amassed a userbase, got them to buy multiple devices, got them locked into the apple ecosystem now cash extraction will begin. Also, The wireless earpods? airpods? Whatever they are called... They sort of look like two tiny penises. I'm sorry, but they do.

oh i'd heard. But never really took the rumours as fact. Given the far fetched leaks we've had over the years. But apple's reasons for removeing the headphone jack are BS and the apple apologists attempting to defend apple are spouting BS also. There was no reason for this.

Yep, none of this surprised me and as I figured, most of the changes were under the hood and not huge. No headphone jack is going to tick me off, no matter what the appologists say, though I'm curious to hear what they think. Funny too, how apple didn't mention how they were planning to support people who were concerned about charging and listening to audio through headphones at the same time. $159 for a pair of earbuds? Screw that... I'll stick with my sonys that are half the price and probably sound twice as good. And of course they're going to say the lightning port allows for better audio, because they made the dang thing! There's no proof of that whatsoever, and apple themselves didn't even give facts to back it up. I'm done with the iphone after my 6 dies, or am just going to hunt down another model of the same. This is the biggest gripe that I have, but the pricetag being raised by about $200 for all of them doesn't please me either. Say what you want about storage being doubled meaning more expensive phones... I think that's crap. another pathetic cash grab from apple.

Wow!

From the way all this feedback about the earphone jack sounds, we might start hearing Crapple instead of Apple, just as we often hear Moneysoft in place of Microsoft.

Gotta laugh!

Then you open your mouth, speak words like crapple, moneysoft, flaws for windows, freedom science fiction, elocrash, and phablet... Listen to the echos of your voice and immediately wish that you hadn't. The shear sillyness you have just heard issue forth from your mouth makes you wish you'd baught a pair of those airpods to jam in your ears to deaden the sound of such terribleness.

Also, I've been hearing crys of this new dual camera on the 7 plus is going to be some kind of magic bullet for OCR. My question is, in what way. It's gonna allow people to zoom, do fancy postprocessing to blur backgrounds in photos and things like that. But when it comes to OCR? your framing what you want to capture and hitting the button. Optical zoom isn't going to help you here, it's down to the steadyness of your hand and making sure you've got the entire page in shot

Looking to buy: one left airpod.

You hit the nail on the head though. You are saying that you are perfectly content with the way things stand now. That does not mean, nor should it, that the rest of us should accept the status quo just because it's the latest and greatest.

I have no doubt that others share your view. However, only time will tell whose view is more valuable from a business standpoint.