Headphone makers quietly prepare for the iPhone 7

That space gain after 3,5 mm removal? A spot on. This is the main reason why they did it. Yes, they'll get money from other manufacturers which are going to have lightning finished headphones in their line-up, but space gain goes above all else.

And if someone asks me, big companies think hard to earn money wherever they can, but at times tech progress has to happen first in order to stay in the game.

 

I'm guessing the 3.5mm jack is more then 5mm wide. If Apple could make a usable phone that was less then that, they would do so in a heartbeat. I'm personally not a fan of that, but Apple has been a "the thinner the better" company for more then a decade.

 

Yeah, it's getting to the point where it's having a weird and unfortunate effect on some of the line, too. Current Macbooks with those dodgy keyboards and f**k-all ports are annoying. I will probably hang onto my old unibody MBP until it dies, as it has actual ports and stuff and tends not to have cooling issues. There are plenty of the new ones around here, lots of misery with a sea of dongles (when they're not missing) which actually seem to make the machine more awkward than if it had proper ports in the first place.

It's probably more understandable on a phone, which needs to fit into a pocket without making you look like Robot Priapism Man(tm), but on a laptop? Not so much. I also miss the option to have a decent GPU, too (though Apple's OpenGL is so many years out of date, that it'd be a bit wasted, unless I dual booted, sadly).

 

Apologies for derail, but I have to say this out loud: I adore your avatar

 

I find it a bit alarming, it was just the derpiest cat that came up in the first search

 

Yes, the 'a bit' part fits here