Apple defends decision to remove 3.5mm headphone jack, cites “courage”

SAN FRANCISCO—Apple Senior VP Phil Schiller took the stage at Wednesday's iPhone event to announce the news most tech geeks had been expecting: the iPhone will leave the 3.5mm headphone jack behind. It was Schiller's job to justify why Apple was doing so, and he defended the company's decision by citing three reasons to move on—and one word: "courage."

Schiller explained to the San Francisco event crowd that Apple would push the Lightning port standard for wired headphones and push a new proprietary wireless standard, driven by the new "W1 chip" in iOS devices, which Schiller called Apple's first wireless chip.

The 3.5mm port, on the other hand, has to go, Schiller said, because the company can't justify the continued use of an "ancient" single-use port. He described the amount of technology packed into the iPhone, saying each element in Apple's phones is fighting for space, and it's at a premium. And while every iPhone 7 and 7 Plus will include a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter, Schiller was a lot more bullish about the company's wireless-audio standard.

Schiller explained that no company had tried to deliver a wireless experience between your devices and your headphones that fixes the things that are currently difficult to do—and since there's only one major industry-wide wireless-audio standard, it's easy to assume that he's talking about Bluetooth there (though he didn't say the B-word out loud).

To promote Apple's wireless-audio push, Schiller announced the new AirPods earbuds, which look mostly identical to the last official Apple earbud model, only with a small piece of plastic replacing the full cord. Schiller says that AirPod users can expect five hours of playtime, along with 24 hours of recharge supplied by a portable charging case (which can be refilled at home and then thrown into a bag for on-the-go recharging). The AirPods will recognize whether or not they're embedded in a user's ears, and they're advertised as being able to automatically recognize compatible hardware nearby and switch to a new device's audio feed based on proximity. Schiller didn't confirm whether W1-compatible audio gear will work with older, Bluetooth-only devices, however.

While Schiller and Apple designer Jonny Ive talked a lot about wireless being "the future" of audio devices—and thus being the reason for Apple's "courage" to move on from the 3.5mm standard—Apple is curiously not packing those AirPods into new iPhone 7 and 7 Plus boxes. Instead, those devices will ship with the updated Lightning EarPods by default.

AirPods will begin shipping in late October and will cost $159.

As expected, Apple's Beats division is also getting in on the W1 bandwagon with a few new models, including the Solo 3 Wireless headset, which Schiller says will hold 40 hours of listening-time charge.