Yes, You Are Stupid (Buying Apple Products)

I hope you like what's coming..... it's headed straight for your arse.

Like most Apple developments, the news emerged from a leak. 9to5Mac has learnt that Apple submitted a specification to its MFi (Made For) licensing program for headphones which connect using the company’s proprietary Lightning port instead of the standard 3.5mm jack. Furthermore all it will take for the Lightning port to start accepting these new headphones is a firmware update.

Right.  And what is likely to come with that is a delete of the standard headphone jack.
You know, the one that let's you choose which set of headphones you wish to buy?
Yeah.
This will take the "low end" listener who is happy with the $20 pair of Gummi earbuds and more than double their cost to listen to music, since they'll need an adapter.  It will also add that price and bulk to everyone else's independent selection of headphones.
Unless, of course, you like the trash called "Beats."
Apple must be getting desperate in attempting to recover what was a fairly-dominant position in the cellphone space.  IOS is falling rapidly in this regard; not in terms of units sold but in terms of penetration.  This is likely to continue and it's a problem for those who think Apple is "God-like" in terms of stock performance and similar.
So rather than innovate Apple is going to do what it has always done, going back to the world of Macs in the 1990s -- they're going to take away your choices, increasing the lock-in you have if you elect to buy their products.
There's nothing unlawful about that, but there is something (terminally) stupid if you choose to cripple your listening experience by buying into a closed system -- just as people found out originally with iTunes before Apple was basically forced to un-DRM their music lest they fade into irrelevance.

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