Why Apple IPhone 7 Earbuds Don’t Work on Latest MacBooks
Recently, Lifehacker has a new employee. She booted up her brand new MacBook Pro from the company and went to plug in her headphones so she could listen to music while she worked. She’s faced with the same conundrum as other Apple die-hards rushing to get the latest version: why the hell can’t you use the iPhone 7’s Lightning headphones with the new MacBook Pro?
Why bother with Lightning headphones?
First, a little background. In 2012, Apple introduced a smaller Lightning port on the iPhone 5, replacing the 30-pin port on previous models . While the Lightning port required a new charging cable, the Lightning connector was more compact than its predecessor and could be connected to iOS devices in any direction, making it more convenient. With the iPhone 7, Apple made a “bold” decision to use its Lightning-compatible EarPod headphones by completely disconnecting the 3.5mm headphone jack from the phone.
In short, you didn’t have 3.5mm headphones and their traditional headphone jack, and either you used the EarPods that came with your phone, you bought a new pair of Lightning headphones, or you used wireless headphones with Bluetooth compatible headphones to listen to music. … … Using old 3.5mm headphones with the iPhone 7 is still possible, but it requires the 3.5mm to Lightning adapter that comes with the new iPhone. This meant carrying around an extra, small piece of equipment that was easy to lose. This is an example of Apple making design decisions that affect functionality for the sake of form, a decision the company has made on many occasions in the past (like its decision to remove the optical drive from its 2012 iMacs ).
By some measures, the removal of the 3.5mm headphone jack was a welcome change. By routing audio through the Lightning port, your phone can play higher quality 24-bit audio files, also known as “high-definition audio,” allowing you to listen to studio-quality music. Headphone manufacturers are also taking advantage of the fact that headphones can draw power from the iPhone’s Lightning port by adding features such as noise cancellation and noise reduction DACs ( digital-to-analog converters ) to improve sound quality.
But Lightning-only headphones only work on iOS devices with Lightning ports. To listen to music on any other device, such as a computer or even an old iPhone, you will need another pair of headphones.
No functional adapters yet
Naturally, you might think there is some kind of workaround or adapter that can easily fix this incompatibility issue. After all, Apple makes its own adapters for a lot of older interfaces (like VGA port adapters for mirroring your iOS device to a monitor).
But unlike the 3.5mm headphones that can be used with the iPhone 7 via a dongle made by Apple, there is no way to do the opposite and get Lightning headphones to work with anything that doesn’t have a Lightning port, which is what my colleague’s new MacBook Pro does. with four high-speed reversible USB-C ports and one 3.5mm headphone jack not compatible with its headphones.
There is a dongle for connecting Lightning headphones to a USB-C port and we tried it, but the problem still persists. Lightning-to-USB-C adapters only work when charging or transferring data. That means no audio support, which means no EarPod powered desktop gigs in your open-plan office.
Apple feels comfortable with hostile technologies
The Apple Lightning connector is good for Apple, but not for all of us. It’s only available on Apple iOS devices, so switching to, say, an Android device is inconvenient and costly – you’ll need new cables, headphones, docking stations, etc. To play well with others, Apple had to either keep the headphones 3 , 5 mm. on the iPhone or switched to USB-C, which is what all the other cell phone manufacturers are doing.
And while their move towards incompatibility with other company’s devices is not surprising, it does seem a little odd that they are building such blatant incompatibility in their two most recent devices – the iPhone 7 and the latest MacBook Pro.
The decision to strip the Lightning port from its Macs – and not publicly discuss compatibility issues – also belies its history of transition tools. During the company’s transition from PowerPC to Intel processors, it released the Rosetta translator software to enable PowerPC applications to run on Mac computers with Intel processors. When the MacBook Air debuted without an optical drive, the company’s external SuperDrive made the transition easier.
My theory? Removing the headphone jack and turning on the Lightning EarPods is just a temporary stop for the company’s true goal of getting you to go wireless and buy AirPods or Beats Bluetooth headphones. Considering the options, the option might be to go wireless, although I would have preferred headphones, which, you know, sound good .