Long the standard bearer for delivering portable audio, the 3.5mm headphone jack had its plug pulled one final time, in Cupertino, on September 7, 2016, and reportedly met its fate with a steely courage you don’t often see outside of Apple designers. In its long and storied life, it survived countless audio formats, from vinyl to 8-tracks, cassette tapes, and CDs. In recent years, it had even coexisted peacefully with purely digital formats, and the advent of wireless streaming technologies, such as Bluetooth.
Originating in use with the military and with radio operators, the convenience of its format found favor with the explosion of the home audio market in the 1960s. To call the 3.5mm ubiquitous would be an understatement—it was truly universal.
Universality, however, is not to stand in the way of progress, and at their annual iPhone announcement event, Apple sent the 3.5mm headphone jack the way of the dinosaur, spinning optical drive, FireWire, and Ethernet ports, and immediately rendered all your existing non-Bluetooth headphones retro chic (you’re welcome). Progress may be hard, but it’s never cruel, so Apple will include a pair of Lighting-connector equipped EarPods, as well as a Lightning-to-3.5mm adapter.
If using this now apparently dated format screams gauche to your futurist sensibility, you have no shortage of options, and that list will undoubtedly grow now that the digital-only cat is out of the bag. Bluetooth headphones are certainly not new to the market, but now will become an even more viable option for playback from your iPhone 7. If the appeal of a Lightning-connector enabled pair of cans speaks to you, but you want something with a little more fidelity than EarPods, you do have options already, from audiophile heavyweights Audeze, as well as Sony. Keep in mind that Apple itself now owns Beats, so Lightning–equipped models from that company are a safe bet.
