I'm wondering if, at some point, they'll ditch the headphone jack for a second USB-C port. But that would require having USB-C headphones, which Apple might not be willing to make.
If they added a lighting port on Macs too.
Suddenly all kinds of peripherals for iPhone/iPad could be reused with Macs too (with the appropriate driver updates).
Too bad they're expensive. Interestingly they're $275 here in .se, but listed as $399 on the US page.
Kinda? Apple owns Beats so http://www.beatsbydre.com/headphones/browse-headphones/wirel...
Normal usage time is about 4 hours on the cheaper units I use, and that's just playback without any microphone use. Maybe longer on more expensive units, while they are new, but I doubt many would get you through a whole work day of continuous activity.
Also, pairing is still fiddly and would probably put off a lot of casual users. (Especially when you have a N-to-N mapping between devices and headphones.)
USB-C could still work if there are enough ports. While it's been great having a common standard for headphones across devices (partly thanks to the original iPhone not requiring a custom dongle), it does start to feel a bit of an anomaly in an era where everything is converging on the new USB standard(s).
Why? USB DACs exist. I use one all the time with my apple stuff.
And I, as part of a seemingly and disappointingly small subset of users, will refuse to ever buy.
If those headphones don't unplug from the amp to allow me to use a 3.5mm stereo jack. Yes.
>or would you refuse to buy a dedicated amp/dac with which you could use any headphones?
I would not refuse that.
I try to avoid buying products which have non-standard connectors that limit connectivity with other devices.
I only buy headphones with a standard 3.5mm stereo jack because I have a ton of different devices and I don't want to limit myself to audio devices which only have a USB port or Bluetooth chip. That's just silly in my eyes.
If the headphones have a stereo jack then my opinion of them might be different, but still dependent on their quality.