Why Apples i. Phone 7 Headphones Dont Work on the Latest Mac. Book. Recently, a new staff member started at Lifehacker. She booted up her brand new, company issued Mac. Book Pro, and went to plug in her Ear. Pods to listen to some tunes while she worked. She was met with the same baffling conundrum as other Apple die hards who rush to procure the latest release Why the hell cant you use the i. Phone 7s Lightning connector headphones with the new Mac. Book Pro Why Get Lightning Headphones in the First Place First, some background. In 2. 01. 2, Apple introduced the smaller Lightning port on the i. Phone 5 replacing the 3. While the Lightning port necessitated a new charging cable, the Lightning connector was more compact than its predecessor and one could plug it into i. OS devices in either direction, making it more convenient. With the i. Phone 7, Apple made the courageous decision to force the use of its Lightning compatible Ear. Pod headphones by removing the 3. In short, your 3. Ear. Pods that came with the phone, you bought a new pair of Lightning headphones, or you went wireless with Bluetooth compatible headphones to listen to music. Using your old 3. Phone 7 is still possible, but requires the 3. Lightning adapter that comes included with the new i. Phone. That meant carrying around an extra, easy to lose little piece of equipment. Its an example of Apple making design decisions that impact function for the sake of form, a decision the companys made at many points in its past for example, its decision to remove the optical drive in its 2. Macs. I admit, I get a wee bit frustrated when trying to remember which cord goes in which slot for allRead more Read. Removing the 3. 5mm headphone jack was was a positive change, by some metrics. By routing audio through the Lightning port, the phone can play higher quality, 2. Sites are constantly changing, updating with stories and even new layouts, making it a challenge to find something you read or saw years ago. If your online writing. A. A B Design A Basses AC Dayton A class AData Technology A E AE Television Networks Lifetime TV A M Supplies Apollo AMark A. N. D. Do not be alarmed, but a bright storm system three quarters the width of our entire planet has emerged over Neptunes equator, in a region where no bright clouds. Noregistration upload of files up to 250MB. Not available in some countries. Headphone manufacturers are also taking advantage of the fact that headphones can draw power from the i. Phones Lightning port, adding features like noise cancellation and interference reducing DACs digital to analog converters to improve sound quality. But Lightning only headphones only work on i. OS devices with Lightning ports. To listen to music on anything else, like your computer, or even an older i. Phone, youll need to tote around another pair of headphones. There Are No Functional Adapters Yet. Naturally, you might think theres some sort of workaround, or an adapter that can easily fix this incompatibility issue. After all, Apple makes its own adapters for a variety of older interfaces for instance, VGA port adapters for mirroring your i. OS device on a monitor. But unlike 3. 5mm headphones, which can be used with an i. Phone 7 via the Apple made dongle, theres no way to do the reverse and get Lightning headphones to work with anything that doesnt have a Lightning port, making my colleagues new Mac. Book Pro, with its four high speed, reversible USB C ports and single 3. We hate to break it to you, but the traditional USB ports youve used to connect your cameras,Read more Read. A dongle does exist to plug Lightning port headphones into a USB C port, and we tried one, but it still didnt fix the problem. Lightning to USB C adapters only work when charging or transferring data. Which means no audio support, which means no Ear. Pod powered desk concerts in your open plan office. Apple Is Comfortable With User Hostile Tech. Apples Lightning connector is convenient for Apple, but not so much for the rest of us. Its only available on Apples i. OS devices, making switching to, say, an Android device an inconvenient and pricey decisionyoull need new cables, headphones, docks etc. To play nice with others, Apple should have either left the 3. Phone, or switched to USB C, which is what every other cell phone manufacturer is doing. And while their move towards incompatibility with other companys devices isnt surprising, it does seem a little weird that theyd build this kind of glaring incompatibility into their two most recent devicesthe i. Phone 7 and the latest Mac. Book pro. The decision to exclude the Lightning port from its Macsand not to publicly address the compatibility issues also runs counter to its history of transition tools. During the companys switch from Power. PC to Intel processors, it released the Rosetta translator software to keep Power. PC apps running on Intel powered Macs. When the Mac. Book Air debuted without an optical drive, the companys external Super. Download Microsoft Outlook Email Free more. Drive optical drive eased the transition. My theory The removal of the headphone jack and inclusion of Lightning Ear. Pods is simply a stop gap to the companys true goal of forcing you to go wireless and buy Air. Pods or Beats Bluetooth headphones. Considering the options, going wireless might be the answer, though Id rather get some headphones that, you know, sound good.