With simply eight days to go till Apple’s “Wonderlust” press occasion, the place the iPhone 15 is just about sure to be introduced, pundits stay uncertain of the opposite merchandise that may debut alongside it. One sturdy chance, primarily based on a brand new report, is an up to date model of the AirPods Professional. That’s honest sooner than we’d usually count on, coming only one yr after the 2nd-gen version.
Earlier than you get too excited, it’s value noting that the supply—Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, writing within the newest version of his Energy On e-newsletter—doesn’t count on the brand new AirPods Professional to include any noteworthy modifications from the earlier fashions. With one exception: their case will function a USB-C charging port as an alternative of Lightning.
Gurman doesn’t say whether or not the Third-gen AirPods or AirPods Max will get a USB-C improve on the identical time. Apple beforehand launched a MagSafe case for the AirPods Professional on the iPhone 13 occasion with no different new options. Apple up to date the AirPods Professional case alongside with 2nd-gen mannequin in September 2022 with a brand new speaker and lanyard loop.
Apple usually prefers to make use of proprietary charging requirements the place potential, as a result of this offers the corporate larger management over tech specs and design and the potential for passive income through licensed third-party equipment. However as Gurman observes elsewhere within the e-newsletter, Apple is in an uncommon and quite awkward place this fall, having been obliged by political stress to do one thing it has lengthy refused to do: specifically, change from Lightning to USB-C on the iPhone. And for PR causes it should now need to give the impression that it’s totally dedicated to the change and that (regardless of having argued towards it for years) the change brings advantages for patrons.
In different phrases, having defended Lightning for therefore lengthy, Apple is now more likely to transfer to ditch it pretty rapidly. We already know the 15-series iPhones will function USB-C ports, whereas the iPad vary accomplished the transition to USB-C in 2022; this would go away Lightning because the connection alternative on some older iPhones that Apple will proceed to promote (there have been rumors of a new USB-C model of the iPhone 14 and even perhaps iPhone 13, however analysts have cooled on that concept) and numerous equipment and charging gadgets.
To simplify the vary, and for the sake of a unified advertising message (“USB-C is sweet now”), Apple will need to shift its Magic Keyboards, Magic Mice, and different equipment away from Lightning as quickly as it could actually, evidently together with the AirPods Professional case. And we sit up for watching Tim Cook dinner attempt to clarify why that is all a superb factor.
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