Steve Wozniak: An iPhone without a headphone jack would ‘tick off a lot of people’

Steve Wozniak is not about to buy a new pair of headphones just for the new iPhone 7.

The Apple cofounder told the Australian Financial Review yesterday that personally, he’s attached to his existing earphones.

“Mine have custom ear implants, they fit in so comfortably, I can sleep on them and everything,” he said in an interview with the newspaper. “And they only come out with one kind of jack, so I’ll have to go through the adapter.”

Apple has not provided information about whether an adapter — or alternatively, a pair of earphones with a Lightning cable — will come in the box with the next iPhone, but many reports have indicated that the device will arrive without a headphone jack.

If that does end up happening, wireless headphones would be an option. But that’s not to Woz’s liking.

“If there’s a Bluetooth 2 that has higher bandwidth and better quality, that sounds like real music, I would use it. But we’ll see,” Wozniak is quoted as saying. He also said he thought the USB-C standard would be “the future,” an idea that’s in line with Apple, to an extent.

Apple’s 2015 and 2016 MacBooks have both had only one USB-C port and one headphone jack, and the next MacBook Pro is rumored to sport four USB-C ports. The iPhone, though, plays a special role at Apple — it’s the primary moneymaker. And so the company is not expected to rid the smartphone of its Lightning port, at least not this year. But the headphone jack is another matter.

“If it’s missing the 3.5mm earphone jack, that’s going to tick off a lot of people,” Wozniak said.