This story has been updated to reflect comment from Apple.
Apple’s Tim Cook might just be that crazy after all.
The company is reportedly ready to eliminate the standard 3.5mm headphone jack from the next edition of its iPhone, the iPhone 7, according to a report in Fast Company.
Rumors about this move have been floating around for months. As Fortune’s resident Apple (AAPL) expert Philip Elmer-DeWitt argued in November, “Apple would be crazy to drop it on the iPhone,” because it would force millions of customers to ditch headphones and other hardware that connects to the port, that they have come to know and love.
In their place, Apple users would have to resort to bluetooth headphones, or as Fast Company reports, “the new phone will rely on its Lightning cable port for sound output to wired headphones.” Elmer-DeWitt noted that this would be frustrating for users, but that it’s not an unprecedented move. He wrote:
Is Apple really prepared to render obsolete countless third-party headphones, hundreds of millions of its own white earbuds, and those clever magstrip credit-card readers (like Square’s) that slot into the port?
It wouldn’t be the first time Apple had abandoned a popular technological standard in the name of a higher purpose—like shaving another millimeter off the … iPhone 6S. Remember when the Mac lost the floppy disk? The CD-ROM? The DVD? Firewire? USB Type-A?
An Apple spokesperson declined to comment on the rumors.
