Some Chinese brand Lightning headphones require Bluetooth, for a wild reason | Hacker News Reader

Some Chinese brand Lightning headphones require Bluetooth, for a wild reason

9to5mac.com

15 pointsjurmous8 comments

> True Apple lightning devices are more expensive to make. So instead of conforming to the Apple standard, these companies have made headphones that receive audio via bluetooth — avoiding the Apple specification — while powering the bluetooth chip via a wired cable, thereby avoiding any need for a battery.

I can confirm as I own one of these.

This sort of convoluted nonsense is what happens when "standards" are really more about marketing than functionality.

A big part of this "standard" is to sell expensive airpods over low cost wired headphones. The Chinese deserve credit for innovating around it.

My first though was that there might have been some quality/power difference between regular lightning and Fake Lightning, but then it jumped to me that lightning is a digital signal, theorically there's no loss right?

Or is there some pseudo analog magic when converting from Lightning to 3.5mm jack?

Analog conversion is the only way to get digital sound into your ears and your brain.

Wired or wireless doesn't make much difference in the overall scheme of things as far as quality is concerned.

This reminds me of the time I bought a fake ipod off ebay in the late 2000s that was 8Gb but would do weird stuff as I copied music over. It was overwrite other seemingly random songs as I copied over using the provided "itunes" lol. It took me a while to realize it but their "secret space technology" was just that. A 1gb drive that somehow looked 8Gb to windows. Their software just did some tricks to make like it appeared to work

The real reason Bluetooth is required --- profit/greed.

Apple attempts to monopolize and profitize every aspect of their products --- even down to external attachments. Not because it is *better* for the user\consumer but because it is *better* for Apple.

The EU finally passed a law prohibiting the most egregious example --- the Lightening connector.

Is the production cost difference still favorable when amortizing the intentional radiator certification costs they likely aren't paying for anyway?

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