The New Apple Accessories – Lightning Connector, Earpod Headphones and microUSB Adapters

Well with Apple’s big announcement gone and out of the way it’s now time for us to digest what exactly Apple has revealed, and aside from the actual hardware we are going to look at the new accessories and connectors for the Apple iPhone 5 and what this means to users.

First of all Apple has announced a new connection port for the iPhone 5, and with this comes a whole host of issues. Firstly the new Lightning connector causes an immediate issue in Europe where the European legislation means that the connector is not adhering to the European Commission’s compliance insistence that all smartphones must have a microUSB connector.

So to get around this Apple will be selling a Euro-specific adapter for its new Lightning standard that can be bought from the UK and French Apple stores for £15/€19. This adapter will allow users to connect a micro USB to the iPhone 5 for connection but to be honest the last thing we want is a longer cables stretching out of our PCs!

Speaking of the Lightning connection port, the new 8-pin port brings up a host of issues for all the people that have existing Apple related accessories, as the iPhone 5 will simply no longer fit any of the older devices.

That is unless you buy the new Lightning to 30-pin adapter for a whopping £25 from the Apple store to connect your older accessories to the new phone! We have no idea how this will work with most accessories as the adapter itself is quite large and bulky so you may not even be able to connect the device with the adapter – some docking stations are rather limited in terms of space around the connector.

And finally we have Apple’s new EarPods headphones, which will replace all of the Apple headphones on new devices going forward. They still keep the remote and mic for iPhone control, and unlike the older headphones, which whilst iconic were possibly the most uncomfortable headphones ever, are designed to rest comfortably inside a variety of ear types.

Apple also states that the speakers inside Apple EarPods have been engineered to minimise sound loss and maximise sound output. They also say that you get high-quality audio that’s just as impressive as what you’d hear from more expensive headphones, but we’ll be the judge of that!

So that’s what we have so far but we can assume that after the iPhone 5 and iPod Nano and iPod Touch are released a host of new products and accessories will hit the market.

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