Apparently my wired headphones are technically wireless…

I love the convenience of wired headphones - I never have to worry about batteries and I’m way way way less likely to lose them. They won’t drop out of my ears or my pocket and disappear forever.

I don’t love that iPhones have ditched their headphone jack and now I need an adapter so my phone can be just a little itty bitty teeny tiny bit slimmer.

I also don’t love that the official Apple lightning-to-headphone adapter is as flimsy as a blade of grass. Mine died after three years, which I consider a long life, but that means I need a replacement.

BUT…

Apple no longer makes those adapters because they’ve switched from lightning ports to USB-C, and while I applaud the move from a proprietary format to a standard format, I’m not upgrading my phone for it. It feels like one of those moves in which Apple’s slowly trying to make me more uncomfortable until I get irritated enough to buy another phone.

I thought I had found an official Apple adapter on Gopuff, so I bought two thinking I would hoard them. If my last one survived three years, two would last six, and by then Apple wouldn’t provide any more security updates to my iPhone 13 mini from 2021 and I’d buy another phone anyway.

Turns out that the adapter was NOT an official Apple adapter, but it does feel way more sturdy.

It also, to my great confusion, requires a Bluetooth connection.

WTF?

It turns out that hardware manufacturers have to pay Apple a licensing fee to sell accessories that use their proprietary lightning port. But the lightning port still provides power to unlicensed hardware.

The creative minds at budget-conscious hardware companies circumvent this licensing by tapping into the power to drive a tiny Bluetooth device on the headphone end of my adapter that converts from Bluetooth to audio.

Pretty ingenious, but also…now I have to have my Bluetooth on if I want to use my wired headphones.

Hey, Apple: Enshittification much?