Phone, youll need to tote around another pair of headphones. There Are No Functional Adapters Yet. Naturally, you might think theres some sort of workaround, or an adapter that can easily fix this incompatibility issue. After all, Apple makes its own adapters for a variety of older interfaces for instance, VGA port adapters for mirroring your i. OS device on a monitor. But unlike 3. 5mm headphones, which can be used with an i. Phone 7 via the Apple made dongle, theres no way to do the reverse and get Lightning headphones to work with anything that doesnt have a Lightning port, making my colleagues new Mac. Book Pro, with its four high speed, reversible USB C ports and single 3. We hate to break it to you, but the traditional USB ports youve used to connect your cameras,Read more Read. A dongle does exist to plug Lightning port headphones into a USB C port, and we tried one, but it still didnt fix the problem. Lightning to USB C adapters only work when charging or transferring data. Which means no audio support, which means no Ear. Pod powered desk concerts in your open plan office. Apple Is Comfortable With User Hostile Tech. Photo Mechanic 5 Serial Number. Apples Lightning connector is convenient for Apple, but not so much for the rest of us. Its only available on Apples i. OS devices, making switching to, say, an Android device an inconvenient and pricey decisionyoull need new cables, headphones, docks etc. To play nice with others, Apple should have either left the 3. Phone, or switched to USB C, which is what every other cell phone manufacturer is doing. And while their move towards incompatibility with other companys devices isnt surprising, it does seem a little weird that theyd build this kind of glaring incompatibility into their two most recent devicesthe i. Phone 7 and the latest Mac. Book pro. The decision to exclude the Lightning port from its Macsand not to publicly address the compatibility issues also runs counter to its history of transition tools. During the companys switch from Power. PC to Intel processors, it released the Rosetta translator software to keep Power. PC apps running on Intel powered Macs. When the Mac. Book Air debuted without an optical drive, the companys external Super. Drive optical drive eased the transition. My theory The removal of the headphone jack and inclusion of Lightning Ear. Pods is simply a stop gap to the companys true goal of forcing you to go wireless and buy Air. Pods or Beats Bluetooth headphones. Considering the options, going wireless might be the answer, though Id rather get some headphones that, you know, sound good.