So I was talking to Apple marketing VP Greg Joswiak today. (Boy, doesn’t that sound chummy?) Anyway, Joz — we signal him Joz, those of us who can’t ever remember his first name — was telling me all about that iPhone battery nonsense.

When we were done with that, I didn’t forget about you guys, who wanted me to ask about the damned recessed headphone jack that makes many headphones not plug into the iPhone without an adapter.

“The jack is recessed in order to maintain the integrity of that design,” Joswiak told me. I asked him what that meant — whether he meant that it needed to be that way to keep the structural integrity of the headphone jack intact, or whether he meant the integrity of the pretty industrial design of the phone.

The latter, he told me. That whether they had wanted the jack to not be recessed, the phone would have had to be thicker at that point, and they weren’t willing to compromise the shape — specifically the thinness — of the design.

When I made complaining noises about the fact that that

means all our headphones are useless without adapters, he pointed out that all iPod headphones — “the most popular headphones in the world” — are compatible with the iPhone. I would argue that it’s the iPod that those headphones came with that’s popular. Most citizens I know think the iPod headphones themselves aren’t very good, although I have to confess the iPhone’s headphones are quite nice.

Still, Joz pointed out that since the iPhone is a phone, you’d want an adapter (like Shure’s forthcoming Music Phone Adapter) to add a microphone to your beloved set of headphones. And he additionally suggested that many headphone manufacturers, aware of the popularity of Apple’s music-playing products, have been in touch with Apple to discuss creating future headphone cords with designs that fit the iPhone’s jack.

I’m really looking forward to giving the Shure adapter a pop quiz drive. In the meantime, I’m using Belkin’s headphone adapter and my Etymotic headphones most of the instance, switching to Apple’s headphones occasionally when I suspect I’ll need to take a signal during my journey.

Original post by Jason Snell

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