Apple Announces iPhone 7 and AirPods

Jason Tate

Apple has announced the iPhone 7. It does not contain a 3.5mm headphone jack, instead including lightning headphones in the box, and an adapter for your old headphones. The adapter is also available separately for $9. Apple has also announced their new wireless headphone solution, dubbed “AirPods.” Those will be available in October and cost $159.

The pitch was actually pretty simple: wireless is better. The devil will be in the details of implementation, but they touted a simple pairing method that looks impressive. If I had to guess, I’d say that as battery life in wireless headphones improves, and as they become more popular and costs drop, wireless will be ubiquitous. Being a 90’s kid will be talking about how you used to have a wire running from your phone to your head all the time. It’s going to be an interesting transition to watch.

Review: Jimmy Eat World – Integrity Blues

Jimmy Eat World - Integrity Blues
Jason Tate

This first impression was originally posted as a live blog for supporters in our forums on September 6th, 2016. First impressions are meant to be quick, fun, initial impressions on an album or release as I listen to it for the first time. It’s a running commentary written while listening to an album — not a review. More like a diary of thoughts. This post has been lightly edited for structure and flow.

It’s here.

It’s time.

I’m going to do a first listen thread for the upcoming Jimmy Eat World album, Integrity Blues. A couple of thoughts going in: I usually try and listen to an album three times or so before doing a first listen thread, so I kind of have an idea of what I wanna talk about on each song. But because it’s JEW, and because a lot of people have been waiting for this one, and because they’re my favorite band, I’m going to do this having only listened to the album once all the way through.

I’m clearly very bias with this band, they’re basically my favorite band ever, so you should know that as well going in … like, there’s no objective way I can listen to these guys, so I’m not going to even try.

My first over-arching impressions is that this album is very Futures-esque in a lot of ways. Layers, dark, big huge pop-rock. But it includes some Invented and CTL themes as well. I think that by and large this is what I love best from the band, and I think recording with JMJ was a fantastic choice. That big huge sound just works so well with this band and on these songs they really sound big, polished, and it’s almost a complete 180 from Damage in how it sounds.

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind at another time, and this isn’t really a “review” as much as it is me going through and listening to an album and just writing down my thoughts on it while it plays.

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What to Expect at Tomorrow’s Apple Event

Apple
Jason Tate

Apple will be, presumably, debuting new iPhones tomorrow at their annual September event. Jason Snell, at Six Colors, has a good run down on what to expect, and what to look for:

Is there an additional wireless audio story? There have been rumors swirling around for a while that part of the headphone-jack removal would be a new set of Apple-branded wireless headphones, dubbed EarPods. Whether or not that rumor is true, I’m curious how Apple promotes wireless audio. Does it highlight Beats? Does it unveil new Apple-branded headphones? Does it use an alternative technology to Bluetooth?

The Apple thread in our forums is always a fun place to talk about the announcements when they drop. So, if you’re watching tomorrow morning at 10:00am (PDT), come join in while we complain about our headphone jack-less future.