iPhone 7 headphone jack may be removed tonight and people are getting VERY nervous
The new smartphone will be launched tonight at a glittering event - but tech fans are bracing for bad news
Apple fans have threatened to boycott the iPhone 7 if the firm goes ahead with plans to remove the device's headphone jack.
The new smartphone will be unveiled tonight, where Apple is widely expected to kill off the port which allows people to plug in earphones.
This controversial design decision would push millions of people into replacing pricey headphones and accessories because they will never again work properly with Apple's latest smartphone model.
The fruity firm will potentially give away near new "earpods" with the iPhone 7 - and try to flog more expensive "airpods" - but that's probably no comfort to the Apple fan whose 200 quid headphones are now redundant.
The rumoured move is already enraging tech lovers.
Nilay Patel, a blogger who write for The Verge,
"I’m seriously considering switching to Android, that’s how annoying this is to me.
"It seems like a real strong way to alienate users."
Tech bible The Verge said the "stupid" plan was "hostile" towards Apple fans.
It claimed the plan would allow Apple to control how people listened to music and clamp down on piracy.
Currently, there is a phenomenon called the "analogue loophole" which means you can play pretty much any audio recording on your iPhone and pipe it out through the headphone jack.
If Lightning headphones were able to enforce a copyright protection system called "digital rights management", it could mean Apple would have the ability to simply stop the iPhone from playing songs which weren't bought from certain online stories.
This would help the music industry by cutting back on the losses caused by piracy.
However, it would really annoy a lot of music lovers, who could face difficulties playing files they had recorded themselves and encounter all sorts of niggles which would inevitably make listening to tunes a bit more frustrating.
To understand what this means, just think of the good old days when we all bought records and CDs.
Once you had bought these items, you could store them carefully and they were pretty much guaranteed to play on every turntable and CD player in the world.
But if you purchased songs with digital rights management built in, they could be programmed so you can only open them using a certain program - like iTunes - or on a certain device using special headphones.
The headphone jack removal plans could also mean users are pushed into joining the world of Spotify-style music streaming, where you don't actually own the music you listen to and simply opt to pay a monthly fee for the right to listen to it.
Project iFear starts here.
We pay for your stories! Do you have a story for The Sun Online news team? Email us at tips@the-sun.co.uk or call 0207 782 4368