damnit
how will i look professional now

That little 'lightning to 3.5mm' cable, actually has a dac built into it. The phone itself doesnt have any dac.

ofc its digital output

It's just interesting that they decided to put a built in dac, the size of a fingernail (If not smaller) In the actual cable.

I had thought they were just going to run an analog signal through 1-2 of the traces & have an adapter, tbh.

I figured that they seen proprietary cable licenses yet again, now instead of just plain cable they can license many other audiophile crap and have tier dacs inside along with licenses for headphones with dacs that go straight to the port

they already have great esitmate on the numbers on how many cables they sell cuz of lost/damagaed/etc, along with the numbers of how many people actually use their itunes, along with making their airpods at $160, shit they be banking all over on this