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One little, two little, three little dongles. Four little, five little, six little dongles. Seven little, eight little, nine little dongles. 25 little dongles in a row. I know, I skipped a few, but I was stretching the absurdity a little far, even for me. So, what am I am talking about? Dr. Andrew Leavitt gathered up all 25 dongles/adapters Apple currently sells. With folks thinking about the headphone jack going the way of the floppy, it’s an interesting list to consider. I hadn’t realized Apple still sold 30-Pin adapters, for instance. And how about that External USB to Modem adapter? Who has external modems any more? I know, apparently someone. Check out Dr. Leavitt’s list. The image at the top, BTW, is a mockup of a headphone jack-to-Lightning adapter. I can’t imagine Apple could make it so small—you’re going to need some signal processing in there somewhere.

There has been much (pointless) wailing and gnashing of teeth about Apple ditching the headphone jack. We’ll find out if Apple is really doing it Wednesday morning, but there’s at least one Lightning headphone jack adapter already in the wild. It has the unsexy name of HRT i-dSp Headphone digital Sound Processor, and it allows you to connect a regular pair of headphones to an iOS device through the Lightning port. Don’t rush out and buy it just yet, though. For one thing, we don’t know how Apple is handling the transition. For another, this device also requires an Apple Lightning to USB Camera Adapter, making it unwieldy. I expect more seamless devices sooner, rather than later, if Apple does ditch that port. My point in posting this, however, is that there are already solutions on the market for a problem that doesn’t yet exist.