[stevefeinstein]

The way he hand-waves away Apple's statement about there being no extra space in the device is arrogant and disingenuous at best.

Does the phone altimeter work as designed? No Does the phone remain waterproof? No

Deal breaker.

[apostacy]

Apple are the ones who are arrogant and disingenuous. It would be easy enough to waterproof the headphone jack, and there is otherwise no serious technical impediment to having one.

Apple is just trying to kill off the open standard headphone jack.

[ballenf]

They were pretty open about exactly that -- wanting to kill off the headphone jack. Since they have gone to all industry standard ports on new MacBooks, I don't know that the argument holds that Apple is against industry standards. When the lightning port was introduced was there an industry-standard small reversible port in use? Just my sense that Apple hasn't been as bad as, e.g., Sony with inventing custom memory sticks for the sole purpose of profit. Firewire was better at the time than USB, etc.

I would be curious whether the headphone port backlash was stronger than Apple predicted. They had to know there would be one. I really don't see how any financial model would have driven the decision -- even a small percentage of lost iPhone sales would easily dwarf profit on a few extra headphone or dongle sales.

Is there any chance the new iPhone will use a USB-C port?

[Tsiklon]

I'd say there's a relative but slim chance of the new phone having a USB-C port, they changed from the 30Pin to Lightning after 5 iterations of the iPhone (and that was 5 model years ago...).

But I think it's more likely they will keep Lightning around for a few more years as they are using it on more than just iOS devices now (see their keyboard and mice, and some of their wireless headphones).

Though it would be nice for them to release an updated version of the standard that can use the higher data transfer speeds afforded by USB3. Especially seeing as they're using NVMe for local flash storage, it could potentially speed up the restore process for iOS devices from your computer.

[z0d]

Apple did it for sole reason being 100% business decision.

1) Sell more MFi licensing since they will earn more per end product made for iPhones. Whereas with the 3.5mm they won't get any source of sustained income.

2) Sell more of their Music equipment after they bought beats. AirPods and Beats wireless with W1.

3) For users wishing to keep using their existing headsets, theirs potential revenues on replacement dongles.

4) The iOS lock that Apple has is a death grip, Many people will adopt to the technology whatever Apple does, be it either the simplicity of the OS or the Apple ecosystem populace which will help them make the Analog open standard close and earn through more and more of their proprietary interfaces. A DRM control mechanism making the product more steered towards Apple in holding control over the end user.

This is a move by apple to drive these other areas of business and improve revenues outside of the iPhone category.

Does removing the headphone jack give them 100% control? No. But it helps push enough people to spend money on things that Apple will directly benefit from additional revenues.