Apple’s sales haven’t really been affected. From personal experience I don’t miss it on my iPhone. I’ve used the adapter maybe a dozen times in the year I have had the phone.
I don't know why this is so heavily downvoted, it totally lines up with my experience. I got an iPhone 7 when it was released, and I even bought a second audio adapter thinking I'd need it. I've used them maybe 5-10 times in ~16 months?
I mean, at home I've got Chromecast Audio or Bluetooth speakers. At work or my desk at home I don't listen from my phone. And on the go I really hate cables, I always fear that I'm going to damage the port when walking with the phone in a pocket and positioning the cable is awkward with a warm jacket in winter.
That being said I see lots of iphone users either never listening to music on their iphone or using the default white headphones that come along the phone, which are of a terrible quality and super-leaky. These people do not care about music quality, so it is unsurprising they wouldn't be bothered by this change.
Man the DAC in the phones was never that good anyway, so complaining about the sound quality of the earbuds is silly. Sure they don't sound as good as better headphones, but the iPhone comes with an adapter so you can still use whatever headphones you want if you want to do that.
If you really care about sound quality you weren't using the headphone jack on a phone (and its not so great DAC) anyway.
There's a _very_ big difference in quality between the iPhone earbuds and high quality earbuds/headphones, and a relatively small difference in quality between different DACs. And outboard DACs come with a lot of tradeoffs: extra hardware, battery life (or another battery to charge), cost, and so on. So there are many people who care about sound quality and invested in high quality earbuds/headphones, but rationally didn't spring for an outboard DAC. You get 98% of the quality without it.
I found the DAC to be good enough, way better than any mp3 player I used before the ipod was released.
Complaining about the sound quality of earbuds is only "silly" if the iphone DAC is so bad that one wouldn't tell the difference between a good and bad earphone, which is clearly not the case.
I don't for two reasons. One I don't want to carry dongles. Two it blocks the charging port and I often listen to music at my desk, where I also need it to charge. Doesn't work for me.
For the vast majority of people the supplied Apple ear phones are just fine and I don't see that as an issue. You don't have to be obsessed with music quality to enjoy reasonably sounding music. I don't not watch movies if I can't see them in theater.
I mean, at home I've got Chromecast Audio or Bluetooth speakers. At work or my desk at home I don't listen from my phone. And on the go I really hate cables, I always fear that I'm going to damage the port when walking with the phone in a pocket and positioning the cable is awkward with a warm jacket in winter.
Is my use case really so atypical?