[scheeseman486]

Space is at a premium on mobile and water ingress is a problem, there's no licensing fees to use such a jack and the part itself is absolute peanuts to buy. The real estate they gained by getting rid of the part eventually got filled by something that's almost certainly more expensive.

You don't have to overthink, you just need to think. Why permanently graft a part to a highly space optimized device when it isn't even being used most of the time?

I got over it, you should too. It helps to try to put off the onset of grumpy old man syndrome as long as possible.

[smolder]

I've been enjoying using the headphone jack on my new android phone with the very nice headphones I have. There's nothing to "get over" if you don't want to. Headphone jacks won't be obsolete in my lifetime, even if they mostly disappear from phones.

[einr]

Why permanently graft a part to a highly space optimized device when it isn't even being used most of the time?

I mean, that's a valid way to view it, but I doubt it was an engineering decision first and foremost. Hanlon's razor applies: 1) Apple makes a ton of money from selling AirPods and 2) this decision was made during the Jony Ive era of "remove literally everything that is not strictly necessary just because fewer ports is more aesthetically pleasing". Under these conditions, of course they would remove the headphone jack. It's Apple doing Apple shit.

But: people used the same arguments -- less ports saves space, who needs it, etc -- to argue that the HDMI port, MagSafe, and decent keyboards would never come back. But they did, in MacBooks that were thicker than the previous generation. Sometimes you can teach old dogs new tricks.

They could have polled the market to see what it wants: release an iPhone that has a headphone jack and is slightly bigger if needed, and a slim one that doesn't have one. This will never happen, and that is my point: you or I will never know if people care, because people never had the ability to choose.