[lxgr]

Why should any manufacturer include components in a device that customers clearly don’t value enough for it to make a difference to them?

I get the objection to Apple artificially creating demand for proprietary adapters; I dislike that too.

But what good would it do me if they make me pay for a component I don’t need? I don’t get gratification out of reducing (nor increasing) their bottom line.

[brokenmachine]

>Why should any manufacturer include components in a device that customers clearly don’t value enough for it to make a difference to them?

If Apple sold a model with a headphone jack and a model without, then we could compare sales numbers between the two models and you could make that claim.

Of course, Apple doesn't sell a model with a headphone jack.

What they do sell however, coincidentally enough, is $300 wireless headphones.

[microtonal]

They also sell $19 lightning and USB-C EarPods, which were/are exactly the same price as the mini-jack EarPods. Or if you want to use different headphones, a $10 lightning/USB-C to jack adapter. They must be getting rich of those $19 headphones :p.

People in tech circles also lambasted Apple for removing DVD drives and a lot of other things. Yet a lot of non-tech people prefer Bluetooth ANC buds or headphones.

Also, if they were so intent on killing the jack for money, why do they still have it on MacBooks and even upgraded it with an amplifier that supports high-impedance headphones?

Better waterproofing and re-using the space sound like perfectly valid reasons.

[brokenmachine]

>They must be getting rich of those $19 headphones :p.

Artificially limiting the available options coincidentally encourages some to buy the $300 headphones.

Selling some $300 headphones is better than none.

>Also, if they were so intent on killing the jack for money, why do they still have it on MacBooks and even upgraded it with an amplifier that supports high-impedance headphones?

They will remove it when they can. The laptop frog is not yet boiled enough.

>Better waterproofing and re-using the space sound like perfectly valid reasons.

Phones haven't gotten thinner or more waterproof despite removing the headphone jack.

My Samsung S10 5G from 2019 is the same thickness and has IP68 waterproofing just like the iPhone 15, but does have a headphone jack.

Coincidentally, it's the last flagship Samsung with a headphone jack.

Phone companies are just regurgitating the same shit year over year.

The SOCs take up the same space and batteries should be improving, so I don't accept space saving as a valid reason, especially when they haven't become slimmer.

I wish all the companies would just make the best phone they could instead of nickel and diming their customers.

But Apple is definitely the worst offender, and does their best to normalize so much anti-consumer stuff.

[lxgr]

But you can also use $10 wired non-Apple headphones with an iPhone, so why does Apple selling more expensive ones matter?

[brokenmachine]

Because artificially limiting the available options will encourage some to buy the Apple expensive ones.

[lxgr]

Why should it matter to me what some people choose to do as long as there are good alternatives?

[brokenmachine]

I believe that it should be obvious that the headphone jack was removed purely as a self-serving business decision because Apple wanted to sell more overpriced accessories, and not because customers didn't want it.

I'd also like to make the comment that almost all high-quality headphones are made for analog jacks.

So as a person who values high-quality audio, I am not interested in wireless headphones of any kind, cheap shitty USBC headphones, or needing to use an ugly inconvenient dongle to use my good headphones.

Lucky for me I'm not an Apple customer anyway for a myriad of reasons, but I'd argue there are no good alternatives for what would be my use case.

[qubitcoder]

The ATH-M50xSTS StreamSet is fantastic. And it works perfectly via USB-C.

[1] https://www.audio-technica.com/en-us/ath-m50xsts