[nullc]

> Nobody has said "well thank God my new MacBook has no ports" or "I'm glad my battery isn't removable". The support column for these decisions is empty.

No, but they do say "thank god my device survived being splashed by water" or "I'm happy this teeny tiny thin device doesn't leave an unsightly lump in my pocket"

The de-featuring isn't capricious -- it's a result of optimizing for different tradeoffs. While it would be best for the customers if multiple vendors managed to tile the pareto frontier of feature combinations, allowing us all to pick a product that serves us best, for the vendors bunching up around a single point is a more stable equilibrium.

[kristopolous]

I've never bought that argument. Apple wanted to sell high margin accessories that get broken, lost and replaced often because people hold on to their devices about 4 years now instead of the 1-2 from 10 years ago.

I use a panasonic wired headphone with a mic, $10. Airpods are $200. They wanted to increase their costs and frequency of purchase by hiding it behind accessories with higher profits and shorter longevity than the primary device.

[nullc]

How does that explain the same decisions being made by other vendors that don't sell headphones?

[scarface_74]

You realize that not only can you buy non Apple headphones, Apple sells Bluetooth headphones with the same integration that the AirPods have for $70?