Don't have a port, and user will be forced to buy the new headphones => profit for the market. Implement some "genuine accessories" program that'd start spamming user with alerts if the connected headphones won't pass Apple-style cryptographic handshake and they'll have buy it from you => profit for yourself. Also allows for vendor-specific proprietary extensions that weren't easy to have with analog plugs (but still existed), but easy to have with USB-C. Oh, and tell users that it's all for them - improved audio quality (in earbuds, yeah), thinner smartphones, and whatever other advantages marketing division could invent - and users'll eventually accept it.

I feel like it's very prophetic that we already had 2.5mm jacks on phones and everyone I spoke to(me included) hated them because you had to use an adapter for your normal headphones. It doesn't matter if your phone has a 2.5mm jack, usb-c, lightning or any other connector - as long as it's not the most common standard on the market it's going to be disliked.

> as long as it's not the most common standard on the market it's going to be disliked.

Eh. Apple's done this before, as Gruber points out, and they basically won. Nobody at this point (at least, that I hear) complains about Lightning cables. Ditching the 3.5mm jack might be a bad idea, but Apple does have a track record of doing this, which is probably why they think they can get away with it now.

> Nobody at this point (at least, that I hear) complains about Lightning cables.

Lightning was a proprietary Apple connector that replaced the older proprietary 30-pin Apple connector. Not at all comparable to removing the 3.5mm jack.

What did Lightning cables usurp that was as ubiquitous as the 3.5mm audio jack?

If we do that we might as well use a lightning to 3.5 jack-adapter since audio equipment and headphones with 2.5 jack are very rare.

I'm all for keeping the jack output, but using a 2.5 one doesn't solve the problem.

> If we do that we might as well use a lightning to 3.5 jack-adapter

You mean a lightning to 3.5 and an usb-c to 3.5 one. With mandatory Apple/USB tax, DRM may or may not be included, and questionable DAC quality.

A fully passive 2.5→3.5 adapter is much easier, would work with all vendors, and has no potential DRM backdoor capability.

And we'd probably quickly see headphones with native 2.5mm plug and an included 3.5mm adapter, just like we currently have for "high-end" (read: $100) headsets and 6.35mm.

It solves it for the thinness problem. Which is stupid imo, cause why not just shove more battery in that millimeter (I thought the RAZR Maxx was gonna be revolutionary, no one cared apparently), but whatever. 2.5->3.5mm adapters are small and cheap...

Well, I for one do not care enough about battery life to pay the huge bonus the Maxx was selling for when I last brought a Motorolla phone (what I have no plans of doing again).

I'd pay for more battery life, but the bonus was just not worth it. It was easily twice as expensive as the phone I brought, with similar specs. Batteries last for a couple of days already, some more days are just not that big a differential.

We're trying to put headphones, a microphone, and remote controls into this connector. It's already kinda flaky with a 3.5mm form factor, and detecting when something is plugged in is a hard problem that gets even harder when you shrink it.

> It's already kinda flaky with a 3.5mm form factor

No it's not.