But the headphone jack? No, that one is Apple pushing people around. It's not to make the phone "thinner" because that fugly lens protrusion is hideous, and the 7 is exactly as thick as the 6S, anyway. It's not to make the phone "waterproof"; $.00000002/phone worth of silicone around the jack could have done that. As Schiller himself said, it "comes down to one word — courage."
It's purely about seeing if they can dictate to their customers, and people are lining up, all, "Shut up and take my money!"
EDIT: vulgarity.
Once again, problem solved.
Can we please at least have the same conversation? Or are you more interested in down-shouting anyone who has this objection with "quit your bitching" and "problem solved"?
One connector. Not one connector except for this one I particularly like.
And that's why I say I like a company with the balls to bring in the future, even if it pisses off the minority that clings tenaciously to its old tech.
Most of the best headphone companies are not experts in digital-analog conversion. Nor should they need to be, because having a separate usb audio interface built into every set of headphones is a stupid idea.
It's fine if all you want to use is the absolute crap Apple earbuds, but for people like me who have spent a lot of money on nice headphones, it's ridiculous. If you want to use quality headphones or IEMs, they don't come with USB connectors, and I pray they never need to because that's a stupid idea.
I don't care either way because I hate Apple's business practices and would never purchase their products, but I think Apple will have to backflip on their "courage" on this one.
Even people drinking the Apple kool-aid seem to be angry about this headscratcher. Maybe the base of people who care about what headphones they use won't be large enough to change their "courageous" minds though. Apple doesn't care about professionals and they don't care about audiophiles. I think especially antagonizing the professional market will hurt them in the medium term.
Ever since my first computer 35 years ago, I've dreamed of the day when we could get rid of all these individual ports and finally have the One True Connector.
Yeah, the transition period sucks. Yeah, you'll have to buy $25 dongles. So what? There's a usb-c dongle that has HDMI, SD card reader, and 4 usb 3 type A ports on it for $30. Done. Problem solved. Stop bitching.
I still have old style keyboard to ps/2 adapters, ps/2 to usb adapters, composite to VGA adapters, VGA to DVI adapters, DVI to HDMI adapters, HDMI to thunderbolt adapters, serial and parallel to USB adapters, IDE to SATA adapters, SATA to USB adapters... And now I'm glad to see that era is finally at an end.
And in a few years when there are no more peripherals using outdated ports, nobody will even remember this time, or your griping.