I'm just saying: keep the jack there, it's cheap, it's convenient, it costs next to nothing in any way (BOM, water resistance, space), it gives customers good and valid options, even if they ultimately want to shove a little plug in the hole and forget about it.
It is not like a CD-ROM drive at all, because it is ubiquitous and common in use (unlike optical media at the time of the superdrive removal), and removing it does not notably improve the device in any way. It doesn't hinder form factor, it doesn't hinder any selling point of the device, and it makes hundreds of millions of people happy.
Four years ago, when Apple started removing laptops with optical drives — they only finished this time last year — from their lineup, very few people were still using optical media on a regular basis. Today, almost everyone who uses headphones uses wired ones when they have the option to.
There's a difference between avant-garde, and jumping the gun.
If I ever need a replacement in a pinch, almost every convenience store has an inexpensive pair of compatible headphones, good ones can be bought online or at audio stores.
Headphone jacks also double as line-out jacks, allowing you to play audio through any of the billions (!) of compatible systems without noticeable RF interference even in congested conditions.