1. It’s impossible for Apple to make a device that perfectly pleases everyone
2. Not all feature sets are possible
3. Apple constantly makes decisions about which trade-offs to make
Sometimes you’re just not the target market for a device a company makes. That’s ok, and it isn’t necessarily the fault of the company that such is the case, they just opted for a different feature set than the one you would have preferred.
No one has introduced the standard of perfect pleasure here. The standard that has been introduced is one of both ability and ease in regards to what I'd think anyone would agree is a fundamental feature for a personal mobile device: getting audio to route from that device to common output devices or even arbitrary output devices.
If anyone thinks that standard is unreasonable or even not relevant to Apple's market, I'd be interested to hear about that.
As far as feature sets and tradeoffs go -- yeah, that's an argument that I find compelling in a lot of product discussions. But it really loses its power when we're talking about a feature that's been present in every. smartphone. ever. up until the iPhone 7 and non-Apple smartphones since. It's hard to take seriously the argument that keeping it just wasn't possible. Tradeoffs? Maybe. But good tradeoffs mean you gained something worth as much or more as what you traded away. I haven't come across any credible explanation of compelling features (let alone market-distinguishing features) the iPhone gained that required shedding the 1/8" audio jack. If you're in the know on this one, by all means, explain.
Overall, it seems more credible that maybe, just maybe, Apple underestimated the broad "just works" utility of the feature they removed here and actually got this one wrong. Or, possibly, "just works" wasn't a functioning value when it came to this decision.
Add to the fact that they obsess over making their devices beautifully engineered by making them slimmer and lighter to increase portability. The more portable your hardware is, the more you are likely to use it and recommend it to others. Portability helps Apple sell more devices. This has been Apple's focus since Job's return.
A few examples:
1. They were one of the first laptop makers to do away with integrated CD/DVD drives because they saw that fewer and fewer people were using them. The tradeoff here is obvious: they figured that Internet speeds would improve to the point that it would eventually replace 4.7GB DVDs as the standard means of distributing software for most of their customers (read: people with high disposable income). This has happened.
2. Apple was the first to ship a mainstream device (iMac) that supported the USB standard (which they didn't invent). USB adoption helped obsolete older tech: serial, parallel and PS/2 ports.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#History
3. The iPhone obsoleted keyboard-centric phone designs from BlackBerry, Nokia, Samsung etc which were widespread prior to 2007 to a more natural touch-centric interface. Apple had previously launched the failed Newton device but this time they made several complementary investments in the user experience that made them feel confident that touch interfaces had matured enough to become mainstream. Remember that the first iPhone didn't even have copy&paste, regardless, their bet against old tech paid off :).
I'm not Apple or its representative, merely trying to help the grandparent see why Apple would do what they did.
If you are a musician that can actually hear, Bluetooth headphones of any kind are a non-starter. It is mathematically impossible for BT to have sufficient dynamic range and low enough noise noise floor for classical strings, for instance. Bluetooth sets my teeth on edge.
Does "works for me" work for you as a reason for closing a software ticket?
Built-in speakers and bluetooth are probably the most common audio output cases for me, and I suspect it's that way for most people. It's totally fine and probably a good idea to recognize that and improve the experience on that front.
But complicating corner cases are a definite reality. If you're someone who was treating your iPhone as a digital musical instrument, for example, bluetooth's latency probably makes it a no go for you. But of course, that's too niche, not a market that Apple does or should have to care about, those people should be buying more complicated niche hardware, right? OK, let's use a "normal consumer" example: if you're someone who likes to connect your iPhone to a car stereo, then maaaybe bluetooth will work out for you, or maybe it's going to be an interesting challenge dealing with the auto/stereo manufacturer's implementation. A 1/8" aux input? Just works. And lets you charge your phone at the same time. Or at least it did.
And before someone says "well, get a dongle" -- a dongle isn't "just works." And that's the thing that bothers me so much about this. It's essentially a user-hostile decision for some portion of users, with no particularly compelling upside for the rest of users... but a thin margin of manufacturing savings and a nice accessories/integration play, I suppose. I fully expect that's just business for many enterprises and "just works" is an acceptable casualty, but I didn't expect it from Apple.
But I do now.
> I actually like my phones getting smaller and lighter
Surely there's a point of not only diminishing but actually vanishing returns. Maybe literally. I recognize that's not going to be the same for everyone, but for me "diminishing" started around the form factor of the original iPhone and I stopped seeing any particular utility in shrinking around the 4s.