Man the DAC in the phones was never that good anyway, so complaining about the sound quality of the earbuds is silly. Sure they don't sound as good as better headphones, but the iPhone comes with an adapter so you can still use whatever headphones you want if you want to do that.

If you really care about sound quality you weren't using the headphone jack on a phone (and its not so great DAC) anyway.

There's a _very_ big difference in quality between the iPhone earbuds and high quality earbuds/headphones, and a relatively small difference in quality between different DACs. And outboard DACs come with a lot of tradeoffs: extra hardware, battery life (or another battery to charge), cost, and so on. So there are many people who care about sound quality and invested in high quality earbuds/headphones, but rationally didn't spring for an outboard DAC. You get 98% of the quality without it.

I found the DAC to be good enough, way better than any mp3 player I used before the ipod was released.

Complaining about the sound quality of earbuds is only "silly" if the iphone DAC is so bad that one wouldn't tell the difference between a good and bad earphone, which is clearly not the case.

Again, I'd say, that it comes with an adapter and you can still use whatever headphones you want. So it's a non-issue IMHO.

I don't for two reasons. One I don't want to carry dongles. Two it blocks the charging port and I often listen to music at my desk, where I also need it to charge. Doesn't work for me.

For the vast majority of people the supplied Apple ear phones are just fine and I don't see that as an issue. You don't have to be obsessed with music quality to enjoy reasonably sounding music. I don't not watch movies if I can't see them in theater.