Those people could have easily....

A) used the included lightning headphones

B) used the lightning adapter that come with the iPhones until this year and are now $9.99 and used any other headphones

C) used third party lightning headphones

D) used any BT headphones.

No one was forced to buy $160 Airpods.

Maybe, but I’ve also never met another person who wanted to go back to regular headphones after wearing AirPods.

I did for listening to music during workouts. They do not like being drenched in sweat from spin workouts :)

If you are a fan of this earbud design they package a pair with a lightning connector in every iphone.

Apple has successfully turned the airpods into a fashion/status symbol, which was their goal. "only smelly android users have headphones with a CORD"

To be fair, airpods ended up being a lot more convenient than I imagined before trying them. I still carry around my tin audio t2s for when I'll be listening to music for an extended period of time. But in most cases, the convenience of not dealing with a cord and being able to pause/skip with a tap outweighs the loss in sound quality.

With the old wired ones you can also play/pause/skip/change volume/use a mic/whisper your fantasies to siri/etc. I mean all you really get with these is not having to deal with 2.5' of wire, at the cost of having to charge them and the whole $160 business

Apple has been doing that with headphones ever since the iPod came out. iPod commercials featured black silhouetted people with the bright white headphone and cord contrasted on top[0]. Like AirPods today, it used to be a status symbol to have white headphones as that basically meant they came from Apple.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlHUz99l-eo

Yes. These commercials are what I was thinking about in this thread. Apple was marketing the CORD as a status symbol a decade ago.

Are you talking about the earpods? I just bought the iPhone XR and I got the earpods but I didn't see any lightning adaptor. Now I have two earphones, one that only works on my phone and another that only works on my laptop - it's a real pain.

Perhaps it's an XR thing. My X and my wife's new XS both had the adapter.

Look on the back of the EarPods. It's attached to the cardboard carrier.

> my wife's new XS

Are you sure about that? I’m pretty sure iPhone XS didn’t come with this.

XS max owner, I did not get an adapter with mine.

There are wired headphones included in every iPhone box.

I would have bought AirPods regardless of an audio jack (I love them to death), but am furious about the removal nonetheless. It isn't often that I find myself needing the jack, but whenever I do it's infuriating, either to have to go hunt for the adapter, or to just not have the ability to export audio at all in that circumstance.

It isn't often that we achieve a universal connector format with basically no downsides (how many iterations of USB have there been now?), but we actually accomplished it with the 1/8" audio jack, and it's exasperating to see that coordination equity be so "bravely" discarded.

I am in the same boat. I am still using my iPhone 6 because of the headphone jack. But I have AirPods and use them daily. Not going to upgrade phone until USB-C is an option (maybe never?).

I use to teach fitness classes even before the iPhone was a thing. Even then I used a 30 pin to 1/8" adapter so I could get line level output. I also had a cassette adapter with a 30 pin connector for my car. I could hit fast forward and rewind on the cassette player and it would fast forward the audio on the iPod. When I took the adapter out or stopped the car, the iPod stopped. Of course these days even my cheap low end car has Bluetooth.

I would just carry a lightning to headphone cord (not adapter) if I were still teaching.

Anyone who bought an iPhone without a headphone jack got a pair of Lightning compatible wired headphones in the box.

If they bought Airpods they decided against using those headphones, getting a Lightning-headphone adapter to use with their favorite wired headphones, or buying any other type of bluetooth headphones.

No, Apple had a vision for perfect usability. It had no wires for the ear pods so no need for a standard jack.