> Customers had no real choice in those matters.

Yes they did, they could vote with their wallet. And they voted for ear buds.

There's still plenty of phones with jacks out there by the way.

No, they didn't vote for headphone jacks to be removed, they were forced to decide whether it was a dealbreaker for them. This kind of incremental erosion of the user experience is a very different thing than consumers making a binary choice about what they would prefer. They 'get away' with it, then it becomes the new normal, and the previous experience becomes niche and expensive or comes with other compromises.