Why Should Apple have to give anything ‘free’, let alone some wireless headphones? Because they deleted a 3.5 mm Jack or are no longer including the lightning adapter? I don’t understand why you think Apple should do something for free because of what exactly?
You're right, they shouldn't. They also shouldn't expect to continue to have a lot of customers when they sell products that you have to buy something else just to make it work, just to get at the most basic functionality of the device. This is an iPHONE we're talking about here, emphasis on PHONE which comes from an ancient word, (Greek, I think,) that means SOUND. Now if they stopped making iPhones and replaced it instead with a similar type device that was utterly silent, and called it something like the iGraph, well, I can see not including a provision for connecting the kind of headphones that there are roughly a billion of laying around, in users' possession, especially since a LOT of iPhone users are CURRENT and FORMER iPhone users, and iPod users, (of 50 different kinds,) and so have a LOT of headphones that are still perfectly good that came with previous Apple devices, and to be not able to use them AT ALL is kind of a slap in the face. To demand that anyone going from a 6, 6s, or SE or earlier, or any iPod, to the newest iPhone and have to pay EXTRA just to use a technology that their old device could use FOR FREE, that it CAME WITH, BUILT IN... when the accessory itself was made by (or for, at any rate,) Apple and came WITH the device, it's a real slap in the face to the user.
In fact, it's worse than just a slap in the face. It's a DOWNGRADE. Imagine if you will that you ride a Schwinn road bike, and you decide to upgrade to the newest one. The newest one not only doesn't come with a seat, (it's fine, you were going to replace it anyway, so not much point in them including it,) but it ALSO doesn't come with a seat post or clamp. That's rather odd and a bit irksome, but hey, this gives you the opportunity to get a fancy new suspension seatpost... But no, it also doesn't come with a downtube, (the tube the seatpost slides into). You have to go to a SHOP and have them WELD one in for you so you can install a seatpost, and, OH, you'll also need to buy a new one of THOSE because the bike is designed around a different kind of downtube, an aerodynamic carbon-fiber number, and there's no way to make your old setup compatible with,) meaning you have to buy a new one of those too. (Couldn't it... shouldn't it have at least come with THAT?) Also, your old seat (or a new seat compatible with your old bike and also every other bike on the market,) won't work either. To be fair, most serious cyclists expect a new bike from an actual bike shop not to come with pedals, or if it does, that they will be cheap plastic crap because no serious cyclist uses the stock pedals anyway; they only put those on there so you can ride it around and out of the store. Soon as you get home, they go in the bin with all the other junk you're never going to use.) Apple, (to get back to traffic, metaphorically speaking,) is asking you to shell out even more money to replace something you JUST bought, that isn't compatible with the accessories you invested in, that you previously bought FROM Apple, for no good reason they can articulate, (because the real reason is GREED,) so they just say something stupid like, "courage".
Being fully ready to use out of the box, just plug it in and turn it on, was the whole point of the Apple Macintosh computer, the eMac, the iMac, and almost everything else they've ever sold since. Next I expect them to start sales of the next generation of Apple iWatches, without supplying straps or crowns, and offer them for sale separately, because... why should Apple do something for free, right? Apple's inclusion of the operating system on Macs and iOS devices is an expensive crutch... maybe they should stop giving those away for free too. In fact, why is Apple not requiring customers to pay a surcharge for each product for the box? You're buying an iPhone, NOT a box, so they should charge extra for the box. The end-result of this reasoning, the logical conclusion, is that one day, you have an experience like this in the Apple Mall: (Yeah, not Store, MALL...)
Apple iSalesPerson: "Would you like a screen with that?"
You: (looking at wall display of screen protectors) "?"
Apple iSalesPerson: "No, not a protector, a screen."
You: "Buh... wha... whu?"
Apple iSalesPerson: (Smiles cheerfully.) "Why? Because of Apple's new 'iCourage,' that is the ONLY thing that comes with anything you buy from Apple, sir! Apple now sells the iPhone XI without a screen, giving you the choice of a Space-Gray tinted screen, a Rose-Gold tinted screen, or a Yellow-Gold tinted Screen, which we'll install for you, for... do you have Apple iCare? If not, then for a modest fee. You see, the iPhone itself just has a gaping cavity in the front; the Apple iPhone XI does not actually come with a screen; that's extra."
See how silly that gets?
Apple iSalesPerson: (Still smiling cheerfully.) "Now let's choose a battery... the standard battery is $99.95, and with moderate use you'll see about 4 hours of talk time..."
Now do you understand? The inclusion of goodies like the charger, the lightning cable and headphones that they've been including for years now is what allowed them to get away with insisting on using proprietary ones that only work with THEIR stuff. Sure, the headphone jack was universal-ish, but in order to offer the features they wanted to, integrated microphone and in-line wired headphone remote control, they had to INCLUDE it to get people to adopt them.
Apple could have put a standard micro-USB connector on the iPhone 5 and on, (or iPhone 4 or whenever they first introduced it,) and NOT had to include the wall adapter and charger, and sales would likely not have been too adversely affected. Indeed, most users and reviewers would have lauded Apple for finally joining the rest of the modern tech world.
Or, alternatively, if they wanted the iPhone to be a giant, costly, embarrassing commercial flop, like so many of their past products no one remembers, they could have made it Lightning-only, just as they did, but NOT include the cable and plug. When people learned that not only were iPhones NOT expandable, (no provision for adding external memory, a 'feature' which persists to this day,) and more expensive to buy than most competitor's phones up-front, but then on top of that they had to shell out an EXTRA wad of cash to buy Apple's stupid, proprietary little connector, most who DID buy the iPhone would have, I think, in this alternate reality in which Apple made that idiotic mistake of going Lightning-only and NOT including the required extras, passed on the "opportunity". (Oh, I almost forgot, since they changed to lightning, even if you HAD an old one, they changed it so even people who already own an iPod or two, and a half-dozen old 30-PIN connectors and cables laying around, from all the previous Apple devices, the iPhone won't be able to use them. If they didn't include it but stuck with the 30-pin, at least owners of older iPods and iPhones would have been happy to be able to continue using their legacy connectors. Let's not forget Apple decided to screw EVERYONE with the change to lightning. I don't recall ever hearing of Apple offering a trade-up program for anyone with an old 30-pin cable. GOOD THING THEY INCLUDED THEM FOR FREE, RIGHT?)
I think this horse has been beaten enough so I'll stop, on the off chance anyone at all is reading this. I believe I've made my point.
