Irrelevant. In the end Flash was replace by something better and more secure. So Apple's help was not needed at all.
The Headphone Jack(a hardware port) wasn't replaced by anything at all and in any way, it was just removed. The End.
If I go and buy a phone with a headphone jack I can still use any type of headphones I want. Or you would disagree?
I disagree.
The way I remember it, flash was still popular when Apple blocked it on their iOS devices. I remember being annoyed when I couldn’t demo a flash-based math game to my class on my iPad.
I even remember Samsung running an advertisement boasting about how their tablets could run flash while the iPad couldn’t.
To me, it all came down to conviction. It was precisely because flash was blocked on iOS that HTML5 got the break it needed. When you are faced with either having to code a website in both HTML5 for ios devices and flash for everything else, or just go all in on HTML5, common sense takes over, and people started to prioritise HTML5 over flash, because why not?
So Apple didn’t just end up betting on the right horse. It bet on a horse it wanted to win, then went out to ensure that said horse would win the race. Because the best way to predict the future is to create it yourself.
As for the removal of the headphone jack, I have said it countless times. It’s not so simple as arguing that you can still use wireless headphones on a smartphone with a headphone jack.
Instead, what Apple is doing here is placing a bet on how people will use their devices in the future. It’s the same reason why they went all-in on USB-C with their laptops. Apple sees a future where the headphone jack will lose value, because the way we interact with our mobile devices will change.
And what I believe is happening is that Apple envisions a future where wearables have taken over as our primary form of computing. Be it your smart watch or AR glasses or something else, you will not be using wired headphones with your Apple Watch or AR glasses. Everything will be connected wirelessly.
Likewise, this suggests that your phone will merely be a slab of glass that you fall back on when you need a little more screen estate than what’s on your wrist (the same way smartphones are displacing PCs are the main mode of computing for some people). When that time comes, wired headphones will no longer make sense.
Rather than wait for better alternatives to appear, why not navigate this change in the driver’s seat? Remove the headphone jack now and funnel users towards your own product (airpods), rather than to some other alternative that might appear down the road which you have no control over, or might not match your vision of the future of computing.
This is what I mean when I say that wires and headphone jacks have no place in this new world order that Apple envisions.