There is no big picture here. Nothing is stopped by offering the port. You can do all the fancy wireless stuff while still offering the port. That is just simple fact, and arguments from the other side read like cult speak.
It's not that I don't 'see' the bizarre argument you are making, it's that I reject it as a way functional adults should think.
I would agree with you IF the idea that Apple wants to “force” people to use wireless headphones held any weight with me.
It does not.
When Apple removed the headphone jack from the iPhone 7, they gave some solid reasons:
*It did not fit at the bottom anymore w/ the Taptic Engine & new solid state home button
*They tried moving it to the top, but it interfered with the antennas
*It made it that much easier to make it waterproof
I believe that all the crowing about how great & freeing bt audio is was more or less to soften the blow. I think that Phil was being completely honest w/ the “space is at a premium & it didn’t make sense for us to include this large antiquated part” comment, if not a tad disingenuous in giving any other reasons. I think that was 100% of it right there.
I don’t think Apple gives a single f**k whether you use analog headphones. I know I won’t give mine up!
Thank goodness they’ve made it ridiculously painless for me to continue using them & until they completely remove a charging port altogether, I don’t foresee even the slightest difficulty.
As some of the math nuts have pointed out... it looks like they’d have to over double the bezel size to leave the audio jack in this iPad. I strongly believe, whatever the narrative, that’s the sole reason it went bye bye.
I have about a 1/2 dozen REALLY nice sets of headphones- from Grado, Sennheiser, Koss, AudioTechnica, Etymotic, etc.
Years ago now, I simply slapped a lightning plug on each one (3/$10 from 3rd parties), & forgot about it. It hasn’t changed my listening habits, nor audio purchasing decisions one iota! I don’t understand all the griping... it never even seems to be from audiophiles at all- just rando people annoyed they had to put an adapter on their Skull Candies, or whatever. *shrug*
Choose your battles. This one is an absolute non-issue... the very slightest & vaguest of one time minor “inconveniences”, in the 2 second process of clicking the adapter on your pair of headphones.