I kind of stopped reading after he said Apple is selling a $9 adapter when it's including it. I guess you'd have to buy it if you lost it tho, but then you'd likely lose your fancy headphones too.
The adapter included lets you listen to music. If you want to charge and listen to music simultaneously though, like you can do out of the box with an iphone 6, you need a $49 dock that isn't included afaik. http://www.apple.com/shop/product/MNN62AM/A/iphone-lightning...
The dock doesn't let you charge and listen to music simultaneously, the iPhone headphones use lightning, the charger uses lightning, the dock has a single lightning port like the phone.
To charge and listen to music simultaneously I need the dock AND a pair of headphones with the "antiquated 100 year old so obsolete" headphone jack.
So how do you charge your phone when you're using a pair of lightning headphones?
Also, I think you misspelled "ubiquitous, universal standard" headphone jack. The idea that it's a step forward to have headphones that only work in a single company's products is really interesting.
Maybe they are trying to add a cordless charger soon. (Whatever happened to those? They were all hyped up a couple of years ago but I never see them. Is it because normal cables are easier to carry around?)
I don't really want to defend Apple's decision to remove the 3.5mm jack, but I think if we're going to criticize the decision, it's better to just focus on the fact that there really wasn't anything wrong with the jack for consumers and lightning audio solutions don't provide consumers with many benefits. The "charge and listen" argument has been brought up so many times that I'm not sure the people saying it really think about the practicality of it.
What I mean is, how often is the scenario where you need to be charging the phone AND listening to music a major need? Like, between iPods, iPhones, and Android devices, for me it's almost always been a one or the other scenario. The phone charges at night when I sleep, and it's music during the day. Or I charge while at work where I use the computer for music. Charging tethers me to an object that cannot shift with me (computer, wall, etc) and I rarely am in a sitution where it's a necessity for me to be able to do both at once.
Truth is the only time I have ever wanted to charge and listen to music, I just used a bluetooth headset while I was cooking in the kitchen.
Now, I understand the purpose behind the argument - it's not so much the practicality as it is that user choice has been removed needlessly. But argue that - this idea that a huge major feature was removed and it spites users is ridiculous. Yes, so is Apple removing the 3.5mm audio jack, but I don't really see the value in trumpeting an absurd scenario as a major reason you need to have both ports.
I'm not all that invested in this since I likely can't afford a new iPhone anyways - maybe once they're on the iphone 9 I can afford to be upset about not having a 3.5 mm jack. But I would imagine Apple isn't making this decision blind. I'm sure they have numbers to show that the majority of iDevice users just use the provided headphones, and the 3.5mm dongle is pretty much a half-assed solution for those outside of the majority. But I don't think that Apple is really worried about the "obsoleteness" of the 3.5mm, and I'm gonna guess they have the data to show their users aren't en masse worried about it either.
