The lack of a headphone jack is simply yet another excellent reason not to buy an iPhone. What confuses me is why so many people continue to buy Apple products when they're overpriced, locked-down and treat developers like crap.
They buy the iPhone because of the brand, or they use Android because that's the free phone that was available, or the one the Verizon store pushed.
Geeks like us spend a lot of energy projecting our beliefs onto an audience who simply does not care. I know I've gotten riled up about open standards and DRM and stuff like that; my non-geek friends just roll their eyes at me.
Maybe they do it because they don't care. Or maybe they do it because we geeks treat everything like a Chicken-Little sky-is-falling thing.
The biggest problem is that others often copy stupid or customer unfriendly decisions Apple makes, leading to a lot less choice if you want to avoid it.
> "which few people really need these days"
According to sales figures people do need/want them.
> "The biggest problem is that others often copy stupid or customer unfriendly decisions Apple makes"
And how is that Apple's fault that other companies try to copy what works for them?
Like the 5 lines of iPhone that Apple offers[1]?