What's so ridiculous about it? Have you not seen the rate at which Apple are increasing the prices across all their products?
And petty practices like not including the lightening to 3.5mm adapter or fast charger on a $1000+ phone e.t.c.
your argument is that it helps the wireless headphone market. i don’t think it does in a way that actually matters, but even that doesn’t explain why it was removed in the first place. why does apple care about that market outside of their own sales? the real reason why they removed it is to further increase accessory sales and to market themselves as a design leader, which further sells devices. they have created this mystique that they do and others will follow. unfortunately, that is somewhat the case given other dynamics.
the fact of the matter is that there is zero benefit to the consumer of an iphone for having the audio jack removed. there is benefit to apple’s cash flow by removing it. and here we are.
Apple has always removed design features that they don't think are where things should head in the future. That's important to do in the longer term. If you consider any single one of the things they've removed from their computers, it might not seem a big deal, but together they are. Removing things they don't see as part of the future helps them to push technology in the direction they think is best. And removing what they see as unnecessary features can save on costs - costs that might be small per unit but large in terms of the sorts of volumes they are dealing with.