... however, having switched to BT for audio devices myself (receiver, headphones, and of course even cheap cars have had it for years now), I need USB-A on my MacBook a whole lot more than I need a headphone jack on anything, now.
On a serious note, apple dropped 3.5mm because they acquired beats and wanted to push users to buy their BT headphones.
Some people even haced the first jack-less iphone to prove apple could have fitted in.
I just dont understand why other companies followed apple.
* I have many headsets at home, some quite expensive, that I want to use directly, without any dongle hell
* "remove something so that people use a dongle" seems to become Apple's mantra which is really irresponsible given the current situation of our planet
* Apple's initial excuse "we removed the jack but made the phone waterproof" holds no water (pun intended) as other manufacturers were able to do it and keep the jack so it just makes Apple look lame
* people applauding Apple need to realize we had been able to use bluetooth audio also before they removed the jack, so the only result of their decision is the limitation of our freedom of how we use our device
I don't want to compare wired and wireless audio (including things like charging the batteries of BT headphones, the high cost of AirPods etc.) as these are more of a red herring and tangential to the main issue. The removal was clearly a customer-hostile move, that's all.