I’m sure that removal of the headphone jack helped drive sales, but it’s worth remembering that AirPods were also some of the first bluetooth earbuds that were good enough for mass market appeal, and for usage with phones especially wires can get pretty irritating. A lot more people probably would’ve switched years earlier had other companies released bluetooth headphones on par with first gen AirPods.

They were definitely motivated to sell more AirPods, but Bluetooth has been a clear quality of life improvement for most people (except when using the microphone, where Bluetooth has been a quality downgrade), and the 3.5mm jack takes up a lot of space inside phones.

I'd have preferred they made a true replacement - a new wireless standard for example.

I don't think I believe these numbers... I know they are way overpriced because I paid $30 for my "clones" but still...

I also hate them because they are too easy to lose

Yes but the GP's point still remains, they shouldn't have removed it from ANY device.

yep, wouldn't have bought it without it. that and the lack of touch bar make the latest models awesome

Why though? Audio jack delivers pretty much all you need functionality for headphones and plenty of existing hardware. iPod Shuffle 3d gen was tiny, had only 3.5mm for data transfer and charging.

They remove headphone jack in iPhone 7 and added USB-C in iPhone 15. So for almost a decade the only option was proprietary lighting or bluetooth, probably resulted in a significant amount of e-waste.

If that were to be the reasoning, the least they could do is provide 2 ports on phones so nobody needs a dongle to listen while charging.

What would make even more sense is a round USB plug to make it even easier to plug it in.

I'm just tired of losing my Bluetooth earbuds