Another day, another apologist pretending that this is "progress."
WRONG. Your ears require analog audio waveforms. Those come from headphones or speakers, which move AIR to produce pressure corresponding to those waveforms. There's nothing Apple or anyone else can do at the moment to "progress" beyond that.
So by removing the source of sound from its music-centric phones, Apple will idiotically require redundant conversion hardware in EVERY listening device. Not only will every headphone, car stereo, hotel-room clock radio, boom box, and home stereo have to decode whatever crap-ass protocol Apple will use (which will most likely recompress your already-compressed music), it will then have to do the D/A conversion.
Or... it could be done by the player device ONCE.
Never mind that anyone who cares about sound already has good headphones. And don't even float the turd of, "Well, get an adapter." Yes, that's classic Apple "elegance:" carrying a wad of adapters and wires around, making your "thin, elegant" iPhone into a Christmas tree of crap because of course you'll need some kind of Y adapter to charge it while listening. Oh, and don't forget all this junk when you go on vacation. Want to play tunes in your rental car? WOOPS, just when every car has an auxiliary input... Apple makes it useless.
Oh, and never mind that the Lightning port is an embarrassing engineering fiasco that delivers worse quality than the ancient 30-pin port it replaced: https://panic.com/blog/the-lightning-digital-av-adapter-surprise
And finally, if you're all keen on a junked-up, recompressed, battery-sapping, all-digital pipeline to your headphones... you can have it WITHOUT getting rid of the headphone jack. There is no excuse for removing it, period. The "thinness" argument is not only a lie (LOOK at the thing), but it's stupid anyway because nobody asked for a THINNER phone.
Grow a nut and demand better, instead of rolling over and showing your flabby white belly to your corporate masters because it's too uncomfortable for you to admit that Apple is calling you stupid... and you're proving them right.
