They had also recently purchased Beats and probably wanted to increase their sales, not to mention the grossly overpriced Bluetooth EarPods. The Bluetooth EarPods probably don’t cost that much more to manufacture than the regular EarPods, but they sell them for several folds the price with probably a much larger profit.

“Waterproofing”, “ removing an obsolete technology and saving space inside for newer technology”, “lightning headphones have better audio quality” etc. are all untrue arguments to cover the fact that this move was made to benefit the company, despite it harming the consumer.

But honestly I don’t blame them, they’re not forcing people to buy the new phones, and if it sells then there’s no reason for them to back down.

They’re currently running on fan loyalty, it will last for a little while but if companies like Samsung keep giving consumers what they want, Apple will probably slip back into its post Steve Jobs era in the late eighties and nineties when they lost most of their market value to Microsoft. Except this time there won’t be another Steve comeback with his iPod revival.