Dear Apple,
As a long time Apple user with great love for your company and its products, I am greatly disappointed. You have consistently produced truly great devices, especially as far as iPhones are concerned, and now you have decided to do something so, so stupid.
I'm talking, of course, about the removal of the headphone jack. While some critics may sit back and ooh and ahh over the new IPhone 7, I for one am not fooled by that glossy black finish. The new iPhone is the epitome of something I have always found fundamentally annoying about your company, which is your completely egotistical need to be excessively pretentious in your so called "innovations." Just like the removal of the CD port from the MacBook Air. While your company claimed that it was the "beginning of a new age," the real reason behind it was to force people to spend more money on external CD drives. The removal of the headphone jack is the same thing all over again. It's a marketing ploy to make the new phone seem "revolutionary" as you jack up the price even more and then add on about five new adapters that a customer needs just to allow their new iPhone to perform a basic function that comes standard with any other smartphone or older version of your own smartphone. I will not pay more money for a phone that does less than the two-year-old version I own now and I'm certainly not paying $160 for the same earbuds minus wires
While I hate (and I mean hate in the purest, most visceral form of the word) this decision, I have to admit that literally, everything else about the new iPhone looks amazing. The glossy Jet Black is going to look great, and, of course, the new home button and water/shock resistance are much-needed changes that users have been begging you to incorporate for years. Essentially, I love everything about this phone except it's one fatal flaw that will probably lose you my business on this particular iteration of iPhones. The removal of the headphone jack is just a dumb change. While complaints about not being able to charge your phone while listening to music (without that $40 adapter that I'm sure you'll release soon) may seem petty, the point of your device is to entertain and to make customers lives easier. Rendering all of my old headphones useless without a stupid, tiny adapter that I'm going to lose within five minutes is not making my life, and many other customers lives' easier. By trying to simplify your phone, you've made it infinitely more complicated to use it and made the older version's superior just by being compatible with the majority of hardware out there in the world today.
Apple, you have a tendency to think and act like the entire world revolves around your next tech release, and it's getting tiring. Oh yeah, I'm sure tons of music companies will buy into this lightning connector nonsense, and release headphones for it. But then those headphones are only compatible with one device. It's just unnecessary. I understand the pros such as more space for internal hardware, and being able to make the phone thinner (I mean you might as well make them paper thin and invisible to the naked eye), but in my opinion, the cons far outweigh the pros.
Apple, I've loved your products for years. Up until now, I have gone along with every tiny upgrade and seemingly useless innovation because I loved the ease and simplicity of using your phones, but this is the line for me. You can catch me upgrading my ancient 6 to a 6s Plus in the fall, but you won't get any of my money on this new iPhone. Thanks for the memories, and if you're taking requests, please release at least one version of your newest phone that includes a headphone jack.
Sincerely,
A Bitter Apple User.
