It's interesting that the "users can check for themselves" defense was attempted, Google search is so awful now that it's nearly impossible to find anything but ads and ads disguised as links. Even watching people try to use it is infuriating.
Apple's just doing what's on the agenda, plugging the analog hole. Your TV doesn't have a headphone jack any more either. TVs haven't had this in decades.
Waiter? What's that wonderful smell? Another remake? Oh boy as long as it's not another pixel remake, those were getting a bit stale. Yes.... snifffff a Disney-styled, now this is gourmet eating! My compliments to the chef!
Yes that was how it worked due to the limitations of the C64 but also the old BASIC that they were using. If you actually used your C64 as a "power user" you'd probably have ponied up for JiffyDOS which in addition to making the disks like 10x faster, had some QoL features like being able to list the disk contents without blowing away the low line numbers in BASIC. It was also extremely easy and common to make your own wedge (a new BASIC command). If you weren't going to use something like the tape drive for instance, you could even have it (or parts thereof) live in the memory where the tape would normally be. JiffyDOS does this, you can't use the tape drive with it at all.