If someone reading this went to MIT and can contact admissions, they should link them to this story. Surely there are a few MIT alums on HN? Get this kid into his dream school!
I have some hiring power, and I went to uni as well, and both in a liberal state (NY). We see hundreds of applications. I can tell you that ~30% percent of my colleagues at uni were female. Exactly 0% of our applicants are female. I have no idea where these women are, but were not turning them down!
I think this is a false comparison for two reasons
1) adding the microphone and volume function to the headjack is a different cable than a normal TRS 3.5mm aux cable, which is the cable we all love. I would rather get rid of the 4 wired microphone enabled 3.5mm than lose the 3.52mm altogether.
2) all of the problems you mentioned that revolve around software - Apple cables not working on android, etc - are only going to get word by introducing USB into this. The idea is to remove proprietary things from analog audio, that's the whole reason the standard survived.
It also goes without saying that there is an inherit loss of utility caused by this switch, since so many of the products I already own use 3.5mm.
Xbox one dev here - can confirm what my sibling said about the quit button. It immediately suspends (quits) the process. I've poured many hours into the product lifetime cycle of my game.
On the other hand, if you don't hit quit, than hitting home and opening a bunch of other apps is exactly what you'd have to do to get the constrained (minimized) app to force quit while in the background.