Ugh, this is not at all a valid comparison. It's extremely tired, too.
The phone MUST create analog audio signals, to drive its own speaker. Denying customers a connector to access it is petty and offensive. Compounding that offense is requiring every listening device to now incorporate redundant D/A converters. Contrary to apologists saying that this enables better quality, it in fact results in wholly unpredictable quality.
Not to mention that your ears will ALWAYS require analog audio. So do billions of amplification devices around the world.
And it's not even about only headphones. It's about billions of audio devices that take one thing as input: line-level audio. Home stereos, car stereos, portable amps, hotel-room docks and TVs, PA systems and mixers.
Then there's the idiotic problem that Apple created but never even solved: blocking the phone's sole port with a "headphone dongle," which prevents you from CHARGING the phone. So now if you want to listen to music while navigating (which kills the battery quickly), you're screwed.
I ended up buying a few of the Lightning-to-30-pin-iPod adapters, which you can then plug a USB+audio cable into. Yes, the ancient 30-pin iPod connector has line audio out, and the cool thing is that it's a true line out; the volume control has no effect on it, so you only have one volume control to dick around with (the one on the amp).
Apple has insulted users and embarrassed itself with this dogshit keyboard and the pathetic emoji bar... on a $4000 "pro" computer, no less.
Then there's the glued-together chassis, the soldered-in RAM and drives... when those go bad (and they will), you get to just throw the computer away instead of performing a routine replacement.
Apple's shoddily-made computers should be hanging from pegs in blister packs at Walgreen's.
It's too bad that Apple has given up on real computers. And Windows is a pathetic mess... so in the end, computers are returning whence they came: to the domain of scientists, hobbyists, and other serious users.
The phone MUST create analog audio signals, to drive its own speaker. Denying customers a connector to access it is petty and offensive. Compounding that offense is requiring every listening device to now incorporate redundant D/A converters. Contrary to apologists saying that this enables better quality, it in fact results in wholly unpredictable quality.
Not to mention that your ears will ALWAYS require analog audio. So do billions of amplification devices around the world.
There's no excuse.