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Comment by kylec | Hacker News Reader

As far as I'm aware, Apple has never removed hardware functionality on a future generation of that iOS device. I would expect the iPhone 7, 7S, 8, etc to all have 3D Touch. Now, whether they continue to integrate it into more places in the OS will remain to be seen.

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The floppy drive, the DVD drive, the Ethernet port, the MagSafe port...

Fair enough, I should have specified "iOS device". Though I would argue that the MagSafe change doesn't count as it still retains the same functionality, it's just a different form factor.

MagSafe has been removed from the new 12" Macbooks.

He's saying that USB 3 charging counts as the same functionality, which is a fair point that I had thought about but I thought I'd throw it in the mix anyway. :)

Great examples. Most of which were removed with the introduction of the iMac and Steve Jobs rejoining the company.

That said floppy drive was available for 14 years (128K->iMac) so that should give you some idea of the commitment Apple has to keeping technologies in place.

except headphone jacks

That will remain to be seen. Every iPhone, iPad, and Mac Apple is selling right now has a headphone jack.

or the 30-pin dock-connector

I don't think this counts, as the Lightning connector retained the same functionality as the 30-pin connector. Sure, you can't connect old 30-pin cables or accessories without an adapter, but no functionality was lost.

One could say the same of the audio jack

There's a subtle distinction though - the 30-pin connector and the Lightning connector can only be used to connect to or from an iOS device. If Apple removed the headphone jack and encouraged people to buy Lighting headphones instead, those headphones could not be used to connect to anything else other than an iOS device, and you would not be able to use any of the headphones that use the standard connector on the new device. Basically, the 30-pin to Lightning changeover swapped one proprietary port for another, and did not change any of the potential use cases for that connector.

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