They hardly insist -- you can just get an adaptor to lightning if you'd prefer, which isn't much compared to the price of the iPad.
Besides, for all of Apples space/thin-saving attempts, requiring me to use an adapter negates all of these completely.
Yeah, your smartphone has only replaced a camera, a portable movie player, a portable music player, a PDA, a phone, a GPS receiver and/or maps, a watch, a gameboy, and 5-6 other devices we had to carry (or couldn't afford to even have) before.
Now it's adding a dongle for headphones we have to remember to carry? Oh, the humanity!
(Plus the fact that there are also lightning equiped headphones).
It's like 3 dongles if you want to be able to charge and listen at the same time. Like, for example, on a long-distance flight. And it's a completely self-imposed limitation on Apple's part!
Not willing to go wireless as I use both for music making and wireless latency and compression is unacceptable. On phones I kind of understand it but IMO the iPad Pro not having a headphone socket is not excusable, there must be a way to fit it in.
I can’t charge and listen to music. Phone low on battery? Hey guess what! Don’t you wish you has just bought our expensive blue tooth speakers?
NO. If I want actual sound I’ll get it from people who love for sound.