Apple was going to sell hundreds of millions of AirPods with or without a headphone jack. We may never really know what the final straw was, but I’d be willing to bet that Jony Ive & Co. were looking for a suitable excuse to drop it for years.

It’s one more component that limits how thin the device can be, it’s an ingress point for water (Apple was never going to add a flap), and if you’re the kind of person who digs symmetry then a giant hole on one side looks ugly.

Luckily for them, the market came their way. Bluetooth headphones were massively outselling wired headphones by that point, and it’s one of those areas Apple loves to work in - a space where they can add some proprietary magic (H-series chips, instant pairing, auto source switching) that makes what would otherwise be a relatively ordinary product into a remarkable one.

(same reason as almost every other I/O decision they make, apparently)