
Courage - kposehn
http://daringfireball.net/2016/09/courage
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elmigranto
I don't think these two situations are comparable.

For one, I own multiple devices that are obsolete now. This wasn't a case with
Flash, since I doubt anyone cared for technology the video was using — it's
fine either way if you see same pixels on the screen. Apple also wasn't making
money from every website that didn't include Flash, but I bet that's the case
for each Lightning device produced, and the major reason jack is removed.

It's not even headphones-only either, there are multiple devices using 3.5mm
for extedning iPhone's functionality that Apple don't get a cut from. I'm
interested whethere those will be supported via adapter.

I'm also not sure that 3.5mm is objectively worse than wireless. If anything,
both have advantages and disatvantages.

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smacktoward
This is a terrible argument, because it completely misunderstands what courage
is. Courage is _willingly putting yourself at risk in the service of some
greater good._

When a grenade lands in a foxhole, and a soldier jumps on it to save everyone
else in the hole, that is courage, because _he didn 't have to do that._ He
could have chosen to jump out of the hole and save himself, and nobody would
blame him for that. But he puts his own self-interest behind the protection of
his comrades, which makes his decision courageous.

Apple's decision to drop Flash was, in that light, a courageous decision. It
was widely assumed that Flash support was something devices had to have, that
leaving it off a device would hurt that device's prospects in the marketplace.
Apple _chose to voluntarily risk the sales of its products_ in order to serve
a greater good, namely killing Flash and thus putting an end to a particular
variety of terrible user experience. They didn't have to do that, but they
did, and we all benefited.

Apple's decision to drop the headphone jack is completely different, because
unlike dropping Flash, dropping the headphone jack aligns almost completely
with their own self-interest. It cuts down on their bill of materials; makes
assembling their devices less complicated; lets them make their devices
smaller, which the market has consistently rewarded; and lets them sell new
accessories at a premium markup to replace the old ones.

The only risk involved is that customers may not buy the iPhone if it lacks a
headphone jack, but given that iPhones have always used proprietary connectors
for other purposes (charging, data transfer) and that hasn't scared their
customers away, that risk seems pretty small. And it's almost certainly
outweighed by the bonanza of benefits described above.

This is why everyone was laughing at the "courage" line when they first
dropped it. It's not courage to do what a cost-benefit analysis tells you to
do. Courage is doing the _opposite_ of what your cost-benefit analysis tells
you to do, because to do otherwise would offend your principles.

