Headphone jacks are the new floppy drives

Daring Fireball:

“No one” asked for the iMac to remove the floppy drive or switch from ADB ports to USB (at a time when PCs weren’t shipping with USB either, which meant few — I mean really few — existing USB peripherals on the market). There was a huge outcry when the iPhone 5 dumped the proprietary-but-ubiquitous 30-pin port for the proprietary-and-all-new Lightning port. MacBook Air fans are still complaining about the new MacBook’s solitary USB-C port.

This is how it goes.

Gruber does a great job of tearing apart Nilay Patel’s silly, whiny piece but the key argument for me is his “If it weren’t for Apple we’d probably still be using computers with VGA and serial ports. The essence of Apple is that they make design decisions “no one asked for”.” This is what Apple does. It’s what they’ve done since Steve Jobs came back to the company. They move forward. They don’t wait for the market to make the decision for them. They make the decision for the market. And, in the vast majority of the cases, the market agrees with Apple – eventually.