Thanks for your thoughtful response. Some things that came to mind: > 1. as far as I know, the jack takes up quite a bit of volume, it's a long and empty space

Thanks for your thoughtful response. Some things that came to mind: > 1. as far as I know, the jack takes up quite a bit of volume, it's a long and empty space, that could be used for battery, heatsink etc. This is a good idea in theory, but in this particular case, what is being said now is that the phone will be thinner by 1mm. I'm very, very much for more battery – even with a Plus I don't have enough – but Apple tends not to handle these tradeoffs with an eye toward functional improvements. What I worry about is being able to shave off a millimeter off the thickness of the phone, but then having to carry around an adapter or two that will easily outweigh the space savings. As you say, in stationary situations like car/office, it's not a big deal, but in those situations, neither is the thickness of the phone or battery life, really. > 3. ... There's suddenly a forced market demand when the port drops, which opens up industry incentives to push wireless price/performance ratio improvements which I feel are around the corner (and partially announced already). Unfortunately I can only speculate as to what will happen. The plausible explanation is that the market will be able to generate excellent alternatives that become the gold standard, but as my sibling commenter says, this has been said of Bluetooth for a long time. I'm not confident that Bluetooth will be able to catch up soon enough, given its history and how far it lags behind today in sound quality, cost, and reliability. With that said, this will certainly be a big shock that may cause the desired shift, or Apple might have new wireless audio technology up their sleeves (though I shudder at the thought of another closed A/V standard) – and the 90% of people who don't care too much for audio quality will probably be unaffected on this dimension.