Apple’s $9 engineering marvel no one wants (2017)
I have non-anecdotal evidence that people definitely buy the Lightning to headphone adapter. We sell them in our stores and it's one of our biggest accessory sales.<p>You know why people buy them all the time, though? Because, frankly, it's a terrible design. It's tiny, easy to lose or forget, and they break easily. <i>That's</i> why it has such terrible reviews in the Apple store site--it's not a good product for what it is.<p>I deal with Apple products on the daily, and the removal of the headphone jack is still one of the things that irritates me most about Apple.<p>The others would be: the whole battery scandal where Apple slowed down older phones without explaining that the battery, a replaceable component, was the issue. And the 2016-2018 MacBook keyboards, which are an absolute travesty.<p>The headphone to Lightning adapter may be a "marvel of engineering", but it was a completely unnecessary one. It doesn't create more room inside the phone, and Samsung had water-resistant phones with headphone jacks. It's basically designed to force you on to more expensive wireless headphones.