@larand Good points all.
I recognise people have different priorities and budgets than mine*, am also in the unfortunate position of having suboptimal experience within my current headphones. They can sound wonderful, but more frequently are 'muddy'.
As I mentioned over there, well, expanding a bit, Ruby dog chewed the cables of 3 sets of mine and my daughters. They now know where Ruby cannot reach and, as I'm blasé about such things, I got the expensive ones. ≈$70 expensive. :)
Knowing a tiny amount of Apple's design ethos, towards clean lines, the move away from legacy holes was inevitable. A shame it's not just headphones though, isn't there a payment device reliant on the socket?
// @ronnie
*Pitifully inadequate for my desires.