Last month Apple made the courageous and ground breaking announcement that the brand new iPhone 7 is not as good as the old one. They have decided to remove a key feature (which no one asked them to remove): the headphone jack.

Every year in September, Apple hosts a huge media event where they unveil all of the new technology that they will be releasing in the upcoming year. This year Apple showed off their upcoming Apple Watch series 2, and of course revealed this year’s new and inferior model of the iPhone, the iPhone 7.  

When Apple took the stage they announced that the headphone jack would be removed from all models of the upcoming iPhone 7’s. In order to listen to music, you either have to get Bluetooth headphones, or use the adapter that plugs into the lightning port, then plug your headphones into that. This means that you cannot listen to music and charge your iPhone at the same time, and you have another flimsy cord to keep track of.

Conveniently, Apple has a solution to this problem. They have developed new wireless Bluetooth earbuds called the ‘Air Pods’. Essentially they look like the part of the normal apple earbuds that you put in your ear, except without the wire and jack that you would plug into your phone. However, the price tag is a whopping $159 and for these headphones that are so small that they will probably be lost within the first month of ownership, it just doesn’t seem worth it.

Even though there seems to be more negatives than positives about Apple’s decision to remove the headphone jack, there are some points favoring Apple. The iPhone is a very compact device that uses every last bit of space the phone possibly can in order to make it as small and efficient as possible. The headphone jack, however, is a very bulky and very old technology that has been around for about one hundred years with little change.

On the stage of the reveal event, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing at Apple said, “Our smartphones are packed with technologies, faster processors…and all of it fights for space.” The iPhone 7 is not any thinner than its predecessor, but it does have better technology(including a much better processor) crammed into the same space which improves its speed.

Apple also claims that they have also removed the jack to make the new iPhone waterproof. The iPhone 7 is the first iPhone that is water resistant and a lot of effort went into this to make it like many of the iPhone’s competitors. With all of this year’s new technology crammed into the iPhone, waterproofing would not have been easy. However all other waterproof phones competing with the iPhone are still well equipped with the headphone jack. It seems the only reason the headphone jack was removed was because of laziness, not the limitations with technology due to waterproofing.

Removing the headphone jack was a big mistake. A big company like Apple should strive to make the best product for their consumers, however with the new iPhone, Apple has done the opposite. The iPhone 7 is worse than the previous models and purchasing this new phone is nothing more than a downgrade.