Progression towards weight doesn’t sound to me like an excuse for ... doing it for progression towards thinness. Which was what your parent comment was talking about their motivation being. I, by the way, am an iPhone user who wishes they kept the jack.
I’m also not sure what you mean by their profit margin hurting their product offering. Do you mean their desire to keep iPhones an aloof luxury brand hurts their product offering? I suppose dropping surprises like removing jack X or button Y could be part of that, but I think it’s more likely they have found customers with different preferences than you or I to be a preponderance of their user base and decided that making us happier is not economically worth a totally separate mechanical design that they have to both manufacture and separately stock. Maybe they incited people to move to airpods, but their forced converts seem to largely like them.
I’m also not sure what you mean by their profit margin hurting their product offering. Do you mean their desire to keep iPhones an aloof luxury brand hurts their product offering? I suppose dropping surprises like removing jack X or button Y could be part of that, but I think it’s more likely they have found customers with different preferences than you or I to be a preponderance of their user base and decided that making us happier is not economically worth a totally separate mechanical design that they have to both manufacture and separately stock. Maybe they incited people to move to airpods, but their forced converts seem to largely like them.