Apple removed the headphone jack on the newest iPhone, a decision that is already causing concern among users.
Apple's reasoning, in one word? "Courage," Apple SVP Phil Schiller said on Wednesday, a line that has been widely mocked.
It turns out Apple has used the "courage" reasoning in the past. Specifically, former CEO Steve Jobs brought courage up when defending his decision that the iPhone wouldn't run Adobe Flash, 9to5Mac points out.
"We're trying to make great products for people, and we have at least the courage of our convictions to say we don't think this is part of what makes a great product," Jobs said at a tech conference in 2010.
The "courage" line starts at 2:45 but the entire clip is worth watching.
"We're going to take the heat, instead focus our energy on these technologies which we think are in their ascendancy and we think are going to be the right technologies for customers. And you know what? They're paying us to make those choices," Jobs said.
"The way we've succeeded is by choosing what horses to ride very carefully, technically," Jobs said. "We have a history of doing that. As an example, we went from the 5-inch floppy disk to the 3.5-inch floppy disk on the Mac ... We got rid of the floppy disk altogether in 1998 with the first iMac. We also got rid of these things called serial and parallel ports."
If Apple succeeds, Jobs said, people will buy iPhones. "If we don't, they won't," Jobs said.
We'll see if customers like the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus at Apple's quarterly earnings. Apple advised on Thursday that it would not release first-weekend preorder sales numbers.
Regardless of whether you believe a product decision could ever be described as courageous, at least Apple is consistent. It is extremely likely that Schiller knew about this clip when he revealed Apple's new jackless iPhone on Wednesday.
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