Removing the headphone jack hurts the iPhone in several less-obvious ways.

Traditional headphones are more convenient than AirPods, which are limited to a five hour battery life. I often wear my headphones for more than 12 hours a day. This means that twice a day I would have to take my AirPods off then wait for them to charge. This product is premature. Battery life just isn’t there yet.

Also, headphones are a prominent signal to people that the wearer wants to be left alone. By making them practically invisible, I anticipate many conversations that go something like:

“What’s that? Were you talking to me? Sorry, I know it’s hard to tell, but I am listening to music through my AirPods and I can’t hear you very well.”

Finally, the story mentions that AirPods are a step toward a more “conversational world of software.” But reaching this state is not a hardware problem — it’s a software problem. Before, I used Siri extensively while running so I could listen to my text messages, queue up audio books, and initiate phone calls.

My experience over the past 4 years, though, is that Siri is actually getting worse. It’s less reliable for accomplishing these basic tasks than it used to be.

If Apple wants to be ready for the “conversational world of software” they need to get serious about improving their software. Otherwise, we’re going to be spending a lot more time “conversing” with Alexa, Google Now, and Cortana.

Note that I previously cited an EFF statement about the potential for new hardware-based DRM problems as a result of removing the headphone jack. I researched this further, and it sounds like this has already been possible for years, but hasn’t come to pass.