I'm not convinced removing the headphone jack was purely a design decision, but rather strengthening apple's position in the accessories market, as it is able to control the software side of bluetooth headphones, making high margin airpods more attractive. With a headphone jack the playing field was flatter for other headphone manufacturers.
> But most BT headphones don’t work seamlessly between laptop and phone.
That's a firmware deficiency, not something mandated by bluetooth ICs. I, right now, use bluetooth headphones that connect to my phone and my laptop simultaneously.
That is true. However, now apple controls the pairing process and is able to introduce features such as share audio that lets you use multiple airpods on the same device, and is probably working on a feature to make airpods work on all your apple products simultaneously.
No, my point was that since apple controls the software side, it is able to limit the features of other headphones, especially when it comes to seamless pairing and integration into the apple ecosystem. When the competition was EarPods vs. thousands of different 3.5mm connected headphones, apple had less power to throttle competition when the experience was almost indistinguishable.
How is it limiting competition? Any BT headphone maker can create headphones that pair to multiple devices. What awesome features could competitors do with a headphone jack that they couldn’t do by creating headphones with a lightning end?
Try to connect your friend's generic bluetooth headphones to share audio from your iphone while connected to your airpods. Now do it with another pair of airpods. Check the list of headphones on this support page: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210421. All apple-owned.
The argument was that Apple was denying the ability for third parties to create a feature by excluding the headphone jack. If Apple had a headphone jack you would get this:
