The aux cord. The jack. The plug. Since 1878, there has been a universal standard for audio, shared by your headphones, your car stereo, your dad’s absurdly expensive liquid-cooled speakers – and you’re probably using it right now. The noble 3.5mm headphone jack has served generations of listeners, and it should continue to serve generations to come.

But Apple, facing declining phone sales and increased competition, has decided to destroy literally centuries of tradition. They call it “innovative”, they call it “magical”, they call it anything other than what it is – a cash grab. Indeed, the decision to remove the headphone jack from their latest flagship phone, the iPhone 7, has caused some controversy among those with two brain cells. Not many companies could release a phone with the same thickness, and fewer features, and then call it an upgrade – but Apple is willing to wager that it can.

They could be right. This is not Apple’s first controversial removal. When they removed the Ethernet port from the Powerbooks, users complained – similarly with disk drives from the MacBook. They have constantly pushed against the boundaries of existing technologies to create a sleeker future. Can they do it again?

In short – no. Ethernet had been superseded by Wi-Fi. DVDs were making way for the now ubiquitous USB flash drive. What, then, can replace a connector that everyone already has? One of two choices that would make Pyrrhus flinch: either use the iPhone’s single lightning connector, or stick a toothbrush in your ear.

Yes, the AirPods – yours for the low, low price of £159 – offer the exact same dreadful quality and terrible in-ear feel of the out-of-the-box EarPods, with the revolutionary feature of getting lost if you turn your head too quickly. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_wImaGRkNY). And best of all, they have a battery life of five hours! No more long study sessions, movie marathons or, heck, picking up your headphones in the morning and assuming they’ll work – with this revolutionary new feature, you’ll never finish a Wagner symphony again.

Fine, but those are optional (very optional when you’re a broke student). Just use the included headphones and don’t complain, right? This option assumes that you will never need to charge your phone and listen to music at the same time. That means no long road trips, blasting your summer playlist, no more falling asleep with your favourite ASMR channel, no more powerbanks. And it means that you have to buy Lightning headphones – and this is where the whole idea becomes a farce.

Remember the last time you pulled your headphones out of your phone and plugged them into your laptop? Apple doesn’t make a single laptop with a Lightning jack. So even if you were fine with being locked into using Apple products forever, you couldn’t bend over if you wanted to. You may say that they will add Lightning jacks in a future refresh: but the new Macbook (yes, the one with only one port to do everything including charging) uses USB-C, which is basically Lightning without Apple getting licensing fees every time someone builds a device with that in it. Their lineup is fractured by design.

This is perhaps Cook’s Machiavellian intention. By demanding its users buy Lightning headphones, Apple creates its own market. A market where they get a cut of every single pair of headphones sold. It is important to note at this point that Beats (which Apple owns) are the only third party that currently makes wireless headphones – and they are also suitably overpriced. Apple wants to control every single facet of the user experience – especially the wallet-opening procedure.

It is this that is the only convincing reason to buy into this line of accessories – the somewhat utopian idea that Apple will create a world without headphone wires, with seamless pairing, and with an actual replacement. But that world is not the iPhone 7. Vote with your wallet.