Apple has killed the headphone jack and Twitter is grieving

Here lies Headphone Jack. Born 1878, died 2016. At least in Apple’s eyes, anyway. Tim Cook said it took “courage” to euthanise the 138 year old connector, which at first seems a bit grandiose until you consider the backlash that the company faces.

Visibrain has done some analysis of Twitter’s reaction to the Apple event, and in total there were 1.36 million tweets. Of those, 153,704 were about the death of the headphone jack, and Apple’s plan to replace it. That makes it the second most talked about product of the night, after the iPhone 7 (491,376) but some way ahead of the Apple Watch Series 2 (97,512) and Super Mario Run (74,734).

Those 153,704 tweets gave us a good insight into how the world feels about the death of the headphone jack… and the answer is still extremely sore. No doubt other companies will be monitoring the reaction with interest, even if there are good reasons to move on. If Twitter sentiment represented the country at large (which is most definitely doesn’t), the answer would be pretty clear. Here are samples of the grieving process in action: