The difference with wireless listening vs. charging is that the former doesn’t need close to 2x the power of the cable-bound method and doesn’t destroy the phone’s battery in the process, unlike the latter

I can't imagine Europe wouldn't lose their shit if Apple removed it entirely. And if Android manufacturers did that consumers would also promptly lose their shit.

Beyond the consumer, having a physical port is beneficial to Apple. Businesses use attached devices (e.g. barcode scanners, DSLR camera attachments, charging stations) all the time. It's more common on Android phones, but I do see iPhones using these sorts of things. My local movie theater uses iPhones to scan tickets with an attached Lightning scanner, for example.

I don't disagree that wireless charging is more convenient, but from the standpoint of being in emergency situations where a cable is needed to charge your phone, it wouldn't be easily possible if the port is removed. People might carry around charging bricks, and while wireless charging bricks do exist they're not commonplace and they're certainly slower than charging by wire. I can tell you nobody will want to carry around a portable wireless charger, although MagSafe is almost already just that.

Playing devil's advocate, it's possible Apple does want things like portable wireless chargers to proliferate, like the one you can buy that slap onto the back of your phone. It means you're buying more of their shit, which is something they seem to love so much. It would mean you're buying MagSafe chargers or whatever proprietary crap they manufacture. I still do see it becoming an issue in emergency situations though, e.g. teens (a large user base of iPhones) use their phones a lot and borrow chargers from each other all the time.

Impossible? No. Unlikely? Yes, for now.

Same. I think the last time I used a cable to transfer data onto my phone was iTunes syncing my iPhone 5s music. Once I moved to Spotify I never needed to sync again.

It’s not the use case of everyone, but I’d bet the majority of iPhone users haven’t used a data transfer in years

I mean yeah I barely use cables to transfer data, but there are times I need to plug it in to back up files. The Pixel 7 Pro is also a bar of soap and slides off of my wireless charger, so it's more reliable for me to use a USB-C cable. I also like having the phone next to me in bed, and so I use a USB-C cable.

It just seems odd to remove something that is so reliable, even if only to have as a backup method. It would only make sense to remove it if wireless chargers are the dominant form of charging devices, especially in a portable manner.

Having a port also enables things like game controllers and wired headphones, if the user chooses to do something like that.

Yeah same, if I need a transfer I use gdrive