What do you propose in lieu of DVI and VGA? VGA fine, let it die slowly, but I work in IT, and every monitor we have in our building supports VGA (and none of these are more than a few years old). Maybe 85% of them do DVI, and 10% probably have HDMI and 0% DisplayPort. DVI is still the real standard. And HDMI is a distant second, but it's the same signal as DVI anyway. DisplayPort is the way of the future for sure, but it's not really here yet for non-4K monitors, so forcing it just turns my IT department into adapter city. The video card I bought last year had some silly amount of ports on it, I think 1x DVI, 3x DP, and 1x HDMI. At work, I have bought an insane amount of DisplayPort-DVI or DisplayPort-VGA adapters for some of our newer PCs, and it's incredibly obnoxious.
Your work is really outdated then. We haven't utilized VGA outside legacy simulators for 5+ years. Analog is just such a pain to work with and poor image quality. 95% of our tvs and monitors (somewhere around 400-500) are either HDMI or DP. About half have a DVI-D. Then again, most of our stuff is 4k, so dvi isn't even an option. Even our 1080p monitors all support either hdmi or dp with the exception of those more than ~7 years old.
How does retaining compatibility with old hardware "hold us back"? What is having both an HDMI/DP AND a DVI port preventing you from doing? How is retaining an audio connector with compatibility (sans grossly overpriced and inconvenient adapters) with BILLIONS of already made and long lasting devices holding us back?
In multiple ways. Keeping those legacy ports on their adds cost to every purchase. It also forces engineers and designers to ensure their device is still compatible with those old standards from 20-30 years ago. IE: Monitor manufacturer working on 4k monitor including compatibility for lower resolutions via analog VGA or DVI. Those legacy ports are not compatible with new technology like Gsync and Freesync either. By removing those ports you can, ever so slowly, move people to new standards and eventually drop the legacy support. How many pcs do you see with parallel, serial, or floppy drives anymore? How long did we spend including those after they were relics?
It absolutely is intentional sabotage. In addition to no swappable batteries, they engage in many other anti-consumer behavior/design decisions:
* current laptops that have obsolete hardware yet still priced at a premium
* soldered on RAM and storage
* no expandable storage on phones (and outrageous prices for internal storage)
* extremely limited I/O ports (#)
* moving to a proprietary headphone solution
* forcing recyclers to scrap perfectly good hardware instead of reselling
* fight against 3rd party repair shops (imagine only being able to take your car to the original manufacturer for a repair job!)
Obsolete Hardware: If you think Apple is bad about this, you should see the 10+ year obsolete hardware sold to the military and govt for new contracts, all because it takes that long to get from design to delivery that the new gear is out of production by the time it is rolling out. I bring that up because Apple is doing a similar, albiet faster approach. They are trying to do heavy design and control with heavy quality testing which means some of the hardware is a generation or two old by the time the product is finished. This is why I personally don't buy Apple products as I like the fastest and greatest, but if you want realiability and quality, then it's a compromise.
Soldered Ram/storage: Multiple reasons. One, smaller/slimmer packaging. Two, Less issue of cords shaking loss for quality assurance improvement. Three, lower cost (maybe?) than swapable ports.
No expandable storage: This is annoying, but they do this because they can't control the quality of the micro SD you put in. I've seen many people trash a phone that just had a bad sd card (they fail often and early). They don't want their quality reputation tarnished because someone stuck a $10 special sd card in that fails.
Limited IO: Minimalist Art choice that's been Apple's philsophy for ages. Power users hate like us hate it obviously, but I see why.
Propietary headphone: They wanted to force a change to bluetooth headphones, but still needed some fallback option via the only port left on the phone. Again, I see why, even if I don't like it.
no recycled: Uhm, I have family who have purchased refurbished Iphones.
Repair shops: Again, Apple wants to control the quality and ensure you don't get a poorly done repair. The reason Apple has such a reputation for quality (and thus can charge the premium) is because they protect that quality like their life depends on it, because it does. Obviously us power users dislike that, but there is a reason to it beyond just profit/obsolescence.
That said, I have never bought any Apple except their stock, so don't try to classify me as a fanboy. As a power DIY user, I prefer the ability to modify and better specs. My extended family mostly uses Apple which saves me from having to provide much support. I respect their design choices for art and progress with the knowledge that it comes with compromise and friction that won't be a match for everyone (such as myself).