A nice exercise/snap-quiz? on .. umm, critical-thinking?

Methinks that Drook's glove example is more al punte than any of those [tacit] good-reasons to which you allude.. How could you "improve" The Glove?
That mini-plug/jack combo resembles an likely even more ubiquitous "electrical connector" ... present in Every locale which has a land-line TELEPHONE installed:

Recall? when that simple-bent-wires-based connector was brand New? [I. Do.] You had bare-wires + screwdrivers in awkward places ... Before.
Some thought: it doesn't look expensively-Advanced-enough! to fill so important a task as
Likely.. being utterly ignored/never 'cleaned' nor otherwise fussed-with ... for n-Decades of malignant-neglect:
this vital connection 'twixt You --> and All-those-phone-numbers. Ever had to replace one of these?/never mind the matching cords mangled in hundreds of ways.

I submit that both minuscule-Items are in same Class with another most-clever engineering solution: to a consideration of mechanical "exactness" exemplified by the film-moving pawl!**
within the--then the World's least costly/while well-performing--8mm movie camera: the Kodak™ Brownie.

** this was a fav teaching example (about the concepts of "redundant constraints" of the ilk,)
3-points determine a plane; a 3-legged stool is unconditionally stable on any uneven floor yet most stools have 4-legs.
(My Mech. Drawing Instructor had brains/fingers in a huge variety of such conundrums as well as audio and other disciplines.)

In the Brownie case, the problem was to achieve accuracy of parallel-placement of 2 metal sheets which supported the axle on which this pawl oscillated.
Error produced unacceptable film damage! The Swiss used precision machining of all parts and expensive tiny ball bearings.
Kodak folk realized that very-precise 'balls' (as in -bearings) were dirt cheap; further: 3 accurate dimples could be pressed into simple flat plates such that the balls exactly determined their parallel-separation.
Precision at lowest-cost. I deem that this was: Thinking-outside-the-Box long before that became #1 tiresome cliche.

Similarly then.. the UBIQUITY of the topic's entirely adequate connector--the wealthy may even flash the sucker with Aurum if they share Trump's obsession--demonstrates its decades
of successful use, despite all the abuse we can anticipate.

tl;dr *nix fans? It DOESN'T NEED replacing. Its RECORD speaks volumes for its suitability AS USED.
aka just FIX your fucking-fone-Pipe-dreams, Timmy!
[ n + a jillion new transistors] complexifies a SIMPLE and adequate thing.
(As mentioned, it's shape could be made tinier wherever it's worth a trade-off: the likelier Klutz-damage/to save a mm or two.)
These tinier versions + their adaptors have been around also, since ~Day 1. I have some pairs, plug/jack in a nearby drawer.

---

Carrion
Sometimes it manifests as ... The Muntz™ Tee Vee of way-back* ... so much like: going-all wireless just 'cause you-sorta-Can.
* Mad Man Muntz liked to cut out various resistors/caps engineered-in, to see how many nickels he could save: if it seemed, just-then, still to be "working". (What about when the vac. tubes 'aged'?)
Illogic/ but via subtraction rather than Here: addition of more xsistor junctions to fail. Gratuitously. Rest case. :-)


Ed: P.S.
Appending Peter's pretty complete list, there's More implicit in this "non-Wired tack".
Timmy-boy's brain-storm is another _bad-step kinda like "MP-3" and its variants: mostly Ignoring that part of the phrase of "High-fidelity". (As transistors "replaced" real acoustical Instruments.)

I note the progressive dumbing-down of all the intricacies of achieving the Best-possible music reproduction: since ..the ascent of 'pop-music' featuring thousands of sound-alike 'tunes', so many of which could be derived from a soap-opera jingle: today's equivalent of older-pop-fare with jingles like, A-you're adorable. B-you're so beautiful etc, ad nauseum.
This direction was NOT replacing the work of generations (since pre-stereo) of refining as much of the measurable distortion out of classical/orchestral Reproduction: as could be discovered by the likes of Edgar Villchur, Henry Kloss (of KLH et al) ..not to ignore the Brits and other icons of audio experimentation-to-some-Purpose. Not. even. Trying.

Since transistorized formula-music has gone (like medicine?) for the mass-Profits, [just make-it-LOUD] "fidelity" is not even in the vocabulary now, as so many of the sounds don't exist save for a machine-generator. Timmy-boy's latest evidence of this mindset is perfectly illustrated by the presumption that Blue-tooth is about as 'fidelitous?' a sound quality as any (gear-head?) really 'needs', this Millennium. Imagine-THAT.

Natch: I fucking-Demur. If I want to HEAR the Elgar cello concerto/Jacqueline duPre: It can only happen on the LInn-Sondek LP-12 + associated gear within the chain: not via some Blue- E.-German-Trabant-grade "..tooth" of any other colour. Y'know? THAT-all is assuredly Drumpf-grade devolution q.e.d.

To the Next-'Generation'-if-there-Is-One: Y.P.B.