Would it have been that hard to do?

The “control panel” would have been a little larger, but designing it like that would still keep the controls closer to reach while allowing many, many different headsets to be used.

Not to mention, what about feeding this into a car stereo auxiliary input jack? That’s blown out the window now, so using this for podcasts and books on tape isn’t much of an option.

In many ways the last generation was more functional. Apple should have added secondary controls to the last one (on the earphone cable) not stripped controls off the current unit.