that definitely sounds like a whinge. raspi is fundamentally an unfinished, everything-not-included product. most use cases require some sort of dongle, hat or other adapter. an audio jack (especially in a context where you're not using an HDMI device that you can get the audio from) is much more niche than a lot of other things that aren't included on-board, like storage or POE.
if it's a trade between a built-in audio jack or a built-in RTC, i'll take the RTC 100% of the time.
fair enough, i suppose i'm interested in using it for mainly audio/music applications and so am biased. no use for an RTC. demonstrates really how hard it is to keep everyone happy! over the years i think they've traded things off fairly well.
No RTC means your time is incorrect until something sets it. usually NTP, assuming the device connects to the internet right away. if it doesn't connect to the internet right away, then you just get a wrong time. it means that for any device that ever reboots, there's some amount of logging that has untrustworthy timestamps.
A battery-powered RTC means that any logs from the device aren't inherently untrustworthy.
if it's a trade between a built-in audio jack or a built-in RTC, i'll take the RTC 100% of the time.