Apple is not the party to blame here - defo Nokia with their stupid headset implementation in the N900. And not just the wiring either (i.e. the lack of support for anything other the one button).

You could do what I did - which is to buy a WH-205 (ie. the standard N900 pack-in headset) on fleabay, snip, solder a volume control / standard headphone jack onto them and plug in the headPHONEs of your choice.

http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p...2&postcount=66