Matt Birchler’s plausible conversation taking place in Apple stores about the iPhone 12:

“Hello, I’d like to buy one of the new iPhones, please!”

“Sure thing, here’s the new iPhone 12. It’s fast, beautiful, and is generally awesome.”

“Sweet, I’ll take it. This box is really small.”

“Yup, that’s because Apple is making the environmental move to reduce waste and not give you yet another charging brick when you, a loyal Apple customer likely have tons of these already.”

“I have bought a new iPhone every 2 years for as long as iPhones have existed, I’m extremely loyal! So I can use one of the half dozen bricks I have in my house already?”

“Well, no, see the included Lightning cable doesn’t work with any brick we’ve shipped with an iPhone except last year’s iPhone 11 Pro.”

Apple’s reasons for not including the charger in the box this year are the environment and because everyone already has a charger. But the new MagSafe charging is only available with the new adapter this year that no one has.