I think this article misses the main reason the white wired Apple EarPods and their imitators are popular: they're great for phone calls. Wireless earbuds all have awful microphones, technical measures to mitigate this seem to be futile against the fact that they're sitting on the sides of your head while your mouth is on the front. Earpods make you sound good on calls while also being cheap and fashionable. That's the appeal for most people, I think, nothing to do with their suitability for music.

I don't get the convenience argument for wireless earbuds. I am the only person in our family without wireless earbuds, so I see wireless buds users up close daily, and it's a pretty common occurrence that someone can't find their buds, or the case isn't charged, or something won't connect. Seeing all these alternative inconveniences to a thin wire doesn't convince me to go wireless at all.

So if you "share" a track by each person using one ear-thingie, does stereo separation mess it up ? How many audio players (HW or SW) have a "mono" button ?

All these people will be complaining about hearing loss in twenty years time. I had to stop using ear buds because they were giving me an ear infection.

I’ve used both wired and wireless headphones and earbuds for about the past ten years. I really enjoy many aspects of wireless earbuds, one of which principally is that I don’t need to carry a player on my person, and cords can easily get in the way of mundane tasks.

However, I will no longer invest in high-quality (and expensive) wireless headphones and earbuds, and have been investing more heavily in wired sets.

One of the key reasons is they many wireless products do not have easily replaceable batteries, let alone other spares, on what is ostensibly a consumable component. I had a pair of expensive Bowers and Wilkins wireless headphones where the battery had degraded to uselessness after five years, only to be advised they were irreparable. The cost of ownership equated to $200 a year, which is definitely in luxury territory.

Other reasons drive me back to wired headphones too. They are more readily interoperable. I can use them with musical instruments, computers, analogue stereo systems. I am not constrained to using them with the amplifier embedded with them. There is no latency, which is a huge problem with Bluetooth headphones for music. They don’t succumb to wireless interference. And I don’t need to navigate the minefield of codec compatibility (SBC/LC3/AptX/AptX HD/AAC/LDAC). I also don’t need to charge them constantly.

I appreciated the article’s author taking the time to document their observations of how wireless listening, and the convenience it supposedly brings, on changing the way we consume music - and other societal impacts - on top of the technical implications too.