True wireless earbuds don't necessarily have to end up as electronic waste when their batteries reach the end of their lifespan. Fairphone demonstrates this with the Fairbuds 2, whose batteries can be easily replaced. The earbuds also offer active noise cancellation and support for Sony LDAC.
It’s not bullshit. I deal with the repair and engineering side of 1/8” phone jacks and they’re fucking stupid ass miniaturized versions of designs from 70 years ago that have to maintain mechanical backwards compatibility with several profiles and conductor arrangements, literally cannot be reliably implemented in a high IP way, cost a bunch, are worse to clean than even usbc and provide a very high leverage thing to torque on your board as well as necessitate additional pcb space for the dac and its power conditioning, shielding and other stuff.
And people who like 1/8” will just buy a dongle anyway.