[Terretta]

Why do headphones need wires? Why should your phone power them, or send them analog signal decoded from digital? Why not let music fans listen to their decoder and amp of choice?

Wires suck.

The jack, dongle, charging are only problems if you assume wires persist. If only Apple were positioned to persuade a popular headphones company to ditch them...

[Grishnakh]

Without wires, the headphones will need a power source. That means a battery. That means you now have to worry about keeping two devices charged all the time, instead of one. And the battery in some headphones is going to be necessarily small, because who wants a big heavy battery hanging off their head or ears? Why do I want to worry about my headphone battery dying while I'm using them? I don't have to worry about that stuff with regular earbuds.

If you want to haul around extra boxes full of electronics and batteries (decoder and amp of your choice), feel free. The rest of us are happy with cheap earbuds, and don't want all this extra complication.

[Terretta]

I have a cell headset that stores in a charging case. Such a brilliant balance in convenience and battery life. I have never once thought about whether the headset is charged. Same play Amazon did with the Kindle Oasis cover, and now Apple with these. You're going to want to keep the two parts in something, why not a charger case?

Your heavy battery hanging off ears comment is like people hearing about a Walkman asking how you'll fit LPs in your pockets anyway:

https://prudentgroove.com/2013/03/29/the-triple-p/

// PS. I highly recommend carrying an amp matched to drivers on your head. In particular, this set: http://blue-headphones.com/powered.php ... an ideal candidate to add a nice DAC to in a future model.