[hoopladler]

I don't disagree, but I think that's more because it's hard to make a shitty headphone jack, whereas it's easy to make a shitty bluetooth headphone set. If somebody actually sat down and made a good bluetooth headphone, with the same kind of robustness and repairability that you get from high-end hearing aids, then it would simply be better than a jack.

A bad technological culture makes technology it can't mess up seem better than it actually is.

[gambiting]

If someone made a pair of headphones to the same standard as high-end hearing aids are made, the price would surely be similar - and that's just way too much to pay for headphones for most people.

Let me put it this way - if I buy a $50 pair of bluetooth headphones and a $50 pair of normal headphones, put them both in a box and opened the box in 10 years, the first pair will be unusable due to the built-in battery, while the second pair will continue working just fine. Sure, maybe a $200 pair of headphones would have a replaceable battery - but I find it extremely difficult to spend so much money on a pair of headphones.

[hoopladler]

A replacable battery doesn't cost 150$. It's just one screw. The reason why headphones are much cheaper than hearing aids is mainly economies of scale.

I think the main reason why headphones often suck are cultural, not mechanical. If you make stuff in capitalism, it being cheap is always a great selling point, even if it craps out after a couple of weeks of use. So you get the whole market crowded with useless junk, and well-made stuff gets crowded out. Stuff that, from a technological perspective, is outdated, works better than new stuff because of this culture. It doesn't mean that the new technology isn't better. It just means that, with an attitude like ours, we could make crud using any technology.