We used to have earbuds that don't need to be charged because they had a headphone jack, didn't get lost so easily because they had a cord attached to a headphone jack, never lost the bluetooth connection because they had a headphone jack, and they cost less because they had a headphone jack. https://bsky.app/profile/daisyfm.bsky.social/post/3l3mfjc6sn62k
Is this an analog vs digital thing? Bluetooth runs at a high enough bitrate that most people wouldn't be able to tell the difference. And especially compared to the quality of the cabled headphones that used to be common any Bluetooth earphone is better
Cabled headphones have gotten a lot better and cheaper, and no it's a compression thing, here's an article about it
https://www.soundguys.com/understanding-bluetooth-codecs-15352/
And as I said, they have bitrates high enough that most people won't notice a difference. Especially since the files/steaming they'll be listening to have lower bitrate than Bluetooth.
Regardless, what matters most is the earphone quality and while there might be better and cheaper options now, that's not the cheap bundled headphone people are nostalgic of when they post things like this.
Apple Earpods are very high quality actually, and are praised as a good cheap option by audiophiles