Those who think 3.5" floppy drives and CD-ROM drives just worked in the same way that 1/8" jacks just work have yet to grasp just works. As for the rest of the

Those who think 3.5" floppy drives and CD-ROM drives just worked in the same way that 1/8" jacks just work have yet to grasp just works. As for the rest of the airpod tech... inductive charging is old, resonant coupling is roughly contemporary with A2DP, and even Qi-branded resonant coupling is 2010ish. Amenable NFC tech or other means of easy pairing are older. If these were somehow a crucial key to The Future™ that Steve Jobs himself had seen in a vision, there's little reason those couldn't have been out sooner (with Apple's resources, possibly before his death). And all this assumes that for some reason the form headphones take with the airpod is for some reason the primary line for marking the obsolescence of 1/8", which isn't a solid assumption because (a) plenty of people are happy for their application with other devices and (b) for some applications, the prevailing bluetooth profiles are still inadequate even assuming universally adopted airpod tech in all bluetooth audio devices and (c) how far away are we from universally adopted airpod tech? and (d) 1/8" would still be closer to just works.