That said, I think a good, working bluetooth solution would be something I'd prefer. I like analog jacks, but honestly, cables are a bad solution for wearable devices.
The microscopic lithium battery crammed into the case - non replacable, usually in difficult environment and if it fails you have to buy new headphones. This is far far worse choice for consumers than normal cable-based headphones.
A bad technological culture makes technology it can't mess up seem better than it actually is.
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.
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 Stuff that, from a technological perspective, is outdated, works better than new stuff because of this culture.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.
There's the AvE influence.