> It makes the earbuds smaller.

How can we verify that’s anything more than an urban legend? The same sort of rationalizations were made for the removal of the headphone jack, and they were proven false (the iPhone 7 had such a big empty space inside it that a YouTuber was able to fit Apple’s external lightning adapter in, drill a circle in the outer aluminum, and have a functioning 3.5mm jack). These CT scans seem to show some empty space where the stem meets the bud, perhaps they could detach there.