They also lack any and all useful features. Even just the ability to tap for pause is critical to my daily life.

I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume. Or even use active noise canceling.

Many wired headphones have buttons and wheels too. We've been adjusting things via them for so long lol.

Many wired headphones have a little control thingy with buttons on the wire. Four pin aux connectors support control signals. If your headphones have a detachable aux cable I suppose you can just replace it with cable with controls.

The touch functionality is useful until it isn't. My Pixel Buds will activate touch controls randomly and unnecessarily all the time when I'm trying to use them in bed, from the contact with the pillow or sheets. Drives me nuts.

But also, I don't think it's either/or for most people. I use both wired and wireless headphones all the time depending on the use case. Wired sounds far better and is more reliable, wireless is more mobile. Different use cases.

Tons of wired headphones have little controllers on them to change songs and pause.

I bought a tiny lapel clip Bluetooth receiver that has buttons and a headphone socket. Charge over USB, pair with phone, turn any headphones into Bluetooth. If the battery runs out, plug the headphones straight into the phone.

However, the noise cancelling gap is real. I'd kill for wired IEMs with an inline battery + buttons, and noise cancelling mic & circuit in the earpieces.

Closest is the Sony cans, which have wired mode (ie: they have a tiny jack, so you can use them passively) but I don't think they cancel noise when using them that way

Probably an exaggeration? But I hope that tapping for pause isn't critical for anyone's daily life.

I use wireless headphones and in fact never use this feature (I have it disabled). Too unreliable when there's a large screen with a big pause and skip button within reach.

Or ever do anything in parallel with listening. I’ve been working in my garden and went to a shed that’s like 15 meters away from my home only to notice that I’ve forgotten to take my phone with me - music never stopped.

> I just wonder if wired fans just never skip forward a song, or adjust the volume.

This has been a thing in wired headphones since at least 2007 lol

by definition you're literally within 2 feet of the device playing the music; how hard is it to use your device to do any of that and more?

Many have a small box on the cord with those controls, and you could argue that's handier since it's closer to where your hands naturally are at any given moment.