Different people want different things. Whenever I wore wired headphones, I was always catching the wire on things, and I found them really inconvenient - to the point where when I bought a new phone the headphones just went into my pile of unused headphones. AirPods were a complete change for me - I use them constantly. The sound quality difference is irrelevant - I just won't wear wired headphones - the hassle isn't worth it for me.

Man, I am the biggest curmudgeon in this regard. I wear my old wired headphones, wire under my shirt, to a BT-BA001 "low-latency BT transceiver" in my pants pocket.