Headlines ranged from cautiously skeptical to outright furious. Tech journalists dusted off the word "hubris." Reddit threads stretched for miles. A few contrarian voices argued Apple was right, and they were mostly shouted down. Samsung ran ads openly mocking Apple, Google made sure everyone knew the Pixel kept its jack, and audio purists everywhere declared that the death of the headphone jack was the death of good sound for normal people.

The history of wireless headphones is a remarkable chronicle of technological perseverance meeting evolving human desire. What began as a cumbersome, fringe experiment with infrared and RF signals has, through the universal catalyst of Bluetooth and the market-forcing move away from the headphone jack, become the default way we experience personal audio.