It's not really niche. The GP's problem is solved because pairing effectively becomes "put these two things close together and open the box".

If it only works on one device it is pretty niche and hardly a replacement for the headphone jack...

I use them with my laptop too. I have had only one ‘pairing seems a bit broken’ issue since buying them as soon as they came out - and an iPhone restart was the fix. That’s about 2.5 minutes of hassle in several thousand hours of use.

If they were a pain, I would stop using them, but they are much less hassle than the many pairs of corded headphones I have. This said, other Bluetooth headphones are much more hassle.

I mean it's certainly a replacement for the headphone jack on that device which is pretty much the stated goal.

What? It will only work with that device. It won't work in any car or any other circumstance. Also the pods themselves will not work with any non-apple device.

That's an extremely narrow use-case. If that was the only thing people used the headphone jack it wouldn't have been the big travesty that it currently is (and will be for the foreseeable time).

They have a pairing button like any other bluetooth device. They work in my car and on my windows laptop.

My bad, when they were new I was told it wouldn't work on regular devices. Still, it's just another bluetooth headset then.

Not to mention that for that price I can buy a pair of extremely nice-sounding headphones, wireless or not.