But you're starting with the wrong assumption: that people focus on having the best option in each situation. The people buying Airpods probably know they're not the best headphones or microphone. They are the best jack of all trades even if master of none. They are the best package. And you rarely choose what's best for others, others probably do the same.

So when you WhatsApp from your mobile someone else has to see you type slowly, full of autocorrect errors and typos. You don't switch to the web Whatsapp from a computer, or a model M attached to the phone despite knowing they are faster because you get their messages fast and correct so it's all great.

Boom mic is always the superior choice.

Yes. All the software / DSP processing can't help if the physics is against you.

By placing the microphone close to the mouth noises you make, you are increasing, by many orders of magnitude, the signal-to-noise ratio.

Cars and other large BT devices (like an Amazon Echo) can use multiple microphones and some fancy processing to really isolate the voice signal coming from a specific direction (relative to the device) and also cancel out surrounding noise sources.

With ear-bud systems, you can't fit in many microphones, nor can you spatially separate them enough for the software to do the job.

In an absolute sound quality sense, yes.

But they also pick up peoples' gross mouth noises. You hear them chewing food, wheezing when they have a cold, or even eating food in waaaaay too much detail.

Obviously mute buttons exist but... I've had multiple remote coworkers with boom mics and even if they rememeber to mute 90% of the time over the course of a year that other 10% really adds up lol

The solution to that problem is not a better microphone, the solution to it is noise-canceling software. It filters out something like 95% of gross mouth noises, and 99% of stupid background noises (Cars, fans, ACs, etc.)