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They’re dropping the ‘more waterproof’ argument? Somebody didn’t think this out. When people are listening to music, they want stereo sound - meaning two ear buds. Are Apple buds $159 apiece? Has Apple upgraded their sound board to match? A lot of time, too, when people are listening to music they are involved in some activity and the wires on the buds keep the buds from falling into the manure pile or shattering into a billion bits if they hit the pavement. Wired buds are also lighter and they’re not battery dependent. (Global warming oh no!!) Maybe Apple should have let a few working people play with this before they went with the final geek cubicle-centric product? I can’t see buying it.

“Are Apple buds $159 apiece?”
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I’m not a big fan of stuffing weird looking things into my ears. That it can seriously muckup my hearing for life doesn’t add a whole lot to the attraction.

They’re dropping the ‘more waterproof’ argument? Somebody didn’t think this out. When people are listening to music, they want stereo sound - meaning two ear buds. Are Apple buds $159 apiece? Has Apple upgraded their sound board to match? A lot of time, too, when people are listening to music they are involved in some activity and the wires on the buds keep the buds from falling into the manure pile or shattering into a billion bits if they hit the pavement. Wired buds are also lighter and they’re not battery dependent. (Global warming oh no!!) Maybe Apple should have let a few working people play with this before they went with the final geek cubicle-centric product? I can’t see buying it.

No, Apple has not dropped the "waterproof (sic) argument". It's "water and dust resistant". . . and that is only one of several reasons for dropping the jack.
No, they are NOT $159 apiece. That's the price for the pair plus a charging case which will charge them five times before the case itself needs to be charged.
Apple's iOS device sound has always been AAC, the same sound that the MPEG-4 — Moving Picture Experts Group standard 4 which they use for BlueRays, digital music, and other high quality sound reproduction. The Apple Airbuds have a new W1 Sound processor chip built into them to handle that. EACH ONE.
Will some of these Airbuds fall out? Probably. I've used the Apple wired buds and they have not fallen out very often, but usually because they were pulled out by the wires. I suspect not many will fall. I had an in ear bluetooth that was held in only by the pressure of being in the ear. Never fell out. So we shall see.
I would be willing to bet that Apple did indeed test them out the kazoo. Apple does that kind of thing before sending the product out into the wild. However, my experience has been that no amount of testing will find all the ways that idiots can find to destroy things.