I imagine it may be hard and they don't have incentives to "fix it", but I think the single most important disadvantage of airpods is the battery life... no matter how long it lasts, there's no way to replace it, so they became essentially discardable items. [1]?
This has nothing to do with some evil planned obsolescence, it’s just that you can’t make a device that small while retaining (easy) battery replacement capability.
They have a 10-steps guide of "moderate" difficulty to replace the battery, and it may damage the water resistance of the buds. That’s definitely not what I’d call "easy" battery replacement.
I'd argue there's a difference between planned obsolescence and products that are of such a nature that it's just about impossible to pull them apart. (Now, whether that means the latter category of products is defensible is a different question)
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence