Within the corporate monopolist called Apple, that is to say within the minds of all its collective employees, lies an old idea still warm and vibrant after decades of waning indifference. This idea is called Apple Computer, and it makes the best gosh-darn computers in the world: the Mac.
It is such a powerful and self-evident idea that those computers are still above and beyond the best ones in the world, even with all those years of indifference.
The people who do are a significant minority just around ~30-40%. Wouldn't be a tremendous market for ear hooks otherwise. There are thousands sold every day on some retail sites and sometimes thousands every hour if discounted. Out of the 2 dozen folks I know who have bought airpods, 8 have also bought ear hooks. That's ~33%. Anecdotal, but you can look at sell figures and the vast variety of airpod earhooks products if you don't believe me - and look at the 10k-100k product ratings.
I am surprised to hear your experience here. Many of my friends have them and only one has ever mentioned a fit issue. He bought larger tips and they now fit perfectly apparently.
Researching I can indeed see such products exist, although given Apple appear to be selling over 100 million pairs a year[0] (also surprising to me!), I suspect your estimate is inflated. Note this is over 300,000 pairs per day.
Anecdotally, I see people with Airpods daily but have not once ever seen hooks on them. Maybe there's a cultural element at play?
Until battery life starts deteriorating any that happens real soon and you can’t even know when it started and where it is currently unlike that of, say, an iPhone. Then it’s unusable — hurrah, buy a new pair. The Apple way! :)
This is not unique to Apple. All headphones with tiny batteries in the drivers take the piss after a few years aging.
That said, my MacBooks have the best laptop batteries of any computer I’ve owned. My wife went through multiple laptops in the time I kept one in college. Turns out some electronics just suck!
It is such a powerful and self-evident idea that those computers are still above and beyond the best ones in the world, even with all those years of indifference.