Of course to make this strawman argument you have to ignore the previous comment that says you can do wired connections just over a different port type.
Let’s also ignore any understanding of the DAC quality between older iPods and newer iPhones, where even the dongle Apple sell are considered a high quality DAC.
Let’s also ignore any advances in Codecs in that time, or advances in audio hardware itself.
Let’s also ignore that most iPod users would have bought low quality MP3s or medium quality AACs at the time. Not to mention that most customers use streaming today so wouldn’t even be able to take advantage of the higher quality codecs today.
Finally let’s ignore customer preferences and what niche set of customers would have bought high end enough audio equipment and have the hearing to appreciate and also not want wires today to even fall into your narrow band description.
Who would have thought that if you ignore all aspects that are inconvenient to an argument that you could make any argument you want?