Mark Zuckerberg on a podcast with Joe Rogan (massive grain of salt, please) talked about the protocol that Airpods use to connect. Apple is reluctant to share the protocol under the guise of "security" and "privacy". But when Meta finally had a chance to review it, it was apparently all unencrypted and all the keys were stored in plaintext.

But this tracks with a lot of other explanations they have put out over the years about why they can't put out basic features or fix UI flaws.

For interpreting Apple PR, I have re-appropriated Hanlon's Razor: “Never attribute to User Experience that which is adequately explained by incompetence or indifference”