It’s true.

The SBC bitrates discussed in the article are nuts. Opus is transparent at 1/5-1/4 of those rates. OTOH it’s newer and maybe ten-year-old cheap Bluetooth chips couldn’t have handled it.

What would the power requirements for decoding Opus with a low latency be? Wireless earphones have tiny batteries.

Also keep in mind that you would also need realtime transcoding on the transmitter, as the device would need to mix whatever audio-codec is provided with other channels (Notification sounds, etc.) and encode it into Opus on-the-fly.

No no no, capitalism is supposed to make BETTER products, because money! You must be mistaken.

Not sure what is a failing unique to capitalism here. The USSR had a standards body comparable to western ones (Gosstandard) and that still has plenty of political infighting and abuse. And for all of capitalism's failings, I don't think it's had any scientific failings on the level of Lysenkoism.

How does the patent system follow from capitalism?

It lets people effectively own ideas, prevent others from using them, and potentially license the ideas out for money.

Free-market capitalism is based on competition and low barriers of entry. A government-granted monopoly such as patents is antithetical to capitalism.

Better than what?

Capitalism isn't bad per se, however capitalism without any limitation can be quite dangerous for allowing too much power in the hands of too few entities.

Compared to what?

Capitalism with limitations.