Agreed. At a minimum, redesign the white stem so that it better represents the function of its new role. Obviously, based on the teardown, they took advantage of the real estate to maximize the battery. But still, they could have designed something more aesthetically pleasing and dines the same thing.
EarPods are shaped the way they are based on function. The wires naturally flow out of the stalks, and therefore looks natural. It suggests where the sound is coming from and the purpose the Pods serve. Remove the wire, without alteration, and now there's form without real function. Yes the beam-forming mics are the new function, but after seeing the teardown, this is really more to accommodate the battery, and choice made following that decision. I'd love to see Apples efforts to redesign these, and see what they came up with, or if they just clipped off the wires, and worked backward.
There's high marketing value in keeping the original design, but a lot of the form is informed by the previous function, not the current function. They most likely could have improved the aesthetics of these considerably had they built them from the ground up. I'll be interested to see how these evolve -- stems of any kind are not ideal in these kinds of devices, so once Apple is able to offer the same battery life without the stems, I think we'll see a shift away from this design, and in the interim, I hope we'll see something that better reflects their new role rather than just recycling their original form without their derived function.
