Sorry to burst your bubble, but it is in fact not an opinion. It's how it works, quite literally. I happen to be an electrical engineer who has done some work in audio design. The people who picked 16-bit and 44.1Khz actually did their homework while creating that spec.
I recommend watching this video which does a great demonstration of the signal path from analog to digital and back to analog.
The only reason apple and others provide music in any format that is "higher quality" than that is because people who don't understand the science behind it ask for it and the technology can do it. Most companies will never turn away an opportunity to sell to yet another market or try to bolster their brand saying theirs is better.
I will add one caveat, some humans can hear up to 28khz, however that is a very small sample of the population, and falls off pretty hard at 15Khz for most. As you age, the upper limit goes down as well. Point being, yes there are outliers here, but the people who would notice are very few, and this is before considering what the playback equipment/room do to the sound. The only reason higher sampling and bit depth is useful for production is because it makes mixing and running through filters easier and less lossy so you can have a better 16-bit/44.1khz output in the mixdown.
If you want to go deeper:
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html