Apple headphones - unexpected quality

I bought my iPod Touch in April 2008. I also got headphones in the package and I've used them about one hour a day since then, approximately. The quality of the sound seemed quite good to me. I liked the design, the "apple white" is a very nice color; the length of the cable is just fine. I expected a very good quality, because new apple headphones weren't cheap /at that time/.
Few months later it turned out that the quality of the material (and also sound later) isn't as good as I expected. The rubber ring on the top of the earphone ripped up (on both earphones) which caused the earphone didn't fit well into my ear. Also the rubber bottom ripped up, which wasn't important to me, but it looks weird.



Next thing was the rubber protection on the jack, which also ripped up, so I cut it (red line). This didn't affect the headphones in any way or I thought so :p. Once I wanted to disconnect headphones from my PC, the rubber isolation stucked in my hand and the jack was still connected to the PC. Fortunately the cable stayed of a piece, but the wires showed up (yellow line).