As far as reliability goes, I do see a lot more frays in Apple cables (though not ones that remain exclusively in my care) than others, but part of the reason is that other cables seem to have a weirdly-high rate of mysterious failures in absence of evident physical damage. They just die after 6-24 months. Maybe they'd fray eventually too, but they crap out before it happens. I don't get it. The only Apple cables I've seen do anything similar are usb(-a/-c)-to-lightning charging cables (and I suspect I just need to rubbing-alcohol the contacts on the lightning-plug ends on those, to solve the problem)

I use litz wire for headphone cables. For a cable that's constantly on you, there's always some chance something happens unexpectedly. I've broken my share of earpods.