What technology is making IrDA ports obsolete?

In terms of "wireless", IR is being obsoleted by WiFi and Bluetooth.

Both of these are radio (wireless) tehnologies that offer faster data rates, potentially greater range (WiFi especially), and freedom from IR's need to have line-of-sight between the computer and the peripheral.

In terms of wired connectivity, USB was designed to replace a collection of interfaces such as parallel and serial, and to allow many more kinds of devices to be connected over the USB "bus", and to allow a number of devices to connect over the bus. This was either impossible or much more limited with the older serial and parallel interfaces.