Some clarification. In general terms, there are several ways to accent the wood grain and any chatoyance it may have, and which is best depends on the wood and the grain we are accenting. .
As I learned it, "popping the grain" on furniture refers to accenting the chatoyance or grain coloring that is the result of different end and flat grain orientations in the same piece of wood. Since an oil finish darkens the wood, it darkens end grain more than flat grain because the end grain absorbs more finish than the flat.
Oil finishes were the traditional way to accent the grain fast when ithe wood was sanded to only 220-grit, and most furniture people still believe it is unreasonable to sand any finer than that.
The grain can also be accented by sanding to finer grits, and we have that option of sanding to finer grits because of the smaller size of what we are sanding. When polished to a high gloss, bare wood with a coat of wax will exhibit the same properties as the oil finish at 220-grit, but without the amber solor change from the use of the oil.
If we were to sand to 600 grit, we would find that a shellac or lacquer does just as good a job, and by sanding to 2000 grit almost any finish other than waterborne will do the the same thing to the grain as oil finish did at 220-grit, and maybe better. Most waterbornes don't accent the grain very well because there is little to no color change, and they don't brighten the surface. The exceptions to this is Enduro and Unoxyl because they do.