This is Technology Bytes, episode 86 for October 27th, 2024.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
So today I’m going to be talking about hearing aids and it seems like a weird thing to talk about, but it is something that has to do with technology, obviously, but I’m really in this sense, talking about the AirPod Pro 2 that Apple has released some time ago, but have added this functionality to them just here in recent days.
So they announced this, I think at WWDC at the iPhone event.
I don’t remember when they announced it.
It might’ve been the iPhone event.
Um, and so they talked about the fact that they needed to get full approval to make sure that they could sell them as a hearing aid and those kinds of things.
And that all came through very quickly, but it wasn’t until 18.1 released, and I know that hasn’t released yet, but being on the betas, as you know, that’s what I do, the release candidate came out.
And so the availability of using the AirPod Pro 2 as hearing aids is now available to me and soon to everyone.
So the first thing you have to do is take a hearing test and obviously it needs to be quiet.
The, the AirPods need to be seated well in your ear.
And over the last, I don’t know how many years it’s been with the Apple health, um, hearing test or hearing study, I’ve been involved in that for, from the beginning, I guess, since they started offering those, not offering, but allowing health related tests in their environment.
I’m not sure I’m saying that right.
But it’s interesting because every month, I believe I’m, I’m taking this hearing test through the Apple health study on hearing.
And this test for the AirPod Pro 2 was very much like that.
We’ll play a tone, hit the screen when you hear it and those kinds of things.
Now, my family has been complaining for some time that I don’t hear well and that I need to get hearing aids and hearing aids are expensive, often not covered by insurance.
And it’s not really something I’m interested in.
I know my mother had them and it seemed like more of a pain than it might be worth, but hearing is also important.
So hard to weigh necessarily that.
But when the AirPod Pro 2 announcement was made, I went and purchased a pair of those and then gave my first, um, version to my son, and then of course I had to wait.
I thought that the hearing test was available right away.
And of course it was not.
And then they got approval and it still was not.
So I’ve had them for a number of weeks, maybe a couple months before this was available.
So once it was available, I went into a quiet part of my house and took the hearing test.
And to no one’s surprise, the result said I had moderate hearing loss.
My wife got hung up on the word moderate because she thinks that I can’t hear at all.
Um, but I’m not sure how many levels they would tell you.
I think it’s like, you know, you have severe hearing loss.
They don’t want you to use the AirPod Pro or you have moderate hearing loss.
This is, you’re right in the sweep spot for using the AirPod Pro, um, two for hearing aids.
So I got the results and it says, Hey, do you want to turn on the hearing aid function?
And, and so I said, yes.
And I was just sitting in a quiet room at that point, so didn’t really have anything to test it on, but then I thought I would turn on the TV.
And then I sent a text to my family and said, did you know that the volume button on the Apple TV remote actually clicks when you press it?
And of course that made them all respond with some kind of laughter, emoji, whatever that happened to be.
And so you could tell it really did make a difference.
And the other thing that it does on beyond that is it has a media profile.
So basically the music that I listened to, uh, phone calls that I might make with my AirPods in my ears, it tunes them for the part of my hearing that is deficient.
And I’ve listened to music.
The thing is that I’m not sure if that happens just on the AirPods or if that happens anytime I listen to music from my iPhone, regardless of the, the speaker source or speaker output.
That I don’t know.
And I haven’t done a test yet.
I think I need to, where I turn off the media setting, listen to music, turn it on and see what’s different.
So it’s hard to say exactly how that works, but the hearing aid part, I definitely know that there’s a difference.
So my wife thought that I would wear them all the time.
And I think that I never had that thought in my head.
I thought there would be appropriate times to wear them where not being able to hear would be inconvenient for me and inconvenient for those around me.
And so I’ve had a couple of times where I’ve been able to use them in a real world test as it were.
So on Fridays at work, we have a group meeting where some of the people are on the TV screen because it’s, we have a lot of remote workers and so I wore them in that meeting.
And of course I let everybody know that, you know, I’m not listening to music and ignoring them.
I’m actually using them so that I can hear everybody well.
And they worked very, very well.
And afterwards I was talking to my boss and my wife had said the same thing when we just did a little internal in the house test, but they both said that I talk quieter when I had my AirPod Pro in as hearing aids, and I think it’s because I can hear what I’m saying and it sounds really loud to me, but not necessarily loud to everybody else.
So that may be something I have to learn to adjust properly.
But hearing everybody in the meeting, being able to understand what was going on, not having to strain so much to hear that I couldn’t pay attention to other things, and then the real funny thing is that one of the people in the meeting was clicking their pin, really just opening the cap and closing it again, opening the cap and closing it again.
And I heard every click and I’m like, that seems to be problematic.
But like my boss said, you know, I didn’t even hear that.
I think you can turn that off and start to learn to ignore that.
It’s just that you’ve never heard it before, so it’s new to you.
So you haven’t learned that function again.
And I think he’s right.
And then the second real world test, I was at a basketball game, so that’s noisy.
And so I turned up the background setting.
So basically it, it drowns out the background.
Wasn’t sure, well, it makes the background noise fade, I guess.
And I wasn’t sure what that would do to the voices, but oh my, it made the voices so clear.
The referee standing in front of me at the score table, talking to me.
I could hear them very clearly.
My wife was beside me doing the books.
I’m running the clock.
Every click of the button to reset the shot clock or to stop something or to add points was clearly heard.
And there were times where my wife said, what did he say?
And I would tell her what the referee said.
And I don’t know if that’s because she has some hearing issues as well.
We both know that we do.
But I don’t ever have her ask me that.
So very real, very good real world tests for the two times that I’ve done it at this point.
And so now what, what’s the future?
Well, the reality is that now I have to carry my AirPod Pro with me everywhere I go, because I don’t know when I’m going to be in a situation where they’re going to be necessary.
And that’s okay.
It’s not a big case.
It doesn’t really get in the way.
Oftentimes I have my technology backpack with me, so that’s not an issue either.
And then I’ve asked my wife to tell me, Hey, this is an opportunity where you need to put those in.
So I’m thinking of times where we might be out to dinner with our family and we’re around a table, the restaurant’s a little noisy.
I can turn down the background and then be able to hear the conversation around the table without saying what, what, what.
And so, you know, I, I don’t think I will get hearing aids.
There’s a couple of reasons.
One is cost and two is because I may be too vain to wear them all the time.
And using AirPods, I mean, that’s normal.
People have them in their ears all the time.
And so I can use them in specific situations.
I can let people know that I have them in, but most of my uses for my AirPods is listening to podcasts while I’m doing my morning walk.
And so I have to turn off my hearing aid part, turn on noise cancellation so that I can hear my podcast better in my ears while I’m walking on the street.
I can still hear the cars fine.
That’s, that’s not a problem.
So there is some management that I wasn’t doing before with my AirPods that I now have to do based on where I’m at, what I’m doing.
And if the ability to hear better is necessary.
So I really like them.
I think my wife likes that.
I have them.
My family hasn’t been around yet for me to test it on them or for them to test it on me, whatever that looks like.
But I am excited about it.
I think Apple has lived up to the expectations that I had for how they would work as hearing aids, and I look forward to being able to hear clearly for far into the future.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybitesatmerickfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bites microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
