Kudos apple for this. Even though most of these (including this one) dont benefit me, this is always good to see. So many of these accessibility devices are ridiculously expensive, and Airpods are far cheaper than hearing aids. Maybe a little competition will bring down the prices to something more reasonable.
Only 1/3rd of the 15% with hearing loss are using hearing aids. That's a lot of suffering for what is really just from poor insurance in the US:
High-quality hearing aids fitted by an audiologist cost between $2,200 and $7,000 per pair. Prices vary by region, but the average cost of a mid-level pair of hearing aids is about $4,500.10 Most private insurance does not cover hearing aids. Only 3 states—Arkansas, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—mandate coverage for adults, and just 20 states require that children’s hearing aids be covered by health insurance.11 Insurance companies say that they do not cover hearing aids because hearing aids are “elective” or because, unlike cochlear implants, hearing aids do not require a medical doctor’s prescription or surgical intervention.
...
Hearing loss can have a dramatic impact on work performance, family and social relationships, and mental health. Studies have found that hearing impairment is significantly associated with depression and social isolation, particularly among women.16,17 A national survey found that hearing loss also has a negative impact on household income, with a loss of earnings up to an average of $12,000 per year, with the severity of hearing loss directly correlated with the amount of lost income. The use of hearing devices was found to mitigate this effect by 50%.
And they don't have the stigma attached. They look like what everyone else is wearing.
Medical equipment is interesting. Something like a pacemaker really needs to work but a hearing aid can probably do fine with a much lower reliability if it means they're affordable.
Just cheaper these days to buy them from India. You could fly there, get a top quality doc/audiologist to check you up. The same top of the line aids cost around 2-3K max. Do the touristy stuff and fly back all for less than what it costs to get an aid in the US. "Medical tourism" they call it.
If you are taking the trouble to look into how to save money on hearing aids, Costco will get you audiologist testing and hearing aids at <$2000 and vastly less trouble than a trip to India. (That's what I did for my last replacement pair last year and so far it's worked out well.)
I got the airpods a couple weeks ago. My main motivation was that the earpods cable easily tangle. It's difficult to sort it out. The next motivation was to be able to charge the phone while using the earpods since they have lightening. And finally, because I can't get the earpods in my macbook unless I use an adapter.
And here is my experience: It is great and feels like an Apple product.
1. The charge lasts. It lasts around 2-3 hours + charge 6-7 more times. Can go with the thing for a full day of usage without worrying.
2. It is seamless to get it working. You just open the case. Done. Then you can easily switch on the Mac after you connected it to your iPhone.
3. The sound is good. It is not too strong. But I guess this will protect me against my own stupidity.
4. The airpods are water resistant (though warranty doesn't cover that). I dropped one on my coffee cup. Still working good.
Simple. Nice. And it works. That's what I'm paying the premium for!
And yes, it is definitively worth the price. I use them for 3-4 hours per day. So if they last for a couple year, that's like $0.22/day for something that I use probably more than anything else.
They really do feel like that old Apple magic from when you first got an iPod.
I ordered them when they came out and figured I’d return/sell them if I didn’t like them. I had normal corded headphones, wasn’t sure I’d really care.
Given how long it took for them to fix supply issues that was a good decision.
But they really changed the way I do everything. They’re so small in their case that I can just carry it with me all the time, so I never have to worry about if I left my headphones somewhere. I always have some on me. By and large they sound better than my old headphones (comfortable/decent sounding $20 model, so no big surprise) but they’re so incredibly convenient.
I don’t remember the last thing I could give an unqualified recommendation to other than AirPods. Android users don’t get some of the benefits of easy pairing, and of course your ears have to fit the things... but they’re fantastic.
Nice points. I actually use my AirPods on Android. They've been really great there. There' not much visibility on battery life though - have to connect them to my MBP to get a battery status. The Android apps that have any support for this are bloated with junk. I'd write my own if I had the time - and then again - I don't know if I want to delve into the world of the Bluetooth protocol.
I would say I get a bit more than 3 hours on a charge - but maybe because they're still new. Agreed on the 6-7 charges from the case.
The AirPods are really far and away the best truly wireless in ear headphones. I did a bit of research before buying them recently. Ultimately my thinking about buying Apple versus another competitor in this vertical boiled down to: Apple is sitting on billions and billions in cash... Their R&D can never be matched. Case in point: they built a custom chip for the airpods... Who else can do that? The bar is high.
Other earphones, you can add a formed rubber cover to make them fit. Due to the AirPods charging in their clever snug case, you can't easily use them with any kind of cover attached.
More so for EarPods because they don’t go into your ear canal. But yes it does apply to any in-ear earphone, except those with custom molds. Eg Etymotic
People with larger openings can put a little rubber on them to increase the diameter and add friction. There are some third party products and DIY methods out there.
They’ll still fit in the case and charge. If the ears are truly gigantic, I suppose removable tips would be needed, but they just need enough that they won’t fall out. I agree they don’t fit everyone perfectly, but the weighting as it sits on the ear helps.
I use the beats wireless headphones - they have the same wireless “magic” (I write software, and nearly failed university physics so magic will do) and they solved my cable issues. AirPods don’t fit in my apparently deformed ears :)
I read all the negativity (I am not a big fan of the touchbar on my MacBook Pro) about Apple on HN but one thing they deserve high praise for is accessability and privacy. Going back to the release of the first iPhone it had great accessibility features.
Just curious, what accessibility features did the first iPhone have? FWIW, VoiceOver, the screen reader for blind users, didn't arrive until the third iPhone, the 3GS.
So what does this actually do to the sound? Improve directionality? Amplification across all bands? Speech processing? Noise reduction?
I have a set of NHS hearing aids (free and with a lifetime supply of free batteries), and they're effectively given a custom EQ profile to match my hearing loss (frequencies above 4khz). They also have feedback protection, which I can occasionally hear kicking in.
Maybe it’s five? I just know that sometimes I wear them nonstop starting from when I come back from lunch and they die a bit before I leave; if I haven’t taken a break and charged them for a few minutes.
I’ve also had them since launch and use them basically every single day at work. Maybe those ridiculously tiny batteries have worn down a little bit.
I thought their case charged them quickly? (I use giant beats headphones to make me look cool ;) they ostensibly have 40 hours, but take quite a bit longer to charge)
Yes, it improves directionality, and you can choose from a number of presets to highlight different parts of the room depending on your situation. Apple’s how-to page for LiveListen [1] offers a glimpse of the interface and features that are already available to made-for-iPhone hearing aid users.
An iPhone doesn't just have a microphone. It has 4 microphones.[1] And it has the ability to do some very sophisticated DSP on the sounds it receives.
So, unless your hearing aids communicate with each other (L and R) in real time, the iPhone might be able to do a better job. That's theory. Does it actually work that way in practice? I don't know.
It would be nice if Apple also did custom EQ like your hearing aids do. It would be pretty easy to add something like that in software, the hardware can certainly do it.
I can't find any references online, but a friend of mine is deaf in one ear and their right hearing aid communicates in real time with the left hearing aid (so that they can hear on their deaf side by the audio being pumped into their good ear).
These are just the free hearing aids you get on the NHS I believe so I would imagine that the ones you need to pay for are significantly more sophisticated in this respect.
I have no idea what is available in the US - perhaps this phone-based approach is good for people who don't have $10k to spend just to get some basic amplification?
I know from when my grandfather went through this stuff a few years ago capabilities varied widely. Everything from an electronic “ear tube” that does nothing but make things louder up too much fancier things with digital processing to help you hear voices. It all depended on how much money you had to spend/how good your insurance was. Sounded like it was common for people to get the low-end models and only something for one ear to try and save money.
Couple years ago I listened to talk from an owner of a startup that was doing exactly that. App was listening to environment, make it louder and playing trough headphones in real time. They failed because users didn’t want to use it because of need of wearing headphones when they was talking to other people. Apparently slapping Apple logo on the same idea fixes the problem
I have been wearing hearing aids for about 6 years. They work, but are incredibly expensive. If AirPods and an iPhone could be used as an alternative, that would be an incredible thing. My current hearing aids come with a blue-tooth adaptor which I never use. I don't use it because the sound quality is very poor - I have a common, age-related high-frequency drop off. So my aids boost the high frequencies, but do not transit the lower frequencies: these I just get as normal. (My hearing aid dome allows low frequencies through to my ear). So when I use the blue-tooth adaptor, all I get is the high frequency sound: very unsatisfactory. The only objection I can see to an AirPod alternative is that the AirPods show - my hearing aids are the behind-the-ear type, and most people do not notice that I am wearing them.
I'm confused about what is so amazing about this. To be clear, I have Airpods and really love them but how is this different than any of the many "microphone" apps already out there? I have a Pixel 2 so I can confirm there are a million of these apps on the Play Store, is there some reason this app isn't possible on iOS? Is it about lower latency?
I can't really say because I haven't used either Apple's live listen feature or any of the microphone apps on Android, but the article says live listen doesn't just amplify sound, it isolates and amplifies voices. Which sounds like a different thing to the standard microphone apps.
Yeah that's pretty similar to what current/last gen hearing aids can do. My mother has been dependent on her pair since she was 7, but a few years ago she upgraded to a newer version. The hearing aid has a few different modes for isolating foreground and background noise toggled by a small button. There's a general amplification mode, conversation mode (isolates) and a crowd mode.
Now I'm very curious as to what current gen hearing aids are capable of.
Am I the only one whose AirPods have gotten quiet over time? I use mine now only to avoid disturbing others around me; I often have to hold them into my ear to understand YouTube. My phone's speakers are much louder and clearer.
[Edit: the comment is meant to be relevant because this seems cool and I like the lack of stigma, but a nearly silent headphone may not be ideal for the hard of hearing]
Are you on Android? I had a similar problem with my Pixel 2 last year, and I've seen other Android users report similar issues with other bluetooth headsets. Under Android developer options, there's an option called "absolute volume" that you can disable which should increase/remove the volume cap on your bluetooth device.
On Android I've found that the volume that the phone thinks the AirPods are at can get out of sync with reality, the result being that Android's idea of full volume is actually very quiet. (Perhaps I tried to change the volume before they were fully connected?)
Re-pairing them from scratch fixed this. Might be worth a try.
I experienced this (but mostly as a mild confusion of not being sure if they had ever been as loud or if I had just forgotten what volume setting I often used). I lost one in a restaurant and bought a new pair a few days ago and it was amazing how much louder the new ones were.
I’ve just bitten the bullet and replace them every 6 months. I think there’s a flaw that let the outside grill get pushed in and making the whole thing quieter.
I hope they fix this issue, but they’re also not expensive enough for me to hate having to buy new ones too much.
I’ve never heard this complaint about AirPods. Mine certainly don’t seem to have experienced any reduction in volume after about 15 months of use. Have you gotten them wet?
My iPhone volume gets more quiet over time. I used to be able to do the washing up while listening to Youtube or Netflix on speaker, I can’t anymore. I used to be able to listen to Youtube on the street with earplugs, not anymore. It decreased by a notch (30%) when I installed iOS 11.3. Never upgraded since.
This may sound odd, but are you sure your earphones are going in all they way into the plug? If they don’t go in properly you lose a lot of volume. (Possibly because of lint)
The Sony MDR-1000X/WH-1000XM2 have had a 'voice' mode for years, where noise cancelling let's through specific bandwidths.
I use it as a safety feature when riding my bicycle, and it is nothing short of amazing. I can hear birds tweeting in the trees around me, tire noise coming from cars, crystal clear conversation. I'd love to have the same feature in a smaller package.
I do that as well with my AppleTV. I live in an apartment so I don't want to crank up the volume watching movies and bother the neighbors. And with my AirPods, I can get up and go to the kitchen to get something to eat and not miss a second of dialogue.
I've found they lose sync on Windows, as in, you hear an echo as left and right and perfectly aligned. Could be the bluetooth dongle I use I suppose, but it's an Asus rather than a no-brand off Amazon.
I had no end of trouble with AirPods and a Killer 1535 wireless card (WiFi and Bluetooth) but replacing that with an Intel 9260 and it has been perfect.
I got my pair as soon as they became available, and I’ve slowly realized that at the rate that I had to replace the old, wired EarPods (due to failures in the cable or accidentally laundering them) I’ve probably already crossed the break even point, making the AirPods surprisingly more cost-effective. And, yet, I use them so much more — very nearly all day.
I have had at least 3 pairs replaced for free due to them physically falling apart. Sure you could argue I am rough with them but the reality is I don't treat them any worse than other earbuds I have that have lasted years. I still have the ones that came with Galaxy S2 or S3 so I feel Apple's are a bit too fragile.
Can somebody help explain this to me? Can I buy AirPods (looks like they are $159?) and then use them with android? or do I need an iphone? Which Iphone do I need? Is there one without a contract that has this software? Will I eventually be forced to upgrade the phone or it will stop working? Does the software allow me to adjust for the frequency that I need help in? How much do I need to spend?
They won’t, there are already unregulated audio amplifiers. But everyone should know that trying to use headphones as hearing aids is exceedingly dangerous. Hearing aids are carefully tuned by doctors to prevent the loud noises they produce from accelerating hearing loss. The Live Listen feature is best used with hearing aids, not AirPods.
This contradicts what I've heard from my wife's best friend who was diagnosed with hearing loss several years ago & has been using hearing aids. According to her, hearing aids themselves are dangerous, expensive & flaky. She complains there is no "one size fits all", and she needs at least two or three different ones. Eg, she has one which is great for indoor conversations, but is very susceptible to wind noise, which she said gets amplified so much it is dangerous. On the other end, she has one she wears outdoors that is great for rejecting wind noise, but she says is useless for indoor conversations with lots of people talking. These are devices which cost thousands.
I'm going to forward this article to her; hopefully she has an old phone she can install the beta on and try this.
I work in an audiology research lab. It is true that hearing aids can degrade your hearing. But if it is tuned by an audiologist it can do significantly more damage. Of course that does little good for people without health insurance - hearing aids are so expensive. But if you can possibly afford to see an audiologist and care about maintaining your hearing (which not everyone does) you should absolutely not use untuned audio amplifiers.
It does seem like it is absent from Beta 3. In Beta 1, I had added it to Control Center but at some point in time since then (Beta 2/3) it was removed, it seems. Not exactly a promising sign.
Edit: it seems that the feature only appears when AirPods are in proximity. Seeing it in Beta 3 now that I’ve gone home and am close to the AirPods.
Only 1/3rd of the 15% with hearing loss are using hearing aids. That's a lot of suffering for what is really just from poor insurance in the US:
High-quality hearing aids fitted by an audiologist cost between $2,200 and $7,000 per pair. Prices vary by region, but the average cost of a mid-level pair of hearing aids is about $4,500.10 Most private insurance does not cover hearing aids. Only 3 states—Arkansas, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island—mandate coverage for adults, and just 20 states require that children’s hearing aids be covered by health insurance.11 Insurance companies say that they do not cover hearing aids because hearing aids are “elective” or because, unlike cochlear implants, hearing aids do not require a medical doctor’s prescription or surgical intervention. ...
Hearing loss can have a dramatic impact on work performance, family and social relationships, and mental health. Studies have found that hearing impairment is significantly associated with depression and social isolation, particularly among women.16,17 A national survey found that hearing loss also has a negative impact on household income, with a loss of earnings up to an average of $12,000 per year, with the severity of hearing loss directly correlated with the amount of lost income. The use of hearing devices was found to mitigate this effect by 50%.
https://altarum.org/health-policy-blog/millions-of-americans...