These Guys Hacked AirPods to Give Their Grandmas Hearing Aids
These Guys Hacked AirPods to Give Their Grandmas Hearing Aids
Three technologists in India used a homemade Faraday cage and a microwave oven to get around Apple’s location blocks.
Ah, the usual disguised [email protected]. Don't get me wrong: I enjoy a clever hack (especially a money-saving one) as much as the next guy, but there's no legitimate reason the grandmas shouldn't have had easy access to proper hearing aids to begin with.
(In fact, this is double [email protected] because it's also about how they had to defeat Apple's anti-property-rights location restrictions to do it.)
It’s not Apple’s fault, blame the regulators in India. AirPods are approved hearing aids devices in the USA. The hackers even say they don’t blame Apple.
Right. Apple is required to disable features that are not approved by the government of the nation in which the product was sold.
For example, FaceTime is disabled if you buy an iPhone in the UAE.
It's crazy how expensive hearing aids are considering they are just fancy in-ear headphones. They are literally like 10x the price of the most high end headphones.
I have a set of Siemens ones that were like 4k
You do get custom made inserts specifically for your ears, extremely precise tuning to adjust your hearing loss, they're way less visible than earbuds, the batteries last 15 hours, wireless charging, free retuning and adjustments for life and free cleaning for life
Plus, just using earbuds to increase the volume will damage your hearing further, a good audiologist will have studied for years to improve your hearing without damage
Wouldn't say it's the best 4k I've spent but it's fucking life changing
My grandfather is really not subtle when he wants me to get him something. He recently wanted hearing aids because the ones he has now with the over-the-ear wires were cutting into his ears. I would've loved to get him some high-end ones, but I'm not THAT well off. I ended up getting him some ~$100 ones. I couldn't imagine $4k.
My last pair was $6500! My current pair was $1500, because I found out that Costco sells them at cost.
They're not just headphones. They're several microphones, speakers, Bluetooth devices, and advanced processing computers to make them sound natural, operate in the correct bands and sound amplification levels, and be small & resilient enough to fit into or onto your ears. There's also the costs of testing, fitting, programming, and all of the other support services that come with them. They do have crazy mark-up everywhere except Costco, but they're not really comparable to a set of ear buds.
Capitalism along with ableism.
They see a desperate need, and they price their products accordingly. Accessibility aids, and healthcare in general, are obscenely overpriced, when they shouldn't even be priced at all.
There are pros and cons to this but big tech has realized they can bury classic medical informatics companies on the small cheap medical stuff. Watches such monitor vitals, thermometers, hearing aids, snoring and breathing, etc. All of it is desired by the mass market. I bought my dad a pixel watch after he had his bypass is a (arguably) useful device that can actually save your life.
Doesn't Apple natively support this now? I read a few headlines a month ago that they're supporting software to turn these things into hearing aids.
It’s region-locked as it says in the article.
Wow, that's awful. What a piece of shit.
My dad recently got hearing aids. The technology has come a long way. His are bluetooth and pair with his phone.
Back in the day of you wanted to ignore someone you'd just turn off your hearing aids. He uses his to listen to music now.
I'm sure there might be some practical difference between hearing aids and airbuds, but it does seem like there's a lot of overlap
It's mainly testing and standards. Same with watches now. Big tech realized they can make better shit, they just need to deal with the FDAs of the world and they can thoroughly trounce ingrained medical tech.
It's unclear to me how often they need to hook up this elaborate setup. Is it a one-time thing that once set up it's done? Can their grandmother walk out of range of the iPad and allow it to disconnect? What is the quality difference between typical hearing aids and this airpod capability?
They could just have used anything else... or is there no alternative?
They wanted to use the hearing aids feature that Apple recently released but it is not available in India. They found a way to get around the geo restrictions and enable it.
Rithwik Jayasimha immediately went out with his dad to buy a pair for his grandma. “We came back home, we took them out of the case, and I was looking for the feature and it was just missing,”
I believe AirPods are the only earphones with a hearing aid feature so far, and because of how expensive hearing aids are, they are probably the cheapest.
The AirPods are probably much cheaper than regular hearing aids. My parent’s hearing aids cost a couple thousand and they have to replace batteries.
Okay that is probably true. Pretty crazy actually. Also cool to have good sounding earphones too.
Paywall
If this isn't cyberpunk dystopia I don't know what is. I'll crosspost to [email protected].