That's an argument against buying an iPhone and AirPods Pro together as a combination instead of buying a hearing aid, but

- it's not an argument against using AirPods as an aid with mild hearing loss if you're already an iPhone user

- it's not necessarily a great argument against buying an iPhone and iPods Pro anyway, given that hearing aids can easily run hundreds or even thousands of dollars more than that combination

- the vast majority of smart phone customers, both on and off HN, have either factored "walled garden" into their buying considerations at this point or never will

- let's not pretend Samsung is not already trying to figure out how to cram this into their next Galaxy Buds for Android users anyway, which will somehow work best with Samsung phones, not so well with other Android phones, and not at all with iPhones, but nobody will really complain about it because whatevs, it's not Apple

I'm looking forward to this going live. I've worn the "we have an app!" BLE enabled hearing aids and am currently wearing a pair of amplifiers I got on Amazon for $200 and they've lasted almost two years. AirPods Pro + this software should make it a lot easier for me to follow conversations and filter out high frequency noise (like you get when there's nothing but bare walls and ceilings and floor space). I mostly ignore the Apple-haters.

And will put some people off from talking to them. I don't talk to people with AirPods stuck in their ears until they take them out. Too many times I have tried to start a conversation or just say "Hello" but they are oblivious because they are on a call or have music or something else playing.

that sounds more like a you problem. i use mine pretty frequently as hearing aids, especially in noisy environments.

> Too many times I have tried to start a conversation or just say "Hello" but they are oblivious because they are on a call or have music or something else playing.

This is GP's problem? What should GP do to solve this problem? (Seriously asking, even though this probably sounds sarcastic). Should GP tap them on the shoulder or try to wave them down or something to get their attention? What if they don't want to be bothered? What about the sibling comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41533796 ) about it being a feature not a bug? If GP were to tap that person or get their attention someway, it seems that it would be unwanted.

Sounds like a feature and not a bug.

> will entrench the user in a walled garden ecosystem from a very specific giant tech company that isn't big on making their products compatible with other companies

Are you suggesting AirPods aren't Bluetooth 5.3 and aren't compatible with Bluetooth audio sources? Or that it doesn't play AAC, MP3, and FLAC?

The proprietary capabilities (such as instant smart switching between active devices) are all incremental, taking nothing away from normal Bluetooth usage.

Seems like a rage bait post but: how do you update the firmware without an apple device?

At an Apple Store[1].

[1]: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/106340

You need to do more than update the firmware. You need to upload your personal audiogram into the device.

As mentioned elsewhere you can't tweak its setting outside Apple's walled garden.

Better wait for more open competition to catch up unless you are already deep in their ecosystem and not intending to move.

Do you need your own iphone, or can you use a friend's iphone to fix the settings once?

I was able to use my partner's iPhone to configure some settings.

It's frustrating that the settings can't be changed on Android, and macOS seems to have a subset of settings compared to iOS.

It probably should be your own device; the audiogram ends up in the iPhone's health app. It can probably be done by someone else if they don't care and don't need to apply a different audiogram for themselves.

That is some nice integration. Having one’s own up to date audiogram stored in a health record and available to doctors and devices.

Can you use them as hearing aids without an iPhone?

I have no issues using my AirPods on Android.

Automatic device switching doesn’t work but that doesn’t work on my Sony headphones either.

The new hearing aid features are gatekept behind an iOS app. You can't tweak the hearing aid settings without an Apple device.

The Samsung Galaxy Buds only have 360 audio and the better audio codec if you use a Samsung Galaxy smartphone. Doesn't even work on other Android devices let alone iOS. And as far as I know you can't tweak the hearing aid features of Galaxy Buds on any device.

If you can't actually tweak audiogram settings, they're not really hearing aids. In fact, Samsung doesn't sell them as hearing aids and from what I can tell never use the term "hearing aid" in any of the marketing, branding, or feature listing of the devices.

They're not FDA approved as hearing aids, so they're not hearing aids.

Either way, pointing to another company being shitty isn't really a good justification of the first company being shitty.

Just trying to understand your argument: Samsung does it so that makes Apple ok? I hear a lot of people argue (when defending Samsung, Google Play, etc) that Apple does it so it's ok, but not usually the other way around. I guess it makes sense that it would devolve into the spiderman meme, but the real losers in that are everyone else that isn't making money from it.

Personally I thinks it's shitty when anybody does it.

+1 on this. I use them with my android phone, steamdeck, windows computer, TV. They work great!

Is the hearing aid market big on modularity and compatibility?

isn’t it good to have multiple options so consumers can pick what they value?

If ever there was an opportunity for apple to earn some easy goodwill, it would be opening accessibility features like this to other platforms. Keeping accessibility features locked to iphones only isn't good optics IMO.