Before the rage at Apple cuts in, it's worth noting that hearing aids are generally regulated as medical devices: Apple got FDA approval in the US, but would be breaking the law in other countries if they enabled this functionality globally.

Going by past experience (Apple Watch ECG for atrial fibrilation detection, for example) Apple will switch off the geoblocking wherever they manage to jump through the regulatory hoops—for example, the ECG functionality turned up on Apple Watch here in the UK about 3-6 months after the USA approved it.

(If you want unregulated hearing aids that's an entirely different argument.)
posted by cstross at 4:17 AM on November 13 [15 favorites]

Given that it seems to be just an equaliser preset on the enabled transparency mode, couldn't it be activated under a different name? "Speech boost EQ" or something?
posted by Dysk at 4:46 AM on November 13 [2 favorites]

Regulatory bodies rarely succumb to naming tricks.

A little rage towards Apple is still warranted, this kind of clever hoop jumping is only required because of the absolute lock Apple has on their eco system. A more open system would be much easier to circumvent.
posted by Mitheral at 5:01 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

Sure, but other manufacturers (eg Samsung with their Galaxy buds) who don't market the feature as a hearing aid, absolutely have transparency EQs that aren't region locked?
posted by Dysk at 5:07 AM on November 13

Before apple rebranded the AirPods Pro as hearing aids you could just choose some frequency ranges to “boost”. The software update had me go through the hearing test to get this feature back (which did confirm that I do have minor hearing loss), so I suspect that people outside of approved regions lost this feature altogether with the latest iOS. Which is a shame, because they are pretty good hearing aids
posted by dis_integration at 5:12 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

hearing aids ... a market that otherwise operates like a cartel. This is true even after the Biden administration did some deregulating. It's incredibly difficult to do meaningful comparisons of hearing aids and they're very expensive/ profitable.
posted by theora55 at 6:34 AM on November 13 [2 favorites]

Oh, this is fantastic and fun. You can also use a discarded microwave as a faraday cage, which is where I initially thought this was going to go! I'd never heard of Skylift before, but it looks like a brilliant project.
posted by phooky at 7:02 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

Ms. Hobnail was in bands on stage from the age of 19 all the way to now, early fifties. She is now as deaf as a post, and we cannot watch TV together without the subtitles on, which drives me crazy because it busts up the rhythm of the dialogue. Now I know what to get her for Xmas. Thanks! Plus I love the sheer nerdy energy of this.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 7:51 AM on November 13 [4 favorites]

Before the rage at Apple cuts in, it's worth noting that hearing aids are generally regulated as medical devices: Apple got FDA approval in the US, but would be breaking the law in other countries if they enabled this functionality globally.

Thanks for this update because Apple rage was absolutely 100% where I was headed but this sounds like an understandable reason at least.

I do wonder if, based on the finding in the article and Dysk/dis_integration's comments, someone could in fact cook up a more vendor-agnostic version of this that runs on Android and works with other manufacturer's headphones. If all that's really needed are noise-cancelling headphones with a transparency mode of some sort, that opens up a lot of other options, many of which will be cheaper still than Airpod Pros.
posted by chrominance at 8:49 AM on November 13

Really cool. I could have used this up in Canada. Anyone know what GUI tool they were using to debug the source code via string search?
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:46 AM on November 13

I read this on HackerNews and someone chimed in saying using a leaky microwave oven as a Faraday would be security risk as AC electricity results in very short but exploitable band gaps (120 per second?). The discussion continues usefully. We may all end needing some of this kind of tech.
posted by unearthed at 10:49 AM on November 13

I set up this feature and few days ago and look forward to pulling them out when trying to talk to people at a noisy bar. Seems super promising, esp. for people like me who don’t have enough hearing loss to justify having hearing aids in all the time. I think it’s great that more people can access it with this hack.

Also, maybe the fact that people use them for something other than hearing aids as well could destigmatize their use.
posted by umbú at 11:00 AM on November 13 [1 favorite]

leaky microwave oven as a Faraday would be security risk as AC electricity results in very short but exploitable band gaps (120 per second?

this is triggering my "someone is wrong on the internet" urges, but there's no way I'm going to go visit (shudder) hackernews to see what the actual claim is
posted by Dr. Twist at 1:56 PM on November 13

Sounds like they are confusing a Faraday cage which blocks signals and a leaky microwave which sprays noise on the bands wifi uses degrading the signal. The hack uses both. Easy to confuse it because microwaves being metal box will attenuate the signals of stuff inside.
posted by Mitheral at 3:00 PM on November 13

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