> I would be very very wary of any device claiming it is a hearing aid that is not tuned by an audiologist
I might be wrong here, but I believe the Apple feature will do a hearing test on your phone to see which frequencies you can still hear, and then calibrate the hearing aid to only apply to the areas where it would be safe/effective to boost.
Please take this with a grain of salt, since I don't know all the facts here, but I think this basically addresses your concern.
It really doesn't though - actual hearing aids have way higher end speakers, microphones, and other sensors that result in the high price tag.
It's great that apple is offering this, I am not opposed to that at all. I am opposed to them changing definitions for political points, resulting in a degradation of the meaning of the original term.
If they called it 'hearing assistant' or something else that makes it clear there is a real difference in these cheap / low end products rather than expanding the term to include everything under the sun that can amplify sound it would be different.
They are basically tricking consumers into believing that suddenly hearing aid technology and audiologists are not necessary at all, and I guarantee it is going to result in many people further damaging their hearing as a result.
> actual hearing aids have way higher end speakers, microphones, and other sensors
Can you share more info about that? I'm open minded but skeptical. What about the speakers and microphones is way better? Speakers and microphones are certainly in the category where a high price doesn't necessarily reflect higher quality.
It's a matter of breaking down the components themselves, the quality, the processing, the amplifier, etc -- and miniaturizing it.
This isn't like an audiophile with golden speaker wire or whatever -- it's literally the components and software are inferior in every measurable way.
Also, real hearing aids generally have about 2x as many microphones and speakers (so they can better isolate the frequencies and replicate them), down to the amplifier -- where the cheaper one has worse frequency control.
Apple does a little better than the similarly priced costco-type $300 hearing aids, but the hardware is still vastly inferior.
Just look up the spec sheet and validate if you don't believe what I am saying. It's not hidden - they literally just changed definitions so they could be grouped together and get covered by Medicaid. These "hearing aids" existed as of the shelf 'hearing amplifiers' prior to the definition change - the only purpose is this change is to dilute the meaning of the term, score a political win, and ensure the government medicaid programs can cover the $300 device instead of considering the actual medical device as a viable option.
> It's a matter of breaking down the components themselves, the quality, the processing, the amplifier, etc -- and miniaturizing it.
The quality of the amplifier shouldn't matter much here. I'm confident that Apple has the capability to make amps with equally low distortion to commercial hearing aid providers, and those shouldn't be expensive at the small amounts of power we're talking about for an in-ear device.
As for processing, Apple is capable of making software that's just as good as commercial providers, and probably capable of making in-device signal processing chips which are even better. Their H2 chip is built on a 7nm node process, and it's probably capable of quite a lot of processing for that form factor.
When we talk about "the quality", that's quite vague. What specifically is better?
> Also, real hearing aids generally have about 2x as many microphones and speakers.
I just looked up some spec sheets and I didn't see any that had more than 2 mics per ear. In contract, the AirPods Pro 2 actually have 3 per ear.
> Just look up the spec sheet and validate if you don't believe what I am saying.
Again, I don't see anything that confirms what you're saying. I see lots of features that the AirPods don't have (ex: telecoil) but I don't see anything which suggests to me that they can achieve better hearing correction or better audio quality per se.
I'm still open minded if you want to find some specific references that disagree here.
It's not really convincing what you're saying as Apple have much more money/technology/people then literally any professional hearing aid manufacturer. Just combine total market cap and revenue and it will be in single digits compared to Apple (Oticon parent company Demant is just ~2 billion - Oticon probably way less than that). I would like to see spec sheet of mild hearing loss hearing aid of any of the manufacturers that are charging 10 times more than Apple and see how that hardware is different from what Apple have in AirPods Pro 2. Is there any exact sample you want to share? I really want to see actual spec sheet and see type of hardware they are using as it's complete mystery...
You are underestimating number of people working on them and data that is flowing into Apple from all the people using them for years.
I might be wrong here, but I believe the Apple feature will do a hearing test on your phone to see which frequencies you can still hear, and then calibrate the hearing aid to only apply to the areas where it would be safe/effective to boost.
Please take this with a grain of salt, since I don't know all the facts here, but I think this basically addresses your concern.