The Vergecast - AirPods are good for your (hearing) health

Episode Date: October 22, 2024

The Verge's Victoria Song joins the show to talk about her year of testing smart rings, and which of the many new options is the one you should buy. Then Chris Welch takes us through his testing of the new hearing health features for Apple's AirPods, including the surprisingly intense hearing test you can take right on your phone. Finally, Andrew Webster helps us answer a question on the Vergecast Hotline: why doesn't Apple buy Nintendo, and what would happen if it did? Further reading: We tested six smart rings, and there’s a clear winner Oura Ring 4 review: still on top — for now Apple’s AirPods Pro hearing health features are as good as they sound Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 could forever change how people access hearing aids Super Mario Run hands-on: like Mario, just simpler Microsoft’s Phil Spencer says acquiring Nintendo would be ‘a career moment’ Email us at [e-mail] or call us at 866-VERGE11, we love hearing from you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Vergecast, the flagship podcast of decades of listening to music too loud in your headphones. I'm your friend David Pierce, and I am sitting here at my computer doing what I call a feeds reboot. I think I've talked about this on the show before, but basically once a year, I try to go through and just take all the stuff out of every single feed or thing that I subscribe to on the internet. And I define that super loosely. So I try to go through all the people I follow on every social platform. I go through all the email newsletters I subscribe to. I go through all the email newsletters I never subscribed to, but am somehow on the list for,

all the channels I follow on YouTube, all the podcasts I subscribe to, anything that just puts an ongoing list of stuff in front of me at any given time, once a year I try to go through it all, look at every single source that stuff is coming from and get rid of all the stuff I don't want anymore. Over the course of a year,

you just become like a different person with different interests and a lot of the sources you care about get better or worse. or more relevant or less relevant. And once a year to just go through the whole list is really helpful. It's super boring, frankly, and kind of tedious, because most of these platforms don't make it easy to go through and sort of systematically unfollow things.

But it's so helpful. I cannot recommend it enough. I try to, like, put on a movie I've seen before or just a bunch of episodes of the office in a row, or when the weather's nice, I'll go, like, sit at a coffee shop. And just over the course of an afternoon, burn through all of the feeds that I have I find this actually most useful in an RSS reader where there's tons of things that, like,

change a bunch or publish too much or publish not enough or go out of business or whatever. And going through and doing a full reset of all the stuff that is being pushed at me is so helpful. Highly recommend it. Again, not a lot of fun, but totally worth it. Anyway, one thing you should not unsubscribe to, by the way, is the Vergecast. This is a very good podcast. I hope we're doing our best. And we have a super fun show coming up today, actually.

We're going to talk about two things. First, we're going to talk about smart rings because I think smart rings are really interesting, and this has been, in a certain way, kind of the year of the smart ring. We've gotten a bunch of new entrants. We've gotten new models from some of the companies that have been doing this a while.

V-Song has tested everything there is to test and has some thoughts, so we're going to talk about it. We're also going to talk about the hearing health features on the new AirPods Pro 2, which I think are actually pretty cool and exciting, but are also big promises from a company. like Apple, promising that your AirPods can act as a hearing aid and really make a difference in how you hear and operate in the world. If that stuff works, it's awesome. And there should be more

like it, but we're going to see if it works. Chris Welch has been testing it. He knows the answer. We also have a really fun question on the Vergecast hotline. So much stuff to do. But first, I have to finish this feeds reboot. I normally do it in the summer, but this year just couldn't make myself sit down and do it. And now I'm doing it. I'm in it. I'm getting it done. It's going to be awesome. This is the Vergecast. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from Retool. Too many companies run critical operations on duct taped spreadsheets,

Slack workflows, and whatever else they could cobble together. Not because they want to, but because building internal tools means weeks of waiting on someone else's backlog. That's where Retool comes in. Build custom internal tools just by describing what you need. Prompts something like, Build me a revenue dashboard on our Salesforce data. And Retool actually builds it.

On your company's data and your cloud with enterprise security built in. Go to retool.com slash Verchcast. We all need to retool how we build software. What's up, y'all. I'm Skyler Diggins, seven-time WMBA All-Star, Olympic gold medalist, and mom. And I'm Cassidy Hubbard, host and reporter for nearly 20 years, covering the biggest names and stories in sports and mom. And this is Am Mom, a community for athletes, game changers,

and moms of all kinds. DROpping May 14th. Tap in with us. Welcome back. All right. My podcasts have been pruned. The RSS reader is just humming. Everything is great.

Let's get into it. So the first thing we're going to talk about today is smart rings. I don't wear a smart ring, but I am fascinated by them. Because for years now, they have been this really interesting device kind of trying to figure out what it's for. You wear it on your finger, which gives it access to some really. interesting biometric data. You also typically wear it all the time because it's a ring and it's unobtrusive and you just can wear it all the time. So in theory, it has access to all this interesting information about you and the ability to do all kinds of interesting stuff. But it's a

tiny gadget with a tiny battery and not that much literal physical room to do stuff. So how do you make a smart ring that's good? And what does it even mean to make one that's good? Like I said, I don't wear a smart ring, but V-Song does. She actually wore a smart ring. She actually wore six, like for months, to do a test to see what the best one is. And I wanted to have her on both to see what she learned and whether she figured out what a smart ring is really for. So, let's just get into it. V. Hello. Thanks for having me. Gadgets. So many gadgets. We just, we talk about watches. We talk about rings. We talk about things on your face. This is just what we do. You wear things and look ridiculous in public and then I ask you about it. This is, this is our

lives. Yeah, this is, you know, it's a burden I'm willing to take so no one else has to look stupid. It's beautiful. We appreciate it. So the thing I mostly want to talk about, I confess, is the new aura ring, a device I have been fascinated by for a very long time and both think is very interesting and not nearly as interesting as it should be. But we're going to get to that. First, I think I want to talk about this battle royale of smart rings that you did and put yourself through some true, like, a summer's worth of pain in order to pull up. So first, just, like, lay the stakes of this experiment for me. Because I think to some extent, like, most people, even most people listening to this,

have never given one second of thought to a smart ring in their whole lives. So I'm very curious, like, how you go through the process of picking the best one and wearing six of them at a time. Yeah. So I decided that I was going to wear six smart rings all at the same time for about I want to say about two and a half three months earlier this summer. Which six fingers, by the way? No pinky, no thumb, because those are, you know, two extremes.

So just the middle three. So you did like, you did a brass knuckles, basically. I did. I did. I was a smart ring mafia wife. I love this for you. For for a solid three months, ended up with six ring tans over the summer, despite all my best efforts at sunscreen. It just happened. You must look like you had some, like, unknowable disease just to have six ringtans.

Yeah, they've somewhat faded now because the experiment is over. I declared a winner. But, yeah, so, you know, it, this idea actually popped into my head a few months before the summer because I knew that the Samsung Galaxy ring was coming and that in order to review that, I needed to know about the entire landscape, but, you know, I didn't want to subject all of our readers to a bunch of little smart ring reviews as I was testing stuff. So what I ended up doing was taking a look at the market. What was currently available was coming out. And I decided, let's do this gauntlet where I test all of them at the same time and tell you which is the best at being a smart ring. Can I tell you what's interesting about that to me, by the way? And this is, we're just, I'm just dying. into the results before I even let you finish your question. But the thing that was so striking to me was that A, there were six of these, which I would not have guessed, that there were like six actual viable competitors here. And how much the same all six of these are in sort of what they are

and what they are trying to be. Like, God help you having to review this six times in a row. It's like, it's like I feel for the people who have to like review the $500 Android phones because they're just all the same. And at some point, it's really helpful to be like, okay, these are basically all the same. Let's run through the, like, narrow ways in which they are different. But even just reading through the thing, I was surprised at how few sort of differences in ideas these six things had. Yeah. So when Smart Rings first were a thing, like 10 years ago or so, there were a lot of ideas as to what a Smart Ring could be. You had something like Ringly and motive, Ring it was just a big fashion thing that didn't do too much, very unobtrusive, but just really there for people who wanted something fashionable that could also track stuff. And then you had Motive, which had some really big ideas about two-factor authentication in a smart ring and fitness tracking on top of that, you know, at some point before they shuttered, they were like, we're going to be

able to authenticate you based on your gate. So there was a lot of weird, interesting ideas, but the one ring that survived that first iteration of smart rings was the aura ring. And so this second class batch of that came after it, in many ways they're just trying to do what the aura ring got successful at with a twist. Right. So that's what I came up against with a lot of these competitors. I too was surprised at CES this year. When I went, I went, oh, my God, why are there like a half a dozen smart ring? smart rings out there, I guess this popped up and has been a thing. Okay, cool, I guess. And then, you know, the really big impetus was Samsung coming out in February going like, hey, we're getting in

on smart rings. And so I found myself in a situation where it was, okay, we got to do a deep dive into this and see because Samsung's big. Samsung, if they were successful in smart rings, you know, that had an opportunity to get other big tech to maybe copy them. So that was the whole thought process behind it. And it was, it was real fun to just go through all of them and go like, oh, you have ideas, but they are not even a quarter baked. Forget half baked. You are, you know, if you watch Great British bake off and Paul Hollywood goes, and he goes, oh, this is underdone. There were some, there were some rings that were, oh, this is extremely underdone. It was the circular ring slim.

That was my least favorite of the bunch. It just did not do what was supposed to do. It felt really cheap on the finger. They have since reached out to me since I wrote this, and they're like, we addressed some of the issues. Which is the story we hear all the time. All the time. And is often not the case.

Yeah, often not the case. But one of the things they said they addressed was the fact that this was, this was the only smart ring that had a haptic motor in it. So I had high hopes because it's a smart ring that has ideas about what the smart part of a smart ring should be. That haptic alarm was just the nightmare because you had to tap above a very imperceptible, hard-to-see logo. And I just ended up smacking my hand most mornings, being very frustrated why this thing wouldn't stop buzzing. They said you can just tap the ring anywhere now and it's fine. And we'll see. We'll see. Yeah. I confess that is one use case I think could be very cool. I honestly, like, the whole reason I wear the Apple Watch to bed is to use it as an alarm. I just think it's a nicer thing to wake up to, especially when you sleep next to someone than having like a big loud alarm. So the idea of being able to do that on a ring and not have to wear the watch, super interesting and exciting to me. Also, neither of the options you just described sound like good, useful, reliable ones. So remains to be seen. Also, we've already

talk too much about the circular slim. But notably, neither circular nor slim. It's all I'm going to say. Notably, no. And it's, it was the least comfortable of all of them. It felt 3D printed. And that just was kind of, ha, not cool. I was on Reddit and some of the circular forums. And there were a lot of angry people on there just because there's just a bunch of really cool ideas, but very underdone in terms of execution. So that was very easy to eliminate. as like straight off from the get-go. I was like, no, sorry, you are not the best. Yeah, the next one I think you probably had a harder time getting rid of.

Knowing the little bit I knew about this research process, I'm guessing this was a harder one. Yeah, I really have enjoyed the EV ring. I've been talking to the company behind it Movano for years because they just were really gung-ho about the FDA clearance process. So that kind of sets them apart in terms of accuracy. They had a very interesting idea in terms of design. It has an open gap at the top, which I will say one of the most frustrating things about smart rings is sizing. Smartwatches have bands. You can adjust them.

It's very easy to adjust them. Smart rings less so because it's on your finger. They're not adjustable. There's a lot of tech inside, so you can't get them resize. You just have to get the right size that fits you. And what most people don't realize is that you bloat. You have a lot of pasta one night or the temperature rises. Your fingers swell.

So, you know, it can be very hard to get these rings off, especially, you know, you're supposed to wear smart rings on your index finger. That's going to be the most accurate. But, you know, maybe that's just not in the cards for you. Maybe you want them to wear, be worn on the middle finger or the ring finger. So, you know, just it can change the size that you need. And you could gain weight. You could lose weight. That will also change how a ring fits on you.

Not so much of an issue with the EV ring because of that open gap design is always very easy to take off. It's very comfortable to wear. I thought that was really clever. It looked so nice. It was so pretty. But it's a first-gen product. And it had some very first-gen quirks. And again, this is going to be a theme with some of the rings on this list.

They have gone and they said we have addressed some of the feedback since the first run. So, yeah, we will see how that goes going on. But, you know, I really loved the hardware design, but it's not just the hardware that matters if you're using it as a fitness tracker. The software, how that data is presented to you also matters. and there was just some quirks here that I'm hoping we'll get smoothed over in a second iteration. Yeah, agreed. You, I think my only grape with this part of your piece was that I think you, if anything, undersold how much better looking this thing is than every other one of the competition. Like, it really is.

You could put the six of them next to each other, and it would be the other five in one bucket and then this one on its own, right? Like, it is a full, like, order of magnitude more stylish and attractive than the others. So, like, kudos. That doesn't get you anywhere. Like, you know, that and a nickel will buy you a Coke. But it's, that's a cool, interesting start, right? And you ran into one of my favorite things about first-gen products, which is, my pet theory forever has been that if you make a product and it's hard to update the firmware, your product probably sucks. It's just, it's a real, like, the tiny details that matter, right?

Like, if you haven't fixed that, there are probably other things that you haven't paid attention to. And this is one of those things. But it gives me a great hope that there are a lot of things that Evie can go get right that are easier than making nice looking hardware. And if it does those things, that could be very compelling. I have a bit of faith in the company because I've talked to their CEO a bunch of times. And this is a dude who is very well-versed in the company. the medical space and what it takes to make a FDA cleared product. So I generally give that a lot of credit because it takes a certain level of dedication and resources to go that route to begin with.

So, you know, I wanted to give them a little more, yeah, cut them some slack, but, you know, this is a battle royal. We can't be too nice. So they unfortunately were kicked out second. Yeah, fair. Yeah. All right. We're going to skip over the next one, which is the ring con, because you barely even talked about it. It's fine. It's fine.

Who cares moving on? So this thing is fine. Who cares moving on? The next one was the Galaxy Ring. I would have guessed probably those first three would have been the first three you would have gotten rid of. This was the first one that surprised me that it went here. Tell me why. Yeah.

The hardware's great. I think it actually has the best hardware. It's the slimmest. It's the most comfortable to wear besides the EV ring. but you know what I'm saying. And at the time, it had the largest size range. It no longer does. But it just doesn't stand alone.

The thing about the galaxy ring on its own is that it doesn't do a whole lot. It's a fitness tracker. It's an okay fitness tracker. The battery life will be better if you get it with a galaxy watch because it does like some smart sensor tradeoff as to like which one's going to be more accurate. And that bore out in my testing. Which is super cool, by the way. It's very cool. As an ecosystem play, I actually think that's really clever. But it does, like, if you're narrowing it down to only people have Samsung phones and narrowing it down again to only people who have Galaxy watches, you've like, the number of people who get the best version of this

product is just very small. It's very small. And then if you have the newest. And you've already spent a ton of money. If you have the newest smart. Samsung Galaxy Flip 6 or the Fold 6, you know, you can also use it as a pinchy-pinch gesture control for certain things on the phone, and that's something they're interested in expanding. Very cool idea. Awesome in terms of ecosystem play. If you, you know, can stomach ecosystems as a thing that we're being locked into. But, okay, so you're going to buy the Fold 6. You're going to buy a Galaxy watch on top of that, and you're going to buy a smart ring. There's no discount bundle for getting all three of those things together. You are spending over $2,000 at this

point close to $3,000. It doesn't matter if there's no subscription because you've just paid Samsung $3,000 to get the full benefit range of this Samsung Galaxy Ring. And then also it is very much tied to the Android ecosystem only. So, you know, I'm sure I got so many angry, Samsung people by eliminating it this early. And don't get me wrong, it's a great little ring. I love the little charging case. I think the hardware is really excellent. But you shouldn't have to pay $3,000 to get the full range of what it can do. To unlock its full potential, like in some ways, weighing that cost versus a subscription, yeah, they don't have to charge you a subscription if you're willing to pay $3,000 to get everything. Yeah, and I think to me it's just a totally different way of thinking about a smart ring. And it's not necessarily wrong. It's just really different, right? Like, this is a thing you buy after you have bought those other devices. The ring is not the entry point into Samsung's ecosystem. You're not going to go buy these other devices because you want the Galaxy ring. And if you already have those other devices, kick ass. I think there's a decent chance this is the best choice. If you're like, I'm coming to this shootout. I already own these two devices. I think the Galaxy Ring probably wins, or at least comes close. But that's not most people. And you're not and you shouldn't make those other choices just to get a smart ring.

Yeah, it's also not most people looking for a smart ring. Like the people looking for a smart ring is a very kind of, they're a defined set of people, I would say. A lot of them are people who just don't like smart watches. So immediately you're kind of losing that benefit. of like using it with a smart watch. And a lot of times they, you know, this is an interesting tip that that aura told me, but their user base is majority female now.

So they started out as a company where, you know, it was a majority men and now they're majority women. So I think a lot of women who just don't want to wear these bulky smartwatches who don't, who want something a little more sleek, a lot more understated, they're the ones who are really kind of pushing the smart ring as a form factor forward. Like if you look at smart ring ads on social media, because Lord knows I get served a zillion smart ring ads on my cursed algorithm. It's all women. It's all women really kind of pushing the aura ring forward.

So, you know, I think in terms of people looking for that, Samsung's great. But, you know, the ecosystem play is kind of their greatest strength and their greatest weakness at the same time. It's very interesting to see how that will play out. Yeah, I totally agree. So that leaves us with two. Speaking of the aura ring, we have the ultra human ring air, stupid name, and we have the aura ring three. Which one came in second place? It was the ultra human ring air. Is it because of the stupid name? No, it's not because it's a stupid name. It's because it's like way too focused on training. And it's like woopy that way. Is it like super intense? Okay. It's very whoopy. It's like if Garmin made a smart ring, I feel like it would be very close to the ultra human ring. And that's going to be a plus.

for some people. Yeah. But for others, I think it's just kind of too cluttered. It's too much. It's, I thought it was really interesting because they, you know, they'll tell you, here's your caffeine window, and here are the drinks that you can drink during the day. Here's like a little, like, widget plug-in that you can use if you want sun exposure. And just very hyper-focused on optimizing.

And I believe there are a ton of people who would love that. I enjoyed it quite a bit. I liked it a lot. But I also felt that it was just a little hyper-focused on that aspect of it versus the aura ring, which is a little more holistic. So if you look at something that's really specialized versus something that is for everybody, I think something that's for everybody generally wins out, which at the end of the day, that's why I picked the aura ring over the ultra-human.

In Ring Air. Even though that name is a mouthful, it was quite a nice ring. I really like it. What pained me, actually, about those two being the winners is that those two are the ones that use docks for charging. And I really like a charging case for a smart ring. So it pains me that we have to give dock supremacy, but it just boils down to the ring itself. Of the two, the only one of those two that I've had is the aura ring.

And the number of times that its little dock has just slid off. my bedside table and fallen onto the ground because it's not heavy enough drives me nuts it's it's not great um but i agree the charging is like you know do better everybody but that's not it's not the beyond end all of this whole thing and that the batteries on all of them last long enough that like it's it's mostly fine so that means the aura ring three was the winner uh yes kind of a boring outcome i'm not going to lie to you that's not boring it's like it's it's it was like aura versus a bunch of aura i was rooting i i i was rooting i i i Just like, if you can just imagine me as Tyra Banks with six ringtangs, I was rooting for all of you to dethrone ORA, to be quite frank. I did not want it to be the winner. And there was there was a point where I was like, should I give it to the ultra human? And just really my instinct was that, you know, it's a little too training focused. If it had been a bit more holistic, then I would have happily given it to the ultra human ring air.

I guess what a also the name is just really tripping me out. But I will say one of the things that really struck me about this is I think this is where ORA having been in this game this long has been really useful because a lot of the things you just said about ultra-human were true of ORA in previous generations. That it was really good at generating a lot of numbers and not that good at making any sense of it or helping you in any sort of meaningful way unless you like really wanted to be somebody who was super intense about your sleep. And over time, they've just gotten better at this. Like, they do more, like, wellness content. It's much more of, like, a thoughtful thing for how to live your life as opposed to just, like, a sleep score. And I think, A, that's to ORA's credit.

And B, that is just a thing that takes time. And so ORA has just been at this for so long now that I think it has figured out how to turn all of that data into something that makes sense to lots of people instead of just the, like, hustle bro body hackers who are served by some of these other devices. Yeah. So, like, one point I'm going to make is that we are. now on an aura ring gen 4 or or ring four. They removed the gen from the name and that drives my OCD crazy. So we're on the fourth generation of ORA ring. Most of these other rings are on their first, maybe second. Or like, and when we talk maybe second, literally just announced maybe second version of the rings. They announced it after you said the first one was bad. They said, well,

we have another one. Basically. Honestly, yes. So, so, you know, it's very hard to kind of discount experience in all of this. Sinking was a big issue for some of these competitors. It took a while. Like, again, with the circular, I rage quit several times because it just would not sink. ORA, good at firmware updates now. Good at firmware updates now. It does not take a lot to sync in ORA ring.

When you open the app, you're like, ooh, it's shiny and polished. There's no, like, finikiness with it. All the other ones, there's, there's, bit of, there's a little bit of a lack of polish. It's very either basic. And some people just won't care about that. And that's fine. I'm just saying, you can tell there's a difference when you open up the app and it's smooth and there's no jitteriness or there's no crashing or, you know, it doesn't take forever to find a connection with the ring, even though they're all just using Bluetooth. It's not that hard. So, you know, there's just a degree of polish there that I can very

confidently say after spending several mornings waiting for all of these things to sink, that I can say that the aura was the best at it. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. So the aura wins and then immediately just to flex on them, they drop a new version. They drop the new ring. The aura three won this shootout and then they dropped to the four. What's new in the four? So the four goes to an all titanium design. And for most people, what you're you're going to notice is that the inside of the ring is flat. There's no, like, sensor bump. The old ring had three little bumps on the inside, and that was there for a reason that inside was epoxy, and epoxy is a type of resin where it diffuses light in a specific way. It can get a little bit messy,

so you really want the sensors to have good skin contact, in that case, to kind of mitigate that kind of factor. Also, rings will rotate during the day. Ideally, you want the sensors to be on the underside of ring because that's going to get the best signal pathway to your blood and all that nonsense. So what this new ring does is that it recesses the sensors so that it's more comfortable. You know, when I'm bloated, this is a lot easier and less painful to take off than the gen 3 was. I do appreciate that. And they have a new sensor algorithm, which, you know, it just basically more than doubles the number of signal pathways that can be used. So if the ring is moving around on your finger, it's not going to matter quite as much for accuracy and data collection.

So it's so minute. It's very cool in terms of like an engineering perspective. Oh, it also improves battery life. So it's very cool from like a, ooh, that's really nerdy. That's awesome. I love this for the engineers. But in terms of actually wearing it, not a huge difference. Not a huge difference.

Yeah, that's fair. But I think there was a bunch of software like between the beginning of the three and the beginning of the four also. Oh, God. So much. The three. And again, I think this is very much to ORA's credit. Like the three is a much better device than it was when it shipped, which is not always true of these devices. And the four gets all of that and then a little more.

Like the one I was excited about was the sort of expanded activity trekking. Yes. Because for me, my problem with the aura rings for a while, and granted, it's been, I think the last one I wore was like the very beginning of the three, was that it eventually got to a point where it was only sort of sporadically good at everything except sleep, which it was very good at, but I didn't care. Like, I just, I have gotten to a point where sleep tracking just does nothing for me. I know when I sleep well and I know when I don't. That's pretty much all I got. But there was a lot of the like standalone activity tracking that it wasn't very good at even then. And I think now it seems like the three and especially now the four are pretty good at that actually. That like as activity trackers, they're pretty good. They've expanded the automatic activity detection, which was a big thing.

Because like on a smart watch, it is so easy to manually start a activity. On a smart ring, you have to take out your phone. You have to open up the app. you have to do the thing. Which is like non-starter, honestly. It's a non-starter for a lot of people, but now they've expanded it to 40 activities. And it's not just the ORA Ring 4 that's going to get that. They've really not gate-kept any of these software updates.

Like it might- Well, that all goes back. Yeah, it goes all back. So it might take a bit to roll out to the three. But, you know, I asked ORA and nothing is really gate-kept software-wise. It's just that this is like got the new sensing algorithm, so it's more accurate. That's the only thing that's really true of the four versus the three. So not a huge incentive to upgrade for people unless their batteries are shot.

But the automatic activity detection is, you know, I don't track my walks on smartwatches for a number of reasons. But, you know, it was actually quite good at picking up when I had done the walks. It includes GPS maps. It includes the heart rate. So it's like, oh, my little activity was, it was still. And I didn't have to worry about duplicates because I do track all of my runs on a watch and all of my strength sessions on a watch. And those, it just imported from the health API. So it was very clean.

It was a very clean experience. I have yet to get housework counted in the oar ring. So apparently I'm not cleaning. You have to clean more aggressively. I'm not cleaning with vigor. Yeah. So we'll have to see. I would love to hear from people if it's catching their basketball.

sessions or whatever. But I'm boring. I mostly run, walk, and do strength training. So I'd love to hear from other people how that's worked out for them. Well, I barely do that. So you've got me on that. But the reason, ORA is very happy to bring all of these new features back to their old rings is because of the way ORA makes money, which I would say caused a great amount of consternation in our comments and in your email inbox after you published the Battle Royale in particular, which is the subscription fee. I should probably just lay my cards on the table here and say, I don't think this is a problem. And a $6 a month subscription fee for something like this is fine. It's fine. If you don't want to have it, don't have it. Like, this is not, I think if

Apple started to suddenly magically charge you another $6 a month to have an iPhone, I would have an issue with it because that is like a thing everyone needs to live modern life. A smart ring is not that thing. Six dollars a month to make your $350 ring actually continue to be very good for as long as Orra has done it, I think is fine. I'm going to get a lot of angry people. That's just where I'm at. You are going to get a lot of angry people. I have some sympathy because what basically, you know, ORA did a Marquez where they had a, that's what they did. That's what they did. With the Gen 3, even though they did it before Marquez did it. Marquez just catching strays on the first cast, geez. No, I mean, like, I think this is just like kind of a really easy recent example to

explain why people are mad. Did Oro release a wallpaper's app? No. Oh, okay, I see it. So, you know, the Gen 2 had no subscription. They introduced it with the Gen 3. So you had a thing that did not have a subscription that you've then added a subscription to. And that is why ORA has been catching strays and has made people super angry about this for so long. That is. Charging for something that didn't use to cost money sucks. I do agree with that. I'm sensitive to that. So I fully understand where people are coming from as to like why they were mad that ORA has a subscription to begin with.

On the other hand, I have to say that one-time hardware sales does not keep the lights on for most companies. And it really doesn't when you have a company like ORA who is investing quite a lot into research and development. science. That stuff is expensive to have peer reviewed studies on your device. You know, just submitting to a journal, a peer reviewed journal, that's like $25,000. That's a lot of money. And that's why you see a lot of dubious claims in the health tech space about algorithms, about all of this stuff. They are, they don't have to do this, really. They don't have to test their algorithm against polysumography, which is the clinical gold standard. They don't have to do any of this research. None of it is required to just sell you a consumer-grade device. They're

choosing to do it, and it is expensive to do this. So in that sense, you are paying for that. You are paying for the science. You are paying for that degree of research. Is that a good trade? I mean, Oro has won our contest, and you just gave it a nine. Like, is that the right tradeoff for Oro to be making over time? It is, it is a gambit that they are taking. I don't know if it's the right one. They are betting that people are willing to pay for the best. And so long as they are the best, okay, sure, go for it. I do think it is worth noting that all of their competitors make a very big point about not having a subscription.

Right. And Samsung can afford to do that. Samsung is big. They have other revenue streams. They don't need to charge a subscription for the Galaxy ring, which is pricey. Yeah, because you have to spend $2,000 on a phone. to get there. Yeah, to get everything, you're going to have to spend on all that hardware.

For some people, they're not going to think too hard about that because they already have it or whatnot, et cetera, et cetera, sure. Love that. But for some of the other competitors like RingCon, which we completely glossed over because it's fine, you know, they can undercut aura in terms of price and they can deliver a decent fitness tracking experienced. And some people are just going to be super happy with that. and they're going to be fine with that.

And that's great. I just think if you want a decent fitness tracking experience, download an app on your phone. Like, I mean that, I'm sort of serious, right? Like, you would be surprised, not you, V, but most people, I think, would be surprised at the sophistication that you can get by downloading an app on your phone

and then holding your phone in your hand. It's not remotely within range of these dedicated devices. But, like, if you just want a thing that does a relative job of counting your steps and telling you how you slept, those are apps on your phone. They exist. Download those things.

I think the people who want this dedicated hardware mostly want the best things and should. And this is like, it's why ultra-human and Woop and some of these companies are going so hard. It's why Garmin continues to go as hard as it does. Because these are, this is the customer.

And I think to some extent, the thing that Apple did with smartwatches was like pull that down towards everyday people in a way nobody has. had before and had like taught Google and Samsung in a lot of ways how to make watches that appeal to regular people, but also do some of those other things. And rings for me are still very much in the like, unless you're serious about this, you don't even consider buying one phase. Yeah, they're just very, I really feel like it appeals the most actually to wellness

influencers and like that type of person who just does not want a bulky smart watch. They don't want smart. They're, you know, it's definitely not the average Vurchast listener, but there, I have been to parties where this very well-dressed, well-heeled woman comes up to me, and she's like, oh, I see you have an aura ring. I love my aura ring because I want to wear this designer watch that is not a smart watch. I don't want an Apple watch. I don't want this. And I've just been sitting there going like, oh, okay, yeah. How, how much is that Airwant salad that you're eating? Like, you know, I mean, I buy that entirely, right? Like that, and I think that is a really good case for smart rings. But I think for most people, if you don't want to wear a smart watch and you don't care deeply about the fitness side of things,

like my point is there's no use for a casual smart ring user at this moment for most things. For most things. It's truly just people who do not care about, like it's going to seem foreign to techies, I think, but they're just truly normal people who do not care about anything a smartwatch has to offer because if we compare a smart ring and a smart watch, which are generally similarly priced, value for value, the smart watch is going to give you more of everything. And is, in my opinion, kind of a better value proposition for a lot of people. But there are just people who do not care about that. And it's why I get so many people just messaging me and DMing me and being like, I don't understand the whole point of a smart ring. And I get it. I get where they're coming from.

But I've also talked to these other people who just are like, I don't get the point of a smartwatch. So you're just serving two very different audiences in that respect. And, you know, it's the Kim Kardashian's who isn't or a ring user. It is B. Gwyneth, Paltrow's, the Jennifer Aniston's, all of these people who are just, it's a more discreet thing. So you're really just paying for the discretion. You're paying for the form factor.

And we'll have to see because the thing about other companies, and if Apple comes out with a smart ring, I think ORA is cooked. I think they are potentially cooked. Maybe not right away, but, you know, because the first Apple Watch wasn't anything super amazing. It was just, oh, Apple's here. But, like, if Apple was like, oh, the Apple ring four, uh-oh. And, I mean, if Apple could take the decade of stuff it

has learned about health and fitness and just pull it out of the watch and into this different form factor? Like, I think there's reason to believe that thing could get much better, much faster than... Much better, much faster. And, you know, if they kind of take some of what Samsung's doing and pull it into the ecosystem, oh, all of a sudden, we got the smart part of the smart ring. Because right now, we're just having a basic fitness tracker in a different form factor that is slightly more comfortable for people to wear, especially for this one specific use case,

which is sleep tracking. And ORA does that really well, but ORA doesn't make phones. Orra doesn't, it's a very like one-trick pony kind of situation, and they have to partner with other companies in order to kind of expand beyond that. So, is this subscription plan going to play out long term? I say in my review, I'm not sure. As long as they're the best at this niche category, yeah, sure, I think it could, It could work for them.

But other people are coming. I think it's very telling that Samsung came out and knocked it out of the park with the hardware in its first go. The software is what needs work with Samsung. And, you know, not gatekeeping it to very expensive phones and watches to get the best out of it. Which, to be clear, is exactly what Apple would and will do if it ever launches this one. Yeah, but, you know, the Apple fans, they're really invested. I have already... Yeah, they got the money.

I have already heard from readers who are like, if Apple came out with the smart ring, I would get it. But I can't be bothered with this aura ring in its subscription. And I'm like, duly noted. Duly noted. It's good to be Apple. It really, really is good to be Apple. Yeah. All right, V, we got to go.

Thank you so much. Here's hoping you don't have to do this again next year because Apple launches a ring. But also, if you do, we'll be back. I probably will. I already have a straggler smart ring that I have to review. So we'll see. All right. We'll see you for the next one.

All right, thanks. All right, we've got to take a break, and then we're going to come back, and we're going to talk about the new hearing health features on the AirPods Pro 2. We'll be right back. Support for this show comes from Shopify. Every thriving, successful business has to start somewhere.

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could be giving to your customers. That's where LinkedIn Hiring Pro comes in. It's built to be your hiring partner, helping you find the right candidates faster. That way you can hire with confidence without turning it into another full-time job. Hiring Pro streamlines the entire process from drafting your job to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI-powered interviews for initial screenings. Its updated conversational interface lets you describe what you need in plain language. Nearly 60% of hirers find a candidate to interview within a week.

With Hiring Pro, you spend less time searching and more time connecting with the right talent. And instead of getting buried in resumes, you get a focused shortlist that, actually moves your hiring forward. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free at LinkedIn.com slash track. Terms and conditions apply. All right, we're back. So when Apple announced all of its new stuff in September,

one of the biggest announcements was about the AirPods Pro 2, but it wasn't new headphones. It was just a software update for the headphones that brought Among other things, some new hearing health features and particularly an hearing aid mode that could actually be a really big deal for people with hearing loss. We didn't get to try it at first, but Chris Welch has gotten to try the new features now. They're coming out soon. I think there's something very exciting going on here if all of this actually works the way that Apple claims that it does. Chris, luckily, knows the answer.

Let's get into it. Chris Welch, welcome back. Hello, it's a pleasure to be here as always. This is, we've gotten to do this so much recently. It's just, it's like headphones season in a truly crazy way right now. Mm-hmm. It is. Now we're here for a headphone reason, but something a bit different than usual.

That's true. It's like headphones adjacent, I would say. Yes. Yes. So this is a strange way to ask an initial question, but what exactly have you been testing on the AirPods? So I've been testing a suite of new hearing health features for the AirPods Pro. Apple announced these at their event a few months ago. and now they're rolling out with iOS 18.1 and some new firmware for the earbuds

the week of October 28th. And so everyone will be able to use their AirPods as hearing protection as hearing aids. And there's hearing tests so you can test your hearing because no one ever goes to the hearing doctor. I haven't been in years.

Yeah, so there's a lot to cover. I am going to ask you to reveal some personal information about yourself. So I hope you're ready for that. I'm ready. But the reason I ask that question that way is it seems like my initial impression of this was that there was going to be like a hearing aid mode on the AirPods, right?

That you would like go into settings and turn it on and then it would do a bunch of different stuff or it would be sort of an accessibility feature. And what it actually seems like is Apple has baked this kind of hearing awareness, both of your own hearing end of the world, into kind of how the whole thing works. Like it's much more holistic than I expected.

Has that been your impression too? Yeah. Mostly, I mean, there is a hearing aid mode. Like, that is a separate mode that you turn on or off. But the rest of, like, hearing protection is always on by default in all modes now. So, like, it was there before, like, they had, I think it was called loud noise reduction. But this is much broader. It's, like, people, like, were their AirPods to concerts before. And Apple never really, like, said, sure, that's great.

They didn't tell you not to you. But they, you know, weren't, like, thrilled about it. But now you actually can use your AirPods at concerts. And, like, they've tuned the EQ, so you hear stuff better. And so that's there. And that's going to be a huge deal for a lot of people who, like, don't wear ear plugs the concerts. Please wear earplugs the concerts. And so that's there. Yeah, it's like a lot of it just on by default and it's just going to be there from now on. Okay. So the very beginning of this process

is you take the hearing test, right? That's the like the first thing that happens. Yeah. Tell me about this hearing test. Okay. Yeah, it was very like emotional, very nerve-wracking because I haven't seen the audiologist since probably 2018 pre-COVID easily. So it's been a long, long time. And like, I don't listen to like metal. I like sad bastard singer-songwriters, you know, that kind of genre. So, like, thankfully, I'm sure that saved me a bit over the years. But, like, I grew up with, like, a Sony disc man at my hip, and, like, then so many iPods and iPhones. And so, like, I was nervous taking it. And so it's, like, five minutes. And you hear, like, a series of beeps, these three-tone beeps, just beep, beep, beep, and, like, all sorts of frequencies. And it had, like, all sorts of frequencies. First, to do your left here.

Then you're right here. And the test is different for each. Like, you hear tones, like different times for both the years. So it's, so you can't game it or, like, that kind of thing. But yeah, it's just very intense. Like I had several people here at the office take it, and they're all like, yeah, it's just very, you know, it's a lot. Also, like hearing loss is super common. Like 1.5 billion people in the world have some level of hearing loss. And so, like, it's nothing to be ashamed of or, like, stigmatize.

And so it's just, you know, part of life. But, like, taking that test for the first time is definitely, like, a thing. So the test is like it plays these tones, and it's, I'm sort of imagining the thing that you do. I've done this once that I can think of, where you actually sit in the doctor's office with a giant pair of headphones, and they're like, raise your hand

when you hear the tone, raise the hand on the side that it's on. It sounds like it's sort of a smartphone-ized version of that. Tap the screen whenever you hear a tone, essentially. Okay, okay. Yeah, so you tap the screen. And like some noises are like super faint. So you've got to pay super close attention.

It's like that thing where like you think you heard something, but you're not sure. They've like accounted for all that, like, the testing. And so, yeah, it takes about five minutes. It's a long five minutes. And then you get your results charted out. And there are five tiers of hearing loss. There's little to know, which I fell in somehow, which is amazing to me.

Yeah, thank you. There's moderate, sorry, there's mild, moderate, severe, and profound is the last one. And so those are the five levels. And so the hearing aid functionality is for anyone who has mild to moderate hearing loss. So if you have like more than that, then you're still going to have to go see like a professional and get like that tier of hearing aid versus this. but it's still like a big deal for so many people who don't want to spend thousands of dollars. But yeah, the test itself is it's kind of fun. I am sort of terrified just at the prospect thinking about this now because I'm sort of in the position that you are.

And I think about this with vision too. Like I have 20-20 vision. I don't wear glasses. I'm very proud of that. In fact, I am 100% sure that if I go to an eye doctor, they are going to make me wear glasses. And so I'm never going to do it. I don't even have problems with my vision. It's just one of those things that, like, I bet it.

could be better and I don't even know. But the prospect of that scares me. And I think what's interesting about hearing is that we all sort of understand the massive scale of vision issues, right? That like we understand prescription levels and they go all the way up and down and you can, you can go all the way from like barely needing glasses to being totally blind. Like that spectrum, we all understand. We don't talk about that with hearing at all. And I think there is like, I don't know, decades at this point of people warning you about. wearing headphones and listening to music too loud and I can still hear my parents being like turn the music down you're going to you're going to go deaf but I don't think I've ever had someone

quantify my hearing for me so I am curious like what was that what does it feel like when you take the test it process and you get the audio diagram uh being like you're mostly okay like what is that is that strangely like gratifying feeling very strange and like for some reason like my left ear is a bit worse off than my right. So that had me wondering, like, where in life? Like, does my left you're exposed to, like, much more sound than my right? And, like, I couldn't pinpoint, like, any phase of life or that would have been the case. But it's driving with the window. That's what it is. That's just the wind coming by. It could very well be. Just crushing your ears. Yeah. Yeah. So that was my main takeaway. But I could see this going,

like, viral on TikTok and, like, having, like, a moment, which would be good for, like, awareness, I think. You know, it is, like, private. Obviously, it's health information. So not everyone is going to be comfortable sharing. But I think, you know, it could have a moment on, like, social media of just people, like, raising awareness and sharing their results. And, you know, I'm sure like the iPod generation is going to have a reckoning of some sort. But, yeah, it's going to be something. Okay. So just to go back to one of the things you said a minute ago, there are the five different scales of hearing loss.

And you said the AirPods are only designed for the first three, basically, right? Little to no, mild and moderate. Like, that's – and for the rest, that is you require something different. Still have to see a doctor and have, like, a professional hearing aid equipped. Yeah, this is like more – this is like – Apple's counters, like, all the, all these new, like, over-the-counter hearing aids, this is their take on that. And so, yeah, it's going to be, like, a super-powerful thing. Like, we talk about, like, ecosystem lock-in.

And, like, this is, like, a whole new level of that if I think about it. Like, your hearing aid is, like, an Apple device now. And so, like, what are the ads you ever going to, like, leave the iPhone at that point? Like, on the whole, I think it's a very good thing. I think there are some concerns about, like, smaller companies. Like, why would you bother making your own hearing aid and trying to keep it against Apple, like, the biggest tech company in the world, like, once they come into this space. but on the whole people are going to save a ton of money, which is, I think, a huge deal. Totally. So once it's set up and once it's tuned to you specifically, what does it do?

Like, it's easy to say, you know, it just makes everything louder so that you can hear it. But I have to imagine it's more complicated than that. Like, what are the actual features inside of this hearing it stuff? You can tune, like, how loud it is. You can tune, like, how sharp the sound is and how crisp. Like, there are a lot of, like, customization options once you actually have your results. And so, like, that's important if you want to make it. sound right. And yeah, so Apple says it takes like a few days to adjust to how it sounds. Like, for me, it barely did anything because I have little to know hearing loss, so I didn't really notice much of anything. But they say like that can still help people who like need certain

frequencies boosted. And so I just haven't noticed it myself. But, but it's there if you want it. Battery life is about six hours with the hearing aid mode turned on, which is about the same as the AirPods itself. So yeah, that's pretty nice. And yeah, I mean, I don't know. Not sure what else there is to say about like I haven't tried it myself. I'm sure they're going to be like a deep dives about like how well it works versus like over the counter options. Was there a little part of you as a reviewer who was like, damn it, I wish I didn't have worse ears so I can actually do this to myself? Yeah, in some way. But for now, I'm just glad that I shoot concerts and still still have mostly good hearing intact. Yeah, I think it nets out. It nets out. Okay.

The concerts one I think is interesting because there do seem to be sort of two sides of what a device like this does to your hearing, right? On the one hand, it's enhance things you want to hear. And I think, to me, the best sort of existing thing I've heard a bunch of people mentioned is like the voice isolation feature that you can get on calls and stuff, that it's just, that's a certain bit of processing just designed to make it easier to hear the thing that you want to hear. And it's like, take that idea and sort of expand it across all the audio on your phone, and that is one version of what it's trying to do. Does that, does that seem about right to you having used it now? Yeah. Okay. But,

then the flip side is all the all the hearing protection stuff which is like these things are designed to protect your ears from getting worse and that strikes me as something that that may actually be just as interesting to just as many people even people like you who aren't photographing concerts all the time right uh i i realized in just reading about this that i have no idea how that would work like what it what is what is it doing in the hearing protection mode uh just avoids loud sounds beyond like a certain threshold i think i'm not sure what the number is offhand. But once things are over that level,

it'll just kind of like down, you know, just bring things back to a safer level. And so that works in like all modes, like noise cancellation mode, transparency mode, and also the adaptive audio mode. And so like each of those,

like you'll hear like certain amounts of like a concert, like noise cancellation mode. You're still not going to hear like much of anything. So just still trying to like cancel out everything. It's like that's not the most enjoyable concert experience, I would say. But you can use that transparency mode and hear pretty much everything. It's still going to be fairly loud in your ears,

but it's going to be like a much safer level of, of loudness versus if you didn't have them in at all. And so that makes all the difference. Got it. So it's basically there to just say it is going to sort of brutally suppress the worst noises no matter the cost. Like forget the smoothing it out trying to make it sound natural thing. Like we are going to just demolish any of these really loud damaging sounds. I mean, it's tune to make things sound like natural and crisp and like detailed.

It's like you don't lose much by having it on. Like I was at this open mic nine a few nights ago And didn't feel like I was like really missing out much In terms of frequency range or anything like that So like I was impressed. I haven't used to like a big arena show yet Hopefully this weekend I'll get a chance to do that But yeah, no, it's like a, it's just strange

to have them in all the time now Like for these tests that I've been doing I think that's like a whole different thing to talk about Like people are going to be wearing air pods all the time now Which is kind of unusual versus where we've been before. I wonder about that though I mean I'm I'm still sort of struck by you just saying so casually, lots of people wear AirPods at concerts.

And, like, at first, I was just like, oh, yeah, sure. Of course. And I'm like, wait, why on earth would you wear AirPods at concert? But to some extent, I think we have really normalized the idea of wearing AirPods all the time. I think you can argue about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I think by and large, it actually sucks because, like, the social cues are a problem. Right. If people think it's rude, but now you really can't have that, like, assumption.

Like, usually when I have my AirPods in, will probably assume, like, I have, like, half my attention. Whereas now, like, someone could be using it as a hearing aid. And, like, you could have their full attention. And so it's not, you can't just assume, like, what someone is using them for. I think that's going to be the big, like, C-change here. Totally. So, yeah, what, how do you see that playing out?

Like, is this just going to push the I'm wearing headphones from the minute I wake up until the minute I go to sleep thing to kind of the nth degree forever? Like, for me, it's always, what do I do when I'm wearing headphones and I walk into Starbucks, right? And I think about, like, if I'm wearing over. the ear headphones, this is the thing I've thought about too much. If I'm wearing over the ear headphones, I will take them off. Take them around my neck.

Because you should assume I'm wearing noise cancelling headphones and legitimately cannot hear you. If I'm wearing AirPods, I'll usually just take one out. And sometimes even like take one out while the person is looking at me as a way of being like, hello, I am now paying attention to you. But again, like you're saying, there are now going to people who have an actual medical purpose to be wearing these things in order to be able to hear people better. And if I'm the person behind the counter at Starbucks, that's just, it's going to be tricky to figure out what to do about that.

But it also just seems like maybe the only correct assumption is just going to be just talk to the people and hope to God they're not playing really loud music. I don't know. Yeah, I think it's going to take time, obviously. I think it's going to just kind of like have that thought of like people are being rude or like trying to ignore you kind of fade away. I mean, that'll still be the case in certain. Like I put my AirPods in to avoid people at times. So, like, that's going to keep going, I'm sure. But, like, there's just, like, that assumption of, like, why someone has their earpods in or earbuds in is going to have to change over time.

It's going to be a while, I think. And I think, like, this is going to put a lot of pressure on Samsung and Google. It's, like, where all their own, like, versions of these features. And, like, once that happens, then, you know, and then it's really on. And so, but, yeah, it's been, like, a surreal experience. Like, the test is very intense. The hearing protection stuff is a lot of fun. It's good, I think, for everybody.

Because you don't realize, like, how loud daily life is. Like, I'm down in the subway hearing, like, screeching trains go by some time. and I'm just like covering my ears when I have nothing else available to me. So stuff like that is, yeah. You never go back once you wear something that is really good at doing that kind of work. Like it ruins a lot of things for you.

But to that point, actually, I'm curious how you're feeling as a headphone guy about all of this, because I think the stuff that Apple is doing for hearing health, I think, is like unequivocally a good thing, right? The question is how well it works and for how many people, and that's going to be tricky

because people are complicated and ears are different and everybody's hearing is different but whatever I think that is mostly agreed upon a good thing to be working on but we're also in this phase

and I think Apple is out in front of this of trying to perfect every sound in every instance all the time right and like the AirPods Pro 2 are probably the best example of this right there's a gaming mode

there's stuff dedicated to just Siri working well. There's voice isolation. Spatial audio head tracking. Yeah, there's spatial audio head tracking. Like, God help us if the head nod thing ever starts to take off. That sounds like a nightmare. But I just think we're headed to this place where step one is like build a nice pair of headphones and then step two is like try and process it perfectly for every imaginable situation. And I just wonder if that's the right road to be going down with all of this stuff. Like we're headed towards such a weird everything is AR audio universe. And what does that make you feel as a music guy?

I think I feel much better about like these use cases versus like the other stuff we've seen previously. Like we've made a lot of noise about like, you know, giving up the headphone jack and like the phone you buy like decides what earbuds you get basically. And like that's where we're at now. So to see like health benefits. Like that's where I'm like, okay, this is the payoff to like where we've been going for all these years.

And that's great. But like all the head nods and like those gimmicks or, you know, they are what they are. you know, people are going to use them or they won't. But like this is like the argument where it's like, okay, this is worth like giving up that phone jack, going wireless only. Because these are not like just earbuds anymore, obviously. And so that's good, I think, for the whole industry. But as far as like, you know, just music is still there. You know, I love my music. I can just settle in and, you know, and just vibe. And that's not going to change anytime soon. But they do do so much more now. And so, yeah, it's just a lot to think about to process. And so this is like a huge moment, obviously. But we're going to see the same from Samsung. And those companies, I'm sure, because like, how could they not, you know, try and copy this? It does seem like pretty clearly the next thing for all of these companies. And again, I think it's mostly a good thing. And I do think one thing it seems Apple has done well. And I want to hear more about your experience of this is kind of after that initial setup,

it doesn't seem like you have to do all that much. Like, you take the test and it learns about your ears. And I expected there to be tons of, you know, buttons and knobs. And you're constantly having it going in. And like the voice isolation is another one for me. It has always driven me crazy that that's not just on. Like, it just makes your calls sound better. Just turn the thing on.

I don't understand what the problem is. But Apple has always sort of hidden it underneath a setting. And my assumption would be that a lot of this would be hidden underneath the setting. But it sounds increasingly like it's not. And that once you take the test and it understands your ears, it just kind of happens. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty true. So, like, there's the hearing aid mode.

There's also this media assist half of it to where it tunes like your music and your phone calls and videos. based off all your data from your hearing test. So all those things sound clear as well. So that's nice. So yeah, it's a very comprehensive, all-encompassing feature that's just kind of there, just always there in the background, just working. And so, yeah, there's not much to do. Like, you can turn it all, some of it off.

Hearing aid obviously can turn on or off. But the hearing protection is just there, which should be the case, obviously. And so, yeah, there's not much to, like, do or tinker with or get wrong or mess up yourself, which I think is super important, especially because, like, you know, they're going to be older people using these features. who don't want to dig through settings many use to, you know, tinker with stuff. And so that's a big deal. Yeah, I don't know.

It's just there. It's simple. You know, it is very Apple. We say that a lot. It just works. This mostly has just worked. I'm very curious to see, like, how it compares, like, other options on the market, like people's deep dives and, like, the hearing aid functionality and all that.

Yeah. What do you, have you heard anything from the kind of hearing aid community so far? Not much. I've been trying to chat folks up, but I guess, you know, they're a busy bunch of these audiologists. So hopefully pretty soon I'll be able to stound somebody and, get some context, but it seems like people are pretty optimistic and hopeful that this is going to be at least, you know, push the whole industry forward towards like making all this, you know, more affordable and that whole trend. So, yeah, I mean, we've been waiting for a few years now

since that bill passed for this kind of over-the-counter hearing aid revolution that we were expecting. And I think years ago, people were expecting ultimately this, right? Which I think is actually very cool. Apple sort of delivered the thing people have been asking for, which is give me something that looks like a pair of headphones that doesn't scream medical device, but gives me some of the help that I need. And I think I'm going to be fascinated to see how Apple communicates that line between here is who they're for and here is who they're not, that like even where you fall on the audiogram test, if it's going to like throw up a thing that's like go see a doctor immediately about your hearing, or if it's just more gentle about it, like we can help but only so much.

Yeah, it's pretty gentle. My experience, like the test is very like low stress. It's like this is all normal. Hearing loss is normal. These are your results. Everything's fine, but we did call 911 on your behalf just now. Talk to a doctor if you have any questions. Yeah. And it makes me wonder if this is going to be the beginning of that movement that we've been seeing.

Because I think there is one version of the outcome here that says Apple is actually way ahead of some of these other companies and health stuff and has been working on this a lot longer and has a lot more the expertise and a lot more of the corporate lock-in to make some of this stuff. And I think there's truth to some of that. But also, Google and Samsung ought to be able to do this kind of thing pretty well, pretty quickly. Is there any reason you think Apple might have some insurmountable lead here? Or is this just going to become the next feature of all of these headphones? I think it'll be the next feature in time. I think Apple got a head start just because they've focused on this vertical integration of all their hardware for so long. They've had the jump on these features.

But I'm sure in time, like Samsung and Google, I'm not sure how other companies, companies get involved, like Senheiser and Sony, like, what are they going to do? Like being just like third party. Sony has something like over-the-counter hearing aids, but like that's not quite the same thing as like this thing that's tied to your phone and like knows what you're listening to and like how to make that sound better at all times. So I'm curious. I'm curious if Apple's going to like run ads about these features like on TV. Like that'll be fascinating. But I think there's just going to be like a big push of like awareness, hearing health.

Because let's, you know, very easy to too take for granted until, you know, you start losing some of it over time. thankfully I'm still in good shape I've got random outs of tinnitus however that's pronounced random outs of that like once or twice a month where I hear just a little like ringing in my ears but if that's the worst that I've had through 40 years so far then I'll

take that. Yeah that's not so bad you can just print out and frame the audiogram results there that's pretty good before I let you go anything else in the software update here I mean Apple basically announced these things like they were a brand new product despite it just being a software update

to a set of existing headphones. You've been using the software update for a while now. Anything else to report? I mean, that's the reason that I would update to iOS 18.1. You know, if you don't care about

all the AI stuff in Apple Intelligence, this is a great reason to get all these new features. You can't do it on iOS 18.0 or like any previous version. So you have to update it if you want all these AirPods features. So if you don't care about the AI stuff,

which I do like the summarized notifications on iOS 18.1, they're pretty handy. But as far as like, rather like AirPods stuff, you know, the head nods are there. They work fairly well. Do you use them? Be honest. I've tried them. I turn them off pretty quickly. They worked, you know?

I'm sure there are people who love, like, all these, like, very niche features. And so, you know, people like love having Siri, like, read their notifications out loud. I would never want that to be my situation. No. To me, it's just the penalty for having the nod and head shake on and get it wrong is that, like, I answer a phone call that I don't want to in the wrong. That you very clearly, like, shook your head, vaguely. vigorously not to answer. Yeah, exactly. Like, that is, I know enough about this technology to know

that that stuff is imperfect and just the penalty for being wrong once terrifies me. Like, even now, when I'm in the car or whatever, and it's like so-and-so is calling, would you like to answer? I never have said the word no more clearly than I do in those moments. And still I'm afraid that something is going to go wrong. So I think making that stuff even simpler seems like a good idea, but also I feel like raises the stakes for what could go wrong. So we'll see how all of that turns out. But I do think there is probably a long road of interesting stuff to do there. I'm just not convinced it's yes and no.

Right. Yeah, there's some way to do like head nods in AR, I'm sure. You know, there are all these rumors of AirPods with cameras on them, which seems so bizarre to me, but I'm sure there's a purpose for that. I just want to be able to like quickly do a double shake of my head to skip songs. It's just like, no, no, no, not this one. Go to the next one. Yeah, exactly.

Or just like make a like a, ugh, face and it just skips. Like immediately add that to my not interested list on Spotify. Go to the next one. That's all I want. Exactly. All right, Chris, thank you as always. Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, David.

All right, we've got to take one more break, and then we're going to come back and do one of my favorite Virchcast Hotline questions in a while. We'll be right back. Support for the show comes from MongoDB. If you're tired of database limitations and, And architectures that break when you scale, it's time to think outside of rows and columns. Because let's be honest, you didn't get into tech to babysit a broken database. You got into it to actually build something. MongoDB lets you do that.

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Buzzwords like progressive and affordability are thrown around all the time in politics. But what do they actually mean? For me, being a progressive means at least two things. One, being willing to unite lots and lots of people. all of the folks that are getting screwed over against the powers that be that are making your life worse. And then second, being progressive is essentially a hopeful enterprise that you think, I think, that the world can be much better, that we don't have to settle for crumbs or settle for the status quo. And is there a difference between what it means to the elected officials and what it means to the people?

So money is essentially the root of everything. I don't care if you're gay. I don't care if you have all that. That's like secondary, third. Like, that doesn't, that's not a priority. That's this week on America, actually. Let's begin. Complex and unprecedented, the Spanish authorities are calling it.

Before the disembarko, asymptomatikas. Passengers who'd been stuck aboard the Hanta or maybe Hanta virus-stricken Dutch cruise ship disembarked in the Canary Islands this weekend, prompting the highest stakes game of where are they now since maybe COVID. Some of the evacuees, American and French, have since tested positive for the virus. and yet public health officials seem remarkably calm. We do have one individual who was taken to the biocontainment unit early, early this morning, and we assessed that individual.

They are doing well. Possibly because this is not the one to freak out over. Today, Explain drops every weekday afternoon. All right, we're back. Let's get to the hotline. As always, the number is 866 Verge 1-1. The email is Vergecast at theverge.com. We love all of your questions, and we try to answer at least one on the show every week.

week. I've been promising a full hotline episode for a while, and that is coming. We just, there's too much going on. If they could just stop with the news for a minute, I'd love to do a hotline episode. But I think that's coming. I'm very excited about it. So get all your questions in, all of your weird tech mysteries, all the things you want us to just ruminate endlessly on, and we'll get to them all. This week, we have a very fun question about video games. Great, Burgecast. My name is Brian. I'm in North Carolina, Newish, Epic, and Limited Run Games for Context. I've had this question ever since you had Riley tested on the show about Delta and emulation on iOS.

It came up again at the tail end of your origins of podcasting episode. Apple has a gaming problem. Why don't they just buy Nintendo? I know they have enough liquid capital sitting around that they could purchase the entirety of that company like you or I could go buy a switch. So what's stopping them? Is it Lena Khan? Does that matter if the company isn't American? Is it that they don't actually care about games?

Would Nintendo say no to a Scrooge McDuck-sized pile of Apple Cash? So that's my question. Why doesn't Apple solve its problem with gaming by eating Nintendo? What stops it from doing that? And just for fun, what would the world look like if it did? Thanks for talking about this. I've been sitting with this in my head for literal months, and I'm more than happy for it to sit in your heads instead.

I need to go do other things now. Thanks, bye. All right, I have brought the Virg's foremost Nintendo expert, Andrew Webster, here, to help me with this. Andrew, hello. Hello. So I caught you in the middle of writing a piece. Would you just briefly describe the piece that you're working on because I think it's a useful setup for what we're doing here? Oh, well, now I have to write it.

But the working headline is I have given up on guessing what Nintendo is going to do, which is a conclusion I've come to after covering them for like 15 years or so. So I want to separate this into two pieces. There is the, why doesn't Apple buy Nintendo piece of it? And there is the, what would the world look like if Nintendo were owned by Apple? And I feel like in the first case, the answer seems very straightforward, which is that anyone would seems like they would want to buy Nintendo, right? Like, everyone given the opportunity, including Apple, I assume, would leap to buy Nintendo. Do you think that's true?

Yeah. I think what's stopping them. is obviously Nintendo. Nintendo has Scrooge McDuck piles already, and they just keep getting more and more. So there's not really any reason for them to sell. And I do think that

that point about Apple not caring about gaming is very true. In addition to being the Verge's foremost Nintendo expert, I'm also our only Apple Arcade expert, and it is a great service that is just nobody knows about. Because

Apple does not care. And I also don't think Apple thinks it has a gaming problem because it makes a lot of money from games and not the kind of games that Nintendo makes. Yeah, I think the question of like, would Apple be interested in making the next Zelda game is actually really interesting? I think Apple is very happy running a store

in which it gets cuts of the work that other people do. And if we've learned one thing about the gaming industry in the last couple of years, it's that you spend an awful lot of money making things that may or may not work. And I guess the appeal of Nintendo is that mostly it makes things that work. Its hit rate has got to be better than anybody's, right? Yeah, and I mean, they tried this. I am one of the few people who will say Super Mario Run was an excellent game.

Fair. And it was downloaded, I don't know, 200 million times, but not enough people bought it for Nintendo to consider that success. So, like, you've already had Shigero Miyamoto make a game for the iPhone, And they never followed it up. So, and, you know, Apple Arcade already has a very good Zelda clone. So I think Apple's pretty happy. Yeah.

So before we pivot to the what would it look like thing, I just want to, I went back after we got this question and found from last summer, the summer of 2023, there were all those emails from 2020 that leaked out in the Microsoft case. And one of them was from Phil Spencer to a couple of folks on his team about Nintendo. And I think he pretty neatly, I think, sums up everyone's feelings about Nintendo in general. And he says, I totally agree that Nintendo is the prime asset for us in gaming. And today, gaming is our most likely path to consumer relevance. This is, they're talking about Xbox, obviously.

I've had numerous conversations with the LTE of Nintendo about tighter collaboration and feel like if any U.S. company would have a chance with Nintendo, we are probably in the best position. This is the best part. The unfortunate, or fortunate for Nintendo situation, is that Nintendo is sitting on a big pile of cash. They have a board of directors that, until recently, has not pushed for further increase. in market growth or stock appreciation. And his basic thing is, like, I don't know what to give Nintendo. They don't want our money.

They don't want our resources. They're very happy being Nintendo. And I feel like that is why no one has bought Nintendo, because Nintendo is super happy being Nintendo. Yeah, we think of Nintendo as this playful company. You know, Miyamoto is like happy to go lucky guy, but they are a ruthless corporation that extracts as much money from everything as they can.

Yeah. Good luck finding Zelda on sale ever. Right. Right. I mean, what? The Switch is eight years old now and still doing just fine. Like, Nintendo knows exactly what it's doing. And yeah, like to the, would they accept any offer?

I'm sure there's a number. Everybody always has a number. But at some point, Nintendo's market cap, I think I was looking this morning, is like $62 billion. And that's a big number. And at some point, I'm sure there is a number, but I bet that number is substantially higher than anybody thinks it is. what it would take to actually get that done. But since you brought up Apple Arcade, I just, I just want to fantasize for a minute here. Let's say Apple decides to write a check for, you know, all of the cash it has, $250 billion and it owns Nintendo. What do you think Apple would do with

Nintendo? That is like, I've been thinking about this, and I feel like there's two avenues, one of which is good and will not be successful, and one of which is bad and will make a ton of money. That sounds right. The one is the Apple Arcade route, which is like, Yeah, you can play like Mario 3 and the Mario Wonder and like all these games on your phone. And Nintendo has access to the hardware in a way that they do when they make their own hardware and can make things that are perfectly suited for it. Again, Mario 1 is good. It's a game designed for a touchscreen. They know what they're doing.

That's like a dream scenario, by the way. That's a dream scenario. You get to emulate all the games on your Apple devices. It becomes this like incredible place for Nintendo to put everything it's ever made. including all the new stuff. Like, that sounds awesome. Yeah. And that's what people say they want,

but not enough people most likely would actually pay the money for it. And what's more likely to happen is, so Mario Run, I keep bringing it up. It was generally a failure for them. But they have had several successful mobile games, which are, there's Animal Crossing one,

there's Fire Emblem one, and they are just filled with all of the free-to-play bullshit that everyone hates. But they make so much money, they're still running, and even though Nintendo has forgotten about mobile gaming, they don't turn those switches off because they get money. And that is how Apple makes its money from gaming.

So I think the dire scenario is, you know, loot boxes in Animal Crossing. Right. Or loot boxes in Tears of the Kingdom, right? Exactly. That's where this starts to get really dark. Yeah. Which, of course, ruins Tears of the Kingdom in a lot of it.

And so it's like maybe there is something about the way that Nintendo works right now that is the... the reason it's able to do the things that it does. Maybe it's stick it inside of a corporation that is much more worried about maximizing growth, and it changes all of the incentives here. Maybe the way we have it is actually the correct way to have it. Yeah. Mario Wonder exists when I was talking to the directors because they were like,

we're not going to have a deadline. We're just going to let people come out with ideas, and when it's ready, it's ready. And then it was the best Mario in a decade. So that's how it happens. Yeah. Yeah. So do you think there is a world in which this ever happens in the time that we're doing this? Like, Nintendo's been around forever.

We've given up guessing what's going to happen with Nintendo. Is this just, Nintendo's out here making alarm clocks not worrying about like live service games. You know what I mean? Like, is this just Nintendo forever? Do you think? If you can turn it around after the Wii, I think, like, you're safe. They don't have to worry about it. They're Nintendo.

Fair enough. All right. Before I let you go, do you know anything about the Switch 2? Can you blink twice if you know what's going on at the Switch 2? I got nothing. Yeah, fair enough. All right. Andrew, thank you.

Appreciate it. All right, that is it for the Vergecast today. Thank you to everybody who game on the show. And thank you, as always, for listening. There is lots more on everything we talked about. V's Smart Ring Battle Real. Chris's story about all of the hearing health stuff in the AirPods, all of our coverage of what's been going on with Nintendo and Apple and gaming

and everything. We'll put a bunch of links in the show notes, but there's lots more going on on Theverge.com. It's a good website. We like it a lot. As always, if you have thoughts, questions, feelings, or a price you think is fair to buy Nintendo, you can always email us at Vergecast at the birch.com. Call the hotline 866 Verge11. We love hearing from you. I confess I recently have done a really bad job of looking at the email. Luckily, Liam and the other folks on our team do it better, but I want to be in that inbox more. I love talking to all of you there. And I I just suck at email, but I'm going to do better. So get at me.

I'm very excited to just randomly email about our feelings about technology with you. This show is produced by Liam James, Will Poor, and Eric Gomez. The Vergecast is a Verge production and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Mili and I will be back on Friday to talk about more gadgets, more AI stuff, continuing craziness at OpenAI, and lots more. We'll see you then. Rock and roll.