Steven Aquino, TechCrunch:
Apple has one hardware-specific feature planned that wasn’t announced at Monday’s WWDC keynote. In iOS 12, users will be able to use Live Listen, a special feature previously reserved for hearing aids certified through Apple’s Made for iPhone hearing aid program, with their AirPods.
After enabling the feature in the iPhone’s settings, users will be able to use their phones effectively as a directional mic. This means you can have AirPods in at a noisy restaurant with your iPhone on the table, for example, and the voice of whomever is speaking will be routed to your AirPods.
This is absolutely brilliant, a wonderful feature especially useful for folks with limited hearing.
As Steven notes at the end of his piece:
Still, it’s critical to note AirPods with Live Listen is not a full replacement for a hearing aid. It’s obviously best to speak with your audiologist to determine the best solution for your ears.
This is no replacement for a hearing aid, but a useful tool to have.
Some folks have noted a dark potential, that of using your phone to eavesdrop on a conversation remotely. Just as a webcam uses a light to let you know it is live, I wonder if Apple might light up the iPhone screen in a certain way to let folks know the audio is being shared remotely.
There are already apps that do this (with any headphones) but the audio filtering leaves a lot to be desired. I hope Apple’s solution works and works well.
Is this for sure specifically only for AirPods? Any technical reason why that would be?
I don’t think the privacy issue is a big concern, really. AirPods range is pretty limited. It wouldn’t surprise me if Apple did do something to limit this, but there are so many better ways to spy that don’t involve putting a $1,000 phone at risk.
the “dark” angle is silly. it’s no different than leaving an iphone or other digital recorder.