Apple's AirPods Pro hearing health features

You can say a lot of things about Apple, but which other consumer-facing tech company adds features meant to accompany people throughout every phase of their lives? People are growing with their smartphones, and the need for some functionalities only starts to become obvious later in life.

It’s just marketing. A plus point in differentiation matrix from gazillion competitors. And a justification for a higher price tag. The products are nice though.

I understand your point and in someway do agree that it is marketing and it is a way of differentiating themselves.

But inly to justify a higher price tag? Yes it is true they are premium products, but I don't think it's true that they're that much more expensive than similar items occupying the same marketing niche from other manufacturers.

And they are far more than an order of magnitude cheaper than even a low end set of hearing aids.

But all of that is despite the point.

Samsung, Sony, Bose,… The list goes on. I have bought high-end headphones from them all, some with some without noise cancellation. In ear, over the ear, wired and Bluetooth... the list goes on.

NOBODY has a headphone that accommodates my hearing loss except Apple.

And they started doing it years ago as a feature buried in the accessibility settings.

But they kept improving it to the point where it is now FDA approved.

"A plus point in a differentiation matrix…?"

This is the kind of action that buys customer loyalty for life. I hope you never get to experience the depth of hearing loss that many of us have and how utterly transformative this kind of technology not just can be, but IS.

Bose made a product ~10 years back called Hearphones which were far more capable than what Apple is doing here.

IIRC Jabra earbuds have had "hearing aid" features for years. They, unfortunately, don't help with single side deafness the way the Hearphones do.

Apple isn't doing anything groundbreaking here but they are doing it at a very competitive price. The airpod features also do not help with single side deafness. :(

Have they confirmed these won't support single sided deafness?

I've been waiting to buy them until I confirm support, but their support reps didn't even know.