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Apple Expected to Sell More Than 100 Million True Wireless Hearables in 2020
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Because it's headsets. I thought it was supposed to be wearables and a typo too until I saw it for like the third time and saw Airpods mentioned.
Might be actually a good thing. Hearing aids are bloody expensive. And a hearing aid connected to an iPhone XR would have tons of processing power to make a real difference.
For example, the Home Pod can detect who said "Hey Siri" _and filter out what they are saying_ with 16 percent of its processing power. Move that to a hearing aid, and it can filter out voices clearly while you are in a crowd with everyone talking.
Headphones and earphones at a minimum. Not sure if headsets are included but it would make sense.
A single HomePod is the best of the speakers out there. Two HomePods are even better. What they are _not_ is cheap. If you want speakers to play music and enjoy it, they are the ones to buy.
Yes of course, because a white, battery-powered mystery box for $50 is so much easier to use than a $9 set of plug-in earbuds. And as an added bonus I could lose both of them while traveling.
I completely agree.
TL;DR: Yep, it’s a word. Just checked. It’s a tech device intended for the general public and not to be confused with hearing aids.
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Longer:
I even did a quick search to see if the word, used in this context, had reached any legit dictionaries.
Given that I loathe the appropriation of words, especially when turning a noun into a verb, I hoped such a word had not reached accepted common usage.
Alas, it has.
Not to be confused with audible (adjective meaning loud enough to be heard), hearable, a noun, refers to smart devices intended for the ears.
Specifically, smart devices made by tech companies for the general community. This should not be confused with … um … hearing aids. Hearing aids with Mfi, streaming, Bluetooth, or other “smart” technologies are not considered hearables. They are FDA approved medical devices approved for those with hearing loss.
With that said, I’m not tempted by “hearable” technology. My hearing aids (MSRP: $7,000/pair) with a Bluetooth streamer work just fine.
[Edit: ps. Holy crap! After lurking for years, I think it my first actual post to the forum!]
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Ok, we all get it...no one likes the word ‘hearables...’
Anyways,
Crazy growth for the AirPods in general. I think the biggest thing the AirPods offer, is the segment that they have the ‘Pro‘ line now if somebody wants the ‘noise’ canceling feature and of course the entry level AirPods with/without the wireless case as an option. There’s a price point for everyone, which creates a larger demographic. (Which includes the beats line as well).
Anyways,
Crazy growth for the AirPods in general. I think the biggest thing the AirPods offer, is the segment that they have the ‘Pro‘ line now if somebody wants the ‘noise’ canceling feature and of course the entry level AirPods with/without the wireless case as an option. There’s a price point for everyone, which creates a larger demographic. (Which includes the beats line as well).
You can complain to apple support and they will replace your Pros you know. I just had mine replaced which are on firmware 2B588 now.
I ran around in circles on the phone with them yesterday, got transferred to a "senior adviser" who was not helpful at all. So I messaged support on the website and they are making me go to the Apple store tomorrow. Think they could swap them right there and then? I bought them at Best Buy in November. Got a long flight on Saturday, really want that ANC to work.
That’s really stretching it. Ok. Not true at all.
the HomePod is not the best speaker out there. Klipsch,paradigm, and many other are clearly superior
Hell the BT Marshall Stanmore or Woburn sound as good and will play far louder
I have 1 hearable (airPod), 2 typables (laptop), 2 callable (iPhone) , 1 touchable(iPad), 1 watchable (appleTV) and 1 Spendable( appleCard). 😂
Sometimes sitting in my office, the wind changes direction and I suddenly wish a company might create an Active Smell Cancellation device. Apple should be that company!
Can someone enlighten me on the difference between 'true wireless headphones' vs 'wireless headphones?' Seems like a true waste of words...
They need to fix the major possible design flaw in the pros:
forums.macrumors.com
AirPod Pro Ear Tip Fit test not working...Not the only one
Went to exchange them and 2 other customers were doing the same. Running 13.2. The demo vs they had worked fine
forums.macrumors.com
Interesting to me, Beats has the 8th highest volume but the 2nd highest revenue. Beaten (intended) only by parent company product. Beats, love 'em or hate 'em, is still printing money. Bad buy, Apple... bad buy.
Also, "hearables"? Absolutely terrible moniker. Wireless headphones.
"Hearables" implies MORE than just headphones, just like "smart watch" implies more than just a watch.
(And of course, in both cases, there'll be a mass of people who refuse to admit that this distinction matters and will still be whining, five years later, about things normal people realized long ago are stupid -- cf round watches...)
So what sort of smarts could be added to a hearable?
It's something of a tricky problem because there are a few concepts that make sense on technical grounds (eg they save power) but they run into the problem of control; there just isn't much scope there for a powerful UI :-(
Personally I think the best way for Apple to deal with this is to just accept that reality. Put as much can be put on the bud as possible (the play/pause button we have today, maybe a stoke action to change volume?, maybe bring back the tap action for a third type of functionality?) but that's just not much.
Second mechanism is to allow Siri (perhaps built into the headsets) to perform some actions. This is not a great solution generally; it's slow and in many places you don't want people around you hearing you talking to Siri. But it works for some cases like on a cycle, or outside wearing gloves.
Third mechanism is tight integration with the aWatch and phone, so you normally activate/control the advanced functionality from those devices. Which means, yeah, even more than before they are valuable to people in the Apple eco-system, and not so much to people outside it.
So what SORT of functionality?
- hearing correction/compensation. Run an ear test then compensate everything that comes through the buds for your ears. Easy case is left vs right volume difference, but most people, especially older will also have some sort of uneven frequency response that could be compensated for. In the most extreme case, they're acting as hearing aids, performing this compensation on the mic feed. Probably will never be up to medical grade; but my idea is not FOR medical grade cases, just for convenience for people with sub-optimal hearing.
- store audio IN the buds. This can happen transparently, basically a form of caching, favorite songs, the audio book you are listening to, things like that. Point is that stuff stored in the buds uses less power when playing.
- white noise generation (and various other ambient sounds that people like) generated on the buds, rather than on the phone. Why? One of the most useful functions of the noise-cancelling buds is that they can block out noise (duh) in crowds, waiting rooms, places like that. But they're not great at blocking out spoken word (or more precisely, the brain is really good at picking up spoken word, even at low volumes). If this bugs you and you just want to read without eg hearing the TV in the background, various types of white noise work well to mask speech.
Like audio stored in the buds, this is achievable today via an app on the Phone (or Watch) but doing it on the buds saves power.
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"True wireless" means two buds that are not connected by a wire, ie somehow each bud separately receives the audio signal.
"Wireless" means no wire to the audio source, but the left and right ears have a wire between the two.
You may think this is dumb terminology (I do) but it is the standard, and it has real meaning.
