iOS 16.1 Beta Brings Adaptive Transparency to Original AirPods Pro

[Htsi]

I may be doing that soon. I have a few concerts coming up and was going to shop around for them this weekend. If you have a reco, I'm ... all ears. 🥁 🥁 💥

I bought some from Amazon, they are silicone so you need to clean them often. Just search for concert ear plugs

My AP1 (no beta firmware) do shift from transparency mode to noise cancelling for a short period when there's a high pitched sound like bells nearby, door alarms or when alarm goes off due to tags on clothes. (my work place is in a mall). Is it adaptive transparency?

That’s been there for a long time, works on sirens and wind in my experience. Not adaptive transparency.

They already do.

They do not, only 3 modes. ANC OFF TRANSPARENCY.

 

[Beatrix Kiddo]

Fortunately, this is so un-Apple

 

[wanha]

Lol, apple being generous? What a warm fuzzy feeling

Totally goes against the overall MR forums narrative

 

[Kottu]

That’s been there for a long time, works on sirens and wind in my experience. Not adaptive transparency.

So, what's the difference?

 

[votdfak]

No it doesn't. You either have transparency mode on, active noise cancelling on, or both off. I usually go for both off unless I really need some background noise drowning out. I don't think i've ever used transparency mode.

I have used transparency mode many times while riding my bike around the city, and if you tweek mics a bit you get super-hearing abilities.

 

[Zanton68]

I'm not sure what's up here, but my 1st Gen Air Pods Pro do not show this option. (And both were just replaced yesterday as part of the service program, so they're pretty new.)

EDIT: Oof, reading is hard. Missed the part about the beta firmware. Carry on.

Me too. Two years old and they swapped the case and both AirPods Pro a few weeks ago. Unless I read that phone call sound quality is greatly improved on the 2s I’ll be waiting for AirPods Pro 3 🙂

 

[Jeromec]

Also shows as an option with my AirPods Max

I can confirm this also works with Airpods Max
See attached screenshots.

 

[God of Biscuits]

Now if only Apple did this with the Photonic Engine and 4K Cinematic Mode on the 13 (Pros). Since, you know, the 14 with the same hardware makes use of it.

who said Photonic Engine was software-only?

 

[gwhizkids]

It works because all these “features” of the new hardware are artificially locked out.

There’s no reason more older iPads couldn’t have Stage Manager (Apple later backtracked), iPhone minis couldn’t have the battery percentage (Apple later backtracked too), and the first gen AirPods Pro couldn’t have better ANC (Apple artificially nuked it with the 2C54 firmware).

All of those capabilities were artificially held back to give Apple a reason to sell us new hardware, and now we’re discovering that the same is apparently true of Adaptive Transparency.

As an owner of one of the older iPads you refer to, I can tell you why Apple “artificially” kept Stage Manager off these devices: it’s a memory hog and performance of the device drops dramatically when you use it. I’d say that’s a pretty good reason in my book.

Knock it off with the “everything Apple does is to gouge its customers”. That’s no more true than the opposite “Apple does nothing wrong/makes no mistakes” fanboism.

 

[Macusercom]

I honestly wonder if that is a feature or a bug. It could very well be that they've accidentally included the toggle in the beta. Not sure if anyone tested if it does indeed work as expected or if it a dead toggle.

If this was intended, I wonder if the AirPods Pro 1st gen and its H1 chip can handle it or if it requires an iOS device to talk to (which would induce a lot of latency making the feature quite useless in many situations)

EDIT: Apparently, I was right. It is a bug: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/10/03/no-adaptive-transparency-original-airpods-pro/

 

[vtuberalpha]

who said Photonic Engine was software-only?

Why would it be hardware-locked when the regular 14 uses the exact same hardware and silicon as the 13 Pro (same wide sensor and SoC)?

Apple knows that the regular 14 is the same as the 13 so they software-lock their shiny new camera features running on the same hardware to incentivize sales.

 

[NightFox]

This is all true, except my dog barks at me and adaptive transparency would be great!

What if he's barking to tell you the house is on fire or the kids have got trapped down the old abandoned mine?

 

[gwhizkids]

Why would it be hardware-locked when the regular 14 uses the exact same hardware and silicon as the 13 Pro (same wide sensor and SoC)?

Apple knows that the regular 14 is the same as the 13 so they software-lock their shiny new camera features running on the same hardware to incentivize sales.

Lol. This is a bad take

 

[gmarm]

Quite pleasantly surprised they back ported this feature. So un-Apple!

 

[cmChimera]

What if he's barking to tell you the house is on fire or the kids have got trapped down the old abandoned mine?

lol well if I don't hear her, she usually will just push me with her paws to get my attention. She's very resourceful. 😆

 

[Denzo]

I should be happy with the news as I wasn’t planning to upgrade anyway but instead I feel weirded out to see Apple without the typical arrogance and stubbornness. I’m not quite sure if this is a good thing.

Like getting slapped about?

 

[jonnysods]

Wow can't believe they retroactively gave this to us poor first gen sods.

 

[gwhizkids]

I can confirm this also works with Airpods Max
See attached screenshots.

When you say "works" do you mean the toggle is there or that it actually delivers Adaptive Transparency? So far, I've seen many reports of the toggle and none confirming that it works (unless that's what you're saying). Thanks!

 

[Jeromec]

When you say "works" do you mean the toggle is there or that it actually delivers Adaptive Transparency? So far, I've seen many reports of the toggle and none confirming that it works (unless that's what you're saying). Thanks!

I can only say the toggle is also there for AirPods Max.
Not found a way to seriously test it.

 

[dannys1]

Interesting, it's the feature I was looking forward to most. There's lots of times I take walks outside and loud vehicles overpower the music I'm listening to. I can't do noise cancellation for obvious safety reasons, so adaptive transparency is the solution.

But if you're listening to music can you hear other noises anyway? Because I can't? They only work for me, ironically if i pause the music to have a conversation with someone, or if i'm listening to spoken word stuff only.

 

[dannys1]

I have used transparency mode many times while riding my bike around the city, and if you tweek mics a bit you get super-hearing abilities.

Without listening to other things you mean? In which case that is pretty cool - like a mega hearing air basically.

 

[techfreak23]

Wasn't this already a thing? My 1st gen Pros drop out the sound whenever there is a loud or high pitched noise in my environment. Does this just cancel that out while retaining the other audio or does it do the same thing where it essentially mutes everything?

 

[votdfak]

Without listening to other things you mean? In which case that is pretty cool - like a mega hearing air basically.

Listening podcasts at maybe 20-30% volume

 

[knight556]

I haven’t seen anyone say that this feature actually works yet, so I tried it myself:
- Installed iOS 16.1 beta 3
- (Against my better judgment) instructed the Developer settings on the phone to install the beta firmware on my AirPods Pro gen 1, which it eventually did
- Enabled Adaptive Transparency in the settings
- Put in my AirPods on ANC mode to start with and started my incredibly loud NutraNinja blender operating
- Left the room and toggled to transparency mode, then slowly re-entered the room and walked towards the blender
- I can confirm that the volume did not diminish in any way.

Conclusion: Either this new toggle in the settings is a mistake, or the feature is simply not working yet.

 

[xpxp2002]

I haven’t seen anyone say that this feature actually works yet, so I tried it myself:
- Installed iOS 16.1 beta 3
- (Against my better judgment) instructed the Developer settings on the phone to install the beta firmware on my AirPods Pro gen 1, which it eventually did
- Enabled Adaptive Transparency in the settings
- Put in my AirPods on ANC mode to start with and started my incredibly loud NutraNinja blender operating
- Left the room and toggled to transparency mode, then slowly re-entered the room and walked towards the blender
- I can confirm that the volume did not diminish in any way.

Conclusion: Either this new toggle in the settings is a mistake, or the feature is simply not working yet.

To be fair, so far I have not been able to produce any scenario where the Adaptive Transparency with AirPods Pro 2 has actually reduced or isolated any sounds for me either.

I just feel like the feature is either very subtle or doesn't work the way I think it does.