John Gruber for Daring Fireball:
Apple invited a few dozen media folks to New York today for a briefing and early access to the new AirPods Pro. My initial impression: I like them… Noise cancellation worked really well for me. I own a pair of Bose over-the-ear noise canceling wireless headphones, but almost exclusively wear them only on airplanes and trains. Wearing noise-canceling earbuds on the subway and walking through the city is going to take some getting used to. It’s so good you really do lose sense of your surrounding aural environment…
There’s no question how AirPods Pro compare to regular AirPods. The difference is like night and day…
Comfort-wise, my ears felt fine after those three consecutive hours of use. It’s a very different feeling compared to regular AirPods, but I like it. I’ve never had a problem with regular AirPods falling out of my ears, but AirPods Pro feel way more secure.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve run races with regular AirPods and they’ve never even come close to falling out of our ears, but we are happy to get all of the new features and much better sound quality that AirPods Pro offers.
I don’t understand how people can be out in public completely oblivious to the sounds around them. Even when I’m at the gym, I want to hear what’s going on around me. In this day and age, you might have to react to something where every second counts.
I’d hate to live like that. I guess you must live in a dangerous place?
USA probably…
A car can kill you just as dead as a gun if you are an unobservant fool.
Pro used to mean “for professionals”. eg. MacBook Pro with extra power to allow professional video editing or music making or whatever. What does a professional headphone user do with them?
Serious? Ever heard of garage band, Final Cut Pro, Logic, Adobe premiere, Adobe Audition, Avid, or any of the podcast or YouTube creation apps?
No one serious, let alone professional, is using bluetooth earbuds for production. “Pro” has always been a marketing term for Apple, the majority of their “pro” products have been purchased by regular people who want the top of the line or just to feel special.
Could Apple add a thingie to the processor to make this device something of a “hearing aid”? I think I read it has two microphones to dull external sound. Could the device be pinched to open external sound? Thousands of engineers at Apple Park could be turned loose on the project and come up with a solution in about an hour or less.
They can and they have. It’s called Live Listen, and you can enable it in settings.