It sure looks like Apple ripped out a valuable hearing loss feature from the AirPods line

Everyone is talking about how AirPods Pro 2 (I guess they're "2" now, now "2nd Generation") are about to be "clinical grade hearing aids" because there's a huge PR push for it and, frankly, no tech journalist is even bothering to dig even a little bit into the history of the thing.

And it's not my job to do that. I am not a tech journalist. I am a person with hearing loss and a day job.

But they really should! Because AirPods have been doing some really nice things for those of us with hearing loss for some time. I wrote about it two and half years ago, in fact!

Today, I am actually in a slightly different position than I was when I wrote that article. My hearing loss has progressed, and I have upgraded to significantly more advanced hearing aids that can hop between all my devices.

In quiet rooms, I can take calls on these new, better hearing aids, and in loud rooms, I can throw my AirPods Max over my hearing aids. I don't really use my AirPods Pro (1st Generation) much at all anymore.

But.

I still listen to music. And while the streaming quality on my new hearing aids is leaps and bounds over my old ones, to the point that I'm actually rather satisfied with them for casual listening, I still want to use the AirPods Max that I bought with the understanding that I'd be able to use them tuned with the hearing test results from my audiologist to listen to music.

And I very recently could do that! Until, apparently, iOS 18.1, when Apple introduced this "clinical grade hearing aids" feature that only works with AirPods I don't even own.

I have been testing the public beta for iOS 18.1 and iPadOS 18.1 for a couple weeks, and Headphone Accommodations in the release candidate—which will almost certainly be the same release that everyone gets next week—is entirely missing the option to use the audiogram from my audiologist that I have loaded in the Health app.

I reported this, of course. Surely it had something to do with changing things up for the AirPods Pro 2 thing, right, and it'd be fixed? Well, I have yet to receive any verbal reply of any kind, but the feedback report was resolved the other day as "Investigation complete - Works as currently designed".

I have tried installing the latest firmware on all my AirPods. I have tried removing and replacing my audiograms in Health and trying to go through Custom Audio Setup again—I'm never prompted. Nothing I do makes the audiogram option come back. (Except restoring to iOS 18.0.1, that is. That works… while I still can, at least.)

Which I thought might mean Apple intentionally removed the audiogram feature from Headphone Accommodations. The picture is kind of confusing, to be honest—since I wrote this post, there have been reports of people experiencing all sorts of things, so I don't know. All I do know is that on 18.1, I just can't establish an audiogram setup unless I have AirPods Pro 2; on 18.0.1, I can.

It's frustrating. The Headphone Accommodations feature itself is even still there—it's just been stripped down to the basic "Balanced Tone", "Vocal Range", and "Brightness" options with a soft sounds boost slider that you get if you don't have an audiogram. Why remove the audiogram? The audiogram is specifically useful for people with hearing loss. Like me.

I can understand why steering someone to using the better feature if they've got AirPods Pro 2 makes sense, but the other headphones in the AirPods (and Beats!) lines that will never be "clinically validated hearing aids" can still give folks with hearing loss a tremendous benefit when it comes to media and calls.

What I would love to see is for someone with media access to ask Apple about their history with Hearing Accommodations and what their plans are for the future with the rest of their AirPods and Beats lines and people with hearing loss.

Ask them specifically about how people who had real, clinical hearing tests could load their results into their iPhones and get customized listening and calling sound profiles with their AirPods and Beats headphones. Ask what Apple's future plans are for that in light of their new shiny thing.

And no, I just wanna say, the "Apple is force-obsoleting an old product" take doesn't ring true to me. They didn't just take the feature away from the first-generation AirPods Pro. They took it away from every other supported pair of headphones, including compatible Beats headphones and the massive Max. These are very different products.

So, come on. What's the reason? Ask them why—why would you get rid of the thing that people are getting great use out of now?