As he neared 90, Aba’s world shrank. He spent his days reading and watching TV, listening to the sound through a pair of oversized wireless headphones over his ears with the volume cranked to the max. He still wore his hearing aids, but as his ears got worse and worse, the devices became even less effective. Simple conversations were now Herculean efforts that ended in shouting matches and frustration.
“DO YOU WANT DINNER?”
“ARE YOU SLEEPY?”
“CAN I GET YOU SOME TEA?”
Phone calls were impossible — Aba had to put his phone on speaker, press it right up against his ear, and ask the person on the other end to shout as loudly as they could. Eventually, “talking” to Aba on the phone meant getting him on a video call and smiling and waving at him.
When I visited him in the fall of 2022, I was wearing a pair of AirPods, and he gestured to my ears with a puzzled expression on his face.
“HEADPHONES!” I shouted. “I USE THESE TO LISTEN TO MUSIC!”
And then, I wondered if I could use them for something more important.
In 2018, Apple made Live Listen, a feature of iOS that lets iPhones and iPads transmit audio from their microphones directly to compatible hearing aids, work with regular AirPods. I hadn’t had any reason to use the feature myself, but now I was curious. Could Live Listen help me have a conversation with my grandfather after all these years?
I slipped the AirPods out of my ears and put them in his. I turned on Live Listen on my iPhone, brought it close to my mouth, and spoke into it.
“Hi, can you hear me?”
Aba’s face broke into a grin, and he nodded excitedly. “I can hear you! I can hear you!”
AirPods aren’t my favorite Apple product. I think they’re overpriced, and they don’t sound great for what you pay. But it’s also true that no other wireless buds work so seamlessly with iPhones, which is why they’re the default wireless earphones for most people, including me.
They’re also an environmental hazard. Vice called AirPods “future fossils of capitalism,” destined for landfills once their tiny batteries, encased in hard plastic, wear out after a couple of years. And I resent the fact that Apple eliminated headphone jacks that worked perfectly well and forced people to pay for something that they used to get in the box for free.
But with Live Listen, AirPods helped me reconnect with my grandfather in a way that no other device has been able to. I’m willing to look past my misgivings for that.
