AirPods are having their Apple Watch moment

Zac Hall | Sep 16 2024 - 11:52 am PT

Some seriously impressive new health-related features are coming to AirPods Pro 2. The customer reach of these features will be especially great for the same reason Apple Watch impacts so many lives.

The thing about Apple Watch has always been that people buy and wear it daily because it’s both cool and helpful on a day-to-day basis. Apple Pay, notifications, workout tracking, you name it.

For that reason, it can deliver otherwise invisible health monitoring features that people later discover when needed. Think heart rate alerts, fall detection, emergency SOS, and now sleep apnea monitoring.

The mass appeal of AirPods Pro 2 is even more focused on reasons that often have little to do with health. People generally buy AirPods Pro 2 for their awesome audio fidelity and features like Active Noise Cancellation and Transparency.

There are very useful accessibility features, like being able to pipe in audio picked up by your iPhone into your AirPods, but AirPods are really having their Apple Watch moment this year.

So many AirPods Pro 2 customers are about to take their very first hearing test, or at least their first hearing test as an adult. AirPods Pro 2 will then transform into an over-the-counter hearing aid for people who otherwise may not have ever considered wearing one.

And AirPods Pro 2, touted for having the most audio features of any Apple headphone, are becoming rated for hearing protection.

Up until now, the AirPods Pro 2 install base has not been based on these three health features, yet hearing protection and hearing aid features are coming to the AirPods Pro 2 install base.

That’s the Apple Watch moment: make a product useful enough that everyone loves it, then demonstrate that accessibility is for everyone in the best possible way.