Apple AirPods are one of the most successful products in the company’s history – just one reason why we’re still waiting for AirPods 2: since the current model is selling so well, why would Apple need to update them?
AirPods 2 may nearly be here, and anticipation is growing, including my fellow Forbes contributors, like Curtis Silver.
In the meantime, the iOS update to iOS 12 last September added Listen Live functionality to AirPods. I tested this feature when it was first announced back in June last year and covered it for Forbes, here. In case you missed it, here’s what Listen Live is, and why it’s a big deal.
Live Listen allows the microphone of an iPhone to transmit audio to paired AirPods. Live Listen has been around for over four years and worked with a select series of certain hearing aids so they could pick up the audio from the iPhone, amplifying it for the listener. Until last fall it has only worked with Made for iPhone hearing aids but with iOS 12 you can add AirPods to that list.
I’ve tried it and it works – sensationally. My hearing is okay, but sometimes, across a wide dinner table in a noisy restaurant, I can struggle, and find myself smiling and nodding as I catch the gist of what the other person is saying, but very little more.
This system solves it completely.
But a tweet in the last few days has picked up on the fact that you can use it more nefariously.
I’ll be honest, the fact that it can be used for this is not a surprise. Whenever I told friends and colleagues about the capability of Live Listen, almost every single person spotted the spying capability and seemed slightly freaked out by it.
Personally, I still don’t think it’s anything to be worried about. For this trick to work you need to leave your iPhone where it can pick up the voice of the person you want to snoop on. Are you really sure that your $1,000 iPhone XS is safe plonked down on the table while you’re in the next room? And isn’t it likely that the first thing you hear as you’re covertly listening is someone saying, “Ooh, look, there’s an iPhone lying here – I’m having that.”
Sure, you could bury it under papers or somewhere, but it all quickly gets a bit James Bond-ish and the more it’s hidden, the more muffled the microphone is likely to be. Also, the range over which Bluetooth operates is not that far and quickly deteriorates. I think it’s unlikely that the now-common knowledge of a feature that has been live for five months will lead to widespread clandestine snooping.
Incidentally, I haven’t run through the details of how you make this happen – this is not a how-to post and anyway it’s easy to do. Much of the instructions are frankly in the tweet above…
It’s true that a company like Apple with its laser-focus on privacy might found the prospect of its products being used for snooping a little uncomfortable, but as CEO Tim Cook says, technology doesn’t want to be good or bad, it’s what we use it for that defines it.
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