I join Super SmartTechCheck podcast host Mark Vena, John Quain and Rob Pegoraro to discuss AirBnB efforts to recruit more hosts, AI photo detection woes, the legacy of the original iPhone, and the consumer electronics slump.
How small is too small for a laptop computer? How big is too big? A laptop with a 15- to 16-inch display, measured diagonally, is the just-right size for many—the most convenient convergence of productivity versus portability.
A “feisty” SmartTechCheck podcast hosted by Mark Vena with myself and fellow tech journalists Rob Pegoraro, John Quain, and AppleDsgn’s Niels Van Straaten on the major themes coming out of Apple WWDC 23.
You’ve grudgingly admitted to yourself that you don’t hear as well as you once did. You find yourself turning up the TV volume to the annoyance of your roommate, spouse, or kids, and/or resorting to closed captioning. You find yourself asking people to repeat what they just said way too frequently. Concerts are still ear-stingingly loud, but you have a hard time making out individual instruments or the words the singers are singing. Conversations with wait staff in restaurants, sales or check-out people, train conductors, medical office personnel, or friends, family, or co-workers at social gatherings have become hard if not impossible to follow, with voices from the folks right in front of you drowned out by the mass of chattering and ambient sound around you.
There have been only around a dozen self-fitting over-the-counter hearing aids (OTC HA) introduced into the market since the new FDA OTC hearing aid regulationswent into effect last fall. These new self-fitting OTC HAs are designed to help compensate for the mild to moderate hearing loss suffered by an estimated 35-plus million people in the U.S. and to approximate the performance of prescription hearing aids you’d buy from an audiologist – but at a much lower cost. OTC HAs remove the audiologist middle person, which means instead of paying $4,000-$8,000 for prescription hearing aids, self-fitting OTC HAs sell for less than $3,000, usually between $400-$1,300, depending on make and model.
Young people overwhelmingly own Apple iPhones. According to Statistica, 58% of 18- to 34-year-olds own iPhones, and, according to Piper Sandler, a whopping 87% of GenZers own iPhones. But if anyone in these age groups wanted to buy a reasonably priced 15-inch laptop, they were limited only to Windows portable computers – until now.
Apple finally unveiled its innovative and potentially revolutionary mixed reality goggles, the Vision Pro. But Vision Pro is more than just another augmented reality (AR) or virtual reality (VR) headset, and more than how Apple describes it, as “a new kind of computer that augments reality by seamlessly blending the real world with the digital world.” Instead, Vision Pro seems like one of those rare logic-defying disruptive technologies like the internet that you must experience to comprehend its benefits and potential fully.
I join host Mark Vena with Rob Pegararo, John Quain, and Hartley Charlton, senior editor at MacRumors.com, for this week’s podcast focused entirely on what we might hear at Apple WWDC 2023.
The Eargo 7 are the most natural-sounding, worry-free, comfortable for all-day wear, and invisible self-fitting OTC hearing aids currently available. However, I recommend them with one big caveat – they are significantly more expensive than other products in the over-the-counter (OTC) category.