Our conversation with Kirk McElhearn about his new Take Control of AirPods continues, exploring the advanced capabilities of AirPods beyond simple audio playback, explaining listening modes, Conversation Awareness, head gestures, and how the Apple ecosystem enhances the experience. He also discusses why AirPods perform poorly as phone microphones, examines rumors of camera-equipped AirPods, and reflects on technology searching for a purpose, from smart displays to the rise and fall of 3D TVs.

Today’s edition of MacVoices is supported by MacVoices Live!, our weekly live panel discussion of what is going in the Apple space as well as the larger tech world, and how it is impacting you. Join us live at YouTube.com/MacVoicesTV at 8 PM Eastern 5 PM Pacific, or whatever time that is wherever you are and participate in the chat, or catch the edited and segmented versions of the show on the regular MacVoices channels and feeds.

Show Notes:

Chapters:

00:00 AirPods listening modes: Noise Cancellation, Transparency, and Adaptive Audio
07:02 Why Transparency Mode improves safety and everyday use
12:08 Conversation Awareness and head gesture controls
20:40 AirPods for phone calls: microphone quality and Bluetooth limitations
36:20 Rumors of camera-equipped AirPods and privacy concerns
45:43 Smart displays, AI, and products searching for a market
57:17 Lessons from Google Glass and the rise and fall of 3D television
71:55 Why learning AirPods’ full feature set is worth the effort

Links:

Take Control of AirPods by Kirk McElhearn

The Imperfect Loaf - Kirk’s bread blog

Guests:

Kirk McElhearn writes about Apple hardware and software, books, music, and more. As a Senior Contributor to Macworld for more than 15 years, he wrote hundreds of articles, including the Ask the iTunes Guy column. He is a regular contributor to The Mac Security Blog, the Literature & Latte blog, where he writes about their writing app Scrivener, and TidBITS, as well as several other websites and magazines. He is co-host of several podcasts, including The Next Track, a podcast about how people listen to music today, and Write Now with Scrivener. Visit his website Kirkville.

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