iOS 10.2 Fixes Two Issues With 'Made for iPhone' Hearing Aids

Apple released iOS 10.2 earlier this month with an all-new "TV" app, a range of new emoji, bug fixes, and other improvements, including one that was not mentioned in the changelog — improved support for MFi hearing aids.

mfi-hearing-aids
After updating to iOS 10.2, Reddit user dshafik noted Find My iPhone pings now come through the iPhone's speakers, while FaceTime rings for outgoing calls through his ReSound 9-Series hearing aids.

On previous software versions, Find My iPhone would ring through the hearing aid itself, making it harder to find a lost iPhone, while FaceTime would ring on the iPhone's speakers for outgoing calls, despite the actual call being routed through the hearing aid.

The accessibility improvements are good news for those with hearing aids, and certainly show attention to detail.

Related Forum: iOS 10

Top Rated Comments

BMcCoy Avatar
96 months ago
Apple's attention to accessibility issues is certainly one area they do well, and far superior to some other manufacturers. Credit to them.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RedTomato Avatar
96 months ago
My Naida Q50 UP were about $3,000 for the pair but insurance covered the cost. I'm quite happy that Apple works hard on accessibility. Thank you, Apple!
Good to see Apple improving their support and paying attention to the details in this area.

I have Naidas too, the V UP model. I work mostly with deaf people / hearing signers at the moment so I rarely wear them, though I would use them more if I was working with non-signers.

The Nadas irritate me because they don't have an on/off switch, fiddling with the battery holders annoys me and traps my hairs, and I can't hear the volume adjustment beeps or the max volume beep. so I don't know where I am on the volume settings. It's exasperating that an advanced device made for very deaf people like me can be so user-hostile.

To be honest, the old analogue hearing aids from 15 years ago had a far better user interface paradigm with controls that were more navigable, even if their sound output was **** compared to today's hearing aids.

I shouldn't complain though, I got mine for free on the NHS (which gets them at a huge discount thanks to bulk-buy). Mine are a couple of years old which means they probably won't work with iOS and other fancy stuff, much to my disappointment.

There's a list of Apple compatible hearing aids here: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201466
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
FreakinEurekan Avatar
96 months ago
Nice, I had reported that bug regarding FMiP. I've also seen improved support of Bluetooth streaming with 10.2, seems less prone to flipping back to my aids - though, I switched iPhone 5s to iPhone 7 Plus literally just a couple days after installing 10.2 so I can't say if the improvements are from 10.2 or the new phone. I have the ReSound Linx2 9-series. @Weaselboy these were north of that figure by a bit :) but yes, covered by health insurance.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
MH01 Avatar
96 months ago
Always respected apple stance on accessibility. Less emoji and more of this!!!
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
RedTomato Avatar
95 months ago
Since there are a few Macrumors deaf readers here, am popping back into this thread with a warning. Last Black Friday I treated myself to the ChromeCast and the Amazon Fire Stick, but didn't get round to playing with them till the Xmas break.

I was expecting to use the ChromeCast for most things, but sadly its subtitle support is lacking. It plays media files from my laptop (via Chrome browser) but won't pick up the subtitle files. Some other web players didn't relay subtitles to the TV either. Am disappointed, as was looking forward to playing media from laptop on TV without needing to hook it up with wires.

I was expecting the Amazon Fire Stick to only be a backup, but the apps for it are turning out to have better subtitle support than the ChromeCast. I've not yet sideloaded Plex on the Fire Stick but apparently that will play subtitle files.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
carlgo Avatar
96 months ago
Check out Costco's price for iPhone compliant hearing aids. Vastly cheaper. And with the membership you can buy giant bottles of good Vodka cheap...
[doublepost=1482374740][/doublepost]I did not previously upgrade to 10.2 because all Apple talked about were those #@$%^&* emoji things and I wanted to hold off having them infesting my phone for as long as possible. Now I will get 10.2 for the usefulness of the hearing aid app.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

maxresdefault

Apple Announces 'Let Loose' Event on May 7 Amid Rumors of New iPads

Tuesday April 23, 2024 7:11 am PDT by
Apple has announced it will be holding a special event on Tuesday, May 7 at 7 a.m. Pacific Time (10 a.m. Eastern Time), with a live stream to be available on Apple.com and on YouTube as usual. The event invitation has a tagline of "Let Loose" and shows an artistic render of an Apple Pencil, suggesting that iPads will be a focus of the event. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more ...
Apple Vision Pro Dual Loop Band Orange Feature 2

Apple Cuts Vision Pro Shipments as Demand Falls 'Sharply Beyond Expectations'

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:44 am PDT by
Apple has dropped the number of Vision Pro units that it plans to ship in 2024, going from an expected 700 to 800k units to just 400k to 450k units, according to Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo. Orders have been scaled back before the Vision Pro has launched in markets outside of the United States, which Kuo says is a sign that demand in the U.S. has "fallen sharply beyond expectations." As a...
Apple Silicon AI Optimized Feature Siri

Apple Releases Open Source AI Models That Run On-Device

Wednesday April 24, 2024 3:39 pm PDT by
Apple today released several open source large language models (LLMs) that are designed to run on-device rather than through cloud servers. Called OpenELM (Open-source Efficient Language Models), the LLMs are available on the Hugging Face Hub, a community for sharing AI code. As outlined in a white paper [PDF], there are eight total OpenELM models, four of which were pre-trained using the...
iPad And Calculator App Feature

Apple Finally Plans to Release a Calculator App for iPad Later This Year

Tuesday April 23, 2024 9:08 am PDT by
Apple is finally planning a Calculator app for the iPad, over 14 years after launching the device, according to a source familiar with the matter. iPadOS 18 will include a built-in Calculator app for all iPad models that are compatible with the software update, which is expected to be unveiled during the opening keynote of Apple's annual developers conference WWDC on June 10. AppleInsider...
iOS 17 All New Features Thumb

iOS 17.5 Will Add These New Features to Your iPhone

Sunday April 21, 2024 3:00 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 17.5 update for the iPhone includes only a few new user-facing features, but hidden code changes reveal some additional possibilities. Below, we have recapped everything new in the iOS 17.5 and iPadOS 17.5 beta so far. Web Distribution Starting with the second beta of iOS 17.5, eligible developers are able to distribute their iOS apps to iPhone users located in the EU...