Your Apple’s Airpods Have a Hearing Aid Feature

Ryan: So this guy got the new AirPod pros for his grandma to use the new hearing aid feature, but she couldn't use it because Apple region locked the feature to the us. Do you know how they got around it?

Alex Gizis: I do. He wrapped his iPad and aluminum foil and he microwaved it. Apple has region locked them, so they only work in the US for hearing aids. So in order to get around it, what these guys did, very clever, they need to fool the iPad into thinking it was in the US, even though they were in India. The trouble is the iPad has so many hints.

It's got the GPS. It's got the Wi-Fi. It's not only what networks you're connected to, but what networks it can detect, what IP address you get when you're on the internet. There are lots and lots of hints. You can't just tell it you're in the U.S. And trick it.

Ryan: So you can't just use a VPN either?

Alex Gizis: No. And they used a VPN, that wasn't enough. So they went all the way. So they had it join a VPN, but they also wrapped it in aluminum foil in order to make a Faraday cage, and they put a little Wi-Fi hotspot inside with it that was broadcasting a whole bunch of SSIDs of hotspots in California.

When it's scanned for Wi-Fi, it would pick up all these hotspots that were in California, and hopefully, because it's wrapped in aluminum foil, GPS wouldn't work, and it shouldn't be able to pick up the other hotspots that are actually there in India with them, and then they VPN'd in order to change the IP address to be one in California.

It took a couple tries, that still wasn't working, so they put it on a microwave and ran the microwave. They tried to block it with a Faraday cage themselves inside, but it's not perfect, so a little bit leaks out, and a lot of it's on frequencies similar to what Wi-Fi uses. So that helped really mess up any legitimate radio signals coming in, and after a couple tries, they got it to work.

The iPad was fooled and said, "I'm in the U.S." And at that point, the AirPods became hearing aids.

Ryan: Could a microwave itself be a Faraday cage too?

Alex Gizis: Oh yeah. A microwave is lined with metal and mesh on the door. That's metal mesh that's tied in, that together turn it into a Faraday cage.

This isn't actually a Faraday cage because the bottom isn't closed, but otherwise it almost is. It doesn't have to be solid metal. It's okay if there are holes. As long as it's largely metal and goes all the way around in every dimension.

Ryan: So how does a Faraday cage work? What's the difference between a Faraday cage and a metal box?

Alex Gizis: Well, a metal box can be a Faraday cage if it's completely sealed on every side and able to conduct all the way through. Right, the electricity has to be able to conduct all the way through. A lot of people assume that what's going on is that the radio waves can't make it through the metal, but that's not it at all.

Antennas are made of metal and radio waves go through them fantastic. What actually happens is when the radio waves hit the box and go through the metal, they excite the electrons on this side of the box and they start vibrating with the radio wave. And because electrons repulse each other, opposites attract, the electrons on the other side start vibrating with basically the inverse pattern.

So as the radio waves come through, the other side ends out making the exact opposite radio wave coming back, and the two end out cancelling, so your antenna gets hit with the opposite signal from each side. And that adds up to nothing.

Ryan: Kind of like how the noise canceling AirPods work.

Alex Gizis: Actually, almost exactly the way the noise canceling AirPods work. Although there, there's a lot of electronics making the opposite signal, and here it's just conducting metal magically does it.

Ryan: So, would it even have to be a box, or could it be a Faraday bag, like our CEO shooter friend Luigi used?

Alex Gizis: It totally could be a bag, as long as, again, it's lined all the way, and where it closes at the top, you need the two edges to touch, so that the electricity can flow through it. And once you do that, you can have, yeah, a Faraday bag. It works fine.

Ryan: So, back to the AirPods. Why would Apple even region lock that feature?

Alex Gizis: Well, because hearing aids are medical devices. And you can't be selling medical devices that the government hasn't approved of. So they got approval in the U.S. to sell them as over the counter hearing aids. But, basically every country wants to test and approve these things before they're sold in that country.

I guess the U.S. got approval, so Apple decided that was enough to launch with. And I assume that in every country around the world, there's somebody testing these. And when the government there approves it, they'll un-region lock it for that country.

Ryan: So these are considered actual hearing aids.

Alex Gizis: Yeah, they're actual hearing aids. Apple did the over the counter tests, which are the lowest level of tests to be approved as a hearing aid that you don't need to see a doctor for. I think the tricks they're doing are much more similar to what a high end hearing aid can do these days. But they didn't take, whatever those higher end tests were.

They just took the base ones to be able to sell it at the over the counter level. So you can just buy them without seeing a doctor, without a prescription.

Ryan: And they're probably actually a lot cheaper than...

Alex Gizis: Oh, they really are, right? At $250, they're a fraction of what a good set of hearing aids cost.