Most people who know me know that I spent large parts of my twenties and early thirties in various Arctic and Alpine locations around the world. If it’s cold and remote (and not Russia) there’s a good chance I’ve been there. Life in these areas often involves helicopters, small aircraft, snow machines, power equipment, shotguns, 30-06 rifles, chainsaws, and other noisy things.

Which means that today I am blessed with significantly damaged hearing along with my other superpower of being able to predict upcoming rain and snow. Last year I finally got my hearing tested and decided to address the issue (thanks to Kim and Steve D for the push). Over the counter hearing aids have only recently been available in the US and I did all the research and took the plunge first with Eargo 7s and then with Eargo SEs after I was unable to get a good fit with the former.

Which leads to my point – making in-ear medical devices is hard and I am in awe of the engineering that has gone into these. But devices like this require integration with a tuning app and ongoing fixes and updates (like all software / hardware couplings). Here’s where things get tough – I’m currently on my third set of Eargos and each time the issue has been that updates have failed and basically bricked the hardware or prevented it from working as designed.

I think in many ways it’s a similar situation to the software and OTA update capabilities in modern cars. Renting cars has shown me the many different ways that manufacturers can break and degrade Apple Car Play, and manufacturers’ own UIs are almost universally worse than Apple or Google’s. Special shout out to the awful Mercedes MBUX which apparently has the ability to integrate with CarPlay but hides that so efficiently that I have only ever found it by accident.

I am very curious to try out Apple’s new AirPods Pro 2 hearing health enhancements because I believe that Apple have the ability to manage software and updates effectively – something that medical hardware and vehicle manufacturers could learn from.