Advice needed on helping get an octogenarian up and running with their new Apple AirPods.
A friend with severe hearing loss absolutely loves the sound quality of her Apple AirPods paired with her iPhone and uses them for business calls. This inspired me to buy a pair for an elderly family member who also suffers from hearing loss (and poor eyesight) because her exorbitantly priced hearing aids are less than useless in restaurants and family gatherings, which is incredibly demoralizing for those suffering from hearing loss.
We took her new Airpod Pros for a test drive this weekend at her coffee klatch and I set the AirPods to "live listen" and placed the phone at the centre of the table facing her friends. She was thrilled and for the first time in years, she could hear and participate in the conversation. Listening to podcasts from her iPhone was also a resounding success.
The four challenges we're having are:
1) The Live Listen feature radio button becomes unresponsive after listening to a podcast. The only solution I have found is turning off and on the BlueTooth. This is not an ideal solution for someone visually impaired with arthritis. The tap once feature on the AirPods to answer calls also did not work.
2) I thought it would be easier for her to search podcasts on her iPad, but I had to fiddle for 10 minutes to make the audio audible even though the AirPods were paired to the iPad.
3) I tried but couldn't pair the AirPods to her older SmartTV without success. How well do AirPods pair with Apple TV? Is it automatic? If so I'll get her set up with one this week.
4). The AirPods are slippery, hard to get out the case, slip out of ears and the white-on-white, minuscule L and R markings are difficult to see. Looking into getting ear-loops to secure the AirPods.
In sum, the AirPods have been fabulous in Live Listen mode for someone with hearing impairment with me there providing technical support. However, connectivity with other Apple paired devices (with up-to-date OSs) has been super buggy.
Is there a way to set up the AirPods to automatically connect to and switch between Live Listen, Podcasts, phone calls, iPads and Apple TVs? Modifying submenu settings on each device every time she uses them is not really viable for the visually and hearing impaired.
Thanks in advance,
Nigel
