The talk of the week on sites discussing technology is that Apple released its AirPods, the $150 wireless earphones, for sale. Now I'm not one of the people who queue before Apple Stores to always have the latest and greatest in technology. But on AirPods I am way ahead of the curve, as I have been wearing $4000 wireless earphones that work with iPads and iPhones for half a year now. Only they aren't called AirPods, they are called hearing aids, and are more usually associated with senior citizens than with technology geeks.

I am over 50 years old and while I am neither blind nor deaf, I do see better with glasses and I hear better with hearing aids. That is just a fact of life that your body peaks around age 35 and then various functions decrease over the rest of your life. Technology can help you to stem that decrease of abilities. Unlike glasses, where new technology is mostly in the area of high-refraction polymer materials, hearing aids are electronic devices and benefit from the general progress in miniaturization of electronics. And as good hearing aids are already rather expensive, you can add additional technology like Bluetooth data transfer to it without that affecting the price too much.

iOS (unlike Android) has built in support for Bluetooth hearing aids. So the hearing aids I am wearing work perfectly well as wireless earphones. The main difference to AirPods is that my hearing aids are "receiver in ear", which means that they don't block outside sound. In some situations that is better, because you can watch a movie in an airport lounge without risking to miss an announcement about your flight. But if there is a lot of noise around that can be a disadvantage too.

Overall the iOS integration has turned my hearing aids from a crutch against a handicap into a useful device that allows me to do more. And I can ignore the heated discussion about AirPods.