Apple Airpods Pro 2
Upgrading to AirPods Pro 2 resolved my fit issues and enhanced my experience with features like extra-small ear tips and Conversation Awareness.
I bought the AirPods Pro 2 in March. I'd been resisting the purchase because I had the original AirPods Pro. I also need to be strategic with my spending because I ain't a rich man.
I had some issues with the original AirPods Pro. My right ear canal is tiny. My antihelix was damaged while I was wrestling in high school; the parochial term for my injury is “cauliflower ear.”
The original AirPods Pro only have ear tips in small, medium, and large sizes. I would have to stuff the damned ear tip into my right ear canal after pulling my right ear's helix upward, and the fit always seemed to become painful after a few hours. My experience, as you might imagine, wasn’t comfortable.
The other issue? I loved the noise cancellation feature of the original AirPods Pro, but it became a latent issue whenever anybody tried to talk to me. The idea of removing my AirPods and reinserting them into my ears was annoying.
AirPods Pro 2 has solved those issues. They have an extra-small ear tip. In my case, I use a small ear tip in my left ear and an extra-small ear tip in my right ear.
The AirPods 2 also includes an adaptive mode that pauses active noise cancellation whenever I start talking. This isn’t ideal when I’m belting out the lyrics to my favorite songs, but it's great when I’m trying not to be rude. Apple calls the feature "Conversation Awareness." I’ll have to learn to tweak the settings to start singing without feeling interrupted, but this feature is a game-changer.
I suffer from tinnitus. I haven’t tried using my AirPods 2 for tinnitus treatment, but I may. This isn’t to say that AirPods Pro 2 will cure your tinnitus; they won’t.
I don't have hearing loss, but AirPods 2 also have a hearing aid feature, which is a fantastic option for people like my mother-in-law.
I should also mention that the AirPods 2 are significantly faster than the original.
I am an Apple fanboy, and AirPods 2 are, without a doubt, a big leap forward for its ecosystem.
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Download App Store Icons
Discover how I leveraged iPadOS Shortcuts and ChatGPT to create a tool that fetches App Store icons, enhancing organization in Contacts and 1Password.
I've created a shortcut using the iPadOS Shortcuts app, and I'm so damned proud of myself. Shortcuts is ridiculously finicky. In reality, it needs a lot of work.
I'll be honest, I didn't create the shortcut. I stole the shortcut from RoutineHub and cleaned it up using ChatGPT, but wow, I had to learn that I don't understand Shortcuts before I decided to steal an existing shortcut.
I've been trying to learn Shortcuts for years. When I was a kid, I'd type BASIC programs into my Radio Shack TRS-80 in an effort to get some simple program to run, but I'd always make a mistake and have to parse through thousands of characters before giving up.
ChatGPT has been a game changer. I fed it screenshots of my stolen shortcut, and it did a great job of answering my questions with solid advice. I feel as though I'm ready to take on the world of productivity with the newly found power of artificial intelligence.
My shortcut doesn't do much. It grabs app icons from the App Store and saves them to either iCloud or the Photos app. In reality, I add those icons to my Contacts app, which allows me to easily visually identify emails in my Mail app from companies with which I do business.
I also add those icons to all types of items within my 1Password app.
I've added the shortcut to RoutineHub as Download App Store Icons (Clean Version), which makes me feel like a big shot.
If you'd like to download the shortcut directly, without feeling like a big shot, I've created an iCloud link directly to the shortcut.
If you find the shortcut useful, let me know.