Apple has a strong culture of secrecy, so when it shares details about its behind-the-scenes projects and processes, it’s a special treat.Today the Twenty Thousand Hertz podcast has published one such treat.The latest episode features Apple staffers going in-depth on the company’s Accessibility and Health work, including AI and research developments that have powered recent features for AirPods Pro, Apple Watch, and more.
Deep dive podcast features new Apple interviews on key features The new podcast episode features new interviews with four Apple staffers—Sarah Herrlinger, Ron Huang, Deidre Caldbeck, and Erick Treski—plus existing clips from CEO Tim Cook and others.It’s a wide-ranging episode that spans the entire history of Accessibility at Apple, in broad bullet points.The timing is noteworthy, as Apple’s first Accessibility department was started 40 years ago in 1985.
Here are a variety of quotes covering just a few of the topics covered: How Apple approaches Accessibility Sarah Herrlinger is Apple’s Senior Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives.Early in the podcast, she shares about two key tenets of Apple’s efforts: building the internal Accessibility team and having five Accessibility pillars She explains: Apple Watch blurring lines between Accessibility and Health One fascinating main topic of the podcast is the blurring lines between Accessibility and Health features.The podcast’s host, Dallas Taylor, highlights how this started being more evident when the Apple Watch launched.
She points to the Noise app as a great example, then turns it over to Deidre Caldbeck, Senior Director of Product Marketing for Apple Watch and Health.“Deidre says that the impacts of these features can sometimes be surprising, even to them.” Using AI to bolster Accessibility efforts Taylor mentions several features that have benefited from AI and other innovaitons, such as Live Captions for generating live subtitles of any speech, and Sound Recognition, a potentially life-changing feature for the hearing impaired.Herrlinger highlights this latter feature: AirPods Pro’s recent Hearing Health additions In iOS 18.1 last fall, Apple introduced three powerful Hearing Health features for AirPods Pro 2.
Caldbeck shares about the origins of the project and its potential impact: Wrap-up I love how the podcast closes with the following Tim Cook quote, which gets at Apple’s overall hopes for what its Accessibility features enable.Cook says: “If we can build a feature that unlocks someone’s capability to express themselves or to learn something, or to do whatever it might be that gets us one step closer to that, I’m all in.” Be sure to check out the full episode, which is available here.What were your favorite parts of the podcast? Any new insights or takeaways? Let us know in the comments.
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