Apple CEO Tim Cook delivers remarks before the start of an Apple event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, on Sept. 9, 2024.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
I tested the new hearing health features coming to Apple‘s AirPods Pro 2 headphones, and they saved me a long-overdue trip to the audiologist.
Apple unveiled the features during an event in September, and they will be publicly available through a free software update next week. Users can take a clinically validated hearing test with the AirPods Pro 2, and the buds will serve as an over-the-counter hearing aid if applicable. The headphones will also be equipped with new hearing protection capabilities, such as loud sound reduction, that are switched on by default.
More than 1.5 billion people are living with hearing loss, according to the World Health Organization. Tapping into this market could help Apple juice sales for the $249 AirPods Pro 2, which the company first launched two years ago.
If you already own the headphones, the hearing health features are worth exploring. They take just a few minutes to set up, and they’re easy to use from the comfort of your home. The AirPods Pro 2 are also a cost-effective option for those looking for assistive hearing technology. Other over-the-counter hearing aids can cost thousands of dollars without insurance, for instance.
Taking the hearing test
Kif Leswing/CNBC
I have a pair of third-generation AirPods that I use every day, but this was my first time trying the AirPods Pro 2. I took them straight out of the box, flipped open the lid to the charging case and paired them with an iPhone. After that, I popped them in my ears and prepared to take Apple’s hearing test.
During its event in September, Apple said 80% of adults in the U.S. have not had their hearing checked in the past five years. That’s certainly true in my case. The last time I remember getting my hearing tested was in elementary school.
Admittedly, I haven’t gone out of my way to protect my hearing, so I wasn’t sure what my results would look like. I felt a little nervous beforehand.
To access the test, you can go into the Health app or into the earbuds’ settings menu. I pulled it up, and it prompted me with a few basic questions about my age, my health and whether I’d been exposed to a loud environment in the past 24 hours.
You need to be in a very quiet space to take the test. Apple runs a background noise test to ensure your environment is suitable, and then it assesses the fit of your headphones within your ears. The AirPods Pro 2 come with medium-sized flexible ear tips attached, but there are extra small, small and large tip sizes included in the box. Apple sells a set of ear tips on its website for about $13 if you’ve misplaced yours.
I took the test in my apartment, and I didn’t need to adjust the fit of the headphones. I read the test’s instructions and then it was time to get started.
The hearing test plays a series of tones at different volumes and frequencies, and you tap the screen each time you hear a sound. It started with my left ear and moved to my right, and it took a little more than five minutes.
The hearing test was easy. There are some long pauses between tones, so I felt like I second-guessed myself occasionally. And Apple isn’t kidding about finding a quiet space to take this test. Some of the tones were so soft that I practically had to hold my breath to hear them. My test also automatically paused a few times as traffic passed by outside, so I’d recommend finding a room that’s as close to silent as possible.
You can take the test as many times as you want, and you’ll get your results as soon as you’re done. A copy is stored in the Health app, and you can share it with your doctor.
I learned that I have little to no hearing loss in both ears, though there are some frequencies that might be harder for me to pick up on. It’s nice to have that peace of mind.
Using your headphones as a hearing aid
Since I have minimal hearing loss, I was prompted to turn on a feature called “Media Assist,” which uses my hearing test results to adjust the clarity of my calls, music and videos based on my specific profile.
I had Media Assist enabled as I used the AirPods Pro 2 to FaceTime friends and family, watch CNBC and listen to different genres of music on Spotify. I didn’t hear much of a difference with music or TV, but I did notice that voices seemed amplified on my FaceTime calls. It’s a subtle change, but I found it helpful.
If your test results show you have mild to moderate hearing loss, you’ll be prompted to set up and use your headphones as a clinical-grade hearing aid. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Apple’s hearing aid software in September.
“After you take a hearing test, your AirPods Pro are transformed into a personalized hearing aid, boosting the specific sounds you need in real time, like parts of speech, or elements within your environment,” Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of health, said in a prerecorded video last month.
The hearing aid feature is intended for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, but users can turn it on in their settings even if they don’t fall under that category. Out of curiosity, I switched it on while walking around New York City, running errands, watching TV and chatting with my roommates.
The feature instantly amplified the world around me, and I joked that it felt like a superpower. It was easier for me to hear quiet dialogue on TV, and my conversations were magnified. Interestingly, I didn’t feel overwhelmed by the loud sounds of the city, which I suspect is due to the earbuds’ new hearing protection features.
Using a hearing aid can take some getting used to, so don’t worry if it doesn’t feel natural right away. You can also make specific adjustments to your liking in your settings and the iOS Control Center.
The hearing aid feature was cool to try, even if I don’t need to use it. It would be nice to switch it on in a crowded New York City restaurant, but otherwise, I got the support I needed from the Media Assist feature.
If you have mild to moderate hearing loss and are prompted to turn on the hearing aid feature, Media Assist will also be activated. Your AirPods Pro 2 will automatically adjust as you make calls, watch videos and listen to music across all your Apple devices.
Though I wasn’t the ideal candidate for the hearing aid, I’m excited to tell my parents and grandparents about it. Since the AirPods Pro 2 look like any other pair of Apple headphones, they’re less conspicuous than many existing hearing aids, which I expect will be an added perk for many users.
U.S. President Donald Trump and Apple CEO Tim Cook shake hands on the day they present Apple’s announcement of a $100 billion investment in U.S. manufacturing, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 6, 2025.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Apple shares rose 13% this week, its largest weekly gain in more than five years, after CEO Tim Cook appeared with President Donald Trump in the White House on Wednesday.
Shares of the iPhone maker rose 4% to close at $229.35 per share on Friday for the company’s largest weekly gain since July 2020. The week’s move added over $400 billion to Apple’s market cap, which now sits at $3.4 trillion.
At the White House on Wednesday, Cook appeared with Trump to announce Apple’s plans to spend $100 billion on American companies and American parts over the next four years.
Apple’s plans to buy more American chips pleased Trump, who said during the public meeting that because the company was building in the U.S., it would be exempt from future tariffs that could double the price of imported chips.
Investors had worried that some of Trump’s tariffs could substantially hurt Apple’s profitability. Apple warned in July that it expected over $1 billion in tariff costs in the current quarter, assuming no changes.
“Apple and Tim Cook delivered a masterclass in managing uncertainty after months and months of overhang relative to the potential challenges the company could face from tariffs,” JP Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee wrote on Wednesday. He has an overweight rating on Apple’s stock.
Cook’s successful White House meeting also comes two weeks after Apple reported June quarter earnings in which overall revenue jumped 10% and iPhone sales grew by 13%.
In an aerial view, the Tesla headquarters is seen in Austin, Texas, on July 24, 2025.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Tesla has been granted a permit to run a ride-hailing business in Texas, allowing the electric vehicle maker to compete against companies including Uber and Lyft.
Tesla Robotaxi LLC is licensed to operate a “transportation network company” until August 6, 2026, according to a listing on the website of the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, or TDLR. The permit was issued this week.
Elon Musk’s EV company has been running a limited ride-hailing service for invited riders in Austin since late June. The select few passengers have mostly been social media influencers and analysts, including many who generate income by posting Tesla fan content on platforms like X and YouTube.
The Austin fleet consists of Model Y vehicles equipped with Tesla’s latest partially automated driving systems. The company has been operating the cars with a valet, or human safety supervisor in the front passenger seat tasked with intervening if there are issues with the ride. The vehicles are also remotely supervised by employees in an operations center.
Musk, who has characterized himself as “pathologically optimistic,” said on Tesla’s earnings call last month that he believes Tesla could serve half of the U.S. population by the end of 2025 with autonomous ride-hailing services.
The Texas permit is the first to enable Tesla to run a “transportation network company.” TDLR said Friday that this kind of permit lets Tesla operate a ride-hailing business anywhere in the state, including with “automated motor vehicles,” and doesn’t require Tesla to keep a human safety driver or valet on board.
Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
As CNBC previously reported, Tesla robotaxis were captured on camera disobeying traffic rules in and around Austin after the company started its pilot program. None of the known incidents have been reported as causing injury or serious property damage, though they have drawn federal scrutiny.
In one incident, Tesla content creator Joe Tegtmeyer reported that his robotaxi failed to stop for a train crossing signal and lowering gate-arm, requiring a Tesla employee on board to intervene. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has discussed this incident with Tesla, a spokesperson for the regulator told CNBC by email.
Texas has historically been more permissive of autonomous vehicle testing and operations on public roads than have other states.
A new law signed by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott goes into effect this year that will require AV makers to get approval from the state before starting driverless operations. The new law also gives the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles the authority to revoke permits if AV companies and their cars aren’t complying with safety standards.
Tesla’s AV efforts have faced a number of challenges across the country, including federal probes, product liability lawsuits and recalls following injurious or damaging collisions that occurred while drivers were using the company’s Autopilot and FSD (Full Self-Driving) systems.
A jury in a federal court in Miami last week determined that Tesla should hold 33% of the liability for a fatal Autopilot-involved collision.
And the California DMV has sued Tesla, accusing it of false advertising around its driver assistance systems. Tesla owners manuals say the Autopilot and FSD features in their cars are “hands on” systems that require a driver ready to steer or brake at any time. But Tesla and Musk have shared statements through the years saying that a Tesla can “drive itself.”
Since 2016, Musk has been promising that Tesla would soon be able to turn all of its existing EVs into fully autonomous vehicles with a simple, over-the-air software update. In 2019, he said the company would put 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020, a claim that helped him raise $2 billion at the time from institutional investors.
Those promises never materialized and, in the robotaxi market, Tesla lags way behind competitors like Alphabet’s Waymo in the U.S. and Baidu’s Apollo Go in China.
Tesla shares are down 18% this year, by far the worst performance among tech’s megacaps.
Shares of The Trade Desk plummeted almost 40% on Friday and headed for their worst day on record after the ad-tech company announced the departure of its CFO and analysts expressed concerns about rising competition from Amazon.
The Trade Desk, which went public in 2016, suffered its steepest prior drop in February, when the shares fell 33% on a revenue miss. In its second-quarter earnings report late Thursday, the company beat expectations on earnings and revenue, but the results failed to impress investors.
The Trade Desk, which specializes in providing technology to companies that want to target users across the web, said finance chief Laura Schenkein is leaving the job and being replaced by Alex Kayyal, who has been working as a partner at Lightspeed Ventures.
While some analysts were uneasy about the sudden change in the top finance role, the bigger concern is Amazon’s growing role in the online ad market, as well as the potential impact of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on ad spending.
Amazon has emerged as a significant player in the digital advertising market in recent years, and is now third behind Google and Meta. Last week, Amazon reported a 23% increase in ad revenue for the second quarter to $15.7 billion, which beat estimates.
Read more CNBC Amazon coverage
Amazon’s ad business has largely been tied to its own platforms, with brands paying up so they can get discovered on the sprawling marketplace. However, Amazon’s demand-side platform (DSP), which allows brands to programmatically place ads across a wider swath of internet properties, is gaining more resonance in the market.
“Amazon is now unlocking access to traditionally exclusive ‘premium’ ad inventory across the open internet, validating the strength of its DSP and suggesting The Trade Desk’s value proposition could erode over time,” Wedbush analysts wrote on Friday.
The Wedbush analysts lowered their rating on The Trade Desk to the equivalent of hold from buy, and cited Amazon’s recent ad integration with Disney as a sign of the company’s aggressiveness.
Executives at The Trade Desk were asked about Amazon on the call, and responded by suggesting that the companies don’t really compete, emphasizing that Amazon is conflicted because it will always prioritize its own properties.
“A scaled independent DSP like The Trade Desk becomes essential as we help advertisers buy across everything and that we have to do that without conflict or compromise,” CEO Jeff Green said on the call. “It is my understanding that Amazon nearly doubled the supply of Prime Video inventory in the recent months. That creates a number of conflicts.”
For the second quarter, The Trade Desk reported a 19% increase in year-over-year revenue to $694 million, topping the $685 million estimate, according to analysts polled by LSEG. Adjusted earnings per share of 41 cents beat estimates by a penny.
Looking to the third quarter, the Trump administration’s tariffs were also a theme, as the company forecast revenue of at least $717 million, representing growth of 14% at minimum.
“From a macro standpoint, some of the world’s largest brands are absolutely facing pressure and some amount of uncertainty,” Green said. “Some have to respond more than others to tariffs. Many are managing inflation worries and the related pricing that comes with that.”
With Friday’s slump, The Trade Desk shares are now down 53% for the year, while the S&P 500 is up about 9%. The Trade Desk was added to the S&P 500 in June.