I’ve just acquired some AirPods and am over the moon with them. They sound great are convenient to use and have tons of cool features like a really effective “noise cancellation” mode and a “transparency mode”that mitigates the issue of not being able to hear external sounds properly with the earbuds in. One question I have is if anyone knows whether “transparency mode” presents a privacy risk ( i.e. mic input sent to Apple for processing) or if all the processing is done on device? I can’t find any mention of this online
Transparency mode allows environmental sounds to be heard naturally, nearly identically to what would be heard if the AirPods Pro were removed from the ears. This is done by channeling outside sound from the exterior microphones and shaping the sound with feedback from the interior microphones using advanced algorithms that run on the H1 chip.
As @robert_h says my understanding that the pass thru remains in the earphones.
However if you are concerned by privacy, I am afraid anything using standard Bluetooth is notoriously insecure … so I would not use for any conversation that would not be too sensitive to be overheard. Bluetooth can have an effective range upto 100 metres.
Thanks for the info, good to know. I’m concerned about privacy in the broader sense (i.e. big tech listening to me in my home) but not to the extent that I might be personally targeted by someone wishing to spy on me. I seem to recall reading it can also be used to triangulate a persons position! I’d certainly be concerned if I were a person of interest. I wonder if politicians are banned from using bluetooth devices like this?