Texas-based parents of a 14-year-old boy have filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the company’s AirPods emitted an alert so loud that it tore their son’s eardrum causing permanent hearing loss, NBC News reports.
The lawsuit, which was filed by Carlos Gordoa and Ariani Reyes of San Antonio back in 2020, claims that the boy was using his AirPods Pro to watch Netflix on his iPhone when an Amber Alert came through.
Even though the boy watching Netflix on a “low volume,” the Amber Alert went off suddenly, and without warning at a volume that tore apart one of his eardrums, resulting in cochlear damage which caused significant hearing loss. The boy will now need to wear a hearing aid for the rest of his life, the suit noted.
“The AirPods do not automatically reduce, control, limit, or increment notification or alert volumes to a safe level that causes them to emit,” the suit said. It added that there are no directions to adjust the alert sound or warnings that the volume could be so loud that it would cause damage.
Gordoa and Reyes’s lawsuit said Apple knew or should have known about the defect that caused the loud alerts, but chose not to fix it.
The suit also quotes some other AirPods customers complaining about the issue in online forums, with one saying they threw away their AirPod across the room when they got a shrill text alert while listening to music.
Apple is yet to issue any official response to the lawsuit.
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Good thing Amber Alerts can’t be turned off or silenced in Canada! :/
I wonder if anyone has looked into the number of accidents that occur on highways immediately after an amber alert scares the bejesus out of everyone driving all at once. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that it has caused a few fatalities as well as eardrum damage.
Never been woken up by an amber alert. Silent / DND works for me.
I don’t know about silent mode, but DND definitively don’t block emergency alerts on my end.
I often wonder the effects of these alerts too in settings like busy restaurants, schools, hospitals/retirement homes when a whack of phones all start “alerting” simultaneously.
I’m preparing my joint lawsuit against Yamaha, Honda, KTM, and Husqvarna (double dipping KTM) as we speak. Will have to add the Maisch family directly, as Maico went under years ago.
From iPhone 7 and on, there is an option in settings to reduce loud sounds. So you are not taking advantage of the feature that is already available and expecting Apple to force it on you? If that option is not capable of attenuating the high levels of Amber Alert, that might mean that it has been overridden by the alert, so potentially out of Apple’s hands. I really don’t understand why is so difficult to change the format of those raising-the-dead alerts so they start at lower intensity, as a gentle notification for a few seconds thereby giving people warning and time to adjust, before building up to a signal that cannot be ignored.
Gee, I hadn’t even considered this. I’m usually listening to music when these test alerts get scheduled. I guess I should consider myself fortunate this didn’t happen to me.
Good thing we can’t toggle this crap off in Canada.
When an emergency does need responding to, everyone will just ignore these alerts. Very nicely done.
I’m also curious how many traffic accidents have been or will be caused by these alerts going off at full volume. Do not disturb gets overridden. Have been woken up at 2 AM a few times.