Apple Sued for “Ear-Shattering” Amber Alert on AirPods That Allegedly Ruptured 12-Year-Old Boy’s Eardrum

[Tsing]

Apple is being sued by a family in Texas who claims that their 12-year-old boy now suffers from permanent hearing loss and tinnitus after an "ear-shattering" Amber Alert played through his AirPod wireless earbuds and ruptured his right eardrum while he was watching Netflix.

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[MadMummy76]

Amber alert? So the earphones shat in his ears? That will do it.

 

[Burticus]

Is this really an Apple problem though, or setting on the kid's phone? I turn those fking alerts OFF, they annoy the hell out of me.

I suspect it would have happened with any headphone. Some lawyer likely talked them into this lawsuit which will go nowhere.

 

[Brian_B]

Is this really an Apple problem though, or setting on the kid's phone?

Hmm idk.

Alerts tend to ignore most settings and blare at whatever some default setting is. Unless you explicitly turn them off. I can see it being really annoying.

To the level of permanent hearing loss - that's stretching it... because I'm sure this kid isn't the only one in the history of ever to have an Amber Alert go off while wearing earphones. But I guess you can pay a doctor enough to claim anything - and Apple will probably just throw some money at it to make it go away, and adjust the default amber alert tone down 1 dB to say they did something proactive about it.

I'm sure Apple ~could~ fight it. They probably have so much data on the phone to show the earphones being used at damaging levels for extended periods of time (it's in the Health app under Hearing, btw, if you want to check it out), but just the press of this will be enough that they won't want to make headlines.