Mono audio

I just noticed that Apple is offering this feature with its new offerings, so I looked into the Accessibility settings in my iPhone and found the same thing. This may have been available for some time, but not on my elderly Classic or clip-on Shuffle. For a company that offers so many special accommodations, it drove me gently nuts for years that whenever I talked to people at the Genius Bar about whether they’d yet come up with a way to pipe both sound channels into a single ear, the best I ever got was, “Gee, that’s an interesting idea,” even though being deaf in one ear is actually fairly common. (I once sat on a three-man board on which one of us couldn’t hear out of his left ear [me], one of us couldn’t hear out of his right, and the other was hard of hearing in both...we always felt like a comedy sketch waiting to happen. Eh?)

I long ago went out and had a special ear bud made for me through a hearing aid specialist, but I’m delighted Apple is now addressing the issue.