I couldn't ask for better timing. My Spanish-speaking mother-in-law was coming to visit the day Apple released live language translation features on AirPods.
It works on the new AirPods Pro 3, which hits stores Friday, along with last year's AirPods Pro 2 and AirPods 4 -- and the user also needs to have it paired to an iPhone running the latest iOS 26 software with Apple Intelligence.
My mother-in-law is bilingual and speaks English perfectly, but Spanish is her preferred language. She'll often jump into Spanish first when speaking to my husband -- and that meant this was my big moment! I would be in the dark no longer! With a press of the AirPod stems, Siri was, in real time, filling me in on everything they said.
Well, almost everything. Depending on how clearly words are spoken, or if someone is using an uncommon word, or if there is more than one person speaking -- well, sometimes Siri gets it wrong. Very wrong. In my experience, Siri might just put swear words where they don't belong (this happened more than once), or botch some descriptive words.
Apple does call it a "beta" product, so I know there are kinks to work out. But even with flaws, this experience showed me that orange iPhones are not the most important tech story this week.
In this episode of One More Thing, which you can watch embedded above, I go into what I learned from the experience, along with my first impressions of using the new AirPods Pro 3.
I also share some tricks I learned with the latest software updates when it's paired to an iPhone -- like having the system automatically play music if it detects you're walking, or how you can summon "Workout Buddy" peppy voices cheer you on for doing barely any activity at all.
I look forward to continued tests of the translation feature, and I'm curious to see how it compares to similar translation services from competitors like Google. But Apple doesn't need to be perfect to make this a hit product. It will be big because AirPods are already so popular -- and that means for many consumers, it will be their first experience using live language translation, no screen required.
If you're looking for more One More Thing, subscribe to our YouTube page to catch Bridget Carey breaking down the latest Apple news and issues every Friday.