Just weeks after releasing the new AirPods Pro 3, Apple opened up its Boulder laboratory and offices for the first time to CBS News Colorado. The campus, located in the eastern part of Boulder, is where the tech giant conducts much of their design and testing for products like the AirPods Pro 3.
CBS
In an exclusive tour of their campus, Apple’s Kate Bergeron showed CBS News Colorado why Apple Invested heavily in Colorado for its campus.
Bergeron, a graduate of the University of Colorado, is Apple’s vice president of hardware engineering.
“Apple has committed to invest $600 billion in the U.S.; this facility is absolutely an example of one of those investments,” Bergeron said.
Apple built its laboratory in Boulder just over a year ago.
“We are standing in a development and characterization lab in Apple’s facility in Boulder,” Bergeron said.
The building is filled with advanced technology, including a series of sound studios. The studios are built so advanced that they are on a unique floating floor, meaning the studios are mechanically separate from the rest of the structure. That prevents other sounds and vibrations from seeping into the studios in which technologies like the Apple AirPods Pro 3 were designed and tested.
A team of Colorado-based employees was tasked with many advancement projects for the new AirPods. That included adding heart rate monitoring to the earbuds, improving the studio microphone quality in them, and also improving the rubber tips that help secure the devices in the ear.
Bergeron showed CBS News Colorado how the Boulder campus uses technology to make all of the advanced technology fit into such a small earbud.
“We gather data about the physiology of humans, and in this particular case, about ears. We are always trying to build that database,” Bergeron said.
CBS
The lab is commonly filled with test subjects who are tasked with stress testing the devices in many ways.
To do so, the lab completes 3D scans of a variety of ears to make sure the earbuds can be of quality for people of all different backgrounds.
The team also uses digital tracking in virtual spaces to follow the motion of active individuals. The motion is then entered into a computer and applied to a robot, which can imitate the human motion of dancing, stretching, and even running. The earbuds are then placed in a mold of a human head to see if they will stay lodged.
Other testing includes placing earbuds in people as they run on a treadmill. Cameras then trace the motion of the test subject’s head, specifically their ear, to see if the AirPods stay set.
Bergeron said Boulder offered Apple a unique environment in which its technology can be stress tested and developed in a wide variety of settings and environments.
“We are really trying to figure out the environments where we can stress the features, that is all done right here in Colorado,” Bergeron said.
“Why is Boulder such a great location for the work Apple is doing?” asked CBS News Colorado reporter Dillon Thomas.
“Boulder is great for a lot of reasons. First of all, the environment here is a lot different than most of the other development activities we have in the United States. The unique combination of more extreme weather in terms of the four seasons and altitude, and of course, all of the wonderful places like the mountains here,” Bergeron said. “We can test products and really put our products through their paces. It makes it unique for Boulder compared to anywhere else.”
Apple
Staff and test subjects in Colorado were given the AirPods Pro 3 in advance of their release in order to see how they worked while doing tasks like trail running, hiking, biking, and everyday walking. The tests were completed in a variety of settings, like cold weather and even extreme heat.
That type of testing would’ve been more difficult to naturally complete in settings like China or Silicon Valley, Bergeron said.
The team in Boulder also includes a group of developers who sampled some of the best studio microphones in the world in order to best develop something similar that could fit in a set of earbuds. The team said what they landed on is some of the best studio-quality sound that Apple has offered to clients, surpassing that of the internal microphones in an iPhone.
Bergeron said the investment in Boulder and the fingerprint of Colorado can be seen throughout the new AirPods.
“Our team members are both Apple employees as well as members of the community. They are observing things that are going on here. From running on the trails to skiing in the winter. We bring that inspiration to our jobs and to the lab,” Bergeron said.
