Disappointed with Apple, they manage to hack Airpods to help their grandmother

With the help of two friends, who were also interested in hearing-impaired family members, the trio decided to dig into the subject to find out how to get around Apple’s geo-blocking. Equipped with some skills that helped them, these three Indians sought to prevent iOS from determining the location of the device. Connected via Wi-Fi, they noticed that several checks were carried out by Apple: the region of the server to which the Apple Store is connected, also defined by the language used and the time zone, as well as a web request sent to Apple providing a code, linked to each country, based on the IP address of the device.

After many attempts, by manually changing the time zone or changing the region settings of their iPad, they noticed that it was impossible to hide the true location of the device from Apple. Logical, since iOS actually analyzes network identifiers (SSID), but also GPS triangulation data, including the MAC addresses of nearby devices. In other words, even a proxy cannot hide this information from Apple: the hearing aid function therefore still cannot be activated.