I'm completely deaf in one ear (no amount of amplification will help) and severe-to-profoundly deaf in my other ear. I wear a hearing aid in that ear, and it al

I'm completely deaf in one ear (no amount of amplification will help) and severe-to-profoundly deaf in my other ear. I wear a hearing aid in that ear, and it allows me to function normally in everyday society. In the last 5 years, we've gone from merely amplification to having digital processes for filtering out background noises, like air conditioning or traffic. My current aid has Bluetooth, which syncs directly to my phone. It's a total game-changer. I can now stream the audio directly to my ear, bypassing noisy (in both senses of the word) transfer from voice to microphone to speaker to microphone to ear. That said, ever since digital hearing aids became a thing, I've been adamant that someday it will benefit Hearing People just as much as it benefits me -- if not more! Hearing People can take advantage of the background noise filtering, singling out specific voices in a crowded room, or having a Siri-like speak directly into your ear. I can't wait for the technology to shrink to the point where even I can take advantage of those things, and as much as I do enjoy the headphone jack (wearing headphones means my hearing aid battery isn't drained by BT usage), I'm genuinely excited at the possibilities of having powerful computers embedded in the ears. Think Google Glass, but Google Ears instead. Exciting as hell. I'm stoked! That said, and let me digress for a moment, there are two major complaints that I wish Resound and Siemens and the other hearing aid manufacturers could fix, and that I hope Apple, et al, tackle when they build these devices. First, battery life is decent, but not great. I change my batteries approximately every 5 days, and it often dies in awkward situations, like mid-phone call or when I'm in a meeting. There's a short warning period that allows me to gracefully exit the situation and replace the battery, but it's still frustrating. And the second is water-proofing. I am completely deaf in the shower, in the pool, in the hot tub, when it's raining, while kayaking or surfing, or running through the sprinkler with my niece on a hot summer day. Swimming is one of my favorite activities, but because I can't socialize like Hearing People, it's an extremely frustrating activity, as well. Hopefully those two problems are on the minds of the engineers building these devices, because I think those will be two of the hardest problems to solve moving forward.