Alternate headline: “Potentially Life-saving Tech Works as Advertised”. I know, I know, it’s a human interest story and the regular folks might not know this. But my first thought reading the headline was, “it better call, or I’m going to be puzzling how to get a refund in the afterlife.”
This is one seemingly tiny, new feature of the device. He might not have bought the device for this feature, or even have known that it was there. Or rather, the people reading might have not bought the device for this feature, or even have known that it was there. I think this is what makes the story popular enough to be going around.
Additionally, some of us who have this watch and this feature enabled want to share stories that verify the feature works for some people ergo could work if something happens to us (and this also helps us to rationalize our purchase!)
FWIW, unless you are over 60 it's not enabled by default. Presumably this is to minimize false alarms, but if you want this feature enabled, you should make certain it's enabled.
I was not aware of this feature in Apple watches. I probably still won't buy one, but it's nice to know it exists and it's a feature I'll look for in other similar devices.
Does Apple marketing guarantee that it will work? I bought watches for my parents, partly because of the feature, but I never had the impression that it was guaranteed to correctly detect all (or even most) life threatening situations
> I never had the impression that it was guaranteed to correctly detect all (or even most) life threatening situations
Apple Watch detects falls, not unconsciousness. It doesn't detect heart attacks either.
> Apple Watch cannot detect all falls. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger fall detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall. [0]
The feature has to be turned on and configured. The cycling group I am in has had dozens of people realize they were accidentally forgoing this feature while wearing the watch, so the impact of this article is potentially huge.
My cousin died last week of a heart attack on the way from his house in a village south of Nuremberg to the bakery 10 minutes away to get bread for breakfast. His Apple Watch (presumably because of the fall detection) called emergency services for him and gave him time to call his wife.
Sorry to read your cousin died this way. I don't understand.
The Apple Watch told him his heart isn't working right - automatically calling emergency services - and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart?
Or was it that he too passed out, the Apple Watch called emergency services, who resuscitated him enabling him to call his wife?
The specs for the watch specifically rule out heart attack detection, by the way.
> Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks. If you ever experience chest pain, pressure, tightness, or what you think is a heart attack, call emergency services immediately.
"What we list for legal purposes" and "what the device actually does" might not be the same thing. I imagine saying "my device detects heart attacks" gets the FDA involved and makes everything ten times more expensive...
Differentiating between cardiac arrest and taking the watch off your wrist may be interesting. And I kinda wonder how good any single-lead EKG would be at detecting a heart attack when your heart is still beating. Even the expensive multi-lead machines usually auto-diagnose me with an old infarction, which is false.
I'd guess taking the watch off would produce a classic flat line. A heart in arrest which is in the process of dying will produce irregular electrical output.
Sometimes the rhythm may degrade into a ventricular rhythm, like v-tach then into v-fib if not treated. A heart can still pump in v-tach, albeit very inefficiently, but in v-fib, no blood is pumped. On the other hand, taking the watch off results in no signal input which is different than what you would see on the monitor for asystole.
Apart from the immediate “flatline” the watch also detects that it is not proximate to the skin. As soon as you take it off the watch disables things like ApplePay. It knows when it being/has been taken off.
Well the watch isn't measuring troponin levels so it's hard to imagine how useful it could ever be at MI detection, especially given the limitations of a poor contact single lead ECG.
ER nurse here - some STEMIs I've taken care of had negative initial trop's (not all though). The 4 hr delta should of course be positive though - I don't typically check the 4 hr repeat for STEMIs though because they're long gone out of the ED to the cath lab then to CVICU.
I could imagine the thing detecting Vfib but it would need to use some good AI signal processing to exclude artifacts. Elevated ST segments, probably not, even with good AI.
OTOH doesn't the EKG feature only work when you touch the watch with your other hand? In which case it would be useless for heart attacks that caused you to lose consciousness.
The watch doesn't have enough data to detect a heart attack. It's not possible for the device to do it (with current, or even near-future technology it's not possible for any wrist worn device to detect a heart attack as it's happening).
Yeah, technically they're all levels of EMT, but "EMT" generally refers to "EMT-Basic" (a few months of training, a couple nights a week). EMT-Paramedic is ~18 months of a couple nights a week, plus 1,000+ hours of clinical time.
The watch did an emergency sos. AFAIK no heart related notification triggers that - only fall detection can.
Outside possibility is he felt bad, saw a heart rhythm notification, and manually triggered emergency sos by holding the power button. But a fall alert seems much more likely.
The specific language you are looking for here is "indications for use". The way the FDA works, you cannot advertise (even directly) a medical device for a usage you have not indicated in your filing and backed up with the required evidence. The level and type of evidence will depend on the type of filing and claims. A medical professional can advise for a different use (called "off label") but you, as the device developer, cannot even hint at it.
Aside: as others note, though, you can't really detect heart attacks well from something this simple.
It absolutely can. It's more sensitive than equipment hospitals use. There's an ongoing data collection program to calibrate it for that purpose. But since it hasn't been approved by regulators for use as such, they'd be in legal trouble if they claimed otherwise.
> and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart
The watch will call emergency services, then it will text your emergency contact(s) and let them know you've experienced a hard fall. I don't know exactly how, in this instance, that was then converted to a voice call.
Edit: I see in another comment that he initiated a call himself because he was conscious enough to do so.
My condolences, it's always painful losing family. I too lost a cousin about six years ago due to heart failure, he had just about turned 21. I wish he'd had an Apple Watch (or similar device) at the time.
I can't speak for all cases but there are often unknown medical conditions involved. My aunt got the flu one year and it weakened her heart so much that she required a transplant and while she lived for a while after that, she died at 27.
Please vaccinate yourselves and loved ones even for the flu.
A friend of mine runs a charity [1] that deals with providing AED (Automated External Defibrillator) devices to organisations. These things save lives. They can deliver shocks to the heart if necessary and can guide laypeople through giving CPR until help arrives (I think many models now actually tell you if you aren't giving strong enough compressions, for example).
I would also highly recommend people go through this app [2] to get some familiarity with CPR. Then take a proper CPR course (I need to take my own advice on doing a proper course, actually).
Nah, vast majority aren't locked up here, from experience. Pubs in the UK tend to have them, as do larger shops, community halls, libraries, I've seen old red phone booths repurposed as AED storage, in Birmingham city centre I saw a really modern one like one of those light-up ad screen / phone booth / touchscreen signs, which could simultaneously call emergency services, deliver CPR advice on the screen and dispatch the AED stored underneath - was awesome. Honestly I'm surprised (and pleased) that they don't get stolen/vandalised more considering the amount that are just out there - though I don't know what you'd do with a black market AED lol.
I have yet to see one that's properly locked up [that didn't have easy to break emergency glass, anyway]. My workplace has a few in special AED boxes, but those have the emergency glass and the hammer.
Must be a southern thing. I've never seen an outdoor (or phoebox) one that doesn't have a keycode lock on it. You're supposed to call 999 before using one anyway, so it's not a major impediment.
i see those AEDs popping up around, ie in the office, train station, every pharmacy around has them. My wife is an emergency doctor, an she has clear opinion about those - yes they save lives, but in most cases, people will end up as 'vegetables' (not sure what's the proper english term for +-brain death). I only presume she meant more severe heart attacks that would normally result in death prior to emergency arriving or shortly after.
So don't expect miracles where none are currently possible. Do all you can obviously in case of need, and ideally make yourself familiar with procedures a bit, any delay will worsen the chances.
Just like with old school CPR, there's really no guarantee you won't be a vegetable. Maybe you get lucky and the person doing CPR does it right, the AED arrives soon enough, and the paramedics arrive soon enough. Always make sure you have a living will to cover such kinds of situations. I would hate having my vegetable body ending up in a fight between loved ones who want to keep me alive and loved ones who want to do the humane thing.
Here in Denmark there's a volunteer "heart runner" programme. If someone calls 911 and has a cardiac arrest, people in the programme that nearby can be notified to fetch an available public AED and run to the patient (or attempt manual resuscitation).
According to their material, the 30-day survival rate in Denmark has gone from 3.8% (2001) to 10.4% in 2016, with 67.5% bystander assistance: https://hjertestarter.dk/english/you-can-save-lives though it's not clear how much the programme itself can claim.
According to various papers, rapid CPR/AED after a heart attack can triple survival rates.
It's still pretty bleak outcome, but better than e.g. in 2002 Detroit, where 1 out of 471 out of hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) survived to hospital discharge. In USA, all those stats are apparently being tracked by a programmed called CARES.
"the overall estimated effectiveness of seasonal influenza vaccine for preventing medically attended, laboratory-confirmed influenza virus infection was 47%"
I can’t find the source now but I remember hearing about a study into the efficacy of prayer. Briefly, the study recruited several Christians to pray for patients in a hospital. The patients were split into three groups: a control group who weren’t prayed for, a group who were prayed for but who weren’t told, and a group who were prayed for and were informed that they were being prayed for. Allegedly the patients in the last group had the most issues with concern and depression, allegedly because they assumed that because they were being prayed for, they were in fact really seriously ill.
Years ago, I joined a health list for parents of children with a very serious medical condition. When I joined, the discussion involved a lot of "Our child is facing X surgery. Please pray for us."
The longer I was there, the more the discussion became "Our child is facing X surgery. Have you or your child had this surgery? Pros? Cons? Any good tips?"
Prayer very often means "It's hopeless. Humans can't fix this. Our only hope is divine intervention." And it's hugely depressing and disempowering.
Prayer is a human act of connection that has been going on longer than recorded history. Evolutionarily, if most people felt it was hopelessness, it wouldn’t have lasted so long.
Modern feelings of hopelessness and nihilism extremely common in the western world, many people are dealing with these feelings through medication. The effectiveness of regular prayer on mental health is surprising according to studies and demographic data.
I actually believe in the power of prayer and considered commenting on that specifically to try to avoid someone replying in this fashion. I didn't because this is HN and saying something like that can be a convenient excuse for a bunch of people to accuse you of being "woo," irrational, etc.
Let me rephrase that: When the people around you offer nothing but prayers, it's often because they don't believe there is any practical support they are capable of offering. In a group setting, if everyone offers you prayers and zero practical support, the signal it sends is pretty depressing.
To be clear, this was a support group for a deadly genetic disorder that frequently kills children before they reach adulthood. It is classified as a dread disease for a reason. The psychological effect of the diagnosis is huge.
It's practically a sign on the wall a la "All those who enter herein are damned." kind of thing.
There has been quite a bit of study of intercessory prayer. i.e. for people that don't know they are being prayed for.
No affects have been found.
> In 1872, the Victorian scientist Francis Galton made the first statistical analysis of third-party prayer. He hypothesized, partly as satire, that if prayer were effective, members of the British Royal Family would live longer than average, given that thousands prayed for their well-being every Sunday, and he prayed over randomized plots of land to see whether the plants would grow any faster, and found no correlation in either case.
The wiki page contradicts your statement about "no effects".
there's been a number of studies showing lots of effects. Most studies seem to show slight positive effects from prayer, some show none and some show negative effects.
You don’t get to take the “no effect” over the “small effect” just because you’re an atheist. That is precisely what taking faith over data looks like!
My answers would be that we're arguing over statistical noise.
I take what I consider to be the simplest explanation in the absence of a credible alternative, that prayer does nothing when the recipient is unaware of it.
I take that view because I've never heard an alternative explaination that didn't appear to break the second law of thermodynamics.
A magical, invisible, omnipresent, omnipotent "all known laws of nature defying"-being that answers prayers, requires significantly more evidence than a small effect in some meta study.
Absolutely. My point is that "I'm an atheist so I'll take the option that agrees with my personal beliefs" isn't a valid line of reasoning. You could symmetrically argue "I'm a catholic so I'll take the option that suggests there is an effect, albeit a small one". Now we're just arguing whose personal beliefs are right.
A more properly scientific line of reasoning would be to instead say that you'll assume the small-to-nonexistent effect is nonexistent until somebody produces a model capable of predicting the proposed small effect, or a myriad other arguments along the same general lines.
A dear colleague died of a heart attack a couple months ago. His Apple Watch didn't save him. He collapsed at work.
The Apple Watch is very explicit about not being a panacea, and currently only advertises detection of a specific kind of arythmia or elevated heart rate. Note that the original comment mentioned that fall detection was probably the trigger.
I'm still pretty angry at the universe about my colleague's sudden death. I just want to temper expectations about what the Watch can or cannot do.
Heart attacks are sudden and sometimes nothing could save you. My mother is a medical professional, and she told me the story about a doctor in her hospital: one morning he realized he was about to have a heart attack, called emergency services himself and left the door open; he was dead by the time the ambulance arrived, five to ten minutes later.
Some heart attacks kill faster than others. They are not all sudden. My friend, a doctor, had a heart attack and decided to go to the second nearest hospital because it had a better reputation than the nearest. He's still alive today.
There was a legendary cardiologist at my medical school who predicted his own demise, took a Holter monitor home with him one night, wired himself up, went to sleep, never woke up, and left his colleagues with the 12-lead trace of his death.
A 12-lead ECG report/graph/whatever it's called. 12 wires collecting data (versus eg the Apple Watch implementation which is equivalent to a 1-lead ECG)
I wouldn't be to sure the Apple watch is even comparable to 1-lead ECG, simply due to the difference of how ECG is attached to you and how the Apple watch is.
Through this doesn't mean the Apple watch can't be a useful addition, just don't rely on it.
12 lead ECG is just a technology. There could be other techniques. However, the Apple Watch might be comparable to higher number of leads but never be identical to the number of leads.
Except, when you wear additional bracelets at your both legs, the other hand, both shoulders and another 6 on your chest. Then yes ;). And consider the continuous cyborgization of our society, that is not that far away.
The 12 lead ECG is about detecting the electrical impulses
of heart beats from different angles of your bodies.
If you found a technology to detect these mV values from a meter away ... tell me ;) We will be rich ;)
There's a reason ECG probes are attached to multiple points on the body, and you can infer quite a bit of info from just comparing multiple signals alone, including if you have your heart flipped, for some reason. :D You'll not get that from your watch.
It is a reference to the number of electrodes attached to the monitor. A 12 lead setup can provide a much more detailed signal and thus be used in different diagnostics than a lower lead obtained trace.
It doesn't just detect arrhythmia -- it also detects if you have fallen and are not moving (and will automatically call emergency services after some duration, if configured as such). More details at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944 if you're interested to know more.
Condolences from my side too. My dad suddenly died in 2011 from a heart attack. It runs in the family so I have to be vigilant. I do love hearing about these Apple Watch stories though.
There is no built-in quote formatting, so code blocking is basically the only way to have it show different. Attribution is important to some, and a proper quote format would help with that.
I don't think there's any formatting that is better than simply prepending quotes with a ">".
Formatting may improve such quotes that already begin with ">", but the problem is that people come up with their own inferior solutions instead of simply using ">". For example, some people try to use italics which are hard to see, hard to distinguish as quotes, and don't even render as italic on some of the HN native apps I've used.
If ">" was good enough for decades of email and usergroups, it's good enough for HN. No, your quotes in this one post doesn't need anything different or special.
What HN needs is a simple formatting-help blurb when writing a post to set people straight once and for all like reddit (or res?) had/has. The first line of it, if I wrote it, would be "Prepend > for quotes, prepend four spaces to format code."
Interesting there was a small Help link[0] next to the text areas for a quick minute, but they have since been removed. This was definitely there in the past month.
There is nothing to fix: code blocks do (almost) exactly the right thing for code. (the indentation on the right is unnecessary and counterproductive, though, but that's not the main source of the complaint here.)
They are horrible for quotes, especially on mobile, but that's not what they are for. Admittedly, quotes are vastly more common than code on HN and HN could use a good quote formatting mechanism, but that's a missing feature, not a bug in code formatting.
(Tangent: anyhow, this reminds me of a great aphorism:
> If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
This can apply to many situations involving technical debt in software... is it really more effective to do many unseemly hacks rather just fix it properly?)
Digging is a very strenuous activity as well as shoveling. Anytime there's a major snow storm, enough people die from shoveling. So it probably detected that she was very stressed.
Any time I see someone shovelling a sidewalk or driveway with something other than a sleigh shovel, I'm baffled at why they're not using a sleigh shovel.
It watches the heartbeat, probably arrhythmias specifically. You can't monitor blood pressure with just a watch. You need a blood pressure cuff for that.
It was probably the same as the fall detection algorithm. Maybe it detected a high drop that didn't move back up (if they were on the ground digging) .. although it should have canceled with movement? Depends how that software was designed. From what the comments say, it seems like the Apple watch only does fall detection (and only if you're over a certain age by default)
I have lots of criticisms for Apple, but this is truly an amazing thing that technology has brought us to this point. This is one of the few things that has me feeling like we "live in the future"
Lots of current trends make way more sense if you look at smartphones as universal communication devices that just happen so far to be slabs in the hands. However, it doesn't make privacy prospects look promising.
>I’m disappointed that Android Wear didn’t take off.
More competition would greatly increase innovation.
Android wearables have a chicken and egg problem. Manufacturers aren't innovating because nobody is buying and nobody is buying because there are no innovations.
Apple is fully vertically integrated so it can recoup the high R&D costs for new silicon and other components through the price of the unit but on Android platforms you have separate manufacturers for the vital components who are under pressure to be cost competitive as they don't get a slice of the profits of the final product so they won't invest in R&D until they see enough consumer demand which isn't there.
> If Apple Watch hadn’t been an immediate success, I’d like to think they’d still be pushing hard to make it so.
Apple Watch wasn't an immediate success - at least not in the form we see it today. WatchOS 1.0 was dramatically different from what we have today, with much less focus on health and more focus on 'connecting you with people' and stuff.
Apple kept working at it, paring out the stuff that wasn't useful (the side button was originally dedicated to a list of contacts to send messages to for example), and doubled down on the stuff that was (health). Clearly it has worked...
More battery life would also greatly increase innovation and adoption. You shouldn't have to wonder if your watch has enough juice to last your weekend trip when you forget to bring the charger. Especially if the watch is meant to be a life-saving beacon.
Regular quartz watches can go 3-10 years between battery replacements. Solar charging can increase that to 20 years or more. Self-winding mechanical watches will last a lifetime as long as you wear them regularly and have them serviced every now and then. How long does a modern smartwatch last in comparison?
> More battery life would also greatly increase innovation and adoption.
Doubt it. Apple watch is already a bigger business than netflix - the battery life is perfectly sufficient and making it longer would involve making it less capable.
Let me add back to the criticism pool then (and I say this as someone with a long history of enjoyment of Apple products): while Apple touts the amazing health and safety features of their watch, they price it as an expensive status symbol/fashion item that the majority of people could never justify buying.
It's classist as fuck: potentially lifesaving tools for the relatively wealthy, and screw everybody else. If they want to get on their high horse about making the world a better place, maybe they should be pricing it in reach of more people instead of lining their already very, very bulging pockets.
It costs a premium to bake in features like this and to have them fault tolerant. Even a low income family could pitch in to buy a watch for their grandma if they really wanted it.
Although they do offer a prior model for $199, which is about as affordable as anyone could expect, this is unfortunately the Series 3, which doesn’t have this feature. Hopefully next year the “old model” will include this life-saving tech.
Poor wording I suppose. My garmin is prior to that one, and has fall detection by using my phone via Bluetooth. Not sure who had it first, but definitely before that 2019 Verizon model.
Kinda. The part that they're referring to is it being Garmin's first device with cellular capability. But it's definitely vague around fall monitoring too.
I'm referring to this sentence, which has nothing to do with cellular capability:
> Like the latest Apple Watch, which has a built-in fall detection system, the new Garmin watch also has a safety monitoring feature, which the company calls incident detection.
several garmin watches have had this feature since May (I think) of this year, requiring a paired garmin compatible phone, actively running garmin app, to work; sends text to selected contact about “incident.” Doesn’t appear to contact emergency services.
The 2015 Garmin Edge Explore 1000 bike computer has this feature. By all accounts it was/is implemented poorly and triggers erroneously all the time. If they'd made it call the emergency services they'd have got in a lot of trouble.
Apple don't deserve any credit for the idea but deserve something for doing it well.
If there's one thing Apple does well is reinventing the "wheel". Every single one of their product seems to be an improved iteration over some predecessor, I don't have any Apple devices though, I might be wrong.
I can think of a lot of things you can do that will make the portion of your body that the watch is attached to take a really hard hit. How does it not have a high false positive rate?
My understanding is they are very specific about this not being able to detect heart attacks - hence why I'm hesitant to speculate about the exact sequence of events above
It's probably more about instantaneous acceleration. Nothing you can do with your own two arms and legs will ever cause you to experience a deceleration as hard as what happens when you fall from a standing position onto a hard surface. (Unless you ran full-tilt into a brick wall, I suppose.)
There was a good bit by Joanna Stern in the Wall Street Journal where she hired a professional stuntwoman; she was unable to trick the watch into thinking she had fallen, but the stuntwoman was able to by taking some hard falls.
Life Alert, horrendous as their ads may be, would probably be surprised to hear that it's only now that you're finding a "device which can contact emergency services in the event of an accident" so life changing. As might OnStar, etc.
Not really. All those other services require the person to hit a button to trigger it, which they can't do while unconscious. The Apple watch called automatically on its own.
$10/month if you factor in the need for a cellular plan for the watch?
$15/month for a fall detection device vs $399 + $10/month buys a lot of months. Yes, I know the Apple Watch does more, but I wasn't the one who tried to make the comparison.
Does the Apple Watch stay on the phone with you until EMS arrives? Is it capable of giving medical information to dispatch?
Another "Apple was the first to do this!"... "No it wasn't"... "Well, the cost is different!"... circumlocution.
I could care less, either way. Whichever device gives me less false positives (but not false negatives) works best for me as a first responder.
I had no idea some services could be so expensive. Life Alert starts at $50/month. Depending on what you get from it, the Apple Watch would be cheaper in less than a year. Interesting!
All of those services rely on manual intervention from staff in a call center.
If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.
I do have a horse in the race. Not the one you might think, but as a paramedic/firefighter, I'm not sure you can argue that "attempts to verify (human or otherwise) that there is a medical incident before dispatching EMS" is automatically worse than "calls 911 from the device automatically".
> If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.
They all have (see my sibling comment about Automatic Fall Detection), and I agree.
As well as what the sibling commentors have pointed out, Life Alert also never bothered to partner with a company that would put their system into a piece of consumer-electronics that the average healthy (maybe even young) adult would buy for themselves. Nobody wants to wear a LifeAlert bracelet and a watch/fitness-tracker; they want their watch/fitness-tracker to just have that functionality. And so they make a choice, and end up dying in a ditch somewhere.
This aspect, I absolutely agree with - the differing markets for devices. I hope I would not need to buy such a device for 20 or 30 more years. But I do own a Fitbit. And may own an Apple Watch. Very different sets, with differing benefits.
To be fair, almost all in home medical alert systems use a fixed base station. So even if they wore both, the Life Alert bracelet would only save lives in a ditch very near the home.
There are many good ideas that exist out there that are "unknown" because the product they are in misses some aspect of how consumers would wish to consume them. My favorite was that the Tesla Roadster wasn't the first electric car, but it was the first that I could see myself buying at some point.
The nice thing about this being a feature of the watch is that the watch brings a bunch of great stuff all on its own. That it can also call emergency services or diagnose Afib is like bonus time.
> In people younger than 55, Apple Watch’s positive predictive value is just 19.6 percent. That means in this group — which constitutes more than 90 percent of users of wearable devices like the Apple Watch — the app incorrectly diagnoses atrial fibrillation 79.4 percent of the time. (You can try the calculation yourself using this Bayesian calculator: enter 0.001 for prevalence, 0.98 for sensitivity, and 0.996 for specificity).
> The electrocardiogram app becomes more reliable in older individuals: The positive predictive value is 76 percent among users between the ages of 60 and 64, 91 percent among those aged 70 to 74, and 96 percent for those older than 85.
Why is that? IANAPhysician, but this seems like a fairly rare malady in this age group. Do we really want all of these people rushing to the hospital? If no one trusts the Apple Watch's diagnosis, how useful could it be?
I think the rate is low enough that most people are not getting multiple spurious notifications to rush to the hospital, so trust is probably not the issue. The only problem I see is hospitals being overwhelmed, but again, I'm not sure if we're really overloading them.
The fact that the baseline rate is so low is why this sort of widespread testing isn't really helpful, and can do more harm than good. The wider the net you cast, and the more rare the target condition, the lest useful the test becomes.
Sure, most people are not going to hospital at the suggestion of their Apple watch. However, of those who do go to hospital, nearly all are false positives. This will lead hospital staff to distrust the Apple watch. It may not have that effect on Apple watch owners...
You're unlikely to get rushed to the hospital due to your watch asking you if you're OK while you're consciously engaged in strenuous activity. It's a sign, not a diagnosis.
As with everything, there is some give and take, but one point in favor of something like a watch doing fall detection is a potentially better anti-false-positive detection. Set your life alert pendant down on the dresser a little hard and it may think you've fallen, and maybe you don't hear the callback for verification, so you get a visit from the police in your shower after they've forced the front door open. This happened to my grandfather ;-). The Apple Watch should be able to correctly avoid a false fall detection in that situation because you will have taken it off your wrist (though not strictly necessary since it is waterproof) and it knows that it's not on your wrist.
LifeAlert makes you press a button, it is designed for people who might fall off the toilet, not someone who might fall off a mountain bike in the wilderness and be unconscious for hours.
OnStar is part of an entire car.
This is a watch with greater capability than both put together. Let it be awesome.
LifeAlert definitely has accelerometer based fall detection, not just a button press. It doesn't have a cell radio though, so it isn't useful when it's away from its base station.
Life alert & OnStar are fairly singular function devices. Life alert is marketed pretty much exclusively to the elderly and does not have the ability to automatically call 911 in this way. OnStar is available in a single manufacturer's vehicles only, and you can't take it with you when you step onto the sidewalk. A device that monitors vitals as well as other potential situations and automatically gets an ambulance brought to your locations is quite a bit different than either of these.
I'm not claiming Apple has done something revolutionary. It's an evolution that builds on and combines various capabilities in a novel way. It's the sort of thing I could imagine seeing growing up watching "future" tv shows (Beyond 2000 ftw) and I love when technology produces something like that.
The first watchOS version that had this monitoring built-in seemed to be prone to false positives. However, the watch first asks you if you are ok and if you do not acknowledge so in a few seconds, then it dials out.
Right. The other day I accidentally slammed my watch into the wall and it started asking me if I was OK. You have a chance to say that everything is fine and that you don’t need help before it starts calling emergency services and telling people you’re in trouble.
As a younger man I took pride in not needing any technical assistance to get around in the world. Now in middle age, and with a diagnosed electrical-type heart problem, I'm pretty happy to have the gizmo help me out. This makes those rare times when I do venture out without any tech on my person particularly pleasurable; I feel like I'm getting away with something naughty and yet all I'm doing is being an unassisted human. If jogging with a health monitor is normalized, well, that's ok with me.
It seems highly likely to me that the Culture of Fear that pervades affluent western societies will exactly lead to what you predict.
And those of us that do not wear a permanent tracking device will have some sort of financial (insurance rates) and emotional punishments (peer pressure/blackmail) inflicted on us.
Speaking for myself, I'm ready to die when its time. If my body is so weak and knackered that I cannot even go for a bike ride without medical assistance then I reckon it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil and make way for someone else.
I can understand why you'd feel the risk of such an event is sufficiently low that it's not worth buying/charging/wearing a "permanent tracking device", particularly if you also feel it doesn't respect your privacy adequately. And I agree our collective tolerance to risk is going down over time. But I'm curious about this part of your comment:
> Speaking for myself, I'm ready to die when its time. If my body is so weak and knackered that I cannot even go for a bike ride without medical assistance then I reckon it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil and make way for someone else.
This could happen because of a hit-and-run driver or because of some other temporary medical condition; either might be completely resolved with the right treatment. I think a better way to look at it is about your quality of life afterward. If you're terminally ill or of very advanced age with a poor prognosis for recovery, then I can see why you'd want a "do not resuscitate" order, would disable this feature, etc. Otherwise why not get help?
Agree about the quality of life afterwards being the most important issue. I have seen too many people who have lingered "alive". I suspect that if I get knocked down then there is a dichotomy of outcomes:
1) unpleasant, painful, survivable, not time-critical, not life-changing
2) major trauma, life can be saved with a time-critical intervention. Prognosis post-event is for a decreased quality of life. Would probably die if left without unusually quick ER.
I can only see the watch being useful for #2: the exact situation where I think it would be better that I die.
If you feel your privacy is violated then contribute to projects like GadgetBridge and PineTime, both are in major need of developers and would allow you to reap the benefits without the tracking you seem to fear.
As I mention above, the way I did this was to buy a low-cost/locked/unactivated iPhone 6s and paired the watch to it. It thus provides in-home monitoring of such events; I can confirm that it works well since it got inadvertently activated a couple of times (the first watchOS version with this feature seemed to be prone to false positives) and I had to talk to the emergency agent on her behalf to state that everything was ok for now.
Can I have one iPhone (in USA) and two watches - one in USA (me), another in Europe with my dad attached to local European SIM card to call local European number if he falls?
I don't think so unfortunately - the cellular watches are weird in that they must be on the same cellular network as the associated iphone. The recipe I suggested above works with the non-cellular version of the watch and counts on being on the same wireless network as the phone. So imo, you will need one iphone per watch. However, I have been able to get refurbished iphone 6s devices for as little as $60; you probably don't want anything older than 6s as it is the oldest device that can still run iOS 13 and thus future proof for just a little bit.
You are right - that should work well as well I believe due to its 6s internals. It's a good idea too: in the US the SE can be found even cheaper than the 6s.
> Can Apple watch be programmed to call relative in case of hard fall / unresponsiveness like this?
Yes.
> After the call ends, your watch sends a message to your emergency contacts with your location letting them know that your watch detected a hard fall and dialed emergency services. [0]
It depends on what you mean by planted. For "some Apple PR person called or e-mailed" then, yes, the chance is non-zero. That's part of how journalism works. A story that's both true and interesting should be published, and it also benefitting some company should have as little impact as when it hurts that company, i. e. none.
If you're talking about a Seattle Times journalist or editor literally being bribed into running the story, you've gone off the deep end. Any such attempt by Apple would give some journalist a once-in-a-lifetime chance to expose a major scandal. It would expose Apple, and any journalist and their publications to risks far larger than whatever the value of a positive, but rather minor, story in a second-tier US newspaper is worth, etc.
"question everything" is stupid advise. Do you question if water isn't a deadly poison every time you drink it? Do you verify your spouse's DNA every time you see them, to prevent them being replaced by imposters?
Of course not, because it's impossible (also insane). Try establishing the usefulness of, say, vaccines from first principle: it would require running hundreds of clinical trials, all by yourself (don't trust anyone!), at costs in the billions of dollars, and taking far longer than your life.
And remember that you will also somehow need to convince yourself of the power of whatever statistics you use in those trials. You need to redo everything, all the way back to, at best, "parallel lines don't intersect". Because that Pythagoras wasn't even considered trustworthy by his compatriots, so why should you?
Realistically, you, like everyone, make thousands of decisions every day and need heuristics to get anything done. Most often, those heuristics involve some system of establishing trust by, for example, remembering previous interactions with people or newspapers or other institutions. It just so happens that you think you come across more interesting on the internet by pretending (or actually) trusting a different set of sources than society at large, i. e. conspiracy theorists pseudonymously ranting about the "mainstream media", instead of that media.
Man, when I was an edgy teenager I questioned everything. But then I grew up, had a family and you know what.... I ain't got time to question everything. Even if I spent all my time questioning everything, what would I gain? I couldn't possibly get answers to 99% of the things I question. I can't be an expert in everything.
So whats the point in questioning everything? Who gives a shit if this was a "stealth article" by Apple, the CIA or the Coca Cola Bottling Company. What difference does it make to me? None whatsoever.
These days I try to be very careful what things I spend my time & energy on.
I just got my series 5 Apple Watch a couple of days ago, and the ECG functionality is a big part of why. There's history of heart disease in my family, and I've been to the doctor a few times with symptoms but of course when I get there they find nothing wrong. Maybe I'm a hypochondriac, who knows. Anyway, last time I went my doctor asked if I could share data from my watch, so figure I'd upgrade so I can get an actual
ECG – what a time to (hopefully) be alive!
I was able to ask my doctor to prescribe a halter monitor for 24 hours after similarly having intermittent "irregular heartbeat". I have fantastic insurance and have access to a major cardiac research center so ymmv but may be worth asking for the 24 hour study if you're concerned.
Ultimately what I got back was "yep you do have an irregular heartbeat sometimes. It's nothing threatening and you'll be fine." They additionally did a stress test and found that under exertion my heartbeat returns to normal so it was nice to have the peace of mind.
By "heart disease" I assume you mean angina/heart attacks. The Apple Watch can't detect those sorts of conditions (that requires multiple ECG leads, but the watch only has one).
I disagree. When Apple Watch detects an event that it considers as a fall, it asks the wearer if he/she is ok. Failure to respond then triggers the 911 call. So being unconscious had a lot to do with it.
I'd love to get my Mom and Apple Watch but getting her to switch to iPhone is probably a bridge too far. How come no Android watches have this functionality?
You need an iPhone to set it up, update it, and otherwise manage it. To whatever degree it works without the phone there you’re still going to need one.
Because the Apple Watch is made by Apple, the company that has taken pride in incompatibility as a defining feature since its first mainstream products.
I did this for my mom, who also refuses to switch to an iPhone. I got a cheapo/locked/unactivated 6s and paired the watch (non-cellular) to it. It gives me some peace of mind that at least it covers her at home; there have been a couple of times it got activated (fortunately false positives) and I can confirm that it definitely calls 911 in this scenario right from the watch if she doesn't acknowledge its warning in time.
I've been looking at the Garmin watches. I just wish they had a model between the vivosmart and the higher end watches that have Pulse Ox. I kind of hate Fitbit now with that they did with the Charge 3's pulse ox hardware being completely useless and Garmin seems nice but the vivosmart is kind of crappy compared to other fitness bands.
Why does everyone who praises Apple on HN qualify it with the fact that they don’t like Apple for other reasons? Also, Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.
Apple has a long history of very enthusiastic fans that can at times crossover into being obnoxious. Apple is hardly unique in that but it does seem to be somewhat more prevalent for them. Some commenters likely don't want to be quickly dismissed as fawning fans lacking perspective of Apple's place in the world.
Apple’s detractors fit this bill far more than its fans do. The online hate Apple gets is nothing short of ridiculous compared to how responsible a corporate citizen they’ve been for as long as I can remember. Most of the time when I see Apple fans in a conversation, it’s countering badly informed anti-Apple circlejerking. One example that comes to mind is the whole Foxconn thing. Apple got massive amounts of backlash for the working conditions there, when virtually every other manufacturer uses them too and received only a handful of the same criticism. Apple dramatically tightened their standards and expanded their vetting process for third-party suppliers (which were already in place). Everyone else? Next to nothing or actually nothing.
It’s completely backward in the same way as the stereotype of vegans. As someone who spent some time as a vegetarian, I quickly realized that most vegans/vegetarians try not to make a big deal out of their dietary choices. On the off chance someone does ask about it, they quickly explain their motivations and hope to move on. Then the next hour of conversation involves something like the omnivores trying to list off every animal type they’ve ever eaten, alphabetically. Alligator, beef (wait, does beef count? Probably not, okay let’s say bison), cuttlefish (wait do individual fish count or no?), etc.
Apple fans (and vegans) get a bad rap because they’re in the minority and those in the majority are simply used to the status quo.
Maybe it's the circles I travel in, but I have seen way more knee-jerk Apple haters--here, on the internet at large, and IRL--than I've ever seen knee-jerk Apple apologists.
Unbridled praise of any large corporation on HN is an invitation to accusations of fanboyism. Prefacing the comment with some sort of deprecation has become a cultural element of immune response to flamewars on HN.
I praise Apple’s largely charitable, low-ROI intense commitment to systemwide accessibility whenever possible. They are light-years ahead of everyone else in that department.
I disagree: There's over 200 million adults & 96% cell phone usage, which would translate to about 2 million disabled at 1%. If they even get 1/10 of that, assuming a device cost average around $700, you're talking about $140,000,000 per upgrade cycle. That seems more than enough to build in decent accessibility. And they get about 44% market share, so that's actually about $660,000,000 per upgrade cycle, which, if measured in cash of $100, is literally tons of money in profit!
Apple is undoubtedly a contentious company, and many of their fans are highly obsessive... I think OP is just letting people know that they're more if a critic than an obsessive fan, thus showing contrast with their praise of the feature.
They have better PR, arguably better products, and a more likeable CEO than other tech hyper-corporations. But they are fundamentally no different than any other self-aware pile of cash.
It is an inaccurate descriptor in my opinion. The cash isn't making decisions. The "corporation" isn't making any decisions. People are making decisions. Corporations are just groups of people just like unions are groups of people and governments are groups of people. Whenever one of these entities commits some malicious act against someone it is because people decided to do it to other people. Framing it in any other way is just an attempt to make us feel better about the reality of the situation.
It's not specific to this place. It's an effective persuasive argument technique. Say you want to praise Apple for something. Since praising Apple to Apple fans is preaching to the choir, your target is people who are not currently huge Apple fans. So, you begin by saying "hi, I am one of you, a person who isn't a big Apple fan." Now that you've established yourself as a member of the in-group, you drop your argument, "this aspect of Apple is good." Maybe you qualify it with "pretty good" to keep from tripping any alarms.
Note: that's not to say that the speaker is being in any way deceptive. People naturally evolve and reinvent more effective speech patterns, often unconsciously.
It isn't technically virtue signing since it's meant to be persuasive.
The post further down (well, up now) that's calling attention to the fact that the guy should replace his helmet because he used it (something that is common knowledge for most people young enough to only have worn single use helmets and is literally printed on the helmet and packaging) is a better example of virtue signaling since it states something basically everyone already accepts as fact and is only tangentially related to the article in the first place.
Unfortunately, the term virtue signaling has taken on a political meaning so you can't say it and expect the internet even if you mean it in the technical sense.
I think it has a second persuasive characteristic, which is simply to contrast with the claimed baseline.
This second characteristic really grates on me when it comes in the form "I don't even know anything about X and even I know this is bad!" -- wherein people somehow leverage their lack of credibility on a subject as a source of authority.
But I think it works because it makes the claim bigger by changing what it's being compared to.
Probably because there is often a lot of unqualified praise or unexamined belief that all they do is incredible and right. In order to avoid the appearance of that, sometimes people qualify their praise in the way I have done.
I for one can't stand their closed eco system and am not impressed by the way Apple is merely picking features that others have funneled through their own innovation processes (seeing what works, what doesn't) - furthermore claiming it as "theirs" not giving any nod to those who went before. Etc. Etc.
So I completely understand why someone would qualify their opinion that this is a nifty good feature by stating as much. Automatic emergency dialing is one feature that my Galaxy Watch doesn't have, that I'd like to have.
Going back to my first paragraph: Appled "claimed" AoD in their launch, however the Galaxy Watch has a great always on display with battery that lasts for days - even longer than the S3 Frontier I had before it. Pebble was the original gangster of course, pretty much inventing the whole market - screen always on for 10 days in the PTS! - but now that they're gone (RIP - all of my Pebbles broke several times so I know why) Garmin has the #1 best battery life by far. I really, really like Tizen however so went with that being a Samsung S-series owner and appreciating the fantastic integration.
I'd love to have this passive features, but the problems I have with smartwatches is that most of them are ugly, and I'm trying to minimize notifications in my life.
You can disable pretty much all notifications from the watch, separately from your phone. I only use my apple watch for activity tracking, music while cycling without my phone, and things like checking the weather (and time, I guess).
As for them being ugly, at least Apple has a wide selection of bands, and the watch itself is as unoffensive as a rounded rect can be, but I feel you there. It's not a work of art, but at least it's not the house arrest bracelets that fitbit sells.
I find that Apple Watch notifications are very useful because I can limit them to important ones (someone texting me, someone calling me, calendar events, reminders) and leave everything else to my phone.
If my watch tries to get my attention, I know it’s reasonably important. If my phone does, I don’t have to pull it out of my pocket if I don’t want to.
I agree the Apple Watch is really useful this way. But can't an "independent" device do this?
It does not need to be tied to a phone or an app ecosystem (android or iOS) to work. It does need a cellular connection, and some logic on the device, but that's about it. This device would be cheaper and affordable to a larger set of people than spending upwards of $500(estimated) on an apple watch.
One could also carry around a calculator that's cheaper than their cellphone.
Not many folks under 60 walk around wearing heart monitors, fall detectors, and other health monitors. This is about those things becoming commonplace for everyone.
The independent devices do exist. There are a few products designed for the elderly that have automatic fall detection. Usually they are a necklace type product connected to a call center. I’m not sure whether they rely on a cell network or WiFi.
So if you don’t want to buy a watch, then get a standalone product. But if you already have an Apple Watch, then this is a cool feature to have.
Does this feature work outside the US? Which countries are supported? https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/ has a country list but not for this feature specifically.
Emergency SOS should work in any country, as long as you have your iPhone nearby or you have a Cellular-enabled watch.
Your second link is specific to international roaming with the cellular-enabled watch, which gets complicated for various reasons (do you need an active SIM, does the modem on the watch support bands used in that country).
The latest Series 5 watch has improved the international SOS feature - from the Ars Technica review[1]:
> The improvements to the SIP and cellular bands allows the Series 5 to make use of its SOS feature in more than 150 countries now. If you find yourself in a bad situation, or the Watch's fall detection kicks in when you fall off your bike during a cycling workout, users with cellular Series 5 models can now call emergency services in various countries.
I really want an Apple Watch for this and the EKG / Heart stuff. But I hate the idea of having another bit of technology on my wrist when I already have the iPhone with me. I like watches, the mechanical kind. I love them as the art of design and as fashion item to be match to what you are wearing (when appropriate). I do not want to give that up. In the end I will likely give in and get the Apple Watch just because I want to be around long enough to see my kid grow up.
Think of the Apple Watch as something that you can use to reduce your phone usage. If you get the one with cellular and GPS, you can go walking/biking/outside and be reachable while at the same time not staring at your phone all the time. Even when you are at home the justification, for me at least, to keep the phone closer was because I might get a call or message I need to respond to. With the Watch, the phone goes straight to its stand as soon as I get home knowing well that I'll get the notification on my watch. This is what's finally helping me wean off the constant need to keep my phone and pull it out to check instagram/hn/reddit repeatedly if I'm bored for even a second.
So I kicked the Reddit habit. I pretty much only read HN, BBCNews, ft.com and ArsTechnica at this point. I have stopped looking at my iPad, iPhone, etc. when watching TV, sport or a movie. The need to always look was really unhealthy. I am much happier now. I have like 5 books on my iPad that I have never quite finished over the last 2 years when before all this easy tech I would have read them quite quickly. It really bugs me. I am going back to paper books as it forces focus (no, I do not want a book only reader to carry as well). The only reason I really care about having the phone with me is for the family. Between email, slack, hangouts, AppleIM and Line it is all just to damn much.
agreed. the responder there is such classic apple. You should get the watch because it counts as not looking at your phone?? Even though you are still looking at a screen. Kind of bizarre logic to me but to each their own bud.
Also good for you man, ditchin some of the distractions for focus. I think some people get weirded out by me when i watch sports because i'm basically 100% in the zone and yelling constantly. Trying to soak up every detail of every play. not casually browsing and watching 2 / 3 screens at once. I can go hours without my phone without really noticing much honestly.
I have an Apple Watch, and it's a love/hate relationship. I'd love to wear another more simpler watch but would lose so many features I always opt for the Apple Watch.
I do criticise the fact that only the Apple Watch contributes to their "Activity" app.
This might help: I frequently leave my iPhone at home, the watch is good enough on its own for messaging, calls, and email. Feels good not carrying a phone around.
I had an earlier model, and ditched it after I forgot to put it on one day, and realized I didn't care. Having to have it charge for a bunch each day, and it not really being designed for overnight wear (as I understand it) really hold it back.
I bought a Fitbit Charge on impulse at an airport for a couple of hundred bucks, and have worn it every day since. I think I prefer it because the battery seems to last forever, it's light-weight, and it's not doing any additional features (although I think it can) than taking my heart rate, counting my steps, and a silent alarm. Would love the EKG feature tho.
> and it not really being designed for overnight wear (as I understand it) really hold it back.
I have a first generation Apple Watch. This is one of the things that annoyed me after buying it: you aint sleeping with it on if you want it to running the next morning.
I'm hopeful that batteries will get better and better, and eventually we'll be able to sleep with the watch on and have it track sleeping patterns, etc.
I just keep reading the comments and sadly the ECG feature is not available in Australia and may never be as Apple have never applied for the licenses.
Apple bricked my series 0 by requiring a software update to activate the watch, and by not providing any watchOS versions still compatible with the series 0.
My perspective on this is just about the opposite. The watch is incredibly helpful, and isn't a distraction like my phone is. I have been wearing my watch and it has enabled me to leave my phone behind more often. It's been a way to wean myself off of technology, but still feel like I can reach people and they can reach me.
And I am the opposite of you! I've been wearing an apple watch for 2 years. I decided to try taking a break about a month ago, and it's been liberating. I didn't realize how often the watch was buzzing me over the course of the day, causing an almost constant level of of low anxiety. I never found a phone to be as intrusive. On the plus side, I have never missed a meeting when wearing my apple watch.
I like the Apple watch fine, I had the Series 0 and also bought a Series 4. I never use them because I love my mechanical watch and you just look like a massive idiot wearing two watches.
Bummer really. Would love an Apple watch in a form-factor where it can complement a watch.
I like the concept of the Sony Wena, which is a smart watch strap which can be used with any classic mechanical watch (even if the current implementation isn't something I'd want) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qMKj_Z-ls
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[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 364 ms ] threadHere's how: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944
Those older than 65 should have it enabled, but should check. (I wasn't sure about the exact age so made a conservative/ lazy guess)
The article says that it was a consideration when he bought it.
Apple Watch detects falls, not unconsciousness. It doesn't detect heart attacks either.
> Apple Watch cannot detect all falls. The more physically active you are, the more likely you are to trigger fall detection due to high impact activity that can appear to be a fall. [0]
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944
The Apple Watch told him his heart isn't working right - automatically calling emergency services - and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart?
Or was it that he too passed out, the Apple Watch called emergency services, who resuscitated him enabling him to call his wife?
> Apple Watch cannot detect heart attacks. If you ever experience chest pain, pressure, tightness, or what you think is a heart attack, call emergency services immediately.
Development of a 12-Lead ECG Signal Processing Algorithm Using NI LabVIEW® and NI ELVIS: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8574627
You would most likely need a 12 lead ECG/EKG too, to detect it accurately.
That being said of course they will state that the watch can’t detect accurately hearth attack to avoid any liability.
Outside possibility is he felt bad, saw a heart rhythm notification, and manually triggered emergency sos by holding the power button. But a fall alert seems much more likely.
Aside: as others note, though, you can't really detect heart attacks well from something this simple.
The watch will call emergency services, then it will text your emergency contact(s) and let them know you've experienced a hard fall. I don't know exactly how, in this instance, that was then converted to a voice call.
Edit: I see in another comment that he initiated a call himself because he was conscious enough to do so.
Please vaccinate yourselves and loved ones even for the flu.
I would also highly recommend people go through this app [2] to get some familiarity with CPR. Then take a proper CPR course (I need to take my own advice on doing a proper course, actually).
[1] https://responseforlife.org.au/
[2] https://www.resus.org.uk/apps/lifesaver/
I have yet to see one that's properly locked up [that didn't have easy to break emergency glass, anyway]. My workplace has a few in special AED boxes, but those have the emergency glass and the hammer.
So don't expect miracles where none are currently possible. Do all you can obviously in case of need, and ideally make yourself familiar with procedures a bit, any delay will worsen the chances.
According to their material, the 30-day survival rate in Denmark has gone from 3.8% (2001) to 10.4% in 2016, with 67.5% bystander assistance: https://hjertestarter.dk/english/you-can-save-lives though it's not clear how much the programme itself can claim.
According to various papers, rapid CPR/AED after a heart attack can triple survival rates.
It's still pretty bleak outcome, but better than e.g. in 2002 Detroit, where 1 out of 471 out of hospital cardiac arrests (OHCA) survived to hospital discharge. In USA, all those stats are apparently being tracked by a programmed called CARES.
Fortunately, it costs about the same! but still...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/68/wr/mm6806a2.htm
Couldn't find the prayer stats.
I doubt there are any. It seems like a study fraught with problems, to put it mildly.
The longer I was there, the more the discussion became "Our child is facing X surgery. Have you or your child had this surgery? Pros? Cons? Any good tips?"
Prayer very often means "It's hopeless. Humans can't fix this. Our only hope is divine intervention." And it's hugely depressing and disempowering.
Modern feelings of hopelessness and nihilism extremely common in the western world, many people are dealing with these feelings through medication. The effectiveness of regular prayer on mental health is surprising according to studies and demographic data.
Let me rephrase that: When the people around you offer nothing but prayers, it's often because they don't believe there is any practical support they are capable of offering. In a group setting, if everyone offers you prayers and zero practical support, the signal it sends is pretty depressing.
To be clear, this was a support group for a deadly genetic disorder that frequently kills children before they reach adulthood. It is classified as a dread disease for a reason. The psychological effect of the diagnosis is huge.
It's practically a sign on the wall a la "All those who enter herein are damned." kind of thing.
If I had to guess I would estimate a prayer to be as effective as a placebo, but to proclaim that as fact seems a bit unscientific.
No affects have been found.
> In 1872, the Victorian scientist Francis Galton made the first statistical analysis of third-party prayer. He hypothesized, partly as satire, that if prayer were effective, members of the British Royal Family would live longer than average, given that thousands prayed for their well-being every Sunday, and he prayed over randomized plots of land to see whether the plants would grow any faster, and found no correlation in either case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Studies_on_intercessory_prayer
there's been a number of studies showing lots of effects. Most studies seem to show slight positive effects from prayer, some show none and some show negative effects.
> Meta-studies of the literature in the field have been performed showing evidence only for no effect or a potentially small effect.
I'm an atheist so I take the "no effect" over the "small effect".
I take what I consider to be the simplest explanation in the absence of a credible alternative, that prayer does nothing when the recipient is unaware of it.
I take that view because I've never heard an alternative explaination that didn't appear to break the second law of thermodynamics.
A magical, invisible, omnipresent, omnipotent "all known laws of nature defying"-being that answers prayers, requires significantly more evidence than a small effect in some meta study.
A more properly scientific line of reasoning would be to instead say that you'll assume the small-to-nonexistent effect is nonexistent until somebody produces a model capable of predicting the proposed small effect, or a myriad other arguments along the same general lines.
The Apple Watch is very explicit about not being a panacea, and currently only advertises detection of a specific kind of arythmia or elevated heart rate. Note that the original comment mentioned that fall detection was probably the trigger.
I'm still pretty angry at the universe about my colleague's sudden death. I just want to temper expectations about what the Watch can or cannot do.
What does this mean?
Through this doesn't mean the Apple watch can't be a useful addition, just don't rely on it.
Except, when you wear additional bracelets at your both legs, the other hand, both shoulders and another 6 on your chest. Then yes ;). And consider the continuous cyborgization of our society, that is not that far away.
The 12 lead ECG is about detecting the electrical impulses of heart beats from different angles of your bodies.
If you found a technology to detect these mV values from a meter away ... tell me ;) We will be rich ;)
There's a reason ECG probes are attached to multiple points on the body, and you can infer quite a bit of info from just comparing multiple signals alone, including if you have your heart flipped, for some reason. :D You'll not get that from your watch.
They call this an electrocardiogram (ECG) but the one I had for a medical didn't have 12 leads just 5 or 7 I think.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einthoven%27s_triangle
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK538203/
Unless he had this sense multiple times and was finally right this time...
Thinking of deaths of people I've known; dying at home in bed seems preferable to most.
"Being Mortal" by Atul Gawande is an excellent book on this subject.
https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-11-10/he-documented-his-own...
Talk about response time, wow!
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21020162
https://github.com/corollari/fixedHackerNews/blob/master/ext...
Formatting may improve such quotes that already begin with ">", but the problem is that people come up with their own inferior solutions instead of simply using ">". For example, some people try to use italics which are hard to see, hard to distinguish as quotes, and don't even render as italic on some of the HN native apps I've used.
If ">" was good enough for decades of email and usergroups, it's good enough for HN. No, your quotes in this one post doesn't need anything different or special.
What HN needs is a simple formatting-help blurb when writing a post to set people straight once and for all like reddit (or res?) had/has. The first line of it, if I wrote it, would be "Prepend > for quotes, prepend four spaces to format code."
dang, was that something you were testing?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc
There is nothing to fix: code blocks do (almost) exactly the right thing for code. (the indentation on the right is unnecessary and counterproductive, though, but that's not the main source of the complaint here.)
They are horrible for quotes, especially on mobile, but that's not what they are for. Admittedly, quotes are vastly more common than code on HN and HN could use a good quote formatting mechanism, but that's a missing feature, not a bug in code formatting.
Yes, but that one line is very long and nobody knows how it ends.
Prepending a line with two spaces is not intended for quoting people. It is intended for posting code in a comment.
If you're quoting someone, stick to the well-established standard of prepending with a > symbol.
(Tangent: anyhow, this reminds me of a great aphorism:
> If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
This can apply to many situations involving technical debt in software... is it really more effective to do many unseemly hacks rather just fix it properly?)
I figured it was the jerking-around. Maybe it looked to the watch like she had fallen down.
Each time, was watching a tight rugby match and getting a little over excited. Nice to know it works as advertised, though.
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyo...
I’m disappointed that Android Wear didn’t take off.
More competition would greatly increase innovation.
Android wearables have a chicken and egg problem. Manufacturers aren't innovating because nobody is buying and nobody is buying because there are no innovations.
Apple is fully vertically integrated so it can recoup the high R&D costs for new silicon and other components through the price of the unit but on Android platforms you have separate manufacturers for the vital components who are under pressure to be cost competitive as they don't get a slice of the profits of the final product so they won't invest in R&D until they see enough consumer demand which isn't there.
If Apple Watch hadn’t been an immediate success, I’d like to think they’d still be pushing hard to make it so.
Most of its competitors have far more offerings with much less commitment behind any one of them.
Apple Watch wasn't an immediate success - at least not in the form we see it today. WatchOS 1.0 was dramatically different from what we have today, with much less focus on health and more focus on 'connecting you with people' and stuff.
Apple kept working at it, paring out the stuff that wasn't useful (the side button was originally dedicated to a list of contacts to send messages to for example), and doubled down on the stuff that was (health). Clearly it has worked...
[1]: https://1reddrop.com/2019/01/07/apple-watch-sales-history-fr...
edit: Apparently the Samsung Galaxy Watch series are Tizen, not Android
Regular quartz watches can go 3-10 years between battery replacements. Solar charging can increase that to 20 years or more. Self-winding mechanical watches will last a lifetime as long as you wear them regularly and have them serviced every now and then. How long does a modern smartwatch last in comparison?
Doubt it. Apple watch is already a bigger business than netflix - the battery life is perfectly sufficient and making it longer would involve making it less capable.
It's classist as fuck: potentially lifesaving tools for the relatively wealthy, and screw everybody else. If they want to get on their high horse about making the world a better place, maybe they should be pricing it in reach of more people instead of lining their already very, very bulging pockets.
Samsung is going to implement it "Sometime early next year" in their currently shipping version.
> Like the latest Apple Watch, which has a built-in fall detection system, the new Garmin watch also has a safety monitoring feature, which the company calls incident detection.
https://www.garmin.com/en-US/blog/featured-2/safety-and-trac...
Apple don't deserve any credit for the idea but deserve something for doing it well.
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
And OnStar has it easier, with existing collision detection.
$15/month for a fall detection device vs $399 + $10/month buys a lot of months. Yes, I know the Apple Watch does more, but I wasn't the one who tried to make the comparison.
Does the Apple Watch stay on the phone with you until EMS arrives? Is it capable of giving medical information to dispatch?
Another "Apple was the first to do this!"... "No it wasn't"... "Well, the cost is different!"... circumlocution.
I could care less, either way. Whichever device gives me less false positives (but not false negatives) works best for me as a first responder.
If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.
> If any of those services have reached the point that the end device can detect an emergency and contact local emergency services by itself, then they've done a terrible job of advertising that functionality.
They all have (see my sibling comment about Automatic Fall Detection), and I agree.
There are many good ideas that exist out there that are "unknown" because the product they are in misses some aspect of how consumers would wish to consume them. My favorite was that the Tesla Roadster wasn't the first electric car, but it was the first that I could see myself buying at some point.
The nice thing about this being a feature of the watch is that the watch brings a bunch of great stuff all on its own. That it can also call emergency services or diagnose Afib is like bonus time.
Careful with that as an assumption:
> In people younger than 55, Apple Watch’s positive predictive value is just 19.6 percent. That means in this group — which constitutes more than 90 percent of users of wearable devices like the Apple Watch — the app incorrectly diagnoses atrial fibrillation 79.4 percent of the time. (You can try the calculation yourself using this Bayesian calculator: enter 0.001 for prevalence, 0.98 for sensitivity, and 0.996 for specificity).
> The electrocardiogram app becomes more reliable in older individuals: The positive predictive value is 76 percent among users between the ages of 60 and 64, 91 percent among those aged 70 to 74, and 96 percent for those older than 85.
(Source: https://www.statnews.com/2019/01/08/apple-watch-iffy-atrial-...)
That being said, I will not at all dispute the ECG tools as very valuable.
https://www.ajmc.com/conferences/acc-2019/giant-study-sugges... - discusses the findings in the context of the Apple Health "Study" announced at one of their events.
edit: its a reference to the ads, you bozos.
OnStar is part of an entire car.
This is a watch with greater capability than both put together. Let it be awesome.
I'm not claiming Apple has done something revolutionary. It's an evolution that builds on and combines various capabilities in a novel way. It's the sort of thing I could imagine seeing growing up watching "future" tv shows (Beyond 2000 ftw) and I love when technology produces something like that.
Anyone know of any force alarms from devices that call the emergency services automatically, be that a watch or app?
The more time passes the more i realize how much the saying « the road to hell is paved with good intentions » is true.
And those of us that do not wear a permanent tracking device will have some sort of financial (insurance rates) and emotional punishments (peer pressure/blackmail) inflicted on us.
Speaking for myself, I'm ready to die when its time. If my body is so weak and knackered that I cannot even go for a bike ride without medical assistance then I reckon it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil and make way for someone else.
> Speaking for myself, I'm ready to die when its time. If my body is so weak and knackered that I cannot even go for a bike ride without medical assistance then I reckon it's time to shuffle off this mortal coil and make way for someone else.
This could happen because of a hit-and-run driver or because of some other temporary medical condition; either might be completely resolved with the right treatment. I think a better way to look at it is about your quality of life afterward. If you're terminally ill or of very advanced age with a poor prognosis for recovery, then I can see why you'd want a "do not resuscitate" order, would disable this feature, etc. Otherwise why not get help?
I can only see the watch being useful for #2: the exact situation where I think it would be better that I die.
I have elderly father in Eastern Europe and he would really benefit from this.
Physical presence, not completely: https://www.apple.com/watch/cellular/
> The Apple Watch also alerted Gabe Burdett that his dad had fallen.
Yes.
> After the call ends, your watch sends a message to your emergency contacts with your location letting them know that your watch detected a hard fall and dialed emergency services. [0]
[0] https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944
https://seesense.cc/
- Heart rate monitoring and warning when something is not right with the heart?
- Fall detection and call 911?
I preordered, but maybe it's because I've been off samsung so long I've forgotten
EDIT: to the downvoters: question everything.
If you're talking about a Seattle Times journalist or editor literally being bribed into running the story, you've gone off the deep end. Any such attempt by Apple would give some journalist a once-in-a-lifetime chance to expose a major scandal. It would expose Apple, and any journalist and their publications to risks far larger than whatever the value of a positive, but rather minor, story in a second-tier US newspaper is worth, etc.
"question everything" is stupid advise. Do you question if water isn't a deadly poison every time you drink it? Do you verify your spouse's DNA every time you see them, to prevent them being replaced by imposters?
Of course not, because it's impossible (also insane). Try establishing the usefulness of, say, vaccines from first principle: it would require running hundreds of clinical trials, all by yourself (don't trust anyone!), at costs in the billions of dollars, and taking far longer than your life.
And remember that you will also somehow need to convince yourself of the power of whatever statistics you use in those trials. You need to redo everything, all the way back to, at best, "parallel lines don't intersect". Because that Pythagoras wasn't even considered trustworthy by his compatriots, so why should you?
Realistically, you, like everyone, make thousands of decisions every day and need heuristics to get anything done. Most often, those heuristics involve some system of establishing trust by, for example, remembering previous interactions with people or newspapers or other institutions. It just so happens that you think you come across more interesting on the internet by pretending (or actually) trusting a different set of sources than society at large, i. e. conspiracy theorists pseudonymously ranting about the "mainstream media", instead of that media.
Man, when I was an edgy teenager I questioned everything. But then I grew up, had a family and you know what.... I ain't got time to question everything. Even if I spent all my time questioning everything, what would I gain? I couldn't possibly get answers to 99% of the things I question. I can't be an expert in everything.
So whats the point in questioning everything? Who gives a shit if this was a "stealth article" by Apple, the CIA or the Coca Cola Bottling Company. What difference does it make to me? None whatsoever.
These days I try to be very careful what things I spend my time & energy on.
Yeah, like wasting your time on HN like a real adult.
Ultimately what I got back was "yep you do have an irregular heartbeat sometimes. It's nothing threatening and you'll be fine." They additionally did a stress test and found that under exertion my heartbeat returns to normal so it was nice to have the peace of mind.
The watch detects falls and calls 911 based on that, not based on "unconscious".
Apple’s detractors fit this bill far more than its fans do. The online hate Apple gets is nothing short of ridiculous compared to how responsible a corporate citizen they’ve been for as long as I can remember. Most of the time when I see Apple fans in a conversation, it’s countering badly informed anti-Apple circlejerking. One example that comes to mind is the whole Foxconn thing. Apple got massive amounts of backlash for the working conditions there, when virtually every other manufacturer uses them too and received only a handful of the same criticism. Apple dramatically tightened their standards and expanded their vetting process for third-party suppliers (which were already in place). Everyone else? Next to nothing or actually nothing.
It’s completely backward in the same way as the stereotype of vegans. As someone who spent some time as a vegetarian, I quickly realized that most vegans/vegetarians try not to make a big deal out of their dietary choices. On the off chance someone does ask about it, they quickly explain their motivations and hope to move on. Then the next hour of conversation involves something like the omnivores trying to list off every animal type they’ve ever eaten, alphabetically. Alligator, beef (wait, does beef count? Probably not, okay let’s say bison), cuttlefish (wait do individual fish count or no?), etc.
Apple fans (and vegans) get a bad rap because they’re in the minority and those in the majority are simply used to the status quo.
[1] https://www.nfb.org/resources/blindness-statistics
Not by any vaguely reasonable metric when compared to other companies its size
Why don’t we judge Apple for Apple’s words and actions and compare them to other’s words and actions, then see how each stacks up.
Size seems less relevant than the image Apple’s projected and its profits.
Ahem ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...
They have better PR, arguably better products, and a more likeable CEO than other tech hyper-corporations. But they are fundamentally no different than any other self-aware pile of cash.
Note: that's not to say that the speaker is being in any way deceptive. People naturally evolve and reinvent more effective speech patterns, often unconsciously.
The post further down (well, up now) that's calling attention to the fact that the guy should replace his helmet because he used it (something that is common knowledge for most people young enough to only have worn single use helmets and is literally printed on the helmet and packaging) is a better example of virtue signaling since it states something basically everyone already accepts as fact and is only tangentially related to the article in the first place.
Unfortunately, the term virtue signaling has taken on a political meaning so you can't say it and expect the internet even if you mean it in the technical sense.
This second characteristic really grates on me when it comes in the form "I don't even know anything about X and even I know this is bad!" -- wherein people somehow leverage their lack of credibility on a subject as a source of authority.
But I think it works because it makes the claim bigger by changing what it's being compared to.
Despite thing-X’s flaws it does a good job of outcome-Y?
So I completely understand why someone would qualify their opinion that this is a nifty good feature by stating as much. Automatic emergency dialing is one feature that my Galaxy Watch doesn't have, that I'd like to have.
Going back to my first paragraph: Appled "claimed" AoD in their launch, however the Galaxy Watch has a great always on display with battery that lasts for days - even longer than the S3 Frontier I had before it. Pebble was the original gangster of course, pretty much inventing the whole market - screen always on for 10 days in the PTS! - but now that they're gone (RIP - all of my Pebbles broke several times so I know why) Garmin has the #1 best battery life by far. I really, really like Tizen however so went with that being a Samsung S-series owner and appreciating the fantastic integration.
As for them being ugly, at least Apple has a wide selection of bands, and the watch itself is as unoffensive as a rounded rect can be, but I feel you there. It's not a work of art, but at least it's not the house arrest bracelets that fitbit sells.
If my watch tries to get my attention, I know it’s reasonably important. If my phone does, I don’t have to pull it out of my pocket if I don’t want to.
It does not need to be tied to a phone or an app ecosystem (android or iOS) to work. It does need a cellular connection, and some logic on the device, but that's about it. This device would be cheaper and affordable to a larger set of people than spending upwards of $500(estimated) on an apple watch.
Not many folks under 60 walk around wearing heart monitors, fall detectors, and other health monitors. This is about those things becoming commonplace for everyone.
So if you don’t want to buy a watch, then get a standalone product. But if you already have an Apple Watch, then this is a cool feature to have.
Here is an article discussing them: https://www.medicalalertadvice.com/fall-detection/
edit: found https://www.apple.com/watchos/feature-availability/
Your second link is specific to international roaming with the cellular-enabled watch, which gets complicated for various reasons (do you need an active SIM, does the modem on the watch support bands used in that country).
> The improvements to the SIP and cellular bands allows the Series 5 to make use of its SOS feature in more than 150 countries now. If you find yourself in a bad situation, or the Watch's fall detection kicks in when you fall off your bike during a cycling workout, users with cellular Series 5 models can now call emergency services in various countries.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/apple-watch-series-5...
Also good for you man, ditchin some of the distractions for focus. I think some people get weirded out by me when i watch sports because i'm basically 100% in the zone and yelling constantly. Trying to soak up every detail of every play. not casually browsing and watching 2 / 3 screens at once. I can go hours without my phone without really noticing much honestly.
I do criticise the fact that only the Apple Watch contributes to their "Activity" app.
I bought a Fitbit Charge on impulse at an airport for a couple of hundred bucks, and have worn it every day since. I think I prefer it because the battery seems to last forever, it's light-weight, and it's not doing any additional features (although I think it can) than taking my heart rate, counting my steps, and a silent alarm. Would love the EKG feature tho.
I have a first generation Apple Watch. This is one of the things that annoyed me after buying it: you aint sleeping with it on if you want it to running the next morning.
I'm hopeful that batteries will get better and better, and eventually we'll be able to sleep with the watch on and have it track sleeping patterns, etc.
I just keep reading the comments and sadly the ECG feature is not available in Australia and may never be as Apple have never applied for the licenses.
Not a huge deal breaker but an annoying one.
Try shutting some of the extras off, and you’ll be surprised at how long it lasts. Also, your morning alarm won’t wake anybody else up!
Bummer really. Would love an Apple watch in a form-factor where it can complement a watch.