I assume because it’s cheaper to lose that feature than the pay the required licensing fee.
The patent holder is a medical device company that is probably used to much more expensive price points than consumer tech. So having a $300 watch available that does o2 readings as much as a multi thousand dollar medical device is probably something they aren’t super thrilled about being in the market.
Blood oxygen monitors aren’t event expensive. You can buy little ones that clamp onto your fingertip for like $20. Seems odd that they couldn’t use their weight to secure a license. Where is the Apple that refused to have the “Intel inside” stickers on their laptops?
They were negotiating a licence but their star engineer emailed Tim Cook offering to work for Apple directly after he wasn't made CTO of a spinoff company.
> He clashed with managers, demanded multimillion-dollar budgets and wanted the ability to hire his own engineers without approval, Hotelling said in a deposition that was part of a court fight between the companies. After weeks of discussions, Lamego left Apple. After his stint at Apple, Lamego ended up starting his own company, True Wearables. In 2016, he released a device called the Oxxiom, which he called the world’s first continuous and disposable blood-oxygen sensor. Masimo sued the start-up and won a court order blocking it from selling the product.
>Blood oxygen monitors aren’t event expensive. You can buy little ones that clamp onto your fingertip for like $20.
It's not about just any blood oxigen measuring tech, there's various ways you can do it and apparently Apple's newest watch is implementing a very accurate technique developed by Masimo.
Those $20 devices exist because measuring blood oxygen accurately via light refracted through flesh is way easier than via light reflect off the flesh(especially as you move around), which is what this fight is all about.
>Seems odd that they couldn’t use their weight to secure a license.
Or, you know, pay for it? It's not like Apple is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions.
> implementing a very accurate technique developed by Masimo.
I’m not sure it’s very technologically complex though. Seems like the patent just covers the positioning of a few sensors. It’s about as silly as allowing “multitouch” to be patented…
They in fact do offer their own "consumer-targeting smartwatch, the W1 series, [with] FDA clearance for providing blood oxygen saturation levels." (Source: the article we're all discussing.)
So their reluctance to license the patent to Apple may be probably partly about competing with Apple, partly about Apple's alleged bad-faith behavior in past dealings with them, and possibly also disinclination on the part of Apple to pay them for a license. But not about Apple's retail price point per unit.
> I assume because it’s cheaper to lose that feature than the pay the required licensing fee.
Without a doubt. I would imagine the number of people that would actually choose to not buy an Apple Watch because it doesn’t have a blood oxygen sensor is really really small. I also believe it’s likely that people considering upgrading an existing Apple Watch will not be deterred by the removal of the feature. My sense is that Apple felt that it had basically nothing to lose. They were going to incur some legal costs in this anyway, why not let that play out? Remove it if you lose the battle. If you lose out on maybe <500 watch sales no biggie, you still have the optics to your customer base that you exhausted all options to keep the feature.
Masimo barely targets the consumer market. 97% of their revenue is hospital devices. They’re not competing.
Their devices tie in to hospital EMRs, do brain activity monitoring, and all sorts of other thing’s that aren’t in the same ballpark as an Apple Watch.
Somehow others competitors managed to do it without patent infringement or just pay the licence fees.
Apple just thought they were so big that they could get away with stealing the IP, because they have deeper pocket for court proceedings.
It's not the first time they do it
If the court finally determines in the End that they violated the patent, they have no choice but to pay up for all the watches already out there.
If they are smart they will now offer a good deal for both sides instead of loosing and pay a huge punitive damage
Apple has almost a $3T market cap, I'm sure their legal team will be fine coming to a favorable arrangement if nerfing the functionality with software updates isn't sufficient. They can fund any settlement out of ~$380B in annual revenue. Any settlement under ~$1B is a day of revenue. The horror.
How should that be sufficient.
They have already done the damage and used the technology they didn't pay for.
Also customers will sue if they nerve a feature via software that was advertised bigly back then, claiming that this was the reason they bought the watch
"Laws are for poor people." Apple will outlast any legal challenges, and any successful will be immaterial to their financials. I have no dog in this fight (no exposure to AAPL besides whatever is in index funds, no standing in claims), just calling it how it is. Any class action is going to be cost of business. At a certain market cap and revenue run rate, it doesn't matter. Some damages will get paid, class action counsel will get paid, consumers will get a few bucks, and everyone will move on until the patent expires. Might have a securities fraud lawsuit to contend with too, everything is securities fraud as Matt Levine @ Bloomberg says. Very similar to Tesla's FSD story. You can outrun the financial liability if your sales and brand are strong enough.
Was it wrong what Apple did? The moral position is irrelevant. We might as well argue over the color of the bikeshed.
Not even that. They’re suing to invalidate the patent entirely and are also attacking the W1 watch Massimo sells based on Apple Patents. I’m not sure as to why Apple decided to go full scorched earth, but man they pissed somebody off.
It would be a fantastic outcome if they managed to get the patent invalidated because it seems rather silly (not that Apple, just like other larger corporations, doesn’t have a tendency to patent perfectly “obvious” “innovations” either)
Well back then it was a major breakthrough for more accurate measurements, so no.
Fuck Apple and their we can steal anything we want attitude.
The other way around they are not that lenient
That's false. Apple brain-fucked Masimo to spill their beans on how their tech works, precisely with the promise they were gonna license it. Then they did a switcheroo where they went ahead and integrated their tech without paying them.
Patents don't always explain everything. Otherwise why would Apple want to to have meetings with Masimo in the first place if they could just rip off their patent directly.
Because the O2 sensor was a COVID-era feature that nobody cares about now and moves zero units. Soon Apple will have definitive confirmation in the form of Watch sales data.
It’s not only useful for COVID, that just got it mainstream attention. If used along with the sleep tracking, it seems like the O2 could signal someone to get treated for sleep apnea. The Apple Watch Ultra is geared toward hikers and people going off the beaten path, for those in the mountains, this is something to monitor at high elevations. It can also signal the user of heart and lung issues that they’d want to get eyes on.
No, SpO2 isn't used for VO2 Max calculations. SpO2 measured at the wrist doesn't tell you anything about how much oxygen is being metabolized. Only heart rate (including HRV) and speed or power are used as input for the VO2 Max estimate. Wristwatches can't even measure SpO2 accurately when you're running around, you have to hold fairly still to get a consistent reading.
I care about it. Its actually the only new feature that I would have upgraded for.
I know a lot of people that got it for that specific feature. Not one of them got it for COVID or medical reasons.
There are huge communities of people that really like this feature. Notably, many people that do things at altitude.
I won't pretend that my narrow experience is a market maker, but I also won't generalize it to say something as broad as its a feature "nobody cares about now and moves zero units."
Try to think beyond your own experiences and worldview.
Not entirely true. My wife has O2 respiratory efficiency problems, and uses both an Apple watch and an Oura ring for sleep monitoring and charts O2 patterns daily. So at least some people care intensely. As to sentence two, it was exactly the O2 feature that prompted my wife to get the watch. No O2 monitoring, no sale. If O2 monitoring went away on her current watch, the watch would be up on E-Bay, most likely, as she doesn't find anything else about it that compelling. In my case, the compelling feature for me is exercise tracking and heart-rate monitoring.
This is yet another case where it is easy to fall into the "product manager trap" -- that is: designing for "most people". The trap is to de-feature things where "most people" have only modest engagement, but a few (likely your most evangelical customers) care intensely about that feature. Don't fall into that trap. The goal is to create a feature collection of "the one thing" that each segment cares intensely about, not to create a basket of meh features that everyone finds meh.
Could apple publish a way for US customers to themselves re-enable the feature? If publishing software is a first amendment right, then I don’t see any legal way to prevent them from doing this.
Are those oxygen monitoring apps any good? (including the Apple Watch one, I mean). I remember that during Covid there was a big gap between what these devices were telling their users and the numbers measured by actual medical equipment (with the latter being those closer to the truth, of course).
All medical-grade blood oxygen sensors that I have seen in hospitals are put on the tip of the finger. This arrangement allows them to beam light through the human flesh and measure how much of it is absorbed - the light source is on one side of the finger and the sensor on the other and there is no bone between them at the tip of the finger, just tissue with lots of blood in it. Smart watches are carried on the wrist so they can only measure light reflected back which gives much lower sensitivity and accuracy.
The FDA doesn't regulate "over the counter" oxygen sensors (including those you find at a CVS or Walgreens), but that study suggests that if they did, Apple could get an FDA clearance. They already have several FDA clearances for the Apple Watch's ECG, irregular rhythm notifications, and afib history features.
The oxygen sensor is helpful for detecting, among other things, sleep apnea, where 60-80% of people are undiagnosed.
I believe the Apple Watch is a class 2 medical device because it alerts you if it thinks you’re having a heart attack. They probably got a 510k for this and based it on some other predicate device
This kept Apple's grubby paws off of a small innovator. The industry needs more patents to defend against egregious titans.
Apple has more than enough money to license this patent if they so choose.
Apple needs serious competition. And that won't happen with their massive scale until regulators start nipping away at their all-encompassing competitive moat.
The largest companies are barely innovating at all, and that should speak volumes. They're camping their position and raking in easy money from the folks doing all the hard work at the bottom.
> When it's not subsidized by the unrelated business unit profit of a monopoly, well, yeah.
Indeed. And that sucks for the consumer. Why should we consider subsidizing less profitable beneficial offerings with more profitable offerings a bad thing? That's how every charity the industrial barons put together that still maintain some of the civic spaces in the US came to be. The steel boom funding a library and an opera house and all that.
> Apple needs serious competition. And that won't happen with their massive scale until regulators
Regulators are the worst way to create competition. Apple has extremely serious competition in the form of Android. iPhone's global market share just hit its highest ever, at 20.1%[0].
> The largest companies are barely innovating at all
If you don't see any mobile phone innovation that's happened, I don't know what to tell you. Go back only 20 years and you'll see an incredible difference.
> Regulators are the worst way to create competition.
Complete and utter hogwash!
> Apple has extremely serious competition in the form of Android.
This is a duopoly of devices, and you are forced to buy into their fiefdoms.
Each company taxes every single form of commerce, transaction, and customer connection on their devices. Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
Smartphones are used to navigate, take photos, find dates, order food (at restaurants!), pay at point of sale, schedule events, network, email, do work, find jobs, order kitchen supplies, do workouts, ...
These are more important than the internet itself at this point, and there are only two companies. They choose what you can do, what you can deploy, when you can deploy, what tech you can use, and they tax you 30%. You have to fit into their payments and login stack, jump through their upgrade hurdles, and they're nice enough to let competitors place ads against you.
I won't even begin to speak towards the insane anti-consumer behavior they have, like green bubble fomo for children and 3rd party parts DRMing.
These devices - smartphones - need to be regulated with the force of every country's legal and judicial power.
> iPhone's global market share just hit its highest ever, at 20.1%[0].
It's over 50% in the US, and they're egregious to US businesses and consumers.
Apple might be doing some things which are beneficial for the society as a whole and would increase the level of competition in the industry, like trying to invalidate this specific patent, while also engaging in very abusive practices themselves (like the app store “monopoly”, ignoring repairability etc.). These things are certainly not mutually exclusive
> Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
Because of the companies you say are "barely innovating at all". Schrödinger would like a word.
> Each company taxes every single form of commerce, transaction, and customer connection on their devices. Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
You're conflating the device being essential (well, useful, not essential) with the apps. My banking app is free, for example, or any shopping apps I have. How many of these essential apps are paid?
> They choose what you can do, what you can deploy, when you can deploy, what tech you can use, and they tax you 30%.
You're thinking of governments. You choose to buy a phone as a convenience value add to your life. You must pay 30% in tax, regardless of what you get back.
> These are more important than the internet itself at this point
They aren't. They need the internet to work. And you can do lots of nonessentials with them, but lots of essential things can be done with a Web browser, and if a service is locked behind an app store, that's a service delivery problem, not an app store problem.
> there are only two companies
There aren't only two companies. There are lots of companies making phones. There are two main OSes though, it's true. And with those, nothing stops anyone creating a third, e.g. PinePhone, except ability and financial environment.
I won't attempt to defend Apple's conduct here, but they do have serious competition in the smartwatch market. Products from Garmin, Samsung, Suunto, etc are equivalent or better than any Apple watch depending on which features you want. Some of them do include blood oxygen monitoring. Those either licensed the Masimo patents or use different, non-infringing technology.
This is an invention from the middle of the last century.
The two patents describe a device with 4 leds, a temperature sensor, and a processor.
The invention of the pulse ox was innovation. Putting it on a portable device and increasing the number of LEDs to 4 is not the level of contribution that really justifies 20 years of legal protection.
Masimo has zero interest in increasing the degree of competition in the industry. Also the patent in question itself seems dubious, and it’s rather silly that it’s even valid
Patents are why people can get paid for inventing nice things. For sure there's a lot of patent abuse, but in this case it sounds like patents are working as they should, Apple just decided to use the patented technology without bothering to license it.
The invention is trivial and anyone thinking on the topic could come up with it. It is just a matter of interest and having the money to navigate the labyrinth patent system / hiring a patent lawyer. All it does it protect those with money and connections already, at the cost of humanity.
Irrelevant. That argument can be used for anything relating to electronics. You're essentially claiming that any patent mentioning electronics should be automatically accepted. That's unfortunately not so far off from reality, but it's not supposed to be the case.
This is a good moment to ask exactly what this patent system is achieving here. Removing potentially life-saving features from Apple's watches isn't a very helpful step; pulse oximetry is a 1935 or 1970s technology depending on where we start counting [0] and it seems a stretch to say that Apple wouldn't have figured this out themselves.
So in this case, the taxpayer is paying good money to enforce a measure that hurts them. Why should they be forced to do that? What is the upside in this case? It is purposefully slowing down life-saving technological innovation. I don't see why it is believed that this is helping progress.
I don't think we should consider the tech stolen. The concept of "stealing" a tech in this context is silly; we should want more people to do what Apple did.
This court decision comes with a body count. It is a bad outcome. Nobody should support it.
Patents were reportedly filed after Apple Watch already had the feature, specifically to target Apple, and that ITC acknowledged Apple’s invention was entirely independent of Massimo and this is considered patent abuse by notable Apple critic:
There’s an allegation the real reason for the patents/suite is retaliation; that Apple pissed off billionaire owner by not partnering with him and instead hiring away top employees.
If you look up the patents it’s hardly worth calling it “tech”. Patenting the positioning of the sensors without any other meaningful innovation shouldn’t be a thing.
That company is not that much better than a patent troll and AFAIK they didn’t even agree to license their “technology” (they wanted to have control over the development of the Apple Watch instead).
In all honesty, Blood Ox isn't really that useful. It seems cool but the novelty wears off quickly, especially given that having it switched on does contribute to battery life.
I'd say it's only really useful for people that have a particular concern around those levels.
Appreciate that this isn't what the article is about, but I don't think it will impact sales too much.
Apple now need to go and implement their own Stress or Heart Rate Variability score. That in my mind is a bigger gap.
My cardiologist suggests it’s a good screener for sleep apnea. Not diagnostic, but indicative that a sleep study may be necessary. He screens his patients that wear the watch for levels during sleep. If he sees consistent sub 90s he sends them off to a sleep medicine doc.
SpO2 monitoring is one of the components of polysomnography which is used to diagnose sleep apnea. SpO2 statistics are reported in the polysomnogram: SpO2 minimum, maximum, mean, standard deviation.
For example, a minimum SpO2 of 70% during sleep indicates your blood is not oxygenating properly for some reason during that period. Doesn't straight up prove it's due to sleep apnea but you can definitely assume it is and be right more often than not. The full polysomnogram also measures air flow, sleep architecture and more.
I have sleep apnea. I bought a $200 very sensitive blood oxygen sensor which measures several times a second if I remember correctly.
I tried to bring the case to my doctor that my Cpap machine setup was not working correctly. His criteria is “do you fall down when you walk because you are out of breath. Then you should be concerned about your lungs and you don’t want to be around anyone with issues like that. “
I would welcome HRV tracking but that will require a better sensor or an additional one. The blood oxygen sensor requires 15 seconds of no movement. ECG requires 30 seconds of wearing watch and holding the crown.
Currently with Garmin and some other smart devices like Whoop, it monitors HRV using its inbuilt sensors. Whoop and Garmin have developed their own indicative "Stress" indicators, with also a view on HRV and deviations from baselines.
I believe the Apple watch does have the capability to monitor HRV as I think its monitored in the Apple health app for Apple watch wearers. HRV I believe is monitored consistently throughout the day and at night.
It displays something on there but “The majority of wrist-worn fitness devices and trackers track your heart rate through your skin. Unfortunately, this means they usually aren't sensitive enough to detect heart rate variability accurately.”
HRV is an interesting field. Too high and it can indicate arrhythmia. Too low is also not good.
I think with all these devices "accurately" is a loose term in the sense that it is accurate enough, but could be better. Wrist based ECG has been determined as accurate enough to wear on your wrist, but isn't as accurate as what you'd get in a hospital.
If it is accurate enough, then the particular number isn't necessarily the important, its whether it an measure the same number consistently, then track movements from the baseline. Which is why they often have a % up/down accuracy figure.
>I tried to bring the case to my doctor that my Cpap machine setup was not working correctly.
Doesn't the sleep apnea machine itself measure whether you are breathing? If the concern is it may not be accurate, the gold standard is probably an in lab sleep study while wearing the machine, but insurance may not feel it is medically necessary and may not pay.
It detects events when I’m awake which led me to suspect it was not working properly. According to Cpap forums awake readings are invalid, but sleep measurements are?
I’ve had a sleep study which determined I need a Cpap machine but they never did the study while wearing it and my readings vary greatly from 3 to 30 AHI per hour with it on.
In hindsight, I have exceedingly “freakishly” large lungs which may explain the slow breathing. My concern has been waking up with a daily headache which has been suggested by other doctors to be due to uncontrolled sleep apnea.
When I had covid in very early 2020 I monitored my blood oxygen levels religiously as it declined precipitously and I became more and more ill. Given it was the first outbreak in seattle I was advised to stay away from the hospital unless it dropped to X, at which point they could provide palliative care as there was no treatment or available ventilators. I got very close to X, and did end up with an extended hospital stay and long covid. So - not how useful the blood ox monitor was but it did provide some form of comfort as I skirted with death to see how close I am.
SpO2 (blood oxygen levels) is actually very useful if it's accurate.
(Apple's implementation is not super accurate because SpO2 measurement from the wrist is fraught to start with -- it's usually measured from the finger -- and it is biased by skin colors etc.).
Prolonged low blood oxygen means insufficient oxygen is being carried to organs and tissues. Apart from sleep apnea, it can make pre-existing conditions worse.
My ophthalmologist tells me that chronically low blood oxygen can cause problems to organs like the retina which is sensitive to oxygen deprivation.
This is apologist. Masimo claims, and multiple court cases have agreed that Apple did, in fact, use patented technology without payment (and frankly, even as an all Apple person, their behavior in this whole situation was entirely shitty).
Couching this all as “claims” gives Apple a benefit of the doubt, similar to the people who refer to Masimo as “nothing but patent trolls”. Previous discussions here had multiple people referring to them being “butthurt that Apple hadn’t offered to acquire them”, or that they “lacked the product chops to bring their own solution to market”.
> Also AFAIK Masimo didn’t just want to be paid they wanted to have some direct on the development of Apple Watch.
They had concerns about some of Apple's design and functionality decisions around the sensor on the watch. They didn't want their technology to be associated with a poorer user experience...
... you know, kinda like how Apple has a whole review process and has input on the development of your apps for their platform?
Conflating that as "they wanted to be have some direction on the development of the Watch" is a notable exaggeration.
According to these documents[1], Masimo applied for patents after Apple had already independently developed the software. So it appears that Masimo is in fact, a patent troll.
patent trolls don't sell products based on their patents. Masimo does.You either don't know what a patent troll is or you intend to confuse others here. Either way, shitty behavior on a web forum.
The blood oximeter has been in the Apple Watch for a couple years now it’s just since they stop selling old models once the new one is released is why you’ll read it only affects the two latest models.
> Starting today, Apple will only sell the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, which both came out in September, with a US Customs and Border Protection-approved software workaround that disables blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. These watches will be available at Apple’s physical and online stores, Apple said. They also have part numbers ending in "LW/A," per updated Apple support materials.
Early on there was a lot of concern about 'happy' hypoxia where your blood o2 was dangerously low but people didn't feel critically ill. I'm not sure where that ended up clinically/evidentially as things moved on though.
I'm pretty sure VO2Max on the Apple Watch is measured using heart rate and not blood oxygen. It uses some algorithm to measure how fast your heart rate should be when you walk/hike/run.
It’s interesting for people who live at sea level but do a lot of mountain activities on weekends.
High elevation seems to have a big effect on blood oxygen but does vary person to person. It’s interesting to see one’s own response. I get why my sleep is shitty the first couple days at altitude after seeing the numbers.
I use an oxygen generator in my airplane when oxygen is required by the FAA (above 12500 ft for 30+ minutes, above 14000 ft at all). This has a visual flow-meter on it, but oxygen generators have an additional failure mode where gas is flowing, but is not oxygen enriched, so regular blood oxygen monitoring makes sense. I also monitor when above 12000 ft but before oxygen is required, to decide if I want to get on it early. I actually use a fingertip reader as my primary, but upgraded my Apple watch to an oxygen-capable one to have a backup instrument.
"Apple's rep said that pricing isn't based on a single feature. It's worth noting that the watches haven't become cheaper to make, as they still have the same components as before."
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadThe patent holder is a medical device company that is probably used to much more expensive price points than consumer tech. So having a $300 watch available that does o2 readings as much as a multi thousand dollar medical device is probably something they aren’t super thrilled about being in the market.
> He clashed with managers, demanded multimillion-dollar budgets and wanted the ability to hire his own engineers without approval, Hotelling said in a deposition that was part of a court fight between the companies. After weeks of discussions, Lamego left Apple. After his stint at Apple, Lamego ended up starting his own company, True Wearables. In 2016, he released a device called the Oxxiom, which he called the world’s first continuous and disposable blood-oxygen sensor. Masimo sued the start-up and won a court order blocking it from selling the product.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/the-late-night-ema...
It's not about just any blood oxigen measuring tech, there's various ways you can do it and apparently Apple's newest watch is implementing a very accurate technique developed by Masimo.
Those $20 devices exist because measuring blood oxygen accurately via light refracted through flesh is way easier than via light reflect off the flesh(especially as you move around), which is what this fight is all about.
>Seems odd that they couldn’t use their weight to secure a license.
Or, you know, pay for it? It's not like Apple is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions.
I’m not sure it’s very technologically complex though. Seems like the patent just covers the positioning of a few sensors. It’s about as silly as allowing “multitouch” to be patented…
Link to their smartwatch: https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com/products/masimo-w1 It's actually in the same price range as the Apple Watch Series 9.
So their reluctance to license the patent to Apple may be probably partly about competing with Apple, partly about Apple's alleged bad-faith behavior in past dealings with them, and possibly also disinclination on the part of Apple to pay them for a license. But not about Apple's retail price point per unit.
Without a doubt. I would imagine the number of people that would actually choose to not buy an Apple Watch because it doesn’t have a blood oxygen sensor is really really small. I also believe it’s likely that people considering upgrading an existing Apple Watch will not be deterred by the removal of the feature. My sense is that Apple felt that it had basically nothing to lose. They were going to incur some legal costs in this anyway, why not let that play out? Remove it if you lose the battle. If you lose out on maybe <500 watch sales no biggie, you still have the optics to your customer base that you exhausted all options to keep the feature.
Their devices tie in to hospital EMRs, do brain activity monitoring, and all sorts of other thing’s that aren’t in the same ballpark as an Apple Watch.
Unfortunately, patents can entirely block the use of a technology, even if enormous sums of money are being offered to use the tech.
Was it wrong what Apple did? The moral position is irrelevant. We might as well argue over the color of the bikeshed.
Giants should get body slammed by the DOJ when they treat little companies like this.
Let this be a lesson to every startup: file patents!
That hardly makes sense since Masimo had to disclose that themselves when filling the patent for their “tech”
I know a lot of people that got it for that specific feature. Not one of them got it for COVID or medical reasons.
There are huge communities of people that really like this feature. Notably, many people that do things at altitude.
I won't pretend that my narrow experience is a market maker, but I also won't generalize it to say something as broad as its a feature "nobody cares about now and moves zero units."
Try to think beyond your own experiences and worldview.
This is yet another case where it is easy to fall into the "product manager trap" -- that is: designing for "most people". The trap is to de-feature things where "most people" have only modest engagement, but a few (likely your most evangelical customers) care intensely about that feature. Don't fall into that trap. The goal is to create a feature collection of "the one thing" that each segment cares intensely about, not to create a basket of meh features that everyone finds meh.
The actual case around the patent infringement is still going through the courts and if I understand correctly nothing has been decided with that.
Like other consumer device manufacturers they have a disclaimer that it isn't a medical device, with concomitant implications.
I have not compared with medical equipment but am interested in doing so, or hear from others who have.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10039641/
I have no idea how accurate they are, but they’re very fiddly and don’t produce a reading at all unless conditions are ideal.
The FDA doesn't regulate "over the counter" oxygen sensors (including those you find at a CVS or Walgreens), but that study suggests that if they did, Apple could get an FDA clearance. They already have several FDA clearances for the Apple Watch's ECG, irregular rhythm notifications, and afib history features.
The oxygen sensor is helpful for detecting, among other things, sleep apnea, where 60-80% of people are undiagnosed.
— Apple Watch ECG App
You’re probably thinking of afib, which I believe the watch will alert for.
Apple has more than enough money to license this patent if they so choose.
Apple needs serious competition. And that won't happen with their massive scale until regulators start nipping away at their all-encompassing competitive moat.
The largest companies are barely innovating at all, and that should speak volumes. They're camping their position and raking in easy money from the folks doing all the hard work at the bottom.
Hooray.
> The largest companies are barely innovating at all
Well, Apple had an oxygen monitor integrated into their smartwatch. That's pretty innovative.
... Until the government forces them to stop I guess.
When it's not subsidized by the unrelated business unit profit of a monopoly, well, yeah.
> That's pretty innovative. ... Until the government forces them to stop I guess.
Apple's finally getting the treatment they give to their developers!
Indeed. And that sucks for the consumer. Why should we consider subsidizing less profitable beneficial offerings with more profitable offerings a bad thing? That's how every charity the industrial barons put together that still maintain some of the civic spaces in the US came to be. The steel boom funding a library and an opera house and all that.
Regulators are the worst way to create competition. Apple has extremely serious competition in the form of Android. iPhone's global market share just hit its highest ever, at 20.1%[0].
> The largest companies are barely innovating at all
If you don't see any mobile phone innovation that's happened, I don't know what to tell you. Go back only 20 years and you'll see an incredible difference.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/apple-hits-all-time-...
Complete and utter hogwash!
> Apple has extremely serious competition in the form of Android.
This is a duopoly of devices, and you are forced to buy into their fiefdoms.
Each company taxes every single form of commerce, transaction, and customer connection on their devices. Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
Smartphones are used to navigate, take photos, find dates, order food (at restaurants!), pay at point of sale, schedule events, network, email, do work, find jobs, order kitchen supplies, do workouts, ...
These are more important than the internet itself at this point, and there are only two companies. They choose what you can do, what you can deploy, when you can deploy, what tech you can use, and they tax you 30%. You have to fit into their payments and login stack, jump through their upgrade hurdles, and they're nice enough to let competitors place ads against you.
I won't even begin to speak towards the insane anti-consumer behavior they have, like green bubble fomo for children and 3rd party parts DRMing.
These devices - smartphones - need to be regulated with the force of every country's legal and judicial power.
> iPhone's global market share just hit its highest ever, at 20.1%[0].
It's over 50% in the US, and they're egregious to US businesses and consumers.
Because of the companies you say are "barely innovating at all". Schrödinger would like a word.
> Each company taxes every single form of commerce, transaction, and customer connection on their devices. Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
You're conflating the device being essential (well, useful, not essential) with the apps. My banking app is free, for example, or any shopping apps I have. How many of these essential apps are paid?
> They choose what you can do, what you can deploy, when you can deploy, what tech you can use, and they tax you 30%.
You're thinking of governments. You choose to buy a phone as a convenience value add to your life. You must pay 30% in tax, regardless of what you get back.
> These are more important than the internet itself at this point
They aren't. They need the internet to work. And you can do lots of nonessentials with them, but lots of essential things can be done with a Web browser, and if a service is locked behind an app store, that's a service delivery problem, not an app store problem.
> there are only two companies
There aren't only two companies. There are lots of companies making phones. There are two main OSes though, it's true. And with those, nothing stops anyone creating a third, e.g. PinePhone, except ability and financial environment.
The two patents describe a device with 4 leds, a temperature sensor, and a processor.
The invention of the pulse ox was innovation. Putting it on a portable device and increasing the number of LEDs to 4 is not the level of contribution that really justifies 20 years of legal protection.
Masimo has zero interest in increasing the degree of competition in the industry. Also the patent in question itself seems dubious, and it’s rather silly that it’s even valid
Patents are why corporations can get paid for people inventing nice things
So in this case, the taxpayer is paying good money to enforce a measure that hurts them. Why should they be forced to do that? What is the upside in this case? It is purposefully slowing down life-saving technological innovation. I don't see why it is believed that this is helping progress.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry#History
This court decision comes with a body count. It is a bad outcome. Nobody should support it.
https://ipfray.com/u-s-trade-agency-itc-incredibly-portrays-...
There’s an allegation the real reason for the patents/suite is retaliation; that Apple pissed off billionaire owner by not partnering with him and instead hiring away top employees.
That company is not that much better than a patent troll and AFAIK they didn’t even agree to license their “technology” (they wanted to have control over the development of the Apple Watch instead).
I'd say it's only really useful for people that have a particular concern around those levels.
Appreciate that this isn't what the article is about, but I don't think it will impact sales too much.
Apple now need to go and implement their own Stress or Heart Rate Variability score. That in my mind is a bigger gap.
For example, a minimum SpO2 of 70% during sleep indicates your blood is not oxygenating properly for some reason during that period. Doesn't straight up prove it's due to sleep apnea but you can definitely assume it is and be right more often than not. The full polysomnogram also measures air flow, sleep architecture and more.
I tried to bring the case to my doctor that my Cpap machine setup was not working correctly. His criteria is “do you fall down when you walk because you are out of breath. Then you should be concerned about your lungs and you don’t want to be around anyone with issues like that. “
I would welcome HRV tracking but that will require a better sensor or an additional one. The blood oxygen sensor requires 15 seconds of no movement. ECG requires 30 seconds of wearing watch and holding the crown.
I believe the Apple watch does have the capability to monitor HRV as I think its monitored in the Apple health app for Apple watch wearers. HRV I believe is monitored consistently throughout the day and at night.
HRV is an interesting field. Too high and it can indicate arrhythmia. Too low is also not good.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/21773-heart-r...
If it is accurate enough, then the particular number isn't necessarily the important, its whether it an measure the same number consistently, then track movements from the baseline. Which is why they often have a % up/down accuracy figure.
Doesn't the sleep apnea machine itself measure whether you are breathing? If the concern is it may not be accurate, the gold standard is probably an in lab sleep study while wearing the machine, but insurance may not feel it is medically necessary and may not pay.
I’ve had a sleep study which determined I need a Cpap machine but they never did the study while wearing it and my readings vary greatly from 3 to 30 AHI per hour with it on.
In hindsight, I have exceedingly “freakishly” large lungs which may explain the slow breathing. My concern has been waking up with a daily headache which has been suggested by other doctors to be due to uncontrolled sleep apnea.
(Apple's implementation is not super accurate because SpO2 measurement from the wrist is fraught to start with -- it's usually measured from the finger -- and it is biased by skin colors etc.).
Prolonged low blood oxygen means insufficient oxygen is being carried to organs and tissues. Apart from sleep apnea, it can make pre-existing conditions worse.
My ophthalmologist tells me that chronically low blood oxygen can cause problems to organs like the retina which is sensitive to oxygen deprivation.
This is apologist. Masimo claims, and multiple court cases have agreed that Apple did, in fact, use patented technology without payment (and frankly, even as an all Apple person, their behavior in this whole situation was entirely shitty).
Couching this all as “claims” gives Apple a benefit of the doubt, similar to the people who refer to Masimo as “nothing but patent trolls”. Previous discussions here had multiple people referring to them being “butthurt that Apple hadn’t offered to acquire them”, or that they “lacked the product chops to bring their own solution to market”.
Also AFAIK Masimo didn’t just want to be paid they wanted to have some direct on the development of Apple Watch.
Also… the patents themselves seem like a joke and shouldn’t be valid.
They had concerns about some of Apple's design and functionality decisions around the sensor on the watch. They didn't want their technology to be associated with a poorer user experience...
... you know, kinda like how Apple has a whole review process and has input on the development of your apps for their platform?
Conflating that as "they wanted to be have some direction on the development of the Watch" is a notable exaggeration.
[1] https://ipfray.com/u-s-trade-agency-itc-incredibly-portrays-...
Any hopes of enabling this feature some time down the line? Assuming they didn’t pull hardware out if the watches.
> Starting today, Apple will only sell the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, which both came out in September, with a US Customs and Border Protection-approved software workaround that disables blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. These watches will be available at Apple’s physical and online stores, Apple said. They also have part numbers ending in "LW/A," per updated Apple support materials.
But I’ve never understood or cared much about my blood oxygen reading.
I’m curious - did anyone out there really use that stat? If so what for?
Was useful for the couple of times I had covid too.
Which is to say it’s very useful to me a few times a month. I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy a Massimo watch for the feature though.
High elevation seems to have a big effect on blood oxygen but does vary person to person. It’s interesting to see one’s own response. I get why my sleep is shitty the first couple days at altitude after seeing the numbers.
Turns out I needed a CPAP, which was confirmed by a complicated medical contraption I had to sleep with.
may not be enough for the ITC