Is "snatching a phone and running off" a common enough problem in some regions that this is worth having? Or is this a feature chasing after fears of the bogeyman, leading to concrete inconveniences like this?
Societies often try to address low-probability-high-cost risks.
City fire departments, car seatbelts, motorbike and bicycle helmets, video doorbells/home CCTV, car steering wheel locks etc etc.
The dangers are uncommon enough that the vast majority of people will live their entire life without ever having their house burn down or crashing their car. But they're common enough that in a city of several million people, the fire department might attend 100 incidents a day.
As someone from South America I find it interesting that people born and raised in developed countries would think that phone-snatching detection is a bogeyman feature. Over there it's a given that your belongings can stop being yours at any given moment just 'cause.
I found this doozy from someone trying to test out the feature:
> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.
Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.
Adding “running” to the list of things that Google engineers apparently don’t do.
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.
At risk of summoning an army of vibe coders, I wish map apps were more configurable and let you set "I'm happy to walk 20 min" or "someone can drive me a few miles and drop me off"
It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.
My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.
Speaking of trains, that's another thing they don't do. The auto-snapping of current location consistently snaps to whatever road or goat track it can find nearby, while equally consistently refusing to snap to the railroad they have mapped.
Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.
My Apple Watch asks me if I am doing an outdoor walk everytime I am at Disney World. It sometimes takes 15 minutes to notice. Imho if its going to ask me this it should know every time I get to Disney that I am going to walk all day long and account for it.
A lot of tech is overfit to the product manager role in tech companies. One of the side effects of living in a bubble.
My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.
I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.
Google's mapper has an option for whether to minimize walking. Turned on, it will do things like this, prioritizing the route with the least walking. it would be quite willing to do this sort of thing. Turned off, it will prioritize based on arrival time.
There is a maximum walking distance, I don't know the limit but it's certainly more than 10 minutes. I have never managed to trigger it other than by asking for a route to a location miles beyond any transit options. And it did provide me a route across the Grand Canyon. (Most people are not doing a rim-to-rim in a single day.) (But then it was totally bonkers--offered me a bike route with a time that was preposterous. Looking at it--tiny portion by bike, then walk your bike--the standard rim-to-rim route. But it assumed bicycle speed. No--try that, you're going over.)
I'm still astounded by how poorly Gmaps handles Seattle ferries. The time and routing calculations always assume the best case scenario.
I've had it insist I take the ferry because it estimated a 5 minute time savings, when in reality there is a minimum 3hr wait for a boat.
This I can work around, but the truly awful behavior is that if you pull off for gas and then get back on the highway, it will automatically recalculate to the 'shorter' ferry route.
The only solution I have found is to add additional stops along your preferred route.
While I am on the subject, Google Maps seems to be somewhat aware of big awkward train stations which take ages to navigate, and applies a time penalty. That's good (though also a bit inconsistent). However, it seems to assume that metro stations are of zero size; you go in the door, and immediately get on any line. This is very not true in some places.
This might just be realistic about the median American's tolerance for walking. Most Americans live in suburbs that are not walkable. At least, I know my own tolerance for walking is very abnormal for an American, and it's due to having lived in walking-oriented cities like Berkeley.
Its also possible that its optimised for least walking for other reasons. If you were disabled in any way (like a wheel chair) or even an old lady maybe this is the better route. Or if was during a huge snowstorm or heatwave?
Don't forget driving in the bay area. Google maps will happily recommend entering 580/880/80 at Emeryville and going on 580 east instead of the much better entrance at 36 street that's 5 minutes out of the way.
Google Maps has had glitched-out building outlines overlapping rivers in my city for years. I don't trust it at all. Citymapper is nice for public transit directions in cities.
But then, another Google product, Pixel Watch, has the bonkers default that if you just take a walk, like I normally do on most days, it considers that a "workout" of a dedicated type "walk" that needs to be tracked. It would vibrate rather annoyingly too. So basically every time I go outside to grab a lunch, that's a "workout"? But at least you can turn that off.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in Mexico City. I had to abandon Google Maps there. The transit system has an excellent metro, a solid BRT setup, some electric tram buses that are fine and then the purple buses that run irregular routes, don’t always accept the transit card that the rest of the system uses, and are by far the most unsafe option, such that even locals won’t ride them unless they have no choice.
Google will always route me on the purple buses. Even when the metro is faster. Their directions in Mexico City make zero sense.
It's a very American take yes. I also like to walk more on either side. Simply switching to walking is usually not the solution because I usually need some public transit to cover the majority is the distance.
My favourite, while being stranded on a trail with a broken bike: teleport across a lake, drive fifteen minutes, then hop on a bus. Apparently you are SOL if you don't have a car.
There are definitely better apps out there, unfortunately my area requires Maps for transit data.
My main two puzzles with Google Maps are:
- on my timeline I have a few driving and motorcycling, and I have neither of those, I only bike to work. But my puzzle here is: how do they know that someone is riding a motorcycle or a car?
- when I ask it for walking routes, the estimated time is always way longer than my walking time. I get to the destination in half of time. So what do they do with all the tracking?
The directions tend to be conservative in their assumptions. Like you won't walk/bike through a business parking lot to save 10 minutes of walking around the block.
I refuse to go running with a phone - too heavy, and too distracting, running outside is one of the few places I _escape_ the phone for a bit. So I made sure to get a fitness tracker with onboard GPS. It syncs to the phone later, when I return, which then uploads workout data to the vendor's cloud.
I look at the results on my PC with a web browser, phone is a passive middleman and is never touched directly for fitness tracking.
In Sweden where I live you need to use the digital national ID whenever you make a credit card transaction via some app, for example when buying a bus ticket, so you need to have it with you at all times. But with the ID you can also take a quick loan and transfer all the money to a foreign bank basically ruining your life as the bank take no responsibility if the ID is used during the transaction.
- Warming up for a run: Possible agitated tweaker, possible crisis
- Going for a run after midnight: Evasive solitary movement after dark
- Sprinting the last block home: Flight behavior consistent with shoplifting offense
- Running with a hood up in the rain: Deliberate biometric obfuscation
- Two runners meeting at a corner and leaving in opposite directions: Brief contact event, possible hand-to-hand
If your heart rate is up, Fitbits will recognize pretty much any rhythmic activity as some sort of exercise and start tracking. "Spinning" is a common one.
someone DID snatch the phone and then run off with it, but if it was up to me I would have mine without any gyros or gps sensors in it, in the first place, and instead a bunch of simpler features that I can only wish for.
the list of instant emergency activities now includes, sking, dancing,and running with automatic file screening for pedo content and who knows what else in state of trembling readiness to report and testify as the new default, you.
A good example of how a wrong assumption ruins something (in tech, products, and life in general). I love the feature idea, but the assumption that a sudden brisk run equals theft obviously ruined it. Well, easy for us to say in retrospect, but my point is: don't make assumptions, test your theories, challenge them, confirm them. Scientific method rules.
Such a silly complaint. Just file a request with Google for a run, and if you give them a few hours advance notice and verify that it's you through a video call with their AI authentication service, they'll put you right in the queue and tell you the range of slots that you're likely to get one of. You can use the time between now and then to get approval on your route.
In a somewhat similar vein, I find that when I use my Apple Watch to track a hike, it will frequently auto pause or ask me if I've finished when I'm climbing slowly up a steep ascent. It annoys the heck out of me because that's often when I'm working hardest. My watch is also tracking my heart rate - and I think it's pretty safe to assume that if my HR is holding steady at 150 BPM then I have not stopped for a break.
Or at least give me the option to turn off Auto Pause/Auto End just for hiking workouts - instead I have to turn off the feature for all workouts. But I suppose that level of customization would be very un-Apple.
The world of appliances is littered with these "smart" features that purport to make life more convenient, but are implemented so crudely that they end up causing more trouble than they solve.
If you are serious about health tracking, get a device that specializes in that and knows what they are doing -- get a polar. They publish papers on the science behind their technology. Many professional athletes do heart tracking with polar devices. Even Garmin isn't as good being it is a GPS company first. If you want mediocre, by all means get an apple device. Their goal is to sell you stuff and keep you hooked in the ecosystem with a veil of convenience.
Fwiw, polar let's you tune the parameters of when to start and stop recording.
I'm sitting at my desk browsing my phone and it gets locked with the theft protection alert. This only started happening in recent weeks. It's super annoying :/
I intentionally did not set up theft detection exactly because I really don't need to get locked out of my life randomly because of inferences made based on someone else's assumptions about my device's accelerometers.
Galaxy watch chirped “Great, you’re moving again” during a flight with heavy turbulence. I was ignoring the bumpiness until that alert put me on high alert and freaked me out.
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[ 0.34 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] threadCity fire departments, car seatbelts, motorbike and bicycle helmets, video doorbells/home CCTV, car steering wheel locks etc etc.
The dangers are uncommon enough that the vast majority of people will live their entire life without ever having their house burn down or crashing their car. But they're common enough that in a city of several million people, the fire department might attend 100 incidents a day.
> After looking over Google’s advice, my key takeaway was that thieves are in much better shape than me, and run both longer and faster than this nerdy writer has in more than two decades.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-theft-detection-loc...
Personally, the main situation I'm concerned about is on a bus or train, where someone grabs your phone right and exits right before the door closes. But I already avoid spending a lot of time on the street with my head buried in my phone.
Where it joins “walking”. Google Maps will suggest almost arbitrarily bonkers public transport directions to avoid walking. Personal favourite: the sensible way to get from my house to work, unless the weather is terrible, is six minutes on a train and a 15 min walk. Google Maps would, generally, prefer that I spend 15 mins on the train going mostly the wrong direction and 15 minutes on a tram, then a five minute walk. It will also contemplate a ten minute walk, ten minutes walking being within the threshold Google deems physically possible, plus an arbitrary amount of time on a rather slow bus. Apple Maps and Transit are better at this.
It would also be nice to have a configurable transportation choice for the time to leave notice. Because some things I’ll walk to, some I’ll take transit and some I’ll drive and Apple seems to want be to just pick one and only use that.
My other map complaint is that there’s no indication of how much tolls are when comparing toll vs non-toll routes. Because if it’s $5 to save ten minutes, no thanks but for a buck, maybe I’ll do it.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/JHQPdvSStnr6jfm77
Sure, there's not much need for navigation in that situation, but if you're trying to be smart regarding where I am, maybe take into account if I'm travelling at 200 kph before plonking me on a twisty gravel road.
My Apple Watch is set up by default to assume any 15-minute walk is a "workout" and interrupt me to ask if I wanted to record it. No, I'm just going to the store, what is this "workout" nonsense. My Oura Ring was worse, it would assume any walk duration is noteworthy and my timeline would be a jumbled mess of "workouts". But these would be reasonable assumptions for a mostly sedentary office worker living in the suburbs.
I remember when a Google feature was announced long ago, some of the headlining features was plane ticket support and currency conversion. The average American gets on a plane once a year, to a place where they accept American dollars, and wouldn't ever care about these features. But these are important if you're in your 30s and travel is an important part of your life for either business or vacations.
There is a maximum walking distance, I don't know the limit but it's certainly more than 10 minutes. I have never managed to trigger it other than by asking for a route to a location miles beyond any transit options. And it did provide me a route across the Grand Canyon. (Most people are not doing a rim-to-rim in a single day.) (But then it was totally bonkers--offered me a bike route with a time that was preposterous. Looking at it--tiny portion by bike, then walk your bike--the standard rim-to-rim route. But it assumed bicycle speed. No--try that, you're going over.)
Not with a phone, no. Why would you take your phone with you when you run? It’s bulky and annoying.
If you really need to be reachable or to be able to pay for something in emergencies, that’s what smart watches are for.
If I select public transport yes, it will suggest public transport ways to get there. I can't see how this is a bug in any way
If I select walking it will show me how to walk there no matter if it takes 15 min or 15 days.
I can choose which i want depending on if i'm tired or weather is bad...
https://techcrunch.com/2011/07/03/sexual-activity-tracked-by...
But then, another Google product, Pixel Watch, has the bonkers default that if you just take a walk, like I normally do on most days, it considers that a "workout" of a dedicated type "walk" that needs to be tracked. It would vibrate rather annoyingly too. So basically every time I go outside to grab a lunch, that's a "workout"? But at least you can turn that off.
Google will always route me on the purple buses. Even when the metro is faster. Their directions in Mexico City make zero sense.
There are definitely better apps out there, unfortunately my area requires Maps for transit data.
/s
I look at the results on my PC with a web browser, phone is a passive middleman and is never touched directly for fitness tracking.
- Warming up for a run: Possible agitated tweaker, possible crisis
- Going for a run after midnight: Evasive solitary movement after dark
- Sprinting the last block home: Flight behavior consistent with shoplifting offense
- Running with a hood up in the rain: Deliberate biometric obfuscation - Two runners meeting at a corner and leaving in opposite directions: Brief contact event, possible hand-to-hand
Score increase the darker you get.
Or at least give me the option to turn off Auto Pause/Auto End just for hiking workouts - instead I have to turn off the feature for all workouts. But I suppose that level of customization would be very un-Apple.
The world of appliances is littered with these "smart" features that purport to make life more convenient, but are implemented so crudely that they end up causing more trouble than they solve.
Fwiw, polar let's you tune the parameters of when to start and stop recording.
How often do you go on runs? At most 3x a day?
Personally i’d rather err on the side of it locking.
Wouldn't the simplistic improvement be to monitor Bluetooth single strength?
Is this feature able to be disabled? I'm slow walking my path to de-Google and use a Linux device for music and audio books while exercising.