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Original Apple Watch Health Features Were Dropped Due to Consistency Issues

PlainviewX

PlainviewX

macrumors 6502a
Oct 4, 2013
907
1,860
Rocketman said:
If the "black hole" sells a few tens of millions gold plated and rose gold plated watches, then I suppose it will be covered. In the mean time they wrote off a large R&D expense.
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That's not going to happen, ever. You're tens of millions off in your hypothetical estimation.

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The story reads that it doesn't do heart rate monitoring. They can't mean all monitoring like heart rate. On Apple's site they still mention it doing heart rate monitoring.

"Heart Rate Sensor. The custom heart rate sensor in Apple Watch detects your heart rate during workouts. When you’re not in a workout, Apple Watch uses an accelerometer, along with the GPS and Wi‑Fi in your iPhone, to measure all kinds of physical movement, from simply standing up to running to catch the bus."
 
kdarling

kdarling

macrumors P6
Jun 9, 2007
17,373
5,924
First university coding class = 47 years ago
UnionVGF said:
The story reads that it doesn't do heart rate monitoring. They can't mean all monitoring like heart rate. On Apple's site they still mention it doing heart rate monitoring.
Click to expand...

It's about two different types of heart rate sensors: beat and pulse.

The story says it doesn't do an EKG, which is a readout of the actual electrical heart beat. For that, you need an electrical connection, and they had a problem with that being reliable due to loose bands and hairy arms.

So the actual watch has only an optical based blood pulse sensor, which can be quite different from the heartbeat.

For extreme example, there are types of tachycardia where the heart is actually beating at say, 180 times per minute, but because they're close double beats, the remote blood pulse that a watch on an arm sees is only 90 times a minute, which would read as fairly normal.

--

It should also be noted that while EKGs are distinctive enough to serve as identification, a pulse is not. That's why the conjectures that the watch will use your own pulse to recognize if it has been removed, are silly. It might look for A pulse, but not YOUR pulse.
 
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PlainviewX

PlainviewX

macrumors 6502a
Oct 4, 2013
907
1,860
kdarling said:
It's about two different types of heart rate sensors: beat and pulse.

The story says it doesn't do an EKG, which is a readout of the actual electrical heart beat. For that, you need an electrical connection, and they had a problem with that being reliable due to loose bands and hairy arms.

So the actual watch has only an optical based blood pulse sensor, which can be quite different from the heartbeat.

For extreme example, there are types of tachycardia where the heart is actually beating at say, 180 times per minute, but because they're close double beats, the remote blood pulse that a watch on an arm sees is only 90 times a minute, which would read as fairly normal.

--

It should also be noted that while EKGs are distinctive enough to serve as identification, a pulse is not. That's why the conjectures that the watch will use your own pulse to recognize if it has been removed, are silly. It might look for A pulse, but not YOUR pulse.
Click to expand...

Understood. It will still do basic heart rate monitoring as other wrist monitors do which are wholly unreliable. I doubt that Apple was able to pass the likes of Pulse when it comes to heart rate monitoring.
 
B

bevon7

macrumors newbie
Jul 16, 2012
6
2
Sensors stilled listed on Apple's web site

Heart rate sensor, accelerometer, etc. still listed in the Apple Watch section of Apple's web site. It seems logical (pointy ears wiggle here) Apple would remove details about the watch's health sensors from the site if they were removed from the watch.
 
pmbooks

pmbooks

macrumors 6502
May 23, 2005
307
63
California
will these features be available as future firmware updates?

I assume none of these features will be available through firmware updates [for the first gen watches]. Anyone have a sense of this?
 
iPadCary

iPadCary

macrumors 6502a
Mar 6, 2012
602
211
NEW YORK CITY
bobob said:
You can't think of a single other reason Apple may have chosen
not to include 3G in the first generation iPhone in 2007 other than deliberately hobbling it?
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No, I can't. Nor could any other reasonable person.
But, undoubtadly, you could.

Keirasplace said:
My coffee quip only related to the frenetic nature of your first post.
I don't care what self imposed tax comforts your coffee buying habit.
Click to expand...

I'm glad you feel that way. Besides, there's no such thing as "too much" coffee.
Or God. There's no such thing as that, either.
 
Rogifan

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,132
31,175
I like Gruber's take down of this WSJ story (they were the ones who reported in June 2014 that the Watch would ship in 2014 and contain 10 health and fitness sensors):

http://daringfireball.net/2015/02/the_artful_dodge
If we’re to take Wakabayashi’s reporting, and his sources “familiar with the matter”, at face value, here’s what we’d need to believe:

  • As of 20 June 2014, Apple planned on shipping Apple Watch by the end of the year — which means October, in order to hit the holiday season. i.e., that in June, Apple thought they were four months away from shipping.

  • In June, Apple thought the watch would contain “more than 10 sensors to track and monitor health and fitness data”, but by September they’d abandoned most of them and still didn’t expect to ship until “early 2015”. In June they expected to ship a watch with more than 10 sensors by October, but by September they’d scrapped all those sensors other than the accelerometer and heart rate monitor and moved the shipping deadline back by six months.

  • In September, when Apple thought it was seven months or less away from shipping, they deemed it strategic to pre-announce the Apple Watch. But in June, when, according to Wakabayashi’s “people familiar with the matter”, they thought they were only four or five months away from shipping, they did not pre-announce the watch at WWDC.
Click to expand...

The WSJ first reported these 10 sensors last June. So we're supposed to believe within the span of 3 MONTHS Apple decided to scrap most of the sensors and then were scrambling to figure out another use case for the watch? So digital touch, taptic engine, 3rd party extensions, Pay support were all things cobbled together in a couple months?

And if the watch was supposed to come out in 2014 (and Apple was still planning for that in June) why wouldn't the watch and WatchKit SDK have come out at WWDC? Wouldn't WWDC be the perfect place to announce a new SDK?Seems to me it was the WSJ that had bad sources or sources with bad information. And for all we know they're getting bad information now.
 
bobob

bobob

macrumors 68040
Jan 11, 2008
3,437
2,520
bobob said:
You can't think of a single other reason Apple may have chosen not to include 3G in the first generation iPhone in 2007 other than deliberately hobbling it?
Click to expand...

iPadCary said:
No, I can't. Nor could any other reasonable person.
Click to expand...

Too late.

zedsdead said:
One of the other reasons was because ATT didn't have a network built out at all. They waited a year because it would have been a problem anyway.

Another reason was to hit the $20 unlimited Data for the 1st phone so it didn't sound expensive.
Click to expand...
 
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