and Apple failing with their argument "this is a watch, not a patient monitor. Thus we can use what's described in the patents".
Your characterization of the damage-limitation argument as Apple's primary defense is misleading.
Apple DOES NOT argue that they are allowed to use Masimo's patent because they are a consumer device. What you said above is patently (pun intended) false.
Apple claims to not be a patient monitor only as a contingent defense should their primary defense be rejected. This is done to limit the scope of damages. It is essentially the same thing as if you are being sued for battery, you might simultaneously claim "I did not commit battery" and "Even if I did, you cannot claim bruising your arm requires you to buy a new car". The secondary defense against the expansiveness of damage claims cannot be construed as an admission of infringement.
Apple's primary defense argument is that they do not infringe the patent; they do monitoring in a different way. They use a different LED topology, different wavelengths of light, different rejection strategies for ambient light, different optical isolation mechanics, different tissue modeling, different algorithms, proprietary DSP pipelines, as well as other substantial differences. Their tech is different architecturally, optically, electronically, and algorithmically.
Unfortunately for Apple, the patent courts are not about truth. They are simply about settling disputes. Apple's defense gets evaluated by people who have little to no technical qualifications to make such decisions. Neither the judges in the ITC case, nor citizen juries are technically competent. They get swayed by narrative, obfuscation, rhetoric, emotion, credibility heuristics, and cognitive biases–the same way as people do on this forum.
