I love how Apple is stepping up to help with the face shields and working with Google on tracking the virus but I’d like to see some user facing features that enable each of us to leverage our Apple devices to adjust our lives to this reality.
I think there’s such a tremendous wasted opportunity if they don’t work on FaceTime to make it cross platform or at least available on the web. Zoom is eating everyone’s lunch and it’s an app with a terrible track record of privacy. Apple could also use the opportunity to make FaceTime a work tool, enabling you to share your screen and allowing an organizer to take the lead on the microphone and choose one speaker at a time to talk.
Apple Watch has the ability to measure blood oxygenation which is a telltale sign of the virus. The feature was withheld due to inaccurate results but perhaps they could track larger swings without focusing on exact numbers. More directly, while the Watch doesn’t have a thermometer, your body’s core temperature affects the flow of blood when your vessels are constricted. This too can be measured by the Watch. Many of us have health devices strapped to our wrists. Let’s make use of that data.
I know this happened so suddenly but I hope that Apple has reprioritized its projects and is now instead focusing on things that will help us all get through this with the use of our technology and that we’ll see the results of that work very soon.
