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Apple Watch Series 4 Fall Detection Feature is Off by Default Unless You're 65+

gavroche said:
Cant recall ever seeing anyone over 65 with an Apple Watch...
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I’m over 65 and teach classes at my local library on iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and iPod) to retirees. I have several students who have bought Apple Watches and are interested in the new health features.
 
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I see Apple Watches everywhere. All the time. I see older people wearing them. All the time. And I see older people that are capable of learning to use technology, all the time.

I agree the default should be on. I also think that no matter how hard a reviewer might try to create a fall that the watch will detect, it is likely extremely difficult if not impossible to recreate what happens during a real fall.
 
boomer11 said:
i would absolutely get this for my parents but based on the reviews so far of fall detection, it seems more like a gimmick than something you can depend on
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It’s really difficult to fake a real fall. You naturally try to brace yourself when you fall, and your body tenses up in preparation for impact. This is all done unconsciously. When you "pretend" fall, all of those unconscious actions that occur, now occur consciously... And really are different than the unconscious actions.

This all to say, that the various tests people have been performing are far from reflective of an actual fall.
 
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My elderly mother had multiple falls at home, and upon watching the recent video's about what type of fall, or rather how HARD a fall has to be, to trigger this fall detection, I can quite confidently say, unfortunately this new watch would not have been of any use to her whatsoever.
Her falls, whilst hard for her, and landed her in hospital would not have been hard and sudden enough to have gotton help for her.
I urge people not to rely on giving an elderly person one of these and assuming it will be enough to get help to someone after a fall.
 
noraa said:
It’s really difficult to fake a real fall. You naturally try to brace yourself when you fall, and your body tenses up in preparation for impact. This is all done unconsciously. When you "pretend" fall, all of those unconscious actions that occur, now occur consciously... And really are different than the unconscious actions.

This all to say, that the various tests people have been performing are far from reflective of an actual fall.
Click to expand...

The fall detection is based on accelerometer and gyroscope. It shouldn't matter how you brace yourself or what body part hits the ground or how tense you are.

You can't seriously believe the watch knows when you're faking it. BTW some of falls on YouTube are exaggerated just to try to activate the thing. If those aren't detected then I have serious doubts tripping and falling in your house will reliably work....
 
Fortimir said:
Rollercoaster falls also have at totally different force pattern than tripping or slipping. Probably wouldn't activate in the first place.
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You can do a decent job detecting a fall because motion and acceleration stop suddenly. There may be a bounce as well. But combining it with activity is the key because it’ll reduce the positives. It’d be interesting to see if it can differentiate between a fall and a tuck n roll.
 
Fortimir said:
Does it though? It's a heavily advertised feature. Being disabled by default doesn't appear to be obvious or clear.
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It’s enabled by default for people for whom this scenario — falling, and then being unable to get up — is likely to occur. Younger people don’t fall as frequently in the first place, and they’re also more likely to be able to help themselves.

Fortimir said:
But most importantly, people of any age can fall and take advantage of this. If the algorithm is good enough and hard enough to fake, I don't see the disadvantage for always being on.
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But it isn’t. It has false positives and false negatives, as mentioned in the article.
 
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Fortimir said:
Does it though? It's a heavily advertised feature. Being disabled by default doesn't appear to be obvious or clear.

But most importantly, people of any age can fall and take advantage of this. If the algorithm is good enough and hard enough to fake, I don't see the disadvantage for always being on.
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Maybe they should attached a beta label to it (or at least pointed out that is disabled by default for under-65s). But given that it can call emergency services automatically, it's not a bad idea to roll out this feature slowly (by age-limiting/disabling by default) to see how accurate it will be in real life.
 
They should make it an option during the set up process. That way no-one is going to miss it.
 
gavroche said:
Cant recall ever seeing anyone over 65 with an Apple Watch...
Click to expand...

Hey, so you understand Apple's motivation for adding this feature!
[doublepost=1537782246][/doublepost]Apple Hotline. I understand that you fell and you Apple Watch did not emit an emergency call? Can you send us your crashlog, please?
 
This is and EKG two of major features of the AW4. Apple has always been a master of identifying its target audience. So is this not a clue that the target audience of apple products are slowly shifting from hip youngsters to senior citizen. Is this a case of the Apple management team producing products/features they themselves would like to use in the future.
[doublepost=1537783062][/doublepost]
gavroche said:
Cant recall ever seeing anyone over 65 with an Apple Watch...
Click to expand...

Apparently you and your friends missed the memo on who the target audience for apple products really are:)
 
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Makes sense to me you should be 65+ before it's turned on. The amount of times it would trigger with people doing exercise or sports would be silly. Hopefully it's useful for someone, though I suspect it'll still result in more unnecessary emergency call outs with little perceivable benefit. Such is the way with pretty much any tech assistants and helpers.
 
noraa said:
It’s really difficult to fake a real fall. You naturally try to brace yourself when you fall, and your body tenses up in preparation for impact. This is all done unconsciously. When you "pretend" fall, all of those unconscious actions that occur, now occur consciously... And really are different than the unconscious actions.

This all to say, that the various tests people have been performing are far from reflective of an actual fall.
Click to expand...

I look forward to these idiots 'testing' the ECG alerts. Probably get people to jump out of cupboards at them or something. Maybe when they've finished trying to out-science Apple on the watch, they get on with demonstrating how we know the Earth to be banana shaped, or perhaps testing theories of gravity by throwing themselves off buildings.
 
Main selling feature 1) ECG. "Coming soon*". *Oh, only in the USA.
Main selling feature 2) Fall detection. Off by default.

Airpower "coming soon". Airpods 2 "coming soon". Apple Pay Cash "coming soon", Duel sim "coming soon". Modular MacPro "coming soon". Multiple face time chat "coming soon". New Apple maps "Coming soon", Homepod Stereo Pair "Wasnt available at launch". Portrait mode "Wasnt available at Launch". Apple Pay, "Took generations of iPhone to arrive in most 1st world countries". etc.

I have seen Kickstarter scam products with more deliverables.
 
Well, i think Fall Detection is a wonderful idea to call emergency itself in case of people who experience with the following condition is more likely to fall down without knowing...

i don't agree with the age 65+ - it can happened to all ages...

Heart Attack
Smoking
Stroke
Diabetes
Faint
Car Crash

I wish apple add a room & body temperature, that would be cool right :D
 
boomer11 said:
The fall detection is based on accelerometer and gyroscope. It shouldn't matter how you brace yourself or what body part hits the ground or how tense you are.

You can't seriously believe the watch knows when you're faking it. BTW some of falls on YouTube are exaggerated just to try to activate the thing. If those aren't detected then I have serious doubts tripping and falling in your house will reliably work....
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I absolutely expect the watch to know. Did you think he looked like he really fell? If it had detected most of what he did as a real fall, then I would have thought this feature a gimmick. A toy, made with none of the science and analysis Apple claimed. When you do science, when you gather data, you learn things. And it seems you can learn to differentiate between a proper fall and some twit doing some strange things with NO real investigation as to how the body behaves during a fall. And an exaggerated fall is also not a real fall and with enough data you can tell the difference.
 
Fortimir said:
Does it though? It's a heavily advertised feature. Being disabled by default doesn't appear to be obvious or clear.

But most importantly, people of any age can fall and take advantage of this. If the algorithm is good enough and hard enough to fake, I don't see the disadvantage for always being on.
Click to expand...
It makes sense if you know why it’s important in the first place:

157zpsm.jpg


Vertebral compression fractures follow a similar distribution. This is due to loss of mineral bone density, i.e. osteopenia/osteoporosis. While of course anyone can fall from a standing height and get injured, they’re just auto-enabling it for the population it’s statistically most likely to help. You’re right, the perfect algorithm would be perfect, but below the cutoff age there’d be statistically more people having to either dismiss the alert or deal with an unnecessary 911 call.
 
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