Apple Watch's Life-Saving Potential Highlighted in Suspenseful '911' Ad

[MacRumors]

Apple today shared a new ad titled "911" that emphasizes the Apple Watch's life-saving potential during emergencies.

The suspenseful ad revolves around three individuals named Amanda, Jason, and Jim who were each able to get help by dialing 911 using the Apple Watch, with the ad highlighting excerpts from their frantic phone calls with dispatchers. Amanda, for example, said that her car had flipped over and was starting to fill up with water.

Fortunately, the ad concludes that all three individuals were rescued in minutes. "These are just three of many incredible stories where people were able to get help using Apple Watch," wrote Apple in the video's description.

The ad suggests that buying an Apple Watch could help save your life in emergencies where you don't have access to your iPhone by allowing you to dial 911 from your wrist. Apple Watch has an Emergency SOS feature that allows you to quickly get in touch with emergency services by pressing and holding the watch's side button and dragging your finger on the Emergency SOS slider that appears on the screen.

Importantly, if you have an Apple Watch without cellular connectivity, using Emergency SOS requires either having an iPhone nearby or the Apple Watch needs to be connected to a known Wi-Fi network and you must set up Wi-Fi calling. Apple has a support document on using Emergency SOS on the Apple Watch with more details.

Update: Apple shared a similar ad on Twitter highlighting the Apple Watch's fall detection feature.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1473054140590964737

Article Link: Apple Watch's Life-Saving Potential Highlighted in Suspenseful '911' Ad

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

This is great. Apple Watch Is a life-saving product. It has saved so many lives across the world. It has also taken over in the health industry. Saving ♥️

 

[ProVideo]

They should also make one where a person has a Series 2 Apple Watch and they try to call for help, but the battery is dead and then they die as well to get people to upgrade to Series 7.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

They should also make one where a person has a Series 2 Apple Watch and they try to call for help, but the battery is dead and then they die as well to get people to upgrade to Series 7.

Apple will say they don’t support series 2 anymore. That’s why it’s very important to upgrade yearly.

 

[Jefe's MacAir]

Had a similar experience when hitching a trailer. I got my finger caught in the hitch pin hole inside the receiver hitch. Every time I tried to make room by rocking the trailer, it only got tighter. Unfortunately my iPhone was in my truck. Fortunately, my Apple Watch was connected to my phone. I was able to call down to the house where my father was. He came up the barn and helped me release myself from the finger trap.

 

[BootsWalking]

Feature Idea: An option to call 911 when your heart rate jumps above a threshold without a commensurate increase in activity, ie detects a non exercise-induced increase in heart rate, which is indicative of an emergency situation, like being seriously injured or a victim of a crime. The watch can prompt to call 911 with a single, easy press on screen or alternately, call 911 automatically if you fail to respond to a prompt to call 911 after a certain amount of time in case you're incapacitated.

 

[magicschoolbus]

Call me paranoid but this is exactly why I got one. The world is a scary place. It’s comforting to know help is only a swipe away.

 

[citysnaps]

They should also make one where a person has a Series 2 Apple Watch and they try to call for help, but the battery is dead and then they die as well to get people to upgrade to Series 7.

Really? What kind of comment is that? Certainly not funny.

 

[yossi]

how many people with a wifi only watch will see this commercial and think they have 911 and then try to use it in an emergency? Maybe they should do what Tesla does - include a cellular chip in every watch and then just charge you the premium cost to activate it

 

[kjvmartin]

how many people with a wifi only watch will see this commercial and think they have 911 and then try to use it in an emergency? Maybe they should do what Tesla does - include a cellular chip in every watch and then just charge you the premium cost to activate it

You also get assigned a telephone number from your provider, so it's not just cellular data, it's a phone number.

 

[yossi]

You also get assigned a telephone number from your provider, so it's not just cellular data, it's a phone number.

yeah but you can use 911 on any phone even if there is no # assigned and there is no service

 

[lc96]

Really? What kind of comment is that? Certainly not funny.

Never heard of dark humor?

 

[citysnaps]

Never heard of dark humor?

Of course. And?

 

[Benjamin Nabulsi]

I feel bad for not connecting my watch to cellular. Prepaid Apple Watch plan needs to become common by now.

 

[michaelant]

how many people with a wifi only watch will see this commercial and think they have 911 and then try to use it in an emergency? Maybe they should do what Tesla does - include a cellular chip in every watch and then just charge you the premium cost to activate it

I think, not many. Nearly everyone with an Apple Watch also has an iPhone in their pocket or purse all the time. Those that don't, who are tech savvy enough to go about with just the Watch, also probably know whether they have a cellular Watch or not. The Tesla idea is good though.

 

[michaelant]

Why is this article calling the three people in the ad "individuals" instead of "people"? I would like to know the individuals at MR involved in this decision.

 

[44267547]

Why is this article calling the three people in the ad "individuals" instead of "people"? I would like to know the individuals at MR involved in this decision.

So why don’t you contact [‘Flag’] the authors directly through messaging -versus- making some vague- trivial comment about basic wording? I don’t see why that’s pertinent when the article advocates something far more important with safety aspects rather than critiquing the authors wording.

 

[swingerofbirch]

I've sometimes wondered how many people have needed to call 911 during an OS upgrade. Or when the iPhone dies and you plug it in and it takes minutes of charging before it will turn back on.

My iPhone 7 is so janky at this point that I can barely make calls a lot of the time because the phone app is so slow. The whole phone is. Not like a little bit slow. Like the phone app will take minutes to open and might crash. I just have never in my life had a device that could possibly fail in that way before. And I've obviously been using phones my entire life. And I know there are a million excuses--I need to have Apple switch the battery, etc., but I've never had it be possible that it could happen to a device like that. It's the first cell phone or any phone I've had that has over a short period of time become nearly unusable for making phone calls. And again, I know there are a million things--I should have had it serviced, I should have changed the battery—I'm just saying it was never necessary before. I have an LG Dare phone that works fine (but for Verizon now shutting down 3G service in a year) that has never had the battery replaced (but if I needed to, it's actually easy to replace). I bought it in 2008, and it works the same now as it did then.

My iPhone 7 is the reason I never purchased an Apple Watch despite interest in that product. It can't support itself, let alone an appendage. The only reason I've kept the iPhone 7 as my active phone is for iMessage and text message forwarding to my Mac, where I prefer to type.

(Because it probably sounds ridiculous that I haven't serviced the phone, I will note that it's because I have been unable to extract my videos/photos from it, which has been a progressively worse problem since I got the phone, and which are detailed in many MacRumors threads on Image Capture issues—and forget AirDrop, this phone as I said can barely open the phone app—and because my 40 GB of health data is stuck on the phone and can't be extracted either--the export fails every time, and because the phone cannot be backed up due to a failure, and Apple insists I just erase everything, and I am in a stalemate as I am not willing to erase data that I can see is still intact on the phone. The phone is so slow I doubt erasing it would even work honestly. I've spent countless hours trying to extract my data using every troubleshooting method I've been able to find, including going up to Apple engineers, who have just told me to erase all my data.)

 

[Cobalt50]

I put a case on my iPhone backwards and it activated the 911. That was a short awkward conversation.

 

[Shirasaki]

Apple is the best advertising company in the world period, perfectly hiding all the tidbits and true dealbreakers to make whatever shown in the ad happening.

The thing is, we never get to Know the failure of this feature or stories about it. It’s more or less bragging imo.

 

[loybond]

Scare tactics, classy.

 

[hello(again)]

I put a case on my iPhone backwards and it activated the 911. That was a short awkward conversation.

I'm a 911 dispatcher in Colorado, and we get more accidental calls from iPhones and Watches than anyone would ever imagine. Your instinct as the dialer is to try and hang up quickly, but it's already reached our center at that point and per policy we have to try calling you back at least twice to ask if you have an emergency. The embarrassed "no no I don't have an emergency, it was my damn iPhone" conversations happen a hundred times a day for us.

 

[SenorWhyMe]

I will give props to my series 6; I had a crash on my motorcycle 8 months ago; and was happy to see the watch fall detection working; I was not badly injured since I was fully prepared jacket and all. Luckily I turned it off before it contacted everyone I did use the emergency to text all my family members it gave them my location. I will say I was winded literally couldn't talk for a bit, my whole upper body hit the top portion of my handle bar also hitting the windshield.

TLDR
I trust If I ever get into another accident that my Series 6 would call for emergency in case I couldn't get up

 

[michaelant]

So why don’t you contact [‘Flag’] the authors directly through messaging -versus- making some vague- trivial comment about basic wording? I don’t see why that’s pertinent when the article advocates something far more important with safety aspects rather than critiquing the authors wording.

It was just a very mild joke, is why. I don't actually want to know who was "responsible", the joke is I was, myself, calling MR staff "individuals" instead of "people". Now see what happens when you explain a joke? His wording just struck me as funny, sounded like a police procedural.

 

[deckard666]

Funny enough my dog bumped me to the ground yesterday on carpet and for the first time in over a year the fall detection went off..bang on !

I saw a stupid article on the web yesterday talking about this ad and saying basically why not just use your phone. d'oh -So you fall or are in a crash, your phone could be yards away or nowhere within reach and even if the fall detection didnt go off you can still activate your watch via your voice and it's always on your person....night and day in this scenario