Im not surprised or shocked, i never said this was rocket science and i also wont sell mine to buy a new one. Its not worth it for me.
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Changing Your Apple Watch or iPhone's Region Won't Enable ECG App Outside of United States
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Im not surprised or shocked, i never said this was rocket science and i also wont sell mine to buy a new one. Its not worth it for me.
I agree that changing region if you have no US connection may count as an unsupported trick, but I live in the US, I have a US iPhone and number, obviously US region settings, but I happened to buy the watch in a store in London, because it was available when I was there. I thought Apple and its products were more international than this. Hardware-based geofencing being what it is, I will now have to sell this watch, and buy a new one in the US. Or maybe I should get an Android watch?
again, another example of Apple being way too much US centric instead of the global company they should be since they actually sell devices almost everywhere.
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yeah I realized it after posting that.
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It’s not any better with android. If apple used hardware geofencing for first time with the new ecg app, google and samsung have been doing that fovever on their products. For example, Samsung Pay cannot be as easily enabled in unsupported countries since there is no language and region setting that can be changed on the devices. In addition, it does not allow to add cards from countries other than the same one where the device was purchased, and only if that was a supported country. And Google Pay works similarly.
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Well Samsung or LG being a Korean company, do not focus their product or services in South Korea? Bixby, Galaxy devices, Samsung Pay, even LG's OLED TV is available to US customers. Like it or hate it is your choice, but they never really hold up about which product or feature may be released for specific regions.
People outside US of A pay a heavy premium over what most Americans pay for their iPhones, yet receives less and less of Apple services. And don't forget many of them pay in cold hard cash.
An iPhone XS costs $999? Big deal! Come over to China or India, then convert the price to USD, yeah you'd be popping your eyes out.
For what it costs, Apple could've at least have a decency of providing them the services they deserve.
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Mexico also has the MU6D2LZ/A in addition to the countries you mentioned, so apparently the LZ designation is for all of Latin America and had made no difference until now.
A good question; once an American leaves the continental US does the feature stop? I will keep investigating an see if there is something that I can do to have it work here. If it works in Canada, it should translate to the EU as well!
That
All this just goes to show that, as the old proverb goes, you can’t cover the sun with one finger. No matter how hard apple and other companies try to regionalize and block certain features, there will always be people who can get around it. What they do is simply stupid.
That question was already answered. As long as the watch was purchased in the US, ECG still works even if the user physically leaves the US and its territories and even has the watch and paired iphone configured for a different region. The restriction is only on apple watch series 4 units bought outside the US. And even then, some US units seem to accidentally have sneaked out to other countries, as was the case for the argentinien fellow who posted here who bought his watch in Chile and still got ECG becauser it was actually a US unit.
All this just goes to show that, as the old proverb goes, you can’t cover the sun with one finger. No matter how hard apple and other companies try to regionalize and block certain features, there will always be people who can get around it. What they do is simply stupid.
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I don’t see why it would be such a big deal to enable it and specifically state that its data cannot be reliably used by docs/hospitals until your country approves it under the relevant regulatory body. Why completely disable it? Beaurocracy is such bull****. Apple could even assert that it’s a “novelty” feature in countries without regulatory approval to avoid legal issues.
Not quite. I know for a fact that other countries have a different designation (Brazil for example has a "BZ" designator).
I agree with you this is the first time this makes a relevant difference. I think the iPhone 3GS did not have WiFi in China, and iPhones sold in the UAE do not have FaceTime - and this stuff is probably done using the model designation. But I haven't ever been anywhere near Asia, so...
I agree. Especially considering that it’s health related. Anything related to health shold be made more easily accessible to customers, not harder to access. Terrible move by Apple. Do they really not realize how many senior citizens around the world could benefit from this new ECG feature?
Any serious contry with half a health agency would fine you into oblivion if you attempted to bypass their regulations and sell a health-related anything without their approval. And as a lawyer I agree with them. If you sell a consumer device with an "experimental" health-related feature, it's even worse.
Hell, I'm shaking just thinking of the size of that lawsuit.
But anyway: FDA approval makes things smoother for probably all other agencies around the world (maybe not so much in the EU and UK). I'm sure they'll be done with launching this all over the world by early next year.
The 58-year-old CEO of Apple doesn't care about older people I guess, or his company is abiding by the laws of countries around the world governing over the counter electrocardiagrams.
Which is more likely?
I think they only requested approval from the FDA and have not even begun the process of getting approval from regulatory agencies in other countries. I’d guess it doesn’t take much longer to get a medical device approved in the EU/Canada/Australia than in the US. Hence why there’s no word from Apple on when the feature will be available in other regions. Not nice for non-American customers.
Much of the non-US price is based on local taxes. And regarding this specific feature, it requires regulatory approval in every country. They can’t just snap their fingers and make it happen.
Also, eSIM first came to other countries before the US. We just got it 2 days ago on AT&T and today on Verizon (T-Mobile still to come).
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I am pretty sure they weren't THAT specific; but since the VAST majority of customers purchase a product IN the country they LIVE, I would imagine they simply didn't think to instruct personnel to make SURE they followed that "rule".
That doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t taken action. The last thing they want is for a submission to be rejected. Perhaps the FDA data plus “real world” results will help with submissions in other countries.
I'm sure they haven't anywhere else either. Don't get why they didn't submit approval requests simultaneously.
It’s possible that they want to use the successful efforts with the FDA, plus real world experience to improve their chances with other regulators.
For me it would have been far easier to roll out the EKG app worldwide including a disclaimer of its non-approved status outside of the USA, and that the resulting EKG data should be regarded as indicative and not 100% accurate.
That would have left everyone happy.
you don't need a spell check when typing letter by letter - L is L, E is E, T is T, T is T (again), E is E (again), R is R = LETTER. This is how most of the software work - if the language isn't available yet, the feature to check spelling is turned off and activated once the language is added. How hard can it be? Apple has enough funds to start supporting their current devices worldwide rather than introducing new services as "us/English only".
You can’t just release unapproved medical devices, disclaimers or not.
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Apple support is only available in the country of purchase. Given the regulatory considerations, it makes sense to tie this to serial numbers since Apple controls where the product is purchased. Apple does this for other features or changes required by law. For example, the Chinese models have 2 physical SIMs since eSIMs aren’t permitted. Japanese models cannot mute the camera shutter for local legal reasons, as well. Those are tied to the serial number.