Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Rumored 'Healthbook' App for iOS 8 Suggests Significant Health Component to iWatch
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
And then the government comes in and says insurance companies can't deny anything, ever.
You do realize you are totally unimportant to Apple
They are after mass iMarket with their products.
Heck they won't even make a Mac for the home computer user, let alone worry about the fraction of a percent of athletes in the USA.
The want to sell a general iProduct to appeal to the mass, and I mean MASS market.
Duh. Do you really imagine Apple would bring a product to market that just throws numbers at you? What exactly do you think Apple has been doing for the last ~35 years?
If the wearable device has good features for health related activities then the direction its usage will take is up to the market and the developer world. This is essentially what apple loves doing, throw a capability and let the market find unique uses for it. A cool device that actually gains widespread acceptance as an accesory in the athletics and pro-sport world is free marketting for apple given how much companies pay top athletes to endorse their products. If top athletes, NBA player, NFL players wear this thing..rest assured your budding high school athlete will do as well
..Yeah tried that. It just turns off the transition effect - the lag of a bout a second is still there. I know I'm 1st world problem moaning here, but iOS6 was instant and I was well used to it.
Well, i"m sure we'll see what it can do when they announce it.
I sure wish they would release a larger ~5inch iPhone by WWDC. My 2 year contract is up this month and I'm getting ready to replace my iPhone and am waiting potential for the larger screen model.
I sure wish they would release a larger ~5inch iPhone by WWDC. My 2 year contract is up this month and I'm getting ready to replace my iPhone and am waiting potential for the larger screen model.
Once you hit 35, you'll be interested. Good chance you'll have cholesterol issues or similar....resulting in having to excercise to keep levels down if you don't want to be on staten drugs...
Just 1 example of many.
Best,
SvK
Speaking as a physician and as someone who was overweight until just this last year, I don't think it's a great idea for Apple to get involved with this area. Most healthcare professionals don't understand health very well. They understand disease. It's not the same thing. This is quite apparent when you see that the obesity/diabetes/cancer/cardiovascular disease rates of healthcare professionals are not much better than the public's.
This idea that one can be healthy by managing and monitoring quantitative aspects of one's physiology is extremely misleading. One can easily be lulled into complacency thinking that someone is healthy just because their "stats" are normal. Determining one's health requires an overall picture of a person's lifestyle, many aspects of which cannot be measured or assessed by an electronic device.
This idea that one can be healthy by managing and monitoring quantitative aspects of one's physiology is extremely misleading. One can easily be lulled into complacency thinking that someone is healthy just because their "stats" are normal. Determining one's health requires an overall picture of a person's lifestyle, many aspects of which cannot be measured or assessed by an electronic device.
Never understood why not bring able to delete an app bothered anyone. You would think that their OCD would be placated by the ability to place all those undeletables in a folder hidden somewhere. I guess they must still live with fact that they can never delete the finder or the settings.
I still don't get it.
I get the ipad the laptop the phone but the watch is a weak product IMHO.
If apple reinvent it as not a watch but another product and a reason for its watch like design. Health seems like a very flimsy premise. It's more likely apple is just making full use of the m7 co processor in the iphone.
Apple should concentrate their efforts on Apple TV and the many other areas they could actually revolutionise.
I get the ipad the laptop the phone but the watch is a weak product IMHO.
If apple reinvent it as not a watch but another product and a reason for its watch like design. Health seems like a very flimsy premise. It's more likely apple is just making full use of the m7 co processor in the iphone.
Apple should concentrate their efforts on Apple TV and the many other areas they could actually revolutionise.
Most people don't go to doctors because of the expense and all the reasons you outline. Don't you think that these data points for patterns of blood pressure, heartrate, etc. would benefit millions who typically avoid doctors? Let doctors diagnose the way they do and devices like these do their job. They can be complimentary to each other.
----------
You can disable animations. This was made possible by 7.0.3 release that came out months ago. They're up to 7.0.4...the one that just came out in November. Stop complaining and get some perspective.
I understand your point, but when you get into your 50s, healthy habits start taking a greater sense of urgency. I have a relative in his late 40s that just died of a stroke....I couldn't believe it. Maybe a health and fitness tracker would not have changed things....but it gets you thinking.
For Christmas, I bought the Fitbit for myself and some members of the family, and I can say without equivocation that routine tracking of excercise, diet, and sleep helps encourage healthy habits.....it just makes you more aware, which is half of the battle.
I actually don't expect this wearable device to launch this year. If they are still hiring people for this project?
I actually think we might see some serious Apple TV upgrades since it's been almost 2 years.
But time will tell. (No pun intended)
After reading this article, if even half of these features are present in an iWatch and the measurements are accurate, I will be buying one the first week as long as the cost is no more than $300.00. I can't speak for anyone else; but knowing myself as I do, I know that having this kind of accurate information a button press away will instantly cause me to make better, more health conscious decisions. Imagine if Apple is able to say in a few years that users of the iWatch have lost, on average, 20 pounds and lowered their blood pressure by 15%. This will elevate the iPhone to an entirely new dimension of usefulness.
Well...
Just replace "Apple" with "Google" and that's pretty much what happened. People didn't trust Google as even then they were becoming wary of all the information Google was collecting about them with their services.
LMAO. That would be good for consumers, which is something insurance companies aren't going to do. Insurance companies don't base their rates on risk factors, they base them on how much money they want to make, and then adjust UP based on risk factors.
A far FAR more likely scenario is health insurance companies start offering a "discount" to people who make use of the app -- and by extension allow the insurance companies to play Big Brother to your day-to-day health ("Mr Johnson, we see your weight has gone up 20 pounds over the last three years, we'll be needing to fix your rates based on higher projected chance of heart disease."). This program is entirely voluntary, of course. You don't have to sign up. Healthy people will be singing the praises of the money they saved on the new program ("The system works! Look, I'm not being charged for the average poor health of my age demographic by demonstrating I'm not like them!").*
Then the fun begins, the insurance companies begin their normal we-don't-need-to-really-justify-them-to-you rate increases. One day, a few years down the line, that healthy guy realizes the price the he's paying now is the same as he had before he signed up for the health monitor app program. He's gained nothing really in the end, and he's now stuck letting the insurance companies spy on literally his every heartbeat, as if he drops the programs his rates will skyrocket.
If you want a preview of this, just watch what happens with the "black box" safe driver discount programs.
* - He has already demonstrated he's oblivious to how insurance works. Costs are spread over a large group of people, so instead of some people paying nothing (because they are healthy) and the sick people are paying an arm and a leg in healthcare costs, everyone pays a small amount, and the insurance company pays the actual medical bills. Healthy people always complain about how "unfair" this is, because they're too self-centered to see the fact that someday the roles will be reversed -- they will be the sick person one day and thanks to the insurance system someone else healthy will be making it possible for their expensive treatment to be covered by the insurance company.
Wearables are the next generation of smart technology. We've already gotten to the point where the OS has a much higher performance than is needed for a phone. Do you really need an i7 processor with, gigs of ram etc to play flappy bird and browse facebook?
The iWatch will be the first step in making the devices part of us (as creepy as it sounds). Health Monitoring via a wearable device is a BIG thing, despite people saying its not. Imagine a future where further iterations will be able to detect subtle deviations in BP or pulse and alert the wearer and or emergency medical personnel of an impending heart attack? A device that can 'smell' cancer (the technology is already here) or detect diabetes.
We're already at the point where we've mastered the 'phone' part of smart devices, so this is the next logical step.
The iWatch will be the first step in making the devices part of us (as creepy as it sounds). Health Monitoring via a wearable device is a BIG thing, despite people saying its not. Imagine a future where further iterations will be able to detect subtle deviations in BP or pulse and alert the wearer and or emergency medical personnel of an impending heart attack? A device that can 'smell' cancer (the technology is already here) or detect diabetes.
We're already at the point where we've mastered the 'phone' part of smart devices, so this is the next logical step.
The iWatch is cool though. But I agree with what you said about it being part of us and sounding a bit creepy. hehe!