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Some Tattoos Found to Interfere With Apple Watch's Sensors

Cloudsurfer said:
So in four years of development, Apple has not once tested this on tattoos?
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Don't have a tattoo (on my wrist) and don't give a hoot...

The sensor used by the Apple watch is similar to sensors used by everyone else's watches. Physics dictate the way they work.

For the .00001% of the population with a dark tattoo on your wrist, return watch and consider there are consequences to tattoos, piercings, general body modifications. Some are obvious, others subtle.

Can we have some real news?
 
Black people?

There are articles saying the watch doesn't work in "dark-skinned people"(some article in flipboard) and to those with sleeve tats. I hope this is not true. Anyone having problems because of skin colour or tattoos?
 
AlphaHumanus said:
I'm hoping this is misinformation. That would make Steve a piece of manure, and I would like to hold him in higher regard than that.
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I heard another story in the early Mac days where one engineer got an Apple logo tattoo. Supposedly Steve hit the roof over it and fired him that day. Guy ended up working for an Apple third party and I think was a hot shot at Clarius for a while. Can anyone confirm this?
 
Keirasplace said:
Give me a break! Did they test it so it can read through a sleeve shirts too... No, because they can't.

IF you wear a tattoo that blocks light from reaching your wrist blood vessels on both wrists (very few tattooed people have that btw), it's fine esthetically, I've got no issue with anyone doing that; but assume your own choice and don't wine that some company won't make a device that cover your every whim.

This is getting very very tiresome. People have to take responsibility for their own actions; everything you do has a tradeoff, can't have everything.
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it was a joke dude.........:rolleyes:
 
Neepman said:
No. It's not Racist, it's a character judgement.

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Fine roll models all.
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Please tell me why you wouldn't want Beckham as a role model. The guy is well educated, a good husband, and has donated millions of dollars to charity. I guess you would like less of these type of people in the world?
 
sundragon said:
Don't have a tattoo (on my wrist) and don't give a hoot...

The sensor used by the Apple watch is similar to sensors used by everyone else's watches. Physics dictate the way they work.

For the .00001% of the population with a dark tattoo on your wrist, return watch and consider there are consequences to tattoos, piercings, general body modifications. Some are obvious, others subtle.

Can we have some real news?
Click to expand...
I believe Apple knew that tattoos were an issue but did not want to disclose this info as it may have impacted Apple Watch sales or even shed bad light on it.

Now they have Apple Watch owners disappointed & people like you making excuses for a company is ridiculous and only empowers them to keep doing bad things.

I bet Apple will address this on the next version & if not, I guess we can thank narcissistic people like you who keep defending bad corporate behavior.
 
CB1234 said:
Did you miss out on the thread where Tim Cook comes out as gay??

If this thread is getting your blood boiling, Tim Cook being Gay thread, would have led you to murder a few people....

You need to calm down and not take the words on internet forum so seriously...

If most of these Tattoo hating people met some tattooed members in public, they would be civil to them without a doubt. But it's easy to hide on the internet forum and pretend to be someone they are not...
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Wow, I went back and read through the first few pages of that thread... shocking, the things people will say in this day and age. :confused:
 
Does it have problems working through black or brown skin?
That would certainly be a massive PR problem.
 
MacSE1987 said:
Apple did explain the difficulties tattoo wearers would have with the heart rate monitor.

See: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666
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"Last updated April 29..."

In general I think it's a typical issue that comes up with new product categories. Apparently Fitbit and a Samsung Gear Watch have similar issues, which makes sense since it is the same technology (I wonder if they have disclaimers up on their page by now?). In hindsight - yes, all of these companies, including Apple of course, probably could have done some extensive testing. But it's just one of those cases that either nobody ever thought of or they had those kind of tattoos that weren't an issue.
 
bawbac said:
I believe Apple knew that tattoos were an issue but did not want to disclose this info as it may have impacted Apple Watch sales or even shed bad light on it.

Now they have Apple Watch owners disappointed & people like you making excuses for a company is ridiculous and only empowers them to keep doing bad things.

I bet Apple will address this on the next version & if not, I guess we can thank narcissistic people like you who keep defending bad corporate behavior.
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How do you address physics? What is Apple magically going to do to make it work with the next version of the Watch?
 
bawbac said:
I believe Apple knew that tattoos were an issue but did not want to disclose this info as it may have impacted Apple Watch sales or even shed bad light on it.

Now they have Apple Watch owners disappointed & people like you making excuses for a company is ridiculous and only empowers them to keep doing bad things.

I bet Apple will address this on the next version & if not, I guess we can thank narcissistic people like you who keep defending bad corporate behavior.
Click to expand...

Do you think that the same technology works better in devices like Fitbit, Microsoft band or Samsung Gear?

And what exactly leads you to the conclusion that Apple was aware of this, besides your personal aversion towards Apple, which is irrelevant. What is your source?

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AleXXXa said:
Not really. People with wrist tattoos usually don't have nice enough jobs, so they can't afford a $400+ watch anyway. ;)
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That bizarre and bigoted "theory" has been disproved several times in this thread. Also I'd like to state that I have arm tattoos instead of wrist tattoos, those wrist tattoo people really are the minions ;-) .
 
ellsworth said:
I wonder if SUPER DARK-TONE SKIN causes this problem as well!? :eek:
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Tattoo ink and eumelanin have very different optical properties. The LED transmitter and photodiode pick-ups used in the Apple Watch have been used in pulse oximetry for over twenty years. They work with very pigmented eumelanin skins. Tattoo ink and the resulting scar tissue have always been a problem.
 
CFreymarc said:
Tattoo ink and eumelanin have very different optical properties. The LED transmitter and photodiode pick-ups used in the Apple Watch have been used in pulse oximetry for over twenty years. They work with very pigmented eumelanin skins. Tattoo ink and the resulting scar tissue have always been a problem.
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Thanks for that. Much appreciated.
 
If the issue is the green pigment in some tats, they better get on this quick or Samsung is gonna get all the market share on Mars.
 
i loathe about 75% of the people commenting here. go have your 2.5 kids and your white picket-fence two story house and do nothing remotely 'out of the box' in your life. i'm not saying tattoos are what will get you there, but a single frikin open-minded brain cell might do the trick. and you might even find a profession that caters to SKILLSET and makes you SERIOUS MONEY rather than typical number crunching or whatever you fell into after failing to make use of your engineering degree. oh, i dunno, like say, tattoo artists.

oh, and mention hipsters again. they might actually resurrect themselves in pop culture after having died off completely since the meme started 6 years ago. 'hipsters' (more attractive/more fashionable people than tech geeks) are cooler than you, and they probably have 100x more fun in life in general. deal with it.

blrrgh
 
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usarioclave said:
Obviously, you need to strap it to something else if your wrist has a tattoo. I'm not sure you want to whip that out for Apple Pay, though.
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Some people are tattooed and pierced a lot down there. :p
I'm occasionally using an App called "Heart Rate" on my iPhone, it uses the flashlight and the camera to measure heart beat. Looks like an actual EKG if you apply constant pressure, not just a big sine curve, but with the little hump in between. I assume the Apple Watch does the same but with dimmer, green light as to not to light up your wrist or suck the battery dry.

Maybe someone with tattoos and an Apple watch can compare the heart rat monitoring performance of the iPhone versus the Apple watch on the same spot?
 
I just saw someone with sleeve tats and def dark color using apple watch. He said watch is working okay. But he only had it for like 3 days.
 
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