W_D_Richards

robbcole said:

What's the blue Apple Watch band you featured?

The band in the last photo is merely the silver band reflecting blue light. The blue band featured in the center of the photo with the three watches on the reviewer's wrist is the Nike Sport Band.

I had the Nike Sport Band with my first Apple Watch; I liked it. It was excellent for when I was doing things where I was going to be really sweaty or wet. It was easy to clean—and just as important, easy to dry. I could wear it right into the shower without a second thought, and that helped keep it clean. That Watch and band has been handed down to two other family members who couldn't afford to buy a new Watch and is still going strong—along with that first Watch!

I'm now wearing the Sport Loop, which has certainly proven itself over years of use. My key reason for switching to this band was it was infinitely resizable—the Sport Band used specific holes punched through the band and could be sometimes too tight or too loose, depending on the situation. The downside of the Sport Loop is that it is fabric and therefore doesn't dry off quickly. The fabric holds the moisture for a while and will wick the moisture onto your clothing if you rest your wrist against your shirt or pants, leaving a big wet spot.

LuvMacs said:

The lady is a cardiologist. She did not need an Apple Watch to tell her that she was tachycardic.
Besides, her symptoms (feeling tired, short of breath) , which began 15-weeks earlier, should have prompted her to seek medical attention much earlier.

What the Apple Watch did was to point out her lack of insight into her own health status.

Having just been through this—I just got out of the hospital—you don't actually feel your heart rate is way up there. All you feel is fatigued. Often, people will blame it on they haven't been very active lately and must be getting out of shape. Atrial Fibrillation and Atrial Flutter can come and go—so one moment you feel dragged down, and the next you feel fine. You simply don't notice that your heart is racing like crazy. This is what makes A-Fib and Flutter so dangerous. People don't know there is a problem until it is too late.

You never notice your heartbeat is going crazy. Not even a doctor will notice unless they directly decide to look at their heart rate. The weariness you can feel is too easy to dismiss.

It took my Apple Watch throwing an alert while I was sitting there watching TV to draw my attention to my heart rate. I watched it for about 30 minutes to see if there was any change. When it remained elevated and began climbing, I knew I had to go the hospital to find out what was going on. A few days later, I needed an emergency ablation to stop the high rate. At one point, my heart was beating so much it was causing my body to vibrate! Yet I didn't feel it unless I really focused on it.

Even doctors can miss what is going on in their own body. They are human, too.

Cesar Battistini Maziero said:

If I was a car maker, I would jump to new CarPlay as fast as I could.

I just don't understand why the resistance.

GM is a perfect example of this. They claimed that "Apple was trying to control too much of the car's systems" and recently opted to remove CarPlay from their vehicles. Their solution was to go with Google's system. The very opposite of Apple's CarPlay. Apple's CarPlay anonymizes their users, so no one can see what you are doing or who you are. This is the very information that advertisers want. Google gives them that information (for a fee) so they can monitor what you are doing and sell that information to other companies for profit.

So, what's happening? There have already been several reports by drivers that their Google navigation is suddenly giving them detours from their route. The detours are  not to get you around possible traffic issues, but commercials for vendors trying to get you into their stores. Imagine you are trying to get to an important business meeting on time in another city and suddenly your navigation system tells you to take a detour, only to find yourself turning into the parking lot of Clownburgers.

This puts me  into a serious conundrum because I was planning on buying a Chevy Equinox EV, currently the most affordable, cross-country capable EV. Now, my choices are narrowed down to EVs that cost at least twice as much, but still offer Apple CarPlay. A serious crimp in my financial planning.

GM has been making some good choices moving towards EVs, but dropping CarPlay was absolutely the dumbest, most shortsighted decision above all.

VictorMortimer said:

It won't help.

Users have no idea what you're talking about when you say Apple ID, they don't know that it's an email address, they don't know that it's the same thing they use for iCloud, they're confused as to what iCloud is, and they definitely don't know how to remove devices they're selling/giving away from it.

I don't know what the fix is, but a simple rename isn't going to help.

But it WILL help!

I have to deal with a lot of seniors in my family who get confused as hell by the 'Apple ID' moniker. To them, an ID is something you have in your wallet. They do understand that an account is a record you have with a company where you keep either money or information—and that an account on a computer is for another user on the same machine. The same extension by which "account" became the nomenclature so many decades ago. By changing the name to 'Apple Account,' it better labels just what is is for them.

It may seem to be just another marketing label rebranding, but for people who did not grow up with computers as an integral part of their life, this will make comprehending what is going on a lot easier.

Ford CEO several years ago: "Your phone shouldn't be the reason you choose a car."

My response: "Compatibility with my iPhone is EXACTLY the reason why I would choose a car!"

My iPhone is an important part of and integral tool in my life. So, yeah, I expect my car to work flawlessly with it. I have already had experience with cars that don't work well with my iPhone and it is irritating as hell.

And I sure as hell don't want the map program of the car reporting every location I drive to and serving me commercials on the screen in my car!

f1turbo said:

Not hearing anything about blood oxygen sensing, so I assume that’s still gone, perhaps never to return?

The O2 sensing was inactivated in software—it was utilizing the hardware used to watch blood flow and measure pulse rates to measure oxygen saturation. So the hardware capability is still built in, it's just now the operating system won't use it to report on oxygen saturation in Apple Watches in the US. The feature is still available in Watches sold in other countries.

The rumormongers seem to feel that this is temporary, claiming that Apple is still working the legal channels to either overturn the ruling against them on O2 sensing or work out a viable agreement to bring it back. Of course, the proof of this would be Apple actually filing something in the courts or quietly signing an agreement with Masimo—something that has not happened in the past eight months since the US ban went into effect.