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Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

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131–140 of 686 posts

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#131

I really want an Apple Watch for this and the EKG / Heart stuff. But I hate the idea of having another bit of technology on my wrist when I already have the iPhone with me. I like watches, the mechanical kind. I love them as the art of design and as fashion item to be match to what you are wearing (when appropriate). I do not want to give that up. In the end I will likely give in and get the Apple Watch just because…

Think of the Apple Watch as something that you can use to reduce your phone usage. If you get the one with cellular and GPS, you can go walking/biking/outside and be reachable while at the same time not staring at your phone all the time. Even when you are at home the justification, for me at least, to keep the phone closer was because I might get a call or message I need to respond to. With the Watch, the phone goes straight to its stand as soon as I get home knowing well that I'll get the notification on my watch. This is what's finally helping me wean off the constant need to keep my phone and pull it out to check instagram/hn/reddit repeatedly if I'm bored for even a second.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#132

I really want an Apple Watch for this and the EKG / Heart stuff. But I hate the idea of having another bit of technology on my wrist when I already have the iPhone with me. I like watches, the mechanical kind. I love them as the art of design and as fashion item to be match to what you are wearing (when appropriate). I do not want to give that up. In the end I will likely give in and get the Apple Watch just because…

I have an Apple Watch, and it's a love/hate relationship. I'd love to wear another more simpler watch but would lose so many features I always opt for the Apple Watch.

I do criticise the fact that only the Apple Watch contributes to their "Activity" app.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#134

Why does everyone who praises Apple on HN qualify it with the fact that they don’t like Apple for other reasons? Also, Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.

> Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.

Ahem ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_L...

They have better PR, arguably better products, and a more likeable CEO than other tech hyper-corporations. But they are fundamentally no different than any other self-aware pile of cash.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#135

Life Alert, horrendous as their ads may be, would probably be surprised to hear that it's only now that you're finding a "device which can contact emergency services in the event of an accident" so life changing. As might OnStar, etc.

Ah, but they don't sell chiche phones, laptops, and watches :)

This, but unironically

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#136
Then his helmeted head hit the ground so hard it knocked him unconscious — hard enough for his Apple Watch to feel it.

“A hit that hard could have killed me if I weren’t wearing it,” Burdett said. He had to replace the helmet.

Sigh. Bicycle helmets prevent neither concussions nor death: by design, according to all epidemiological studies and according to the manufacturers of bicycle helmets.

https://www.badscience.net/2013/12/bicycle-helmets-and-the-l...

Bike helmets are probably useful in reducing a tiny subset of head injuries.

And this is yet another anecdote proving the opposite of what the true believers think.

Sometimes I despair, then I think of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCL4dXUtblg

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#137

My cousin died last week of a heart attack on the way from his house in a village south of Nuremberg to the bakery 10 minutes away to get bread for breakfast. His Apple Watch (presumably because of the fall detection) called emergency services for him and gave him time to call his wife.

Sorry to read your cousin died this way. I don't understand. The Apple Watch told him his heart isn't working right - automatically calling emergency services - and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart? Or was it that he too passed out, the Apple Watch called emergency services, who resuscitated him enabling him to call his wife?

> and he also called his wife to let him know the watch says there is an emergency with his heart

The watch will call emergency services, then it will text your emergency contact(s) and let them know you've experienced a hard fall. I don't know exactly how, in this instance, that was then converted to a voice call.

Edit: I see in another comment that he initiated a call himself because he was conscious enough to do so.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#138

Why does everyone who praises Apple on HN qualify it with the fact that they don’t like Apple for other reasons? Also, Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.

It's not specific to this place. It's an effective persuasive argument technique. Say you want to praise Apple for something. Since praising Apple to Apple fans is preaching to the choir, your target is people who are not currently huge Apple fans. So, you begin by saying "hi, I am one of you, a person who isn't a big Apple fan." Now that you've established yourself as a member of the in-group, you drop your argument, "this aspect of Apple is good." Maybe you qualify it with "pretty good" to keep from tripping any alarms.

Note: that's not to say that the speaker is being in any way deceptive. People naturally evolve and reinvent more effective speech patterns, often unconsciously.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or diagnose Afib is like bonus time Careful with that as an assumption: > In people younger than 55, Apple Watch’s positive predictive value is just 19.6 percent. That means in this group — which constitutes more than 90 percent of users of wearable devices like the Apple Watch — the app incorrectly diagnoses atrial fibrillation 79.4 percent of the time. (You can try the calculation yourself using this Bayesian cal…

In this case, it's better to have a false positive diagnosis than a false negative.

Yes I would really like to get multi-thousand dollar hospital bills because my watch made a mistake.

Re: Bike crash left Spokane man unconscious, so his Apple Watch called 911

#140

Why does everyone who praises Apple on HN qualify it with the fact that they don’t like Apple for other reasons? Also, Apple is probably the best corporate citizen of any company its relative size in history.

Probably because there is often a lot of unqualified praise or unexamined belief that all they do is incredible and right. In order to avoid the appearance of that, sometimes people qualify their praise in the way I have done.
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