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You have to look at the business side of things, too. Apple has to pay a lot of money to whoever is managing and maintaining the satellites behind this and if y

You have to look at the business side of things, too. Apple has to pay a lot of money to whoever is managing and maintaining the satellites behind this and if you only ever pay when you need it you might not never pay at all. The correct mindset to have about this is that it's like insurance — you can't pick up insurance only after the fact when you need it, otherwise all insurance providers would be broke.

cowsup 4y ago
Not just the satellites, but they also said that, due to the slow speeds involved in the satellites, Apple will employ people who will be able to step in the middle of you and EMS, to help get information to them faster and answer relevant questions, without having to rely on you receiving/answering them using your device. The cost of this team alone will be huge.
- jerlam 4y ago
  This is probably an expansion of the same Globalstar team that services SOS messages from their own SPOT satellite messengers, which also use the same satellite network. The SPOT plans and the competing Garmin inReach plans are not cheap: https://www.findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/service-plans https://www.findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/service-p... https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/837461 https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/837461
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - gumby 4y ago
    And if you make a SPOT call nobody may be out there for a while. I looked into getting one just in case. Where I like to camp, in BLM land, SPOT calls the "local" 911 responder which is 2.5 hours away and run by CHP. Back then they said it can take up to 72 hours for someone to get a team together to look for you. The owners of the backpacking store I went to, whom I know, said it wouldn't be worth my money. I imagine there's better coverage in a national park though.
    - tjohns 4y ago
      Even in a national park, it will take time to respond to a satellite call. Contrary to popular belief, search and rescue doesn't always send a helicopter. It's still common to send a ranger on foot and help walk somebody out on the trail. Or if that's not possible, to take a team of humans and carry someone out on a litter. More generally... From what I was trained, ~12 hours is considered a fast rescue. The average time (according to the FAA's pilot survival training) is 31 hours, even with a known good location fix. 72 hours is very possible if there's inclement weather or difficulty locating someone.
      - cameldrv 4y ago
        It seems like this is a big advantage of the inreach in that you can text with EMS to convey if it is an urgent situation. You can also text friends/family to make alternate arrangements if the regular rescue people aren’t going to be fast enough.
        LorenPechtel 4y ago
        Sounds like the Apple version lets you send some info also. And I would generally expect search and rescue to be able to get to you faster than friends.
        cameldrv 4y ago
        That's true, it apparently has some multiple choice questions you can answer, which is definitely better than just hitting the big red button and letting rescuers guess what the nature of the situation is based on you position. Being two-way, the other advantage of the inreach is that rescuers can ask you questions and tell you when they expect to arrive etc. That said, the delta in functionality between what the iphone will offer and what an inreach offers in an emergency situation is probably not enough for the vast majority of people to want to purchase an inreach and a subscription, unless they also have a use for non-emergency communication outside of cell coverage.
      - newaccount74 4y ago
nicknow 4y ago
What you would hope is that there is a small monthly fee (say a few bucks) to have the service and then a "usage fee" for the random unlikely time you use the service. So imagine paying $2 a month to have the service on and then $75 each time you use it. Use it once every 3 years (which seems like a lot for the intended user base) and it's only ~$4 a month. And that seems about right compared to SPOT monthly pricing, considering it's intended for much greater usage than one time every 3 years.
dghlsakjg 4y ago
I pay spot ~$12/month for unlimited satellite tracking on a 10 minute interval on what I believe is the same network.
post_break 4y ago
The garmin gps you can pay only the months you need it.
- fastball 4y ago
  I'm assuming this will be the same – a monthly subscription that you can pause whenever and turn on for months when you are hiking in the wilderness, on your boat etc.
jakeinspace 4y ago
It’s a bit different from insurance, in that the benefit to the user of contacting police/rescue could be nearly infinite, while the marginal cost to Apple is small. So as long as the after-the-fact charge is high enough, Apple can amortize their costs. The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains, many of whom wouldn’t be able to pay anyway.
- runeks 4y ago
  > The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains, many of whom wouldn’t be able to pay anyway. Just hook it up to Apple Pay. “Pay $1000 to make an emergency call” /s
  - smilespray 4y ago
    Hard to authorize payment with Face ID when your face has been eaten by a bear.
    - AdamN 4y ago
      Launch 2025: BearID
    - hulitu 4y ago
      Yet people still think FaceId is a good authenticating tool.
- hbn 4y ago
  > The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains Is it any better PR if there are stories out there of bodies found starved to death in the wilderness equipped with an iPhone that has the hardware capabilities to contact emergency services, but couldn't because the person didn't pay Apple life insurance
randyrand 4y ago
They could charge $50k for 1 day of use after the fact, and people would still be happy for that option. Rescues are not cheap to begin with.
- bradleybuda 4y ago
  Haha no, they would call the literally space-age thing that saved their lives "price gouging" and point as Apple's profits as evidence that every human is entitled to this service for free.
  - adastra22 4y ago
    Every human is entitled for this service. This should be free, like GPS.
    - dymk 4y ago
      If the government was running it, maybe.
      - nickpp 4y ago
        Even government-run services cost money (usually much more than private ones). And the government gets its money from us, not from the sky.
        ChadNauseam 4y ago
        Yeah, but the government can collect money via taxes, which allows it to solve coordination problems that would be more difficult for private companies to solve.
    - LorenPechtel 4y ago
      The birds aren't cheap, the rescue coordination centers (they know who to talk to, they have no ability to actually go into the field--although that's not always needed. Garmin recently mentioned one--SOS comes in "found lost child". 25 minutes later, SOS comes in "lost child"; all they had to do is direct them to where the other was) have to be staffed--and both are private.
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Gov should subsidise it for everyone, not just Apple and Globestar. Emergency beacons should be given for free at every park. Thats a massive cost saving in terms of search and lost lives.
- cjrp 4y ago
  It might lead to _more_ search costs; people head off into sketchy situations safe in the knowledge that if they press a little button a SAR helicopter will be scrambled.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    Which it almost certainly won’t be. A SAR team will probably be dispatched when it is safe to do so. Which may take a day or more. It’s a limitation of a personal locator beacon. It had better be a real emergency and even then you have to wait. Location fixes may also not always be reliable.
dividedbyzero 4y ago
I don't think that comparison holds. What Apple is doing is making a crucial rescue tool, the distress beacon, near-ubiquitous. In a few years, any major-ish emergency involving people rich enough to own iPhones will have a working distress beacon around. This isn't like an InReach that you get and subscribe because you expect you might end up in an emergency, this is something that'll be around without even an awareness of danger and the optics of letting that potential go to waste carry a cost as well. Imagine a plane goes down in a remote area, a dozen iPhones on board but no one got the subscription. They might even end up eating the costs for genuine distress calls just for the marketing value of the iPhone saving hundreds of lives a year, or they might just charge a large sum for non-subscription distress calls and eat the cost in case the bear got there first. Besides, if they included a few tweet-sized non-emergency text messages and location updates a day in a reasonably priced subscription, I bet that would sell like hotcakes in outdoorsy circles. People bring their phone anyway, so 2-3 iPhones on your party might make the InReach redundant. I'd love that.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  I wouldn't say it would make the inReach redundant, although it's going to take a substantial bite out of the low end of the market. I pay extra for unlimited pings on a 10 minute interval--even if I can't call for help when I'm reported overdue they'll know where I am. I also think my inReach can take a lot more abuse than an iPhone. I also think it will drive the satellite guys to offer a different service--SOS only, you pre-pay a fixed price that doesn't expire. (Actually, we already have a limited version of this--personal locator beacons have no monthly cost but have to be sent in for refurbishment if used. They are highly reliable but carry nothing but ID and GPS, you can't alter the message.)

cowsup 4y ago

Not just the satellites, but they also said that, due to the slow speeds involved in the satellites, Apple will employ people who will be able to step in the middle of you and EMS, to help get information to them faster and answer relevant questions, without having to rely on you receiving/answering them using your device. The cost of this team alone will be huge.

jerlam 4y ago
This is probably an expansion of the same Globalstar team that services SOS messages from their own SPOT satellite messengers, which also use the same satellite network. The SPOT plans and the competing Garmin inReach plans are not cheap: https://www.findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/service-plans https://www.findmespot.com/en-us/products-services/service-p... https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/837461 https://www.garmin.com/en-US/p/837461
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- gumby 4y ago
  And if you make a SPOT call nobody may be out there for a while. I looked into getting one just in case. Where I like to camp, in BLM land, SPOT calls the "local" 911 responder which is 2.5 hours away and run by CHP. Back then they said it can take up to 72 hours for someone to get a team together to look for you. The owners of the backpacking store I went to, whom I know, said it wouldn't be worth my money. I imagine there's better coverage in a national park though.
  - tjohns 4y ago
    Even in a national park, it will take time to respond to a satellite call. Contrary to popular belief, search and rescue doesn't always send a helicopter. It's still common to send a ranger on foot and help walk somebody out on the trail. Or if that's not possible, to take a team of humans and carry someone out on a litter. More generally... From what I was trained, ~12 hours is considered a fast rescue. The average time (according to the FAA's pilot survival training) is 31 hours, even with a known good location fix. 72 hours is very possible if there's inclement weather or difficulty locating someone.
    - cameldrv 4y ago
      It seems like this is a big advantage of the inreach in that you can text with EMS to convey if it is an urgent situation. You can also text friends/family to make alternate arrangements if the regular rescue people aren’t going to be fast enough.
      - LorenPechtel 4y ago
        Sounds like the Apple version lets you send some info also. And I would generally expect search and rescue to be able to get to you faster than friends.
        cameldrv 4y ago
        That's true, it apparently has some multiple choice questions you can answer, which is definitely better than just hitting the big red button and letting rescuers guess what the nature of the situation is based on you position. Being two-way, the other advantage of the inreach is that rescuers can ask you questions and tell you when they expect to arrive etc. That said, the delta in functionality between what the iphone will offer and what an inreach offers in an emergency situation is probably not enough for the vast majority of people to want to purchase an inreach and a subscription, unless they also have a use for non-emergency communication outside of cell coverage.
    - newaccount74 4y ago

nicknow 4y ago

What you would hope is that there is a small monthly fee (say a few bucks) to have the service and then a "usage fee" for the random unlikely time you use the service. So imagine paying $2 a month to have the service on and then $75 each time you use it. Use it once every 3 years (which seems like a lot for the intended user base) and it's only ~$4 a month. And that seems about right compared to SPOT monthly pricing, considering it's intended for much greater usage than one time every 3 years.

dghlsakjg 4y ago

I pay spot ~$12/month for unlimited satellite tracking on a 10 minute interval on what I believe is the same network.

post_break 4y ago

The garmin gps you can pay only the months you need it.

fastball 4y ago
I'm assuming this will be the same – a monthly subscription that you can pause whenever and turn on for months when you are hiking in the wilderness, on your boat etc.

jakeinspace 4y ago

It’s a bit different from insurance, in that the benefit to the user of contacting police/rescue could be nearly infinite, while the marginal cost to Apple is small. So as long as the after-the-fact charge is high enough, Apple can amortize their costs. The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains, many of whom wouldn’t be able to pay anyway.

runeks 4y ago
> The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains, many of whom wouldn’t be able to pay anyway. Just hook it up to Apple Pay. “Pay $1000 to make an emergency call” /s
- smilespray 4y ago
  Hard to authorize payment with Face ID when your face has been eaten by a bear.
  - AdamN 4y ago
    Launch 2025: BearID
  - hulitu 4y ago
    Yet people still think FaceId is a good authenticating tool.
hbn 4y ago
> The main issue is it’s terrible PR for Apple to be sending $1000 bills to people who’ve been mauled by bears or gotten lost in the mountains Is it any better PR if there are stories out there of bodies found starved to death in the wilderness equipped with an iPhone that has the hardware capabilities to contact emergency services, but couldn't because the person didn't pay Apple life insurance

randyrand 4y ago

They could charge $50k for 1 day of use after the fact, and people would still be happy for that option. Rescues are not cheap to begin with.

bradleybuda 4y ago
Haha no, they would call the literally space-age thing that saved their lives "price gouging" and point as Apple's profits as evidence that every human is entitled to this service for free.
- adastra22 4y ago
  Every human is entitled for this service. This should be free, like GPS.
  - dymk 4y ago
    If the government was running it, maybe.
    - nickpp 4y ago
      Even government-run services cost money (usually much more than private ones). And the government gets its money from us, not from the sky.
      - ChadNauseam 4y ago
        Yeah, but the government can collect money via taxes, which allows it to solve coordination problems that would be more difficult for private companies to solve.
  - LorenPechtel 4y ago
    The birds aren't cheap, the rescue coordination centers (they know who to talk to, they have no ability to actually go into the field--although that's not always needed. Garmin recently mentioned one--SOS comes in "found lost child". 25 minutes later, SOS comes in "lost child"; all they had to do is direct them to where the other was) have to be staffed--and both are private.

dzhiurgis 4y ago

Gov should subsidise it for everyone, not just Apple and Globestar. Emergency beacons should be given for free at every park. Thats a massive cost saving in terms of search and lost lives.

cjrp 4y ago
It might lead to _more_ search costs; people head off into sketchy situations safe in the knowledge that if they press a little button a SAR helicopter will be scrambled.
- ghaff 4y ago
  Which it almost certainly won’t be. A SAR team will probably be dispatched when it is safe to do so. Which may take a day or more. It’s a limitation of a personal locator beacon. It had better be a real emergency and even then you have to wait. Location fixes may also not always be reliable.

dividedbyzero 4y ago

I don't think that comparison holds. What Apple is doing is making a crucial rescue tool, the distress beacon, near-ubiquitous. In a few years, any major-ish emergency involving people rich enough to own iPhones will have a working distress beacon around. This isn't like an InReach that you get and subscribe because you expect you might end up in an emergency, this is something that'll be around without even an awareness of danger and the optics of letting that potential go to waste carry a cost as well. Imagine a plane goes down in a remote area, a dozen iPhones on board but no one got the subscription. They might even end up eating the costs for genuine distress calls just for the marketing value of the iPhone saving hundreds of lives a year, or they might just charge a large sum for non-subscription distress calls and eat the cost in case the bear got there first. Besides, if they included a few tweet-sized non-emergency text messages and location updates a day in a reasonably priced subscription, I bet that would sell like hotcakes in outdoorsy circles. People bring their phone anyway, so 2-3 iPhones on your party might make the InReach redundant. I'd love that.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
I wouldn't say it would make the inReach redundant, although it's going to take a substantial bite out of the low end of the market. I pay extra for unlimited pings on a 10 minute interval--even if I can't call for help when I'm reported overdue they'll know where I am. I also think my inReach can take a lot more abuse than an iPhone. I also think it will drive the satellite guys to offer a different service--SOS only, you pre-pay a fixed price that doesn't expire. (Actually, we already have a limited version of this--personal locator beacons have no monthly cost but have to be sent in for refurbishment if used. They are highly reliable but carry nothing but ID and GPS, you can't alter the message.)