6 ms·

Apparently you can't do a lot of things with it if you have tattoos on your wrist: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/344b3o/anyone_with_tattoos_and_the_wa

Apparently you can't do a lot of things with it if you have tattoos on your wrist: http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/344b3o/anyone_with_tattoos_and_the_watch_please_read/ http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/344b3o/anyone_with_ta...

huhhhh 12y ago
You're tattooing it wrong. But seriously, how could Apple not test this?
- drzaiusapelord 12y ago
  I have a feeling that the Apple of old would have caught this instantly, when it was largely the boutique brand for creatives. Today's Apple? Not surprising at all.
  - freehunter 12y ago
    I'm not sure that's the case. This feature (which is entirely optional and can be disabled) is looking for skin. Metallic ink tattoos don't look like skin, and only a small percentage of people have such tattoos on their wrist. However, a massive percentage of people have hands that are shaped like hands, and yet the Apple of old made a mouse that doesn't seem to be designed for anything even remotely resembling a human hand. They've literally always been form-over-function. They may have caught this issue and said "those people can disable this completely optional feature".
    - jacobolus 12y ago
      Their “puck” mouse design was intended to ameliorate RSI by encouraging a grip with only the fingertips. Unfortunately, nobody got the memo about the “proper” way to hold the mouse, and tried to grip the mouse the same way they were used to... which of course sucked. (And it was also difficult to guess the orientation of a round object.) It’s definitely a bad design especially given the context of existing mice, and a case of poor communication, or insufficient user testing, or even hubris maybe. Your dismissive summary of their intentions is not at all fair, however.
      - freehunter 12y ago
        I make no judgment of their intentions. Merely stating that even back in the day, Apple was known for making some questionable design decisions. Good intentions or bad intentions, it was not a highly functional mouse.
      - phs2501 12y ago
        I do grip mice "properly" with just my fingertips, and the puck mouse still felt incredibly horrible.
  - zerohm 12y ago
    I like the way you found a new way to say "this never would have happened under Steve Jobs!" Nice work.
  - edgyswingset 12y ago
    The Apple of old (and by that I mean Steve Jobs) decided to tell people they were holding their phones wrong rather than launch a device which worked no matter how you held it.
    - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
      No I mean a 80s and 90s hacker culture where weirdos were valued and guys with tats would be testing things. Apple today just seems way too button down, for good or bad.
      - greglindahl 12y ago
        Not only do you need a tat, but you need a tat covering the skin under the watch that's done with metallic ink. What fraction of people with tats have such a tattoo? I have a lot of friends with tats, but none that meet those criteria.
    - snowwrestler 12y ago
      The iPhone 4 did work no matter how you held it, as evidenced by its long tenure (sold for 4+ years), and high sales and customer satisfaction ratings. If you carefully held it in a very particular way, you could make it lose a couple bars. Jobs said: there's no reception problem, just don't hold it that way. It turned out he was right.
  - elorant 12y ago
    The Apple of old almost went bankrupt.
    - pmelendez 12y ago
      Depends how old you want to go. For me is Woz's AppleII kind of Apple which was exceptionally quality driven and economically was a great success.
    - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
      For a long time they were incredibly successful while Woz and Jobs were active.
- istvan__ 12y ago
  Oh boy, in a world that is focused on productivity (aka deliver asap something even if it is partially broken) and not too much of quality, this can happen very easily.
  - jonknee 12y ago
    ASAP? The watch had been in progress for many years and was even announced and demonstrated publicly 7 months before it started to ship. It was definitely not rushed out the door.
    - istvan__ 12y ago
      Sorry I was focused more on the making process than the actual product. This happens with software more often than with hardware. I started to work as a hardware test engineer back in the day, and I know how hard is to deliver something without problems like this.
- DannoHung 12y ago
  Seems like they tested every other factor though: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666 They do explicitly note that you may need an external heart rate sensor band in some conditions if the pulse oximeter isn't working for some reason.
- josefresco 12y ago
  The proclivity of hipster-douches with full sleeve tattoos in tech makes this even more shocking. All jokes aside (I can live with the downvotes), I could see this easily falling through the cracks for a company new to wearables. What about hairy arms? What about skinny arms?
r00fus 12y ago
No it means you can't use wrist detection to auto-lock because the metallic pigments in some tattoos interferes with passive skin sensing. There's an option to turn it off. How many people have metallic pigment tattoos on their wrists?
- oxide 12y ago
  a lot?
- sanoli 12y ago
  How many watches don't work on people with tattoos on their wrists?
  - eric_h 12y ago
    How many optical pulse oximeters don't work on people with tattoos on their wrists. The watch works fine.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > How many optical pulse oximeters don't work on people with tattoos on their wrists. AFAIK, very few, because optical pulse oximeters usually go on fingertips or earlobes, even ones that are attached to wrist-mounted displays.
    - sanoli 12y ago
      thats dishonest/apple fanboyism. The watch doesnt work as advertised. Edit: on people with dark tattoos.
julianpye 12y ago
This kind of reminds me of the 'Better off Ted' episode, where the company's new motion detection system does not detect any of the African Americans in the office.
- chimeracoder 12y ago
  > This kind of reminds me of the 'Better off Ted' episode, where the company's new motion detection system does not detect any of the African Americans in the office. Which is itself a reference to real-life results involving motion detection/computer vision/image processing (this was a particularly bad problem in the earlier days of the field, but still persists today to some extent).
  - JoblessWonder 12y ago
    Here is a great video showing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM I think I just like their banter.
- r00fus 12y ago
  Right, because people who have chosen to get dark tattoos are just like people who were born with darker skin.
  - seanp2k2 12y ago
    Both cases illustrate how the technology fails to adapt to the physical world.
- swombat 12y ago
  Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

huhhhh 12y ago

You're tattooing it wrong. But seriously, how could Apple not test this?

drzaiusapelord 12y ago
I have a feeling that the Apple of old would have caught this instantly, when it was largely the boutique brand for creatives. Today's Apple? Not surprising at all.
- freehunter 12y ago
  I'm not sure that's the case. This feature (which is entirely optional and can be disabled) is looking for skin. Metallic ink tattoos don't look like skin, and only a small percentage of people have such tattoos on their wrist. However, a massive percentage of people have hands that are shaped like hands, and yet the Apple of old made a mouse that doesn't seem to be designed for anything even remotely resembling a human hand. They've literally always been form-over-function. They may have caught this issue and said "those people can disable this completely optional feature".
  - jacobolus 12y ago
    Their “puck” mouse design was intended to ameliorate RSI by encouraging a grip with only the fingertips. Unfortunately, nobody got the memo about the “proper” way to hold the mouse, and tried to grip the mouse the same way they were used to... which of course sucked. (And it was also difficult to guess the orientation of a round object.) It’s definitely a bad design especially given the context of existing mice, and a case of poor communication, or insufficient user testing, or even hubris maybe. Your dismissive summary of their intentions is not at all fair, however.
    - freehunter 12y ago
      I make no judgment of their intentions. Merely stating that even back in the day, Apple was known for making some questionable design decisions. Good intentions or bad intentions, it was not a highly functional mouse.
    - phs2501 12y ago
      I do grip mice "properly" with just my fingertips, and the puck mouse still felt incredibly horrible.
- zerohm 12y ago
  I like the way you found a new way to say "this never would have happened under Steve Jobs!" Nice work.
- edgyswingset 12y ago
  The Apple of old (and by that I mean Steve Jobs) decided to tell people they were holding their phones wrong rather than launch a device which worked no matter how you held it.
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    No I mean a 80s and 90s hacker culture where weirdos were valued and guys with tats would be testing things. Apple today just seems way too button down, for good or bad.
    - greglindahl 12y ago
      Not only do you need a tat, but you need a tat covering the skin under the watch that's done with metallic ink. What fraction of people with tats have such a tattoo? I have a lot of friends with tats, but none that meet those criteria.
  - snowwrestler 12y ago
    The iPhone 4 did work no matter how you held it, as evidenced by its long tenure (sold for 4+ years), and high sales and customer satisfaction ratings. If you carefully held it in a very particular way, you could make it lose a couple bars. Jobs said: there's no reception problem, just don't hold it that way. It turned out he was right.
- elorant 12y ago
  The Apple of old almost went bankrupt.
  - pmelendez 12y ago
    Depends how old you want to go. For me is Woz's AppleII kind of Apple which was exceptionally quality driven and economically was a great success.
  - drzaiusapelord 12y ago
    For a long time they were incredibly successful while Woz and Jobs were active.
istvan__ 12y ago
Oh boy, in a world that is focused on productivity (aka deliver asap something even if it is partially broken) and not too much of quality, this can happen very easily.
- jonknee 12y ago
  ASAP? The watch had been in progress for many years and was even announced and demonstrated publicly 7 months before it started to ship. It was definitely not rushed out the door.
  - istvan__ 12y ago
    Sorry I was focused more on the making process than the actual product. This happens with software more often than with hardware. I started to work as a hardware test engineer back in the day, and I know how hard is to deliver something without problems like this.
DannoHung 12y ago
Seems like they tested every other factor though: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204666 They do explicitly note that you may need an external heart rate sensor band in some conditions if the pulse oximeter isn't working for some reason.
josefresco 12y ago
The proclivity of hipster-douches with full sleeve tattoos in tech makes this even more shocking. All jokes aside (I can live with the downvotes), I could see this easily falling through the cracks for a company new to wearables. What about hairy arms? What about skinny arms?

r00fus 12y ago

No it means you can't use wrist detection to auto-lock because the metallic pigments in some tattoos interferes with passive skin sensing. There's an option to turn it off. How many people have metallic pigment tattoos on their wrists?

oxide 12y ago
a lot?
sanoli 12y ago
How many watches don't work on people with tattoos on their wrists?
- eric_h 12y ago
  How many optical pulse oximeters don't work on people with tattoos on their wrists. The watch works fine.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > How many optical pulse oximeters don't work on people with tattoos on their wrists. AFAIK, very few, because optical pulse oximeters usually go on fingertips or earlobes, even ones that are attached to wrist-mounted displays.
  - sanoli 12y ago
    thats dishonest/apple fanboyism. The watch doesnt work as advertised. Edit: on people with dark tattoos.

julianpye 12y ago

This kind of reminds me of the 'Better off Ted' episode, where the company's new motion detection system does not detect any of the African Americans in the office.

chimeracoder 12y ago
> This kind of reminds me of the 'Better off Ted' episode, where the company's new motion detection system does not detect any of the African Americans in the office. Which is itself a reference to real-life results involving motion detection/computer vision/image processing (this was a particularly bad problem in the earlier days of the field, but still persists today to some extent).
- JoblessWonder 12y ago
  Here is a great video showing it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4DT3tQqgRM I think I just like their banter.
r00fus 12y ago
Right, because people who have chosen to get dark tattoos are just like people who were born with darker skin.
- seanp2k2 12y ago
  Both cases illustrate how the technology fails to adapt to the physical world.
swombat 12y ago
Reminds me of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]