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Apple Ditches Health-Monitoring Features from Watch

posted by janrinok on Wednesday February 18 2015, @11:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the tick-tock-sick-tock dept.

wirelessduck writes:

The Register reports: "Apple's bad hair day: Watch 'stripped' of health sensors":

Apple has ditched plans to make its new smart watch a health-monitoring device following problems with the technology and regulatory issues, according to reports.

Sources told The Wall Street Journal that some of the features were too complicated, while others would have prompted unwanted regulatory oversight. It said development of its health sensor technology has failed to meet standards, with inconsistency from sensor readings, arising from hairy arms or dry skin.

"Apple also experimented with ways to detect blood pressure or the amount of oxygen in the blood, but the results were inconsistent," said the paper.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by dbe on Thursday February 19 2015, @12:55AM

    by dbe (1422) on Thursday February 19 2015, @12:55AM (#146784)

    Well maybe citing NSA seems like a bit too much in this case, but the more slippery slope is when is this data going to be integrated by your heath provider to jack-up your premium if you're spending your days in the basement eating Doritos?

    Companies are already promoting heath campaigns where they give a free pedometer to employees and distribute fake prices for whoever has registered more steps per month... While you are free to not register and do exercise on your own I'm not sure how long that will not be part of your employee record as "does not want to participate to corporate activities" and come to bite you at your review.

    So I would be more concerned by the integration of all that data with social networks and health providers.
    (I refuse to call it big data, but that's the elephant in the room)

    -dbe

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19 2015, @02:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19 2015, @02:56PM (#146970)

    heath provider

    You mean the shepherd? :-)