If you’ve entered your age when you set up your Apple Watch or in the Health app and you’re age 65 and over, this feature automatically turns on.
Nice find by a Redditor on Apple’s Watch Series 4 support pages. As a commenter said, it’s the likeliest explanation of why some reviewers couldn’t trigger it.
Wonder if Apple anticipated that people would intentionally fall down to test this? Cue up the ridiculous lawsuit…
also, you likely need a hard-stop of wrist against surface, not a mattress landing.
Apple needs to fix this or they are leaving themselves open to huge lawsuits. They advertised this on stage as a feature of the Series 4. They are also advertising it on their website (see text below). In neither of these places did they mention that it was off by default for those under the age of 65. I know that I assumed it was on. I’ve told my wife about the feature and that it would send her a message if I were to fall. So I had a false sense of security that the watch was looking out for me in the case of a fall. So where does the lawsuit come in? When people are not told that the feature needs to be manually enabled and then someone who is wearing the watch falls and is hurt badly, Apple will potentially be sued by them or their loved ones because a featured reason they purchased the watch failed because it was disabled by default.
This is a big deal. If Apple were not actively advertising this, with no indication that it is off by default, I would not think it was as big of a deal. And the steps needed to turn it on are not intuitive either. There should be some indication to the user that this is off by default.
From Apple’s website:
Fall detection.
With the new accelerometer and gyroscope, Apple Watch Series 4 can detect that you’ve fallen. When an incident like this occurs, a hard fall alert is delivered, and you can easily initiate a call to emergency services or dismiss the alert. If you’re unresponsive after 60 seconds, the emergency call will be placed automatically and a message with your location will be sent to your emergency contacts.
Someone at macrumors activated it by “digging” 🙂
Testing must have been fun. I imagine them asking employees to wear watches and then randomly knocking them over in the hallways for three days…
Some of you will never be satisfied until Apple comes to your house and configures every one of your devices to your personal satisfaction. Take some responsibility for yourself and make sure things like this are on if they’re important to you. This take is like the upset a few weeks again that parental controls are set permissively and let kids view things like NC17 movies… gee, they’re Parental Controls…. if a parent wants to set them, do that.
Your analogy is so ridiculous as to strain credulity. Apple is not advertising their products as protecting your children from movie ratings. They advertise that they have a feature you can turn on. They are advertising the watch as a product that detects falls, not one that detects falls after you dig through the settings to find the feature and enable it.
This is really simple, either advertise it and have it on by default or very simply say that it must be enabled by the user. But the simple fact is, the way they are currently advertising, I haven’t heard you or anyone else say that they understood that it was not enabled by default. Furthermore, falling and expecting that your watch will call for help could literally be the difference between life and death. Your child seeing an R-rated movie is nowhere near that.
“Read my mind! Do everything for me!”
Some people will want this on. Others will not. IF you’re too damn lazy to check and adjust settings on a new device, esp for a feature that you claim is important to you, that’s your damn fault. Quit blaming others for it.
A sign that you’re on the wrong side of an argument is when you resort to ad hominem attacks.
Are you truly claiming that it would be laziness preventing someone from turning on this setting? Something that takes only a couple of taps to do?
The fact that you went there should tell you how ridiculous your stance is on this. No one is saying that it is hard or cumbersome to have to turn this on. What we are saying, if you even care, is that people are quite obviously assuming it is on by default. No one is even thinking that this is something that has an on/off switch. Why would it?
You’ve obviously dug in on this and I’m honestly not responding because I expect you to open your mind and have a real discussion on this. You’ve clearly demonstrated that you aren’t interested in that when you resorted to the personal attacks. I’m only responding now to demonstrate the absurdity of your response to others who might read this thread.
I should not have to look for a setting to turn on a feature that the watch is advertised as having. And it isn’t a regular feature. It is advertised and works as a potential life-saving feature. It is not crazy to expect that if Apple advertises the watch as being able to call potentially life-saving help for you if you fall, that it should do that without you having to turn it on. It is a service that provides assistance when you are unable to provide it for yourself. It is a no-brainer that this should either be on by default or ask you if you want to turn it on during setup.
And for the record, it is Apple that is claiming the importance of this feature, not me.
I am really shocked at the absurdity of you attacking me over something that is so simple.
“. What we are saying, if you even care, is that people are quite obviously assuming it is on by default. “
They are? You’ve conducted a statistically relevant sample?
what I’m sick and tired of is people ceding agency to technology. Oh we can’t resist the pull of our smartphones! We’re just prisoners, little stimulus/response bots! BS. People need to take responsibility for themselves. We can argue over whether this should be on or off by default – both stances have merit – but if this is truly important to someone they can CHECK THE DAMN SETTING. That’s all I’m saying. Don’t tell me it’s so important but when someone gets their new phone they can’t be bothered to check the setting out and make sure it’s configured properly.
And there’s no ad hominem in my last comment. The ‘if you’re too lazy’ is both meant generically and, if you want to take it personally, my opinion. If you, specifically, are too lazy to check this, it IS your fault that it’s not set to your liking. That’s not an attack – it’s a statement of truth… or do you think it’s someone else’s responsibility to set your device up the way you want? Keep in mind than Apple CANNOT… because if they default to on, then it will be wrong for the people who want it off and vice versa. There is no setting that will be correct 100% of the time.
You have launched so many logical fallacies in this one response that it is staggering.
Ad hominem (again)
Straw man
Begging the Question
Slippery Slope
Non-Sequitur
I mean seriously, you are off on so many tangents and having arguments with things that I never said. And you are ranting and using all caps on top of that. Did some technology hurt you?
You seem to be addicted to pointing out what you feel are logic errors. That’s cute, but boring (and wrong in several cases). Go away – wait, I can block you. Excellent…