[HN Gopher] Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in ...
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Blood oxygen monitoring returning to Apple Watch in the US
Author : thm
Score : 310 points
Date : 2025-08-14 13:14 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| brandonb wrote:
| Apple was in a patent dispute over this feature with Massimo.
| Their workaround is to calculate blood oxygen on the iPhone,
| using the sensors from Apple Watch.
|
| The Apple Watch hardware is otherwise the same. The back of the
| watch shines light of a specific wavelength into your skin and
| measures the reflected light. Heart rate sensing uses green (525
| nm) and infrared (850-940 nm) light; blood oxygen sensing added a
| red light at 660 nm in 2020.
|
| The iPhone will now calculate the ratio of absorbed red to
| infrared light, then apply calibration constants from
| experimental data to estimate blood oxygen saturation.
|
| More detailed writeup on how the technology works is here:
| https://www.empirical.health/metrics/oxygen/
| BallsInIt wrote:
| Software patents are a scourge.
| sneak wrote:
| The whole concept of software patents is a hack; as I
| understand it algorithms as a rule cannot be patented, so the
| system running the algorithm is patented instead. This seems
| to illustrate the absurdity of that workaround.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a
| trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather
| than engage in a licensing deal.
| spogbiper wrote:
| 25 employees including the CTO, and then bought a building
| nearby to Masimo's office for them to work in. At least
| according to the CEO of Masimo in public statements.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RR1o8EoW-Eg
| thebruce87m wrote:
| Sounds good for the employees, so go Apple?
| spogbiper wrote:
| Yes, very good for the employees. Apple even offered them
| 2x their salaries to leave Masimo.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Yes "very good", until Apple decides to mass-layoff them,
| because now, owning the valuable core IP and having
| killed their primary competitor in the field, Apple can
| do whatever they want and get away with it because those
| employees have nowhere else to go in the area. 200+ IQ
| move </slow_clap>.
|
| How people on HN can support monopolization of markets
| and killing of competition is beyond me, since in the end
| it always bites them in the ass (see recent mass layoffs
| in the industry), yet this lesson seems to be quickly
| forgotten.
| johnfn wrote:
| Is there evidence of Apple doing this in the past?
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Apple is infamous for driving other companies into
| bankruptcy to acquire their assets. For a single example,
| see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_Technology
| jachee wrote:
| That's not evidence of Apple doing mass layoffs, though.
| ggreer wrote:
| How is that an example of Apple driving a company into
| bankruptcy to acquire their assets? Judging from the
| Wikipedia article, it looks like Exponential Technologies
| made a good PowerPC CPU, but Motorola promised they'd be
| able to catch up, and it's safer to bet on a big company
| that you've been doing business with than to rely on a
| startup for a critical component.
|
| Licensed Mac clones were only available for two years
| (1995-1997), and discontinuing the program drove many
| other companies out of business, so it's hard to see how
| the change was a ploy to acquire a single company's
| assets. It seems more likely that Jobs discontinued
| licensing because it caused Apple to lose money.
|
| And it looks like much of the Exponential Technologies
| team continued under a different name, then was bought by
| Apple in 2010 for $121 million.[1]
|
| If there are other examples, can you provide one that is
| more recent and/or more blatant?
|
| 1. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/technology/28apple.
| html
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| When they started, they were producing for multiple small
| customers. Apple was frustrated with Motorola and
| approached them but demanded they massively increase
| their production capacity (Apple's model for dominating a
| supplier... put them in debt and beholden to them for
| orders) and effectively dominated them as a customer...
|
| Then used them to negotiate a better price with Motorola,
| dumped their purchase contract for 'reasons' and
| bankrupted the company.
|
| Exponential sued.. and won $500 million... for breach
| contract but were destroyed by that point. Apple gobbled
| up their IP for around $20 mil later on.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Oh... and I forgot this case also exposed that Apple had
| embedded proprietary IP into the CPU design which made it
| impossible to seel the already produced CPUs to anyone
| else (PowerPC chips were in very high demand at the time
| and these were the fastest on the market).
| ggreer wrote:
| I can't find any articles about Exponential winning the
| lawsuit, only that they filed one and sought $500 million
| in damages. Had they won, I think it would have been in
| the press. The only thing I could find was Apple's 10K
| from 1999[1], which says they settled the lawsuit for an
| undisclosed amount:
|
| > This matter was settled during the fourth quarter of
| 1999 for an amount not material to the Company's
| financial position or results of operations.
|
| If Apple did pay $500 million, I think that would have
| been material to the company's financial position, as
| their profit that year was $601M.
|
| Again, are there any examples that are less debatable
| and/or more recent? I don't have a dog in this fight. But
| if Apple is infamous for this behavior, it seems like
| there would be stronger examples.
|
| 1. See page 59: https://www.annualreports.com/HostedData/
| AnnualReportArchive...
| hbn wrote:
| Let's not forget Masimo picked the fight. Apple was fine
| letting them compete.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Pardon? Masimo was first and Apple took their tech (as
| confirmed by a court). Was Masimo supposed to sit there
| and shrug?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Hah, plenty of people have described Masimo, 400 times
| smaller than Apple, in the threads on this as "bullying
| Apple unfairly by being a patent troll."
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| If they couldn't get a patent on the LED setup, just the
| software, then yes. They should just shrug and compete.
| The _idea_ of a piece of software should always be open
| to competition.
| adrr wrote:
| First to what? Sensor was invented in 1972.
| eddieroger wrote:
| Masimo does so much more than consumer-worn heart rate
| monitors and O2 sensors. They'll be fine as well.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| They will be fine, but maybe they want to be FANG rich.
| You do not get there if the already big companies play by
| different rules and can out spend the minute you pose a
| threat.
| jart wrote:
| Maybe if Masimo had made Lamego a significant
| shareholder, he wouldn't have left his "CTO" role to
| become a mere Apple employee. Masimo is an $8b company.
| They created a spinoff called Cercacor which Lamego got
| to be CTO of. My best guess is it wasn't a real startup
| like we're used to in the Silicon Valley sense. There
| wasn't any real opportunity for him to gain generational
| wealth there if he was successful. Apple not only hired
| him, but thirty other of their employees too, because
| Apple recognized that their talent was worth more than a
| licensing deal. That's the issue with these non-valley
| enterprises. They're very feudal in the sense that the
| owners treat their engineers and scientists like ordinary
| workers, expect total loyalty, and pull out their legal
| guns when they don't get their way. Big tech companies
| like Apple are more meritocratic and generally offer
| smart people much better deals. A court later found
| Lamego hadn't made his moves entirely fairly, but I
| believe if you look at the big picture, Apple's behavior
| wasn't predatory, but rather liberatory.
| snapetom wrote:
| > Big tech companies like Apple are more meritocratic and
| generally offer smart people much better deals.
|
| It's mindblowing how big of a gap this is for these non-
| tech companies. I work for a company that sold to PE. The
| owners walked away with the vast majority of a 1.5
| billion deal.
|
| I asked if employees were given anything. "Sure. Some got
| as much as 50k!" I was told.
|
| Using some standard equity math for early engineers, I
| back of napkined that the 25 year tenure engineers, if
| they were at big tech, should have gotten low 7 figures.
| Nope. They got 50k out of 1.5 billion.
|
| (No, PE had no say on how that 1.5 billion was divided up
| for those of you quick to blame PE.)
| eddieroger wrote:
| They're already in most of the hospitals in America.
| There was one attached to my daughter's foot for 100+
| days. I don't think they care about FAANG at all. They're
| not a software company. Look them up - this is big
| companies fighting, not David and Goliath.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Look them up - this is big companies fighting, not
| David and Goliath._
|
| Massimo is 400x smaller than Apple. WTF are you talking
| about like they're in the same weight class?
| runako wrote:
| > maybe they want to be FANG rich
|
| Their (limited) levels.fyi data does not indicate this is
| one of their goals.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >Apple can do whatever they want and get away with it
| because those employees have nowhere else to go in the
| area. 200+ IQ move.
|
| I would bet Apple, and the other large publicly listed
| tech companies, have lifted far more employees into
| financial independence from employers than any other
| business in history.
| themafia wrote:
| > have lifted far more employees into financial
| independence
|
| They've also destroyed financial independence. They've
| engaged in anti-competitive and anti-poaching practices
| before. There's several famous examples.
|
| Anyways, are you saying it's Apple's goal to lift
| employees in this way, or does it just happen to be
| incidental to whatever their CEO wants at the moment?
|
| Also all the people actually _making_ those devices,
| surely the largest labor pool supporting their business,
| have zero financial independence. That's the typical
| western blind spot.
|
| > from employers than any other business in history
|
| I think that'd be the US Government and it's GI Bill.
| Okay, technically not a business, but if the virtue is
| independence, then it shouldn't matter who provided it.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> I would bet Apple, and the other large publicly listed
| tech companies, have lifted far more employees into
| financial independence from employers than any other
| business in history._
|
| So doing monopolistic and illegal things is OK because it
| makes some people rich?
| jart wrote:
| Lamego only stayed at Apple six months. He was very
| productive. He filed 12 new patents for Apple. But he
| apparently had disputes with managers. The details aren't
| entirely clear. But Lamego ended up resigning. After
| leaving Apple, he founded his own company, True
| Wearables, which was also successfully sued by Masimo for
| trade secret theft.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _owning the valuable core IP and having killed their
| primary competitor in the field, Apple can do whatever
| they want_
|
| Massimo still owns the core IP. Apple owns some other IP.
|
| > _How people on HN can support monopolization of
| markets_
|
| There was one niche (note: still massive) provider of
| this technology. Now there are two, one of which is mass.
| Even if that collapses to one mass, that's objectively
| better. More competitors and more consumer surplus is not
| a monopoly condition.
|
| There is a difference between being reflexively anti-
| Apple regardless of the circumstances and being pro-
| monopoly.
| mrcwinn wrote:
| (I couldn't reply down another level.)
|
| >How HN can support monopolization of markets and killing
| of [sic] competition is beyond me.
|
| That suggests HN is a monoculture of some sort of united
| front. It is not. Diversity of opinion is best for this
| community (and all communities).
|
| And, sorry, what competition was killed off here? I, as
| the consumer, was never considering Massimo for my blood
| oxygen measurement needs. I bought an Apple Watch and
| just want it to be as feature-full as possible. So does
| Apple.
| yifanl wrote:
| Why were you never considering them for your blood oxygen
| measurement needs?
| lovich wrote:
| Not the OP but as someone in the same boat.
|
| I wasn't going to buy a device just for blood monitoring.
| What they produced is valuable to me as a feature of a
| product but not as a product in of itself
| yifanl wrote:
| So we should allow apple to have monopoly power in every
| industry because otherwise it'd be annoying to buy
| separate devices.
| jodrellblank wrote:
| ... who made that claim?
| usefulcat wrote:
| Where did anyone claim that Apple ought to have a
| monopoly on blood oxygen measurement in a wearable
| electronic device, let alone "have monopoly power in
| every industry"?
| snitty wrote:
| >monopoly on blood oxygen measurement in a wearable
| electronic device
|
| And I know this isn't your argument, but that's a VERY
| narrow market for the purposes of a US inquiry into
| monopolies. Like, the normal market definition fights are
| about whether you should be considering "premium
| smartphones" or "smartphones" as a whole. Or all of the
| grocery stores in a given region, and whether that should
| include convenience stores that also sell groceries.
|
| I'd be hard pressed to imagine a court really
| contemplating an argument that a company has a monopoly
| in a very small slice of a market. It would be like
| saying that Rolex has a monopoly in luxury sport watches
| with headquarters in Geneva.
| odo1242 wrote:
| Yea, so if Apple didn't copy the other company's work,
| they'd have been forced to buy devices from or license
| the other company's work. So instead of your money for
| the blood oxygen sensor going to that company, it went to
| Apple.
| skybrian wrote:
| I bought a cheap pulse oximeter during the pandemic and
| what I learned is that when I'm feeling light-headed,
| blood oxygen is low. So I decided that my body's built-in
| blood oximeter is probably good enough most of the time.
|
| It's sort of like having your watch tell you whether you
| slept well or not. Didn't you already know? If you think
| you slept well and your watch disagrees, are you going to
| trust its opinion over your own?
| nopenopeyup wrote:
| Because why would I want to destroy the planet by
| purchasing an additional new watch for each single
| feature that I wanted to leverage? This seems hugely
| damaging to the environment just to enrich the lives of <
| 100 people.
| adrr wrote:
| Masimo never paid well. $100k to $120k for a senior
| software engineer. 2x sounds good but probably brought
| them up to average bay area salaries.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Yikes. That's like the poverty line in Silicon Valley.
| soperj wrote:
| lol from the company that colluded with multiple other
| companies to keep developer salaries down.
| krferriter wrote:
| Good for everyone except whoever had money invested in
| Masimo
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Similar to what HNers are so happy to say about
| restaurant owners who actually have to be profitable and
| can't depend on the largess of investors, if Masimo can't
| afford to pay market rates to developers, the company
| doesn't deserve to exist.
| blizdiddy wrote:
| This, but unironically
| geodel wrote:
| Right. Somehow people here are struggling on how to pin
| blame on Apple even when developers are better off with
| Apple's offer. It is a great outcome for anyone who is
| developer.
|
| If in their world view "best developer salary is not
| always the best thing" one could have better reasoning
| for supporting little guy Massimo getting crushed by
| Apple.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| So if Apple came to your company, promising licensing,
| collaboration and other things, when all along their
| intention was to "take" "your" employees, you'd be cool
| with that deception?
|
| The employees made out better - good for them. That's a
| lot easier to do when you have a market cap 400 times
| higher than that of the company you made all these
| promises to, and then left holding the bag.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| Sincere question for you: Do you actually believe that
| your employees _belong_ to you?
| FireBeyond wrote:
| No. That's why I framed those words. They're not taken,
| and they're not yours.
|
| I thought I was pretty clear that I felt the outcome for
| the employees was positive and that Apple's actions were
| actively deceptive. It was clear in the trial that Apple
| had zero intention of collaboration, licensing, or patent
| sharing and just used that as a pretense to "get in the
| room" and see who showed up on Masimo's side so they knew
| who to target with competing offers.
| meindnoch wrote:
| If another company taking some of your employees will
| affect you company's bottom line, then you better pay
| those employees _handsomely_.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And by "pay" liquid cash or liquid equity in a publicly
| traded stock - not illiquid "equity" in a private
| company.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| If apple hired them to work on something else, but they
| hired them to steal tech from their old company.
| raw_anon_1111 wrote:
| There were no trade secrets involved. It was a patent.
| Here it is
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/
|
| They were hired for their expertise. Do you want to start
| enforcing non competes in California?
| nkrisc wrote:
| I think the good is offset by Apple using its other hand
| to suppress wages for other employees by engaging in "no
| poaching" practices with other companies.
|
| Probably a net-negative.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Great for the employees. But Apple submarined their way
| in offering partnership, licensing, collaboration, with
| near zero plans to do any of it.
|
| So good for the employees, but I wouldn't be applauding
| Apple for their outright deceptions here.
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| They destroyed the founders company and stole their IP in
| the process though. Let's not forget there's actual
| victims in this story.
| adrr wrote:
| What did they steal? CEO destroyed his own company when
| he bought a bunch of highend speaker brands. WTF is a
| medical device company doing buying consumer audio
| companies?
| hsbauauvhabzb wrote:
| That's not for you to decide. It somebody is
| eating/smoking/drinking themselves to death, does that
| give you the right to murder them?
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| Giving a pass to trillion dollars companies for them to
| just come next to something they are interested in, poach
| employees, steal IP and not give a dim to actual
| innovators sure will be a great incentive towards
| companies doing more R&D.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| It's really easy to avoid your employees being "poached":
| treat them well, and pay them better.
| gibolt wrote:
| I generally agree, but the company likely doesn't have
| those funds. Considering the largest player (Apple)
| stands to make way more from it than you and just works
| around your patent.
|
| Not arguing Apple shouldn't poach, just that your
| suggestion doesn't work.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The company made a billion dollars in profit last year. I
| doubt Apple was willing to pay anywhere near that amount
| to hire an employee.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| They did not earn $1B in profit in the last year. Or 5.
|
| https://companiesmarketcap.com/masimo/earnings/
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MASI/masimo/net
| -in...
| runako wrote:
| Check the ratio of SG&A to R&D spend at MASI. They have
| money, they just choose not to spend it on engineering.
| boringg wrote:
| Wow you must work for a company with incredibly deep
| pockets. No way can massimo compete on salary with apple.
| Only people in the game who can do that are google
| facebook apple chatgpt etc.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And as a hypothetical sought after employee, how is that
| my problem? If another company wants to roll a shit ton
| of money up to my doorstep, why shouldn't I take it?
|
| Should I be treating my employer "like family" and care
| about "the mission"?
| hu3 wrote:
| It's about the company anti-competitive behaviour. No one
| said anything about the employees.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| The company is being "anticompetitive" by offering
| someone more money? Should we now make that illegal too?
| Dayshine wrote:
| Well, we've made other situations where companies offer
| people money illegal. Such as bribery, or paying someone
| to steal trade secrets.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| And neither is alleged. It was a patent that we are
| discussing which by definition isn't a trade secret.
|
| But you are coming awfully close to advocating for non
| competes which is explicitly not allowed in CA.
| lurk2 wrote:
| Acquisitions can be considered anticompetitive. The only
| thing that appears to differentiate this situation from
| an acquisition is that the investors didn't get paid.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| Are you suggesting that the FRC should step in when a
| company offers employment to a large number of employees
| at another company? How exactly would you propose to put
| this into law where it doesn't hurt the employees?
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| How about the fact that both companies are still healthy?
|
| And even if you do look at this like an acquisition,
| acquisitions are _almost always_ not anticompetitive.
| tshaddox wrote:
| This is the exact opposite of being anti-competitive.
| arcfour wrote:
| This is almost farcical. This is literally the opposite
| of anti-competitive. Please take a basic economics course
| and pass it before spouting off about economics online.
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| As an employee you shouldn't care, but if you're someone
| who wants technological progress to continue, you should
| care whether companies with a slush fund of billions are
| able to bully those with less money.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| You mean like the innovation that someone else here said
| that was denied a patent in Japan because of prior art?
|
| We like software patents now?
| do_not_redeem wrote:
| I skimmed this and it doesn't look like a software patent
| to me. It's a giant long description of the hardware.
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/
| lovich wrote:
| Massimo did not appear to respond to Apple by trying to
| compete on compensation with them. The levels.fyi data is
| showing that they appear to pay their engineers between
| 140-180 while they are making hundreds of millions in
| profit.
|
| It seems like Masimo wasn't bullied because they had less
| money. They decided to run to the government to protect
| them instead of doing actual competition
| runako wrote:
| Masimo was worth ~$16B when this was going down. They are
| worth $8B today. This is roughly the size of American
| Airlines. Masimo is not the biggest company, but they are
| a large publicly-traded company.
|
| The company does $2B in revenue and spends close to $800
| million annually in sales, general and admin. This is
| over 3x their R&D budget. (For reference, Apple's R&D
| spend is higher than its SG&A spend.)
|
| Per levels.fyi, Masimo is paying senior SDEs in HCOL
| $150k. They could 10x the comp to these critical
| employees without it being more than a rounding error in
| their numbers. (I don't think they would have had to go
| to 10x. Most people would practically tattoo a brand on
| themselves for a one-time bonus of $1m.)
|
| Long story short: Masimo does indeed have the money to
| compete on salary with Apple for this set of employees.
| They chose to spend the money on attorneys instead.
|
| Some companies don't value engineers. That often works,
| until they end up in an engineering competition against
| companies that do value engineers.
| boringg wrote:
| Im not saying they pay them well or not. Theres just not
| a comparison on comp they could do. That you don't
| understand the power dynamics between that is something
| you will hopefully learn about the world as you become
| more experienced. Apple would just offer more at the end
| of the day.
| runako wrote:
| I understand, and this is timely in the context of Meta
| making $100m offers. I have no data on this, but I would
| be highly surprised if Apple offered anybody more than
| $5m/year. Masimo has that much money.
|
| Could Apple go higher? Sure, but again most people who
| like their jobs are not going to leave once their needs
| are met.
|
| From a competitive standpoint: Masimo has lost $8B in
| market cap during this kerfuffle. It's entirely possible
| it would have been rational for Masimo to pay these
| employees higher than Apple possibly would go in order to
| not lose those billions in value.
| eitally wrote:
| I disagree with your assertion that Masimo has the money
| to compete. Apple's upside to employing these folks to
| build the tech into the Apple Watch is FAR, FAR greater
| than Masimo's potential sales growth for existing pulse
| ox devices (or patent licenses). With Apple Watches being
| licensed as medical devices for ECG & pulse ox, this
| gives clinicians even more reason to leverage them with
| patients for convenient 24/7 home monitoring. It's not
| the same market Masimo is serving, at all.
| runako wrote:
| I specifically did not address any of the corporate
| competitive dynamics, although it is worth noting that
| this is more of an existential issue for Masimo than
| Apple.
|
| My core point is is that Masimo has far more than enough
| money to pay strategic employees enough money to keep
| them. Again, I doubt they would have to go as high as
| $5m/year for each of the relevant engineers. Masimo could
| spend that without making a major dent in their finances.
|
| Could Apple up the ante and make offers of $5B/yr to each
| engineer? Sure, but we are likely talking about the
| difference between Masimo offering $150k and Apple
| offering $500k. These are numbers any public company can
| afford.
| richiebful1 wrote:
| Masimo sells a health monitoring watch. [1] There is
| direct competition here.
|
| [1]. https://www.masimo.com/products/monitors/masimo-w1-m
| edical-w...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| This product WAS generally marketed to the healthcare
| field, not to people directly.
|
| It was literally described in the page you referenced:
| "Arm your patients with continuous measurements in a
| comfortable, lifestyle-friendly wearable--helping you
| deliver a true telemonitoring experience."
|
| > automates the collection of clinically accurate
| measurements to help support: -Post-surgical recovery
| -Chronic care -Patient management
|
| I say "was" because it was possible to buy it as a
| consumer, but there's still no direct competition, as:
|
| "Please note that all Masimo consumer products have been
| discontinued. These include:
|
| MightySat(r) Masimo W1(r) Sport Watch Opioid Halo(tm) /
| Masimo SafetyNet Alert(tm) Radius Tdeg(r) Continuous
| Thermometer Masimo Stork(r) Vitals, Masimo Stork Vitals+,
| and Masimo Stork Baby Monitor"
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| As long as a company is turning a profit, they by
| definition can afford to be paying their employees
| better. As a company you can _choose_ not to, but it also
| means you get to suffer the consequences, and lose the
| right to complain that your employees were "poached"
| when in reality it was simply a matter of you not paying
| them enough to stay.
| adrianN wrote:
| If you compete with someone who can afford to lose money
| longer than you, for example because they have some
| departments with very high margins and can cross-
| subsidize, you can win.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Profit distribution only makes sense to owners of the
| company.
|
| A better way to give employees a share of the profits is
| to give them shares of the company. But then that also
| comes at the expense of compensation in dollars. You
| cannot pay for groceries with company shares.
|
| People _really_ like the idea of "When you win, I get
| money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like
| that they agree it's bad, but explained like "Companies
| should be distributing profits to workers" they fall over
| themselves about how good of an idea it is.
|
| Running a business is a gamble and like gambling, you
| need to put skin in the game to get a share of winnings
| (and lose your skin in the losses). People are just
| hyper-focused on the winners.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/di
| str...
| lovich wrote:
| This has nothing to do with their point.
|
| If company X is making a profit and losing employees to a
| competitor paying more, then company X has effectively
| chosen to let that happen. They don't get to complain
| that they ate their cake and don't have it anymore.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > People really like the idea of "When you win, I get
| money, when you lose, you lose money". Explained like
| that they agree it's bad,
|
| It's not _bad_ , it's a _cost_.
|
| You obviously wouldn't make a deal like that in
| isolation. You also wouldn't give someone a salary for
| nothing. But a cost like that can be worth paying just
| like a salary is worth paying. (Obviously you'd have
| limits on the numbers, just like salary is limited.)
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The salary is the cost.
|
| People think that profits should be distributed on top of
| salary. And frankly it already happens to a degree with
| bonuses. But there is this pervasive idea that any
| leftover profit is just money that should have gone to
| workers.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| There's no way Massimo could have competed in a salary
| race with Apple. Apple could have paid those employees
| MILLIONS if they wanted to.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Yes, this is capitalism. Apple get 1st rate engineers,
| Massimo gets 3rd. If they want 2nd, they pay more
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, these employees are not being "poached." They're not
| zero-agency deer owned by Masimo, grazing on their land,
| that Apple came in and stole away. They can decide for
| themselves that someone else is offering a better
| business arrangement.
|
| There is a market rate for talent, and if you can't
| afford the market rate, then you don't get the talent.
| missingcolours wrote:
| I mean, this doesn't tell us whether they can pay them
| twice as much or $5 more per year. Some companies make no
| profit, or very little, or very little per employee.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Not my problem. The owners of a small company have no
| right to force their financial constraints onto their
| employees.
| hu3 wrote:
| that doesn't work when Apple can pay them multiples "more
| well".
|
| the sensible thing would be to license the tech
| soperj wrote:
| Or just collude with your rival companies ala Steve Jobs.
| 7thpower wrote:
| - is what Tim Cook told himself to vanquish the last bit
| of uneasiness. Then he took of his glasses, set them on
| the night stand, and slept better than he had in years.
| geodel wrote:
| Absolutely. Similarly, I tell parents who keep whining
| about soaring education costs and employability: Educate
| them well, and get them high paying jobs.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I hate the word "poaching". A company offered employees
| more money in exchange for their labor.
|
| I see no issue. Would you have preferred what happened in
| the Jobs era where 7 of the largest tech firms colluded not
| to hire from each other's company?
| Teever wrote:
| Apple is able to do what they do now because of the shit
| they got away with in the Jobs era.
|
| Because they hobbled competitors and innovation then
| they're able to do it now.
|
| It's really hard to determine how detrimental their
| actions have been to the job market for software
| engineers.
|
| It is entirely possible that every software engineer is
| worse off because Apple severely distorted the market and
| prevented many competitors from growing to be competitors
| to Apple and what ever offer Apple made to these people
| pales to what they could be making if Jobs hadn't done
| what he did.
| JustExAWS wrote:
| You mean they hobbled poor little competitors like
| Google, Adobe, and the other tech companies that agreed
| to it? Apple was actually one of the smaller companies at
| the time.
|
| How is all Apple's fault? And are you really saying that
| the iPhone wouldn't have happened if Apple hadn't gotten
| into these agreements?
|
| In your alternate universe would Nokia or Rim (who wasn't
| involved in the agreement) still been relevant?
| Teever wrote:
| No, they hobbled the competitors that their staff could
| have formed if they had made more money to do so.
|
| That collusion between these big companies to deny their
| employees a wage driven by free markets allowed those
| companies to accrue wealth and prevent competition from
| forming.
|
| That's terrible for their employees, that's terrible for
| the consumer.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| How did their collusion stop a new company from offering
| more money than the depressed wages that the collusion
| was causing?
|
| Alternatively, if hypothetically without the collusion do
| you think the upper wage pressure would I have materially
| affected those companies bottom lines to not create the
| products that made them profitable?
| Teever wrote:
| The hypothetical new companies that I'm talking about
| would have been formed by their former employees who
| could afford to do so with the increased money that they
| would have made if it hadn't been for the criminal
| collusion to deny them that capital and us as a society a
| freer market.
|
| And you're right, there's a distinct possibility the
| savings that they made in breaking the law could have
| affected their bottom line at the time in a way that
| prevented them from making certain products, but it could
| have also fostered creativity and innovation in the
| companies that colluded, and increased competition
| between them and the new companies that would have formed
| in a way that would have benefited innovation.
|
| What's important is that companies don't break the law
| and that people are paid as much as they're worth so that
| they can in turn stimulate the economy in ways that they
| see fit.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| So let me get this straight, if there wages would have
| been 30% more hypothetically they could have invested
| their own money (which few startup founders do) built
| phones or search engines that competed with Apple and
| Google? Something well funded companies like Microsoft
| and Facebook couldn't do?
|
| But now are you also saying that Apple did the right
| thing when they paid Masimo's employees more so now they
| can stimulate the economy and in the future start
| companies?
| Teever wrote:
| A charitable interpretation of what I have wrote is that
| if Apple had followed the law then they would have more
| competition and the market would be a healthier place
| that benefits software developers and consumers alike.
|
| Apple broke the law because they felt that it was in
| their best interest to the detriment of others and they
| will likely continue to do so if they feel it is in their
| best interest.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Why focus just on Apple instead of the other companies -
| Adobe, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm and eBay?
|
| But since when have people making BigTech money been
| afraid to venture out on their own to found a startup and
| would 30% more (completely made up number) and that was
| probably tied up in RSUs and not cash really made a
| difference?
|
| Shouldn't the idea that these people were making less
| than market wages spur them to go to other companies
| besides those seven or venture off on their own?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Two things can be bad at once.
|
| Apple has a massive war chest they can leverage to crush
| competition in several ways. As a nation and as
| consumers, we should at least be wary of what they're
| doing and whether it stifles competition or innovation.
| Even if the actions are legal.
|
| There's a difference between Apple paying more for
| engineers in general vs Apple specifically targeting a
| competitor, acquiring all the talent from that
| competitor, then using the IP that talent brought to roll
| out substantially the same product.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| There was no IP to poach. The IP was in a publicly
| available patent.
|
| Every company that proactively reaches out to an employed
| individual is doing so because that employee has
| demonstrated elsewhere and probably at their current job
| skills and experience that they find valuable and I
| assume is willing to make a better offer for them.
|
| Other posters said that Masimo was paying developers
| $140K - $180k. That's a nothingburger for good
| developers. The BigTech company I was working for two
| years ago was offering returning interns about that much
| in cash + liquid RSUs
|
| I once worked for a startup where everyone loved the CTO,
| the startup got acquired after I left by a PE company.
|
| When he left to be the CTO of another company in the same
| vertical, 10 of the employees followed him within the
| next six months basically taking all of the developers
| and sales that he wanted and all of the worthwhile staff
| from the startup. I assume it was for more money.
|
| If I had still been at the startup when he left, he would
| have easily "poached" me too?
|
| Should that also have been illegal? Was that unethical?
| 0x457 wrote:
| I don't how can you patent "read sensor, and process
| readings on device" I get if how it's actual sensor was
| patented, not "read and compute"
| nradov wrote:
| Have you read the patent?
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| My reading of the claims is that the novelty is having
| the processor integrated in the sensor protrusion. So
| processing the data elsewhere (particularly on a
| different device) would avoid infringement.
| QuinnyPig wrote:
| And then let their product lose the feature for multiple
| years rather than settling for some amount of money that
| was absolutely trivial to them.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > I would be a bit more sympathetic if this was not about a
| trillion dollar company who poached some employees rather
| than engage in a licensing deal.
|
| Obviously the people who suffer are customers. There isn't
| a single instance where IP helps them.
| adrr wrote:
| Why would they license something that was invented 50+
| years ago? No one else pays a license for it. Not even
| valid patent as the company couldn't prove it court it was
| a valid patent and the case ended up being hung jury with
| all but one jury that held out. Only reason they couldn't
| import it because
|
| Travesty is the ITC is allowed to block imports without
| going to court. Banning imports shouldn't be done by some
| government institution and should be handled by the court
| system.
| terminalshort wrote:
| Poaching employees is a good thing and should always be
| allowed. Companies have the means to prevent this at any
| time. It's called contract employment. But if they insist
| on being able to fire me at any time, they can eat the
| downside of that too.
| burnerthrow008 wrote:
| Wow. So you view corporate employees like serfs bound to
| the land, not allowed to seek better opportunities for
| themselves? That's kind of... dark.
| anonu wrote:
| I dont think the patent in question is for software:
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en
| Disposal8433 wrote:
| Every workaround I've seen for the past 30 years feel like a
| "Shabbat elevator"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbat_elevator) I'm not
| using the elevator because I'm not pushing the button because
| it's always moving.
|
| Edit: I've always hated patents too, don't get me wrong.
| johndhi wrote:
| Isn't this hardware though? :-)
| cmiles74 wrote:
| IMHO, the problem is that if you are wealthy enough then you
| don't need to worry about patents. I also think these patents
| are, on the whole, not great. But here the one company
| legally got the patent and the another, richer company hired
| away their talent and paid them to find a workaround to avoid
| licensing. Smaller companies will continue to license the
| patent.
|
| Few tears will be shed for Massimo (or Qualcomm) but the next
| victim could be a much smaller company, maybe one that would
| be more of a competitor. I don't like the current patent
| regime but I do believe enforcement should apply to everyone,
| not just players who lack the money to rig the game.
| Angostura wrote:
| > The iPhone will now calculate the ratio of absorbed red to
| infrared light, then apply calibration constants from
| experimental data to estimate blood oxygen saturation.
|
| Sorry, maybe I missed it - but source for this?
| chedabob wrote:
| It's in the Apple PR
| https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2025/08/an-update-on-blood-
| ox...
|
| > sensor data from the Blood Oxygen app on Apple Watch will
| be measured and calculated on the paired iPhone
| clint wrote:
| The literal article that is the sole focus of this entire
| thread?
| unglaublich wrote:
| Crazy that this is a 'patent'. We did this experiment in high
| school 30 years ago.
| spogbiper wrote:
| almost as crazy as a patent for a rectangle with rounded
| corners
| mbirth wrote:
| You mean a Squircle(r)
| raldi wrote:
| Apple calls them roundrects:
| https://www.folklore.org/Round_Rects_Are_Everywhere.html
| Zee2 wrote:
| Technically, a quintic superellipse, in modern times.
| robertoandred wrote:
| That's of course not what the patent was about.
| shagie wrote:
| You can also patent the shape of a bottle.
| https://patents.google.com/patent/USD48160S/en (yes, its an
| old one).
|
| These fall into the classification of design patent which
| covers ornamental non-functional elements of a particular
| item. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent
|
| Design patents also cover typefaces. https://en.wikipedia.o
| rg/wiki/Intellectual_property_protecti... -- note that
| typefaces _cannot_ be copyrighted in the United States
|
| Design patents differ from a utility patent which covers
| how something works.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Design patents are a form of trademark with a silly name,
| not real patents.
| rootsudo wrote:
| I've just been amazed how many things could be a patent and
| why I haven't spent time to learn.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| Phenomenal that the patent is only violated by doing it with
| the watch cpu but not by funneling the data to a separate cpu.
| The surest sign that it's a bullshit patent.
| kube-system wrote:
| They're all like that. Patents are pretty specific.
| abirch wrote:
| If they're not very specific there's frequently prior art.
| alooPotato wrote:
| I wonder if they could take it one step further. Do the
| measurements on the watch, do the calculation on the iPhone,
| send the results back to the watch for display. Technically all
| the work is done on the iPhone and the watch is just the IO
| device.
| CalChris wrote:
| Massimo invented this technology (yay Massimo!) in the 90s yet
| their Japanese patents [1] weren't considered prior art (WTF?)
| because of technical legal reasons.
|
| [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/JP2002542493A5/en%EF%BF%BC
|
| So I suppose if Massimo is going to use a technical legality to
| extend then Apple can use a technical legality to avoid.
| 7thpower wrote:
| That is interesting, had not understood this previously.
| parsimo2010 wrote:
| Masimo only _refined_ pulse oximetry in the 90s, as pulse
| oximetry was invented in the 1970s (prior oximeters did not
| resemble the devices seen today). Everything after that has
| been tweaks /improvements to the base method, but I wouldn't
| call them the inventors of the technology.
|
| The only IP that companies can own now are specific
| methods/improvements, not the base idea of measuring SpO2 with
| light. All Apple has to do is avoid the specific improvements
| that Masimo owns and they are fine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse_oximetry#History
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Yes. I recall the brand new pulse oximeters (I don't recall
| the manufacturer) that appeared in the ORs at UCLA Medical
| Center right around when I started my anesthesiology
| residency in 1977. They were SUPER expensive when they first
| came out, so much so that our department bought 3 of them,
| which were used only for the most critical cases. I remember
| the chief resident sometimes had to decide who got one when 2
| residents/attendings each said their patient was more
| unstable/critical and thus needed it more.
|
| These were NOT small devices like the inexpensive fingertip
| versions you can buy now over the counter; rather, they were
| big boxlike machines, perhaps 2 feet x 1.5 feet x 8 inches
| high. They were SO heavy (I'd estimate 25 pounds) they were
| attached to a stainless steel rolling cart.
| mandeepj wrote:
| Hopefully blood glucose monitoring will come soon as well
| SJMG wrote:
| I'm out of the loop, can this be done without drawing blood
| now?
| borski wrote:
| You can do it by using interstitial fluid, which is how CGMs
| work.
|
| But, in short, no, not yet: https://www.fda.gov/medical-
| devices/safety-communications/do...
| SJMG wrote:
| Gotcha, thanks for the clarification and answer.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| They're all on a subscription model, you're spending who-
| knows-how-much per year on a new sensor every few
| days/weeks. Afraid it'd feel like a prickleburr stuck to me
| constantly.
| coolspot wrote:
| It does feel like that for some people (like myself). But
| it was fun and informative to wear it once for 10 days.
| rstupek wrote:
| When I used one I didn't notice it was there except when
| I inadvertently brushed it against something.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| I'm the ADD type that runs into shit, or at least I clip
| corners regularly when going through doorways.
| Normally... I don't even notice. Ripped two CGM's out in
| the first month. Shit HURTS.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Tried both of the popular ones: didn't notice either one
| ever.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > They're all on a subscription model, you're spending
| who-knows-how-much per year on a new sensor every few
| days/weeks.
|
| Which - to be clear - is because the sensor chemically
| degrades over time. It's not just rent-seeking; they
| genuinely don't know how to make one that'll last longer.
| mandeepj wrote:
| It's been going on for a while - Non-invasive monitoring.
| Here's a general link
| https://www.google.com/search?q=blood+glucose+patent+startup
|
| I believe a firm in Uk holds a patent for it and Apple has
| partnered with them a while ago.
|
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-takes-key-step-
| towards-b...
| SJMG wrote:
| Very neat! If they can crack this, I might actually bite
| and finally buy one.
| crazygringo wrote:
| To be clear, the _research_ has been going on for a while.
|
| But extracting an accurate enough signal from noise through
| the skin is an incredibly complex signal analysis problem.
| And there are multiple approaches.
|
| Nothing has FDA approval yet because it's a major question
| whether any technology developed thus far is accurate
| enough. I understand there's at least one clinical trial
| going on right now. Fingers crossed...
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| i'm not a smartwatch fan for the most part but i'd get one for
| CGM use if it meant no more knocking my sensors off walking
| through doors (because i'm apparently incapable of walking
| without moving like a wacky inflatable tube man) or nasty
| adhesive residue stuck on my arms.
| dmart wrote:
| Just offloading the analysis to the phone is extremely funny. It
| also seems like a pretty obvious solution, so I wonder if it was
| delayed by legal analysis and they only just decided it was
| likely to hold up in court.
| rafram wrote:
| Apple says:
|
| > This update was enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling.
|
| I can't find the ruling in question, though, so I'm not sure
| what they mean.
| anonu wrote:
| https://rulings.cbp.gov/ruling/H335304
| irons wrote:
| This is the January 2024 ruling allowing Apple to resume
| imports of Apple Watches to the US with the blood oxygen
| feature disabled. Hopefully the recent ruling will show up
| on this site at some point.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| I live in a rural area. My old fashioned doctor said to test
| oxygen levels, all you need to do is pinch your index finger nail
| down until it goes white. Then when you let go, if it goes back
| to pink right away, you're good. If it takes more than a few
| seconds, you're not good.
| qgin wrote:
| That's the capillary refill test which tests circulation and
| perfusion. Doesn't really tell you anything about oxygen
| levels.
| monkeyelite wrote:
| Of course. Billions of people have lived without this. You also
| don't need a computer on your wrist.
|
| But many people are willing to pay get more health information,
| especially wealthier demographics who have interest in health
| and appearances of health.
| comrade1234 wrote:
| I have it on my garmin and it seems pretty useless. My oxygen
| level while I sleep has more to do with how tightly I'm wearing
| it that night than anything else. It also drain the battery fast
| so I just disabled it.
|
| I have a real finger-based one bought during COVID that I trust
| more.
| neild wrote:
| In my experience, the Apple Watch blood oxygen monitoring was
| horribly inaccurate. It would report wildly variable results,
| often telling me that I had a blood oxygen level of 80% (which,
| if true, would indicate that I should be getting myself to an
| emergency room ASAP).
|
| Regular pulse oxygen meters are cheap and reliable.
| throwaway303293 wrote:
| In contrast my Garmin and finger pulseox match exactly.
| exabrial wrote:
| Yep, my Garmin also has matched the doctors office instrument
| to the 1% every time.
| iamdanieljohns wrote:
| Which model do you have?
| mauvehaus wrote:
| I don't know what Garmin you have, but I'm about half
| convinced that my Instinct's heart rate measurement is
| implemented by a PRNG. It's frequently off by 50% from a
| count/time cross-check.
|
| It does not inspire me to move up their range when this watch
| eventually dies: if they can't get the basic feature working,
| I have a hard time seeing how they're going to manage
| anything trickier.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Heart rate measurement on my Garmin (fenix 7 pro range) is
| great, the pulse ox measurements are shit though, and
| absolutely rinse the battery life.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/@TheQuantifiedScientist
|
| That guy is a great reference, and through his videos you
| can find various measures where he compares devices against
| reference devices (e.g. the Polar H10 for heart rate for
| instance). A lot of the reliability of these devices relies
| upon a tight fit as well.
| alternatex wrote:
| Accuracy varies wildly with each model. Obviously the more
| expensive ($400+) ones are better, but Garmin devices are
| generally good with heart rate tracking. Same for Apple
| watch, Pixel watch, and a few cheaper options from Huawei
| and Xiaomi.
| jeltz wrote:
| Heartrate is generally very good but only as long as the
| fit is tight. Blood oxygen on the other hand is a joke.
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Indeed, just generally this is a silly feature that was used to
| sell updated devices, but has almost no value to end users.
| There is shockingly little diagnostic value of the reading
| unless you are in such a critical state that you likely want
| something better than an incredibly unreliable and inaccurate
| smartwatch feature cram.
|
| For anyone remotely healthy, 100% of the time your real value
| will be between 95% and 99%, and there is almost no diagnostic
| value to it. Heart rate is actually interesting and is
| something you can learn from and work towards. SpO2 is just
| "eh...neat".
| 361994752 wrote:
| as some one whose family passed away due to pneumonia, spo2
| is a life saving feature if we had that back then. probably
| 99.9% of the time spo2 number is good enough. but the value
| is really about the left 0.1% . of course the false positive
| rate should be low enough.
| toast0 wrote:
| > For anyone remotely healthy, 100% of the time your real
| value will be between 95% and 99%, and there is almost no
| diagnostic value to it.
|
| Sure, but if the value is less than 95, that does have
| diagnostic value (if it's accurate)
| llm_nerd wrote:
| Sure, but unlike heart conditions where people often have
| no idea (about afib, or even abnormally high or low heart
| rates), people generally know when they have respiratory
| difficulties. Like the other comment noted something about
| family having pneumonia, and I cannot understand how the
| watch would have made their situation better. If someone in
| that state wasn't already seeking medical advice, it's
| hugely unlikely a watch saying "yo it's bad bro" is going
| to help.
|
| It's like heralding a G-sensor in your watch telling you
| that you're falling. It's likely pretty obvious already.
| toast0 wrote:
| Seems to me, it has some value (again, if it's accurate)
| for letting people know about sleep apnea; especially as
| part of an overall sleep tracking dodad.
|
| I've got enough mild asthma around me that we have a
| finger pulseox (or two cause we "lost" one and found it
| later) and I've started yelling at sick people to check
| it once in a while. Cause they don't usually think to,
| but sometimes it lingers and by the time they decide to
| go into an office, the numbers are pretty low.
|
| Of course, we're not on the Apple bandwagon and stopped
| wearing watches once we got used to having pocket watches
| again.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Wouldn't you already be super dead with a true reading of 80?
| Or at least unable to cognitively interpret the reading?
| skadamou wrote:
| That's definitely a danger zone for healthy people but
| interestingly enough people with things like COPD may have a
| blood oxygen level in the 80s and while that is indicative of
| the disease, they may be totally stable and may not even need
| oxygen [1].
|
| [1] https://www.drugs.com/medical-answers/normal-oxygen-
| level-so...
| tialaramex wrote:
| My grandmother's heart was completely fucked, so they'd
| have to adjust the alarms on the hospital monitors after
| checking their files when she went in. It's like "OK, well
| that's the problem... consults notes... Nope, apparently
| that is normal for her, now lets figure out what's actually
| wrong". It wasn't keeping regular time and it would
| sometimes skip, but apparently it was pumping well enough
| to keep her alive for several years.
|
| Normal in humans is _definitely_ relative and medicine has
| tended to assume that if we average 1000 humans (in too
| many cases, 1000 white college age men) that 's what human
| normal is, which is crazy even beyond obvious problems like
| " people normally have 1.999 legs apparently".
| nucleardog wrote:
| Bodies are generally pretty amazing in that sense. As long
| as things go out of spec _slowly_, we will often adapt
| quite well. In the short term, we will tend to balance even
| fairly extreme changes out through various chemical
| processes and in the long term people can even develop
| heritable genetic changes. (E.g., how people acclimatize
| and have in some cases adapted to living at higher
| altitudes[0])
|
| [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_high_altitude
| _on_hu...
| op00to wrote:
| I had some momentary readings lower than 80 during a sleep
| study prior to going on CPAP. I didn't snore, or choke, or
| anything. Just ... didn't breathe. With CPAP, 98% all the
| time.
| ayhanfuat wrote:
| That caused me nightmares when I was first diagnosed with sleep
| apnea. I would check my oxygen levels during the sleep to see
| if my treatment is effective. Even though the CPAP machine
| would show a few short events Apple Watch would show levels as
| low as 75%. Thankfully in my next sleep study I learned that my
| oxygen levels were consistently above 95% and the watch is
| indeed very unreliable (how snug it is, which direction it is
| facing etc highly affect the results).
| okrad wrote:
| I've always felt the sport loops (soft w/ velcro) provide the
| best contact with wrist while not being too cumbersome. Very
| easy to tighten just before a workout or loosen before bed.
| All the while it stays planted on my wrist. Unlock the
| rubbery band it normally comes with, which is prone to
| sliding around and less easy to adjust.
|
| Out of curiosity, which band do you use?
| brandonb wrote:
| The FDA standard for blood oxygen sensing is within 6%
| absolute, 95% of the time.
|
| So variability in the sensing is pretty normal, and you want to
| look at long-term trends rather than individual measurements.
| rafaelmn wrote:
| The problem with consumer health sensors is they have both
| high random error and inconsistent systematic error. When
| your SPO2 sensor gives you 92% one minute and 98% the next
| while you're sitting still and it is almost always 2% under,
| you're not getting "noisy but usable" data - you're getting
| garbage.
| conradev wrote:
| On their best days, they're accurate to within 2-4%. But so
| many things can trip up the reading, like melanin:
| As a result, for darker-skinned patients, oxygen saturation
| readings can read as normal when they are, in fact, dangerously
| low.
|
| https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/pulse-oximeters-racial-bia...
|
| When everyone starting looking at every percentage point of
| their SpO2 during COVID as if it were life or death, the FDA
| had to remind people of this:
|
| https://www.fda.gov/news-events/fda-brief/fda-brief-fda-warn...
|
| You would be unable to read an accurate pulse oximeter at 80%
| because you would have lost consciousness. Doctors have to
| worry about false negatives just as much as false positives
| with those things.
| js2 wrote:
| I've never had any trouble with it on my series 9 (purchased
| Dec 2023 just before the feature was disabled). It's always
| closely matched the fingertip meter that I have. Which is to
| say they both always read >= 95% for the most part.
| sargun wrote:
| What's the US Customs ruling in question? > This update was
| enabled by a recent U.S. Customs ruling.
| ezfe wrote:
| That this is okay?
| anonu wrote:
| https://rulings.cbp.gov/ruling/H335304 maybe this - from
| January 2025
|
| It appears the patent is for "User-Worn Device for
| Noninvasively Measuring a Physiological Parameter of a User".
| So Apple is simply moving the logic to a non user-worn device -
| like a phone - to get around the problem. (this is my quick
| read / conjecture)
|
| Here is the original patent
| https://patents.google.com/patent/US10912502B2/en
| freehorse wrote:
| Yeah, prob because one cannot patent an algorithm itself, but
| only a specific implementation. The patent was about a
| wearable device so i guess the workaround was to do the
| computations in a non-wearable device.
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| You can buy a fingertip pulse oximeter for like $10. I understand
| the benefits of having all of these biometric readers directly on
| your personal device, but the perceived stress over getting this
| back into the watch seems... I don't know, not wise? In poor
| taste? Something, but I can't articulate it well.
|
| I mean, we don't have IR blasters on any of our personal devices
| anymore, and arguably it would be nice to be able to control my
| TV with my phone like I could with my Palm Pilot forever ago, but
| that's not in vogue anymore.
| rblatz wrote:
| iPhone can control Apple TVs, and is able to detect which
| device you are nearest to and auto select it (if you have
| multiple)
|
| Also all my TVs also have apps that function as a remote
| control.
|
| Interestingly enough my main TV an LG has a remote that
| controls the tv using RF. I don't even know if it would work
| with an IR blaster.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Apple Watch can also control Apple TVs.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| The point of this is that for people who would never get a
| pulse oximeter getting this "for free" and automatically
| enabled on their Apple Watches and realizing they have a
| medical issue well before symptoms become severe or
| catastrophic.
| delduca wrote:
| To be honest, I didn't like these metrics. They're very different
| from what I get on an oximeter. The first time I saw them, I
| thought I was short of breath, but it was just the metric being
| used.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I never really understood why protecting Massimo in this
| situation was more important than allowing customers to access a
| feature in their watch. I get patent law is important, but they
| seemed more interested in rent-seeking from Apple than actually
| providing a desirable product that people could benefit from.
| appease7727 wrote:
| That's precisely what patents are for in the modern era
| bigyabai wrote:
| Because Apple consciously violated the patent? When you think
| about it, Apple is lucky the judge didn't demand a hardware
| recall. They got off pretty easy, and if Apple wanted to be
| petty, then they could enable the hardware as an API only, and
| let users do the rest.
|
| Here in America this is part of our culture: your health
| gimmeck features are precisely meaningless to the court if the
| prosecution can prove wreckless harm on Apple's behalf.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| "Rent seeking" is original intent of patents, correct? The
| theory being that this incentivizes invention.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Patents are literally for rent-seeking.
|
| They are explicitly not to maximize the number of people who
| can benefit from a product in the short term, but precisely to
| limit it so the inventor can make more money.
|
| The idea being that in the long run the inventions it
| incentivizes outweigh the people who are limited from
| benefiting in the short term.
|
| Judges aren't in the position to weigh societal benefits in
| each individual patent case. Your framing implies that cost-
| benefit tradeoff. But that's not how it works. The only
| question is whether a product infringes or not.
| adrr wrote:
| Wasn't patent law since decision wasn't decide in court. ITC
| banned it from imports. I don't understand how a government
| entity can wield so much power to block sales of product
| without using the court system. This should have been
| litigated.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Did the Watch Series 9+ incorporate a new sensor or different
| algorithm? I have an older model that has always had blood oxygen
| (and it was never disabled, as it was for the 9+).
| jerlam wrote:
| Apple only disabled the pulse ox sensor on watches they sold,
| distributed, or replaced after the ruling. I don't think Apple
| disabled a working pulse ox sensor on anyone's watch other than
| repairs.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| And only in the USA, as far as I understood. You could but
| the same watch in Canada and the pulseox worked.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Don't get me started about my Kindle books....
| ck2 wrote:
| blood oxygen from the wrist is absolutely garbage-in
| Havoc wrote:
| Been holding off buying a watch till glucose monitoring hits.
|
| Much like fusion that is continuously imminent though
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| That would be amazing, but it seems like that tech is still a
| ways off. At least to have any sort of useful accuracy. The
| wrist "temp" is a great example of "interesting but useless".
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Rumors have it that some form of BP monitoring will appear in
| next month's updated watches.
| bilsbie wrote:
| I wish they could monitor blood insulin.
| bilsbie wrote:
| Can you do anything interesting with knowing blood oxygen?
| hinkley wrote:
| Which will be absolutely useless for anyone serious and even
| plebs like me since who runs with a 250-500g phone strapped into
| spandex?
|
| I use a watch and wireless headphones. The iphone stays at home.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Let's be clear: the return of this function requires an iPhone;
| the original version did not.
| cogogo wrote:
| I have the first Ultra and just looked back at the data and they
| were never interrupted. It isn't included in the release either.
| Wonder what is different about it. Did apple arrive at a separate
| agreement for that device?
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