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Tattoos Found To Interfere With Apple Watch Sensors

An anonymous reader writes: A number of early Apple Watch adopters have complained that their tattoos cause interference with many of the new product's key features. According to multiple tattooed sources, inked wrists and hands can disrupt communication with the wearable's sensors installed in the underside of the device leading to malfunction. Owners of Apple Watch have taken to social media to voice their frustration using the hashtag #tattoogate and sharing their disappointment over the newly discovered Apple flaw. One user reported that the Watch's lock system did not disable as it should when the device was placed on a decorated area of skin – forcing those affected to constantly enter their security pins. A further source suggested that notification alerts would fail to 'ping' as they are supposed to, and that heart rate monitoring differed significantly between tattooed and non-tattooed wrist readings.

17 of 403 comments (clear)

  1. Straitlaced Engineers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    That's what you get for designing your hardware deep in secretive cleanrooms staffed by pallid programmers and dainty designers.

    1. Re:Straitlaced Engineers by Hussman32 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you've ever been to the Apple campus, you'll find there is not a shortage of tattoos.

      --
      "Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
  2. Re:Waitasecondhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fact that there's a technical issue isn't what matters. What matters is that they apparently either didn't think to test it, or didn't warn purchasers that it might be an issue.

  3. Re:Waitasecondhere... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Yeah, if only their mum's had warned them that they'd regret having tattoos when they were older.

    Now if they didn't work on black people, you'd have a story, but nobody said the Watch would work over tattoos, and nobody asked either.

  4. What is the obsession with tattoos... by linebackn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Ick. I've never understood why people get tattoos. While I can respect the idea of using the human body as a canvas for art, it just doesn't come across as such. Perhaps it is just the way my brain is wired, when I see a tattoo my brain instinctively registers it as "damage" and that the person may be injured or ill. Certainly others must have the same instinctive reaction, yet it seems even more people are doing that these days.

  5. Re:Waitasecondhere... by grnbrg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, starting yesterday, anyway...

    http://web.archive.org/web/201...

  6. Re:Not every tattoo by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'll be bangin' 18 year olds when I'm 40, because the fad will finally be over and I can get some women whose skin doesn't have blue and black blotches like the fucking bubonic plague all over it.

    Tattoos look nice, but they don't look nice on your body. It's like grabbing piles of cool shit and plastering it all together in a house: you have the ugliest fucking house in existence. If you would learn to theme it properly, you'd get a nice interior design. Problem: tattoos don't make for a nice body design; they're a blotch on your body. They make for nice pictures and fantastic decals on your car.

  7. Apple flaw? by DarkOx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    over the newly discovered Apple flaw.

    How is it Apples fault your body contains a deposit of metallic pigments where there should be none?

    Seems more like a defect in the wearer to me.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  8. You're an idiot. by Brannon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They were dumbing down the explanation to make it understandable, there's obviously enough of an absorbtion difference to be detectable--that's all that matters.

    Maybe stop investing so much of your self-worth into your choice of consumer electronics and then you won't feel the need to invent lame excuses (like bullshit marketing) for why someone else's choice is flawed.

  9. Re:Struggle by Penguinisto · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...you really should see it in action though. As someone who lives in Portland, OR... I can, even now, hear the distant howls of heart-rending anguish from the many coffeeshops drifting up to my office. You'd think that skinny jeans were banned or something.

    Okay, just (half-) joking.

    I'm slightly amused at it though - no one really thought it through that if you put colored shit in your dermis** , it will interfere with a device that relies on skin capacitance for some of its features? Really? Are we that damned ignorant (and overly-entitled) as human beings, or is my beard just getting too many gray hairs in it?

    ** I have four tattoos about my body, incidentally, so all you 'inked' mofos can keep your righteous indignation to yourselves. ;)

    --
    Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
  10. Re:First World problems by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't have a tattoo. Saved $200
    Not buying an iWatch Saved 10,000
    Sticking to nobody, just living my life ... Priceless!

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  11. Re:Waitasecondhere... by NatasRevol · · Score: 3, Insightful

    But it does say this:

    "Even under ideal conditions, Apple Watch may not be able to get a reliable heart rate reading every time for everybody. And for a small percentage of users, various factors may make it impossible to get any heart rate reading at all."

    Tattoos being one of the 'various factors' that they didn't explicitly say, then later did. Big whoop.

    --
    There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
  12. Re:Waitasecondhere... by zieroh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The fact that *some* green light is reflected from blood misses the point. It absorbs *most* of the green light, and therefore green is useful. And if you want to quibble with that, then you probably suck at your job.

    --
    People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
  13. Re:Struggle by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Just to be clear, we're all joking about Apple only being popular with hipsters, but in main-stream numbers. Correct?

    --

    "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

  14. Target Demographic by jmac_the_man · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This sucks for Apple especially since the target demographic for this product is poor decision makers, like people who get wrist tattoos or buy Apple stuff.

  15. Re:Waitasecondhere... by Swarley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Christ, you sounds like somebody who is butt hurt because they took a 3 week course for a technical certification and are insecure about how "expert" they are compared to people with actual education. Their description is accurate enough for marketing materials. By your own admission there is at least one green wavelength that blood cells absorb and at least one red one that they reflect. Therefore their information isn't incorrect and anyone with actual expertise in this area (like myself and others with this expertise have pointed out to you) can easily understand how they could make a sensor based on this phenomenon. It's not a new idea. These sensors have been around for decades and are used in hospitals routinely. It's basically a modified pulse oximeter, just since it uses only one wavelength instead of two it gets only the plethismograph information instead of the pleth AND oximetetry. Which is enough to determine a pulse rate.

  16. Re:Struggle by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's not that hard. You can save up a good amount of money with a job like that when you live with your parents and they pay for all your food.