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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.
The ultimate hipster struggle is real!
Stop Computers/Cars Analogies on S
You're saying that pigments with metal particles in them are blocking certain wavelengths of light from penetrating the skin? I'm shocked. I'm shocked, Cotton!
you're wearing it wrong
Apple is trying to move away from being perceived as the hardware of choice of nose-ringed tattoo-sleeved hipsters. This ink incompatibility is not a bug but a feature.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Now I have reason to get one.
what? a tat(too) or some tat (i.e. an Apple watch)?
Looks like your mother was right. You will regret that tattoo some day down the line.
Didn't include Apple Store employees.
Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
...hipster tragedy*:
"Oh no, my trendy tattoo is interfering with my Apple Smart watch! What ever will I do?"
*also called comedy by the rest of us.
-Styopa
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."
Im sure fellow readers are concerned about the $10,000 version of the apple watch, and as an early adopter I am truly livid. If the watch comes into contact with my tattoo of the spirit of extacy riding a diamond into tattooine astride a golden dove the sensors stop working entirely. The watch is also difficult to locate as im sure most people have undoubtedly found out. I had to search all five bedrooms on the yacht just to find the darn thing! Also the watch has difficulty determining if or when I am wearing the rare jade oriental pendant of everlasting immortality, and just last weekend I had to buy a new one after I bumped into the caviar chafing dish and spilled lemon rochette truffle remoulade on the band.
Its not that apple doesnt make an excellent product, they truly do! But I for one am getting tired of having to take the same bently to the same helicopter every other week to send my manservant into the apple "store" as the common people call it to have it replaced. A man can only tolerate so much car champagne before the aftertaste of the lox comingling with the alsace vintage becomes too much to bear.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Not all tattoo inks are created equal. Many practitioners use ink from botanical sources. I didn't know tattoos were a hipster thing. I thought they were more into beards, cutoff shorts, and bicycles?
This is exactly my problem with Apple and many other product designers. Phone screens that don't work with gloves. Phones that aren't waterproof. Phones that can't have the storage upgraded or battery replaced. Self driving cars that can't handle rain and snow. There's a lot of products out there that only work in very specific conditions and that fail when used outside the very narrow range in which they were tested.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Not sure about that, all the Apple Stores I've been in there was no shortage of full sleeved tattooed clerks.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Hasn't it always been known that early adopters are exposed to some risk? Yup, you can pay a lot of money to be the first person with a new gadget, but you are paying a premium to be a guinea pig and reinforcing that there is a market where people pay a lot of money to be a guinea pig. (Yes, Apple probably should have considered tattooed skin in their testing.)
I wonder, did you ever get braces? Have your wisdom teeth pulled?
"Apple can't possibly design it to work with people's wrists that fall outside of normality" you mean like a fat ass not being able to fit in a single airplane seat?
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
Who could have possibly predicted your sleeve tattoo would limit your options later in life??
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.
If you want a tattoo on your wrist, either put it on the wrist where you wouldn't wear a watch, or go to some competent tattoo artist who will be able to advise you what kind of ink will affect your skin more or and which one will affect it less; consider that the Apple Watch is just the start of wearing things around your wrist. .
As noted by others (just copying the link);
https://support.apple.com/en-u...
Just a case of uninformed, self-entitled hipsters (is there any other kind of hipster?).
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
If companies had to list everything that's not possible with their products, everything would come with enough books to fill an olympic swimming pool.
Did you know you can't wear the Apple watch if you don't have arms?
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Are some people planning on wearing them in their mouths then?
You have tattoos? No soup for you!
NEXT!
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Aren't braces a temporary project to permanently make your teeth normal? Don't you have wisdom teeth pulled to make a minor deviation for the purpose of correcting a major one?
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Another Apple fail that everyone will make excuses for.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Smiles everyone, smiles!
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Apple provides a link on the very front product page labeled "Learn about the Apple Watch heart rate sensor, its accuracy and limitations", which then points to a page that specifically mentions the tattoo issue. NatasRevol pointed this page out, but I noticed it was a support page, and wondered how prominently it was displayed. As it turns out, it's very easy to find that page and information.
Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart rate sensor performance. The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings.
A legitimate question is, of course, how long that link and information has been there. If it just recently went up, then it's bad on Apple. If it's been like that since before preorders were taken, then maybe people should have actually read about what they were purchasing.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
when the skin begins to sag
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
Wow..where do you live?
I mean, hell, I live in New Orleans...where pretty much ANYTHING goes, and I rarely see people with that much tattoo work done on them.
Most people that could afford an iWatch are gonna have 'real' jobs...and you generally can't be all painted up from head to toe, with piercings galore and work in an office, etc.
So, even in a town where wild and different is the norm...folks with enough tattoos to make it in a circus show are very much in the minority. And like I said, generally...those folks are not the market for an expensive toy like the iWatch.
I've never seen any of the Apple Store employees here with any noticeable ink on them.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
One time, I had ice cream that was TOO cold! I mean really, the ice cream company was basically negligent for not taking into account the ambient temperature of the room I was sitting in.
Sure you can - you just need to get the iAnkleBracelet.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
I heard it doesn't work through bandaids either.
from apple's website:
What else affects your reading?
Many factors can affect the performance of the Apple Watch heart rate sensor. Skin perfusion is one. A fancy way of describing how much blood flows through your skin, skin perfusion varies significantly from person to person and can also be impacted by the environment. If you’re exercising in the cold, for example, the skin perfusion in your wrist may be too low for the heart rate sensor to get a reading.
Motion is another factor that can affect the heart rate sensor. Rhythmic movements, such as running or cycling, give better results compared to irregular movements, like tennis or boxing.
Permanent or temporary changes to your skin, such as some tattoos, can also impact heart rate sensor performance. The ink, pattern, and saturation of some tattoos can block light from the sensor, making it difficult to get reliable readings.
If you’re not able to get a consistent reading because of any of these factors, you can connect your Apple Watch wirelessly to external heart rate monitors such as Bluetooth chest straps.
Heart rate is just one of many factors that Apple Watch uses to measure your activity and exercise. Depending on your workout, it selects the most appropriate inputs for that activity. For example, when you’re running indoors, it also uses the accelerometer. When you’re cycling outdoors, it uses the GPS in your iPhone. And even when you’re not in a dedicated workout, it tracks how much you move each day. So Apple Watch can give you the information — and the motivation — to improve your fitness and your health.
https://support.apple.com/en-u...
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
And how many of those tattooed people have their tattoo right on their lower arm/wrist where it would interfere with the watch?
I bet it's a pretty small percentage of the already small(ish) percentage of Apple employees who have tattoos in the first place.
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.
So, now that we're all frothing at the mouth and getting our pitchforks, has anyone bothered to check if other smart watches or fitness trackers have same issues or it's only Apple's?
Just curious if this is something endemic to the entire category or only the technology Apple used in their watch.
If 2 out of 3 Apple products failed then we probably would have heard about that by now.
That was recently update to include the bit about the tattoos http://web.archive.org/web/201...
of course if you read how the sensor works you would know that scarring, discoloration of the skin, and tattoos would all be a possible problem it just wasn't spelled out for the masses.
You seem to have a solid handle on all the engineering & market challenges involved.
As noted by FUCKING HISTORY you are absolutely full of shit, you apologist shill.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Did you know you can't wear the Apple watch if you don't have arms?"
Dunno, my ankles seem to fit this wristband just fine.
Oh, wait, too stupid to think critically.
Did you know most /. posters simply don't have common sense, despite their supposed education?
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Wah! I changed the wheels on my car and now the hubcaps I wanted to buy don't fit anymore! Somebody MAKE them make those hubcaps to fit a 13.5" Russian army surplus wheel!"
Ha. New Orleans must be losing it. Up here in unHipster Alaska you see quite a number of heavily tattooed folk carting around iPhones, iPads and various other iAccoutraments. These are typically working class folk - fisherman, lumberjacks (yes, we have them), cannery workers and such who happen to make a lot money (at least at times) and think that shinys are worthwhile expenditures. Yeah, it looks a bit, shall we say, different, to see some heavily muscled guy in beat up work clothes sipping a grande quadruple shot mocha and daintily tapping away at his MacBook Air. It is a very strange world at times.
Now, it isn't obvious that this guy and his cute friends are the prototypical iWatch purchasers but I'll wager there is going to be some overlap here.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Maybe that's what they're doing when they disappear into the backroom for awhile.
preorders began on april 10th
The wayback machine on april 11th http://web.archive.org/web/201...
The current page says it was last updated yesterday.
From the description of how the sensor works you would think that scarring, skin discoloration, and tattoos could all be a problem but it was not spelled out. {maybe extremely hairy wrists too}
The sensors on the Apple Watch and other devices use specific color range of light to detect blood flow through the skin. The tattoo ink can block it. Yet another reason not to mark up one's body.
I work in an office, I wear a shirt to the wrist. It's none of my employers business what's under that shirt sleeve.
The downtown Portland Apple store had heavily decorated employees. Of the ones I noticed, more had ink, piercings, and hair dye than did not. But that's downtown Portland, so probably not the best example, just happens to be the only one I've been in lately.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
The sensors on the Apple Watch and other devices use specific color range of light to detect blood flow through the skin. The tattoo ink can block it.
Yet another reason not to mark up one's body.
I hardly think "Can't use an Apple Watch" ranks very highly on the list of reasons not to get a tattoo since there's such an easy workaround -- don't buy an apple watch.
No, hipsters still by popular items, they just do so ironically. Or something.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It's a simple problem. If the device doesn't work for you, send it back for a refund and find something that does. If they aren't accepting returns, then that's an example of crappy customer service.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
If you read page 226 of the 1200 page EULA, its for whites only. They recommend cheaper Android watches for colored skin
From the description of how the sensor works you would think that scarring, skin discoloration, and tattoos could all be a problem but it was not spelled out. {maybe extremely hairy wrists too}
Good to know - thanks for checking that out. Wayback machine is awesome.
Yeah, reading the description does pretty lead you to believe that a layer of ink under the skin seems pretty likely to interfere with those sensors, which are relying on color information (crazy, I didn't realized that's how it worked).
One has to wonder about the ramifications for those with very dark skin. I suppose we'll hear about it if proves to be problematic. The tattoo issue... well, sucks for those who chose to get a tattoo. If the watch simply doesn't work as advertised on black wrists... that's a little more disturbing. Apple may have invented the world's first "racist" watch.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
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.
I plan on wearing mine like a cock ring, just set it to vibrate and keep texting myself.
Think that'll void the warranty?
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I would imagine it would work like laser hair removal the darker the skin, if there are tattoos, or any other blemishes it may not be a viable option.
We are in the midst of a decades-long scandal. It seems lazy people who evidently hate the English language have been appendin "-gate" at the end of pretty much anything that annoys or inconveniences them.
I'm sure when you tell the Apple Store people their watch doesn't work on your tattooed wrist, they will take it back and issue a refund. You may have to spend 15 minutes doing that instead of picking out artisanal teapots or locally-sourced beard wax. Oh the horrors!
#noteverythingisafuckinggate-gate
Nothing posted to
Easy! Just get an Apple Watch tattoo. Problem solved.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
In other news, hordes of hipsters realize to their horror that electronics aren't magical.
It's never been a secret the Apple watch uses an optical sensor - if it's blocked by anything it won't work; it's just the nature of optical sensors...
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Melanin is generally transparent to the frequencies used in these devices, so skin color doesn't make a difference. It's essentially the same technology as the little finger clamp they put on you in the hospital to measure pulse and blood oxygenation, and they work fine on people of all colors.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
How do they have money to buy an iwatch? Tattoos on hands and wrists seems like a great way to make yourself unemployable and eternally poor.
Are you sure Louisiana is a place where "anything goes"??? I guess you need to come to Seattle, where you'll meet bankers with neck tattoos and insurance executives with nose rings. Sorry, but New Orleans hasn't been avant guarde for decades.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
If you haven't noticed, Hipsters are pretty mainstream now.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Actually, they're a great idea, they'll stop you from using an iWatch.
Gosh, I love the back and forth in this thread.
'People who get tattoos are sheeple!'
'No, people who like Apple stuff are sheeple!'
'No, you are!'
'No, you are!'
"sharing their disappointment over the newly discovered Apple flaw."
They also don't get hired by banks and other serious businesses, it ain't a 'bank flaw'.
It was just a bad idea to get a tattoo and now you pay for it.
obviously the Apple domos in China and One Infinite Loop didn't have a stable of bikers and wearable art folks availiable to see if the watch worked right with those injected clays, metallics, and inorganic dyes strewn all across the bio-network. I doubt they'd have been able to work around it, either. breast implants are known to fuzz up mammograms and can hide tumors, as well as complicate angioplasty. muck up the network, don't expect clear signals.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I hardly think "Can't use an Apple Watch" ranks very highly on the list of reasons not to get a tattoo since there's such an easy workaround -- don't buy an apple watch.
How about "Emergency services personnel can't use a pulse oximetry device on your tattooed skin in order to save your life following a car accident"?
The device that's being interfered with is a pretty standard non-invasive pulse ox device that happens to be built into the watch.
Maybe the paramedics should use a standard finger pulse-ox meter instead of an iWatch.
This is exactly my problem with Apple and many other product designers.
Yeah, most capacitive coupling (read as "nearly any touch sensitive device") doesn't work with gloves, unless they are specially made.
It also doesn't work with artificial limbs, which I think is probably a more important issue.
You can modify an artificial limb pretty trivially to make it work, just as you can modify a glove pretty trivially to make it work. I helped someone modify their Boch's artificial arms to allow them to use the touchpad on their IBM Thinkpad (also capacitively coupled). I declined to patent the modifications, and instead disclosed them into the public domain.
I have no idea on either, but I do know that they have a very liberal campus policy with regards to wardrobe, hair, etc. There is plenty of body art to be seen, not sure whether they work in design.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
And as noted by others in reply to your note from others, your own fucking wayback machine link states:
"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."
Clearly, having a tattoo counts as one of the "various factors"
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I've not seen many people tattoo the tips of their fingers. And I've never seen EMS use any other kind of device to take pulse ox readings. A full on hospital will still use a fingertip pulse ox reader for the ox, but will get the pulse from an EKG. EKGs are much more common now that they don't need paper and a printer, but store the reading digitally, which give instant feedback, as well as the ability to play back later.
But even then, tattoos often have metal in the pigment,so would that change in conductivity mess up an EKG, given a large chest tattoo with iron in the pigment?
Learn to love Alaska
For the tiny percent of people who have tattoos that cover all the way down, why would they waste money or resources trying to figure out that last barely 1 percent or less? That makes no sense from a business stand point, on the other hand I totally agree with you on they should have a warning for those people with tattoo. For most, there is still time to return the watch, stop being major cry babies, thats how you let companies know there product has problems, RETURN IT.
So, GM shouldn't have fixed the ignition key problem because it affects even less than your "barely 1%"? And if a laptop design has barely 1% of cpus fail out of the box, that's okay? Or drugs or contaminated food shouldn't be recalled because it only affects barely 1%? Can you change your name from Anonymous Coward to Corporate Shill?
So is the Apple Watch not working with wrist tattoos equivalent to a malfunctioning car, failing laptop, or or contaminated drugs/food? You call the GP commenter a shill. You sounds silly and shrill.
If you have wrist tattoos (my guess is you don't) and the watch doesn't work for you return it. Get some perspective, and buy a Google Wear instead.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
How about "Emergency services personnel can't use a pulse oximetry device on your tattooed skin in order to save your life following a car accident"?
Don't most pulse oximeters work by shining a certain frequency of light through fingernails? You'd have to be tatooed under every fingernail - full hiptard level.
Even in the absence of a suitable finger an earlobe, toe or penis should work nicely. (Well . . . not sure how effective the latter would be. Might have to disregard readings taken during sponge-bath time, when oxygen saturation goes up to about 350%)
Also the thing about pulse oximetry: perfect accuracy is not required. Their benefit is that they are light, cheap and portable (in aluminum and space gray configurations, not gold) so can be used as an indicator that intensive care is required. They measure oxygen saturation, but are not effective at indicating respiratory acidosis, for example. Once in an intensive care setting, there's other ways to measure organ perfusion.
DISCLAIMER: The above might be complete horse@#(&, as I'm not a doctor - just read medical encyclopedias from time to time ;)
If it acquires resources on instantiation like a duck, then its a shared_ptr<Duck>
How about "Emergency services personnel can't use a pulse oximetry device on your tattooed skin in order to save your life following a car accident"?
The device that's being interfered with is a pretty standard non-invasive pulse ox device that happens to be built into the watch.
Maybe the paramedics should use a standard finger pulse-ox meter instead of an iWatch.
The iWatch is not a certified medical device. I am specifically talking about standard pulse ox on someone who has done something like this to their fingers:
http://blog-cdn.tattoodo.com/w...
If people are going to tattoo their wrists and faces, they are sure as hell going to do their fingers.
How about "Emergency services personnel can't use a pulse oximetry device on your tattooed skin in order to save your life following a car accident"?
Don't most pulse oximeters work by shining a certain frequency of light through fingernails?
No. They shine through the pad of the fingertip to the blood vessels there. Otherwise they would not work on people wearing nail polish.
Does extending the strap count as a modification?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
By your own admission Apple does test the products before they reach customers. Your original post claimed that they didn't--obviously that post was wrong.
You're wearing it wrong.
Just had a vision of someone with an iron pigment tattoo getting into an MRI machine...
You can google it. The "result" is a minor burn caused by the heating from the MRI. That's all, and it's not even consistent. Some with tattoos have no reaction, others with the same pigment will. The shape of the tattoo has an effect.
Learn to love Alaska
Stuff you might put in (or on) your wrist preventing Apple's watch from working right isn't really a problem with the watch. You did something non-standard to your skin and now you want some tech company to compensate for it?
It's not their problem; it's your problem. But it's not a very significant problem in the big picture because only a tiny percentage of people have tattoos on their wrists. Of those, a minority want one. Of those, only a few percent can afford one. We're talking a handful of people affected. Why should Apple care?