Apple don't get nearly enough credit for the thought and effort they put into these sorts of features. The same goes to their dedication to accessibility, which is industry-leading and honestly pretty inspiring.
Apple has had strong accessibility features since before they were a household name, when they were a fraction of the size of the company they are today.
Ironically, I think the accessibility focus started because they were a fraction of today’s size: in the early 2000s, section 508 requirements were becoming more stringent; there was an increasing risk that Apple would get shut out of government contracts, and due to the small market share of OS X, it was not considered a viable market for commercial screen reader vendors, so Apple decided to roll their own.
Thanks to strong leadership in the accessibility team, there was an increasing buy-in from the top, and throughout the company. Today, accessibility is indeed in Apple’s DNA, but initially, there was quite a bit of genetic engineering and (dare I say it?) government regulation involved.
Apple was known for easy to use in the 1980s. While that isn't entirely accessibility, the two are related. The early macs had some accessibility features.
Evidence is simply being brought forth to showcase that before Apple became as large as they did, they still cared about accessiblity, irregardless of their "company size" as you stated.
I don't see how that's relevant at all in 2019. People WERE giving Apple mad props for their thoughtfulness back in the day. Now, they have revenue over a third that of Saudi Arabia's GDP. I was responding the OPs point. That's evidence for an argument nobody made.
I ordered my grandmother a Series 5 for this feature alone, in fact it just arrived at my door today and she’s coming over later this week so I can get it setup and walk her through the basics.
She has a hard time getting up from the floor if she kneels or sits down as is, one good fall from a cat tripping her or something is likely to be devastating.
The only iPhone I've owned is asecond hand iPhone 5C that I used for a few months. The watch is making me think my next phone will be an iPhone. Fortunately, I don't think there are any Android only apps that I depend on so the switch should be easy.
Does anyone know if you need to get the watch with an active cellular plan to have the auto-911 feature? Or is it like how cell phones without a plan can still call 911?
Why would a different accelerometer surprise you? The entire SiP is different between the Series 3 and Series 4. One source say the accelerometer in S4 has higher dynamic range. [0]
For battery life concerns, I can see them implementing some of the fall detection logic in hardware as well. For example, a high shock or shaking could trigger the fall-detection software to wake. Although, with the 60-second period, they probably wake the main processor often enough anyway that hardware detection might not save much power.
