Turning the iPhone 6s Into a Digital Scale | Hacker News Reader

Turning the iPhone 6s Into a Digital Scale

medium.com

168 pointshuntleydavis94 comments

That's a shame. Gravity looks like a clever app, and the UX in the reviewer video was pretty slick. The spoon + quarter calibration is great!

This sort of thing is why I'm increasingly disinterested in developing for iOS for fun (and why most of my recent side project work has been on web apps). App review is effectively a black box since the rules are applied so inconsistently, and working for weeks or months on something only to find out the Apple doesn't like it is a constant concern. Add in the the real and psychological barriers app review imposes when making bug fixes or updates, and it makes going back to the web rather attractive. It'd be nice to see Apple make some changes to the process.

(I know I could move over to Android dev, but since I use an iPhone it's not terribly interesting for side projects - though that's my problem, not Androids's.)

> I know I could move over to Android dev, but since I use an iPhone it's not terrible interesting for side projects

Fragmentation and the frequency of device- or vendor-specific bugs and other issues take a lot of the fun out of Android dev for me.

Apple's position is actually very easy to understand.

Don't do anything that is likely to cause significant harm to them. Examples of this include: (a) negative press publicity e.g. porn app, drone strike app, (b) stealing from or harming their customers and of course (c) this app where they will have to cover the cost of you putting heavy objects on something that it was never designed to do.

If you want to damage your own phone go ahead. You can build a weighing app and deploy it to your phone. But expecting Apple to endorse (which is what the App Store actually is) stupid behaviour was never going to happen.

I don't buy it. Where is the negative publicity on android? It doesn't exist... There are apps that many people find offensive on the play store... just like there are movies on amazon that some people would find offensive... same thing..

The negative publicity on Android for bad taste or stupid/dangerous apps (remember "Send me to heaven"? the app that measured how high you threw your phone?) is probably swamped by the bad publicity from malware and spyware. The thing about the App store is so little bad news comes out of it that all the hysteria is over minor stuff (e.g. Apple accidentally banning Civil War games).

Completely Agree with your view point. Why was it down voted?

App review is effectively a black box since the rules are applied so inconsistently, and working for weeks or months on something only to find out the Apple doesn't like it is a constant concern.

Unless you're Facebook which has recently been caught abusing silent notifications to start up in the background and continue running permanently by streaming music at zero-volume while draining battery.

Apple responds decently when developers have big media presence notice their abusive process and rolls over passively when powerful players like Facebook have them over a barrel. It's a stormy ocean when you're independent. Best to be careful.

increasingly disinterested in

You mean 'uninterested,' not 'disinterested.'

It was a bug, not intentional from FB: https://www.facebook.com/arig/posts/10105815276466163

I do not understand why the parent gets downvoted so much. I think FB can do pretty much what they please. If Apple is concerned for any reason, Facebook can simply ask them: "Do you want the Facebook Apps in the App store or not?" I think the answer will be: Yes.

By that standard, Amazon should be able to do pretty much what they please too, but we know they can't (see: in-app Kindle store / link to web store, etc.).

> You mean 'uninterested,' not 'disinterested.'

Uninterested may have been better, but disinterested works fine - see the usage notes (desktop only for some reason): http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/disinterested

Popular incorrect use of a word doesn't make it acceptable usage, especially when it occludes an important distinction.

That depends. The Oxford English Dictionary would agree with you. They are an "authoritative" dictionary that tells the reader what is right and what isn't. However, Webster's wouldn't. They document the common usage.

It's a matter of philosophy. In any case, the common usage will always win. People don't consult the OED when talking, or even writing blogs. So language changes.

Did you know that even the OED now includes the awful non-literal meaning of "literally"? Oh the horror ...

Clever idea and use of technology, not surprised to see Apple reject as they want nothing to do with either concepts.

As a developer I will never develop for, support, condone or recommend Apple products to anyone I know because of such behaviour, they want a wall garden, good for them, but I'll have no active part in it.

Really really obvious reason they did this.

People are dumb.

Someone, probably very soon, and probably more than one or even ten people, would overload the weight and crack their screen. At which point they would show up at the Apple Store DEMANDING a brand new phone.

When they didn't get the repair because they're too stupid to understand how glass works they would contact CNN or HuffPo or whatever and there'd be a flurry about "glassgate" or something. Same way that putting a thin phone in your back pocket, SITTING on it and then complaining it bent set off a huge issue and tons of news coverage.

There is a walled garden, this is not an example of Apple overreaching though.

I think the real problem is that they are absolutely not calibrated for any weight. I don't know what the programming interface exposes, but I'd imagine it's something like a percentage out of 100, or something like that.

So people are going to think "My iPhone isn't weighing this accurately! It must be defective!" because Apple never intended for the technology to be translated into a scale.

The Fine Article explains the calibration process they use very nicely. Good UI too.

Way to read the article

the only thing I can imagine cracking the screen is trying to weigh a person.

is that really something Apple would have to pay for? seems like something like that would fall well in "your fault" territory from my perspective.

my first thought was drugs, might be handy to have a scale in my pocket sometimes.

Just because it's the user's fault, doesn't mean the user won't waste apple's time trying to fight for a new phone.

I don't know about you, but if that's the only reason, it sounds an awful lot like a clear cut case of overreach.

But only Apple would know how much weight the force touch sensors can sustain before they are damaged.

If weight on the screen often breaks the force touch sensors without breaking the screen, that's an ugly UI problem. Even with a low "force touch / no screen" accident rate (< 1%), there could easily be tens or hundreds of thousands of users walking around with broken force touch sensors that have no idea their phone has a problem - because there's no visible signal that anything's wrong. They'll just think force touch is broken and/or unreliable. That's no way to promote the adoption of a new feature.

> might be handy to have a scale in my pocket sometimes.

I would kill for that. I diet in a geeky way, weighing everything. I have often thought that some kind of foldable scale that fit in my shirt pocket would be nice.

>Same way that putting a thin phone in your back pocket, SITTING on it and then complaining it bent set off a huge issue and tons of news coverage.

To be fair, earlier phones didn't have the problem. My Motos and iPhone 5s took back pocket tension like a champ. iPhone 6 had to be replaced within 10 days.

And 16 year olds take pictures and effectively create child porn, but how far are you going to go to protect someone from being ridiculous?

Image recognition is improving all the time. Don't give them any ideas...

Haven't we learned from that Lego MMO that penis police doesn't work?

I did Apple support from 2000-2010 and I find this is a ridiculous argument. Apple constantly gives out free phones. I've given a free iPhone (5th replacement) for a guy who dropped his phone at a construction site and it was run over by an industrial vehicle. I've given a free phone to a famous tennis start because she threw it across the room in a fit of rage. I denied tons of free iPhones to people affected by Aentennagate. I've given a third free iPhone to a loudmouthed lawyer who dropped it at a bar and then ran over it. People come into the Apple store every damn day demanding free iPhones and the truth is, if you are savvy enough, loud enough and endless enough you will get it. Whether or not people will show up demanding replacements is not a factor in their decision. Internally our policy was if it affects less than 10% of the user base, it's a non-issue to be dealt with on a case by case basis. If the person making the demands has any cultural, media or social weight, they get a free phone. If the person is being loud enough and you are seeing a no-win situation ahead, just give them a free phone. I can't see how this app would have caused either situation to occur.

Giving out free phones is not a sustainable way of doing business. The just sold ~50m phones on a historically low volume quarter.

Statistically speaking any meaningful way to reduce phone handouts is probably worth the negative publicity.

Banning this app is one such way.

They allow the apps which the point of the game is to throw it up as high as you can. I imagine that's not it.

someone might use it to weigh medication or something explosive etc... they can't be held liable. but of course this should be the developer's fault not apple's but apple wouldn't be apple if they didn't exercise their dictatorship from time to time.

Couldn't we say this about any app? People look up medical info in a browser and self-diagnose, self-medicate and accidentally-self-harm.

Really cool app, and a shame Apple rejected it. Using a spoon was a very clever idea.

Why did you choose to display weight in grams to 3 decimal points when the measurements are only accurate to within 3g? It would be better to not display the values after the decimal point, so you don't give your users a false sense of accuracy.

(Sorry for the slow response!) I'm really glad you called this out! You're totally right. The demo video was shot with an earlier version of the app before this was fixed :)

Here's a more recent video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3S95b9gAC8 One decimal place (in grams) was kept since precision != accuracy.

A minor point, but the app was rejected rather than "shut down".

It's a shame, it seems like a neat application and I can totally imagine using an app like this to weigh spices or coffee beans.

My guess is that Apple didn't want their customers ruining their phone screens by putting heavy objects on it.

By accepting the app, Apple is implicitly allowing the use case of using the phone as a scale.

Exactly this.

  "Oh, let's see how accurately it weighs 50lbs!"

Anyone remember the "waterproof" troll? Apple is protecting some of their users from their own stupidity.

> By accepting the app, Apple is implicitly allowing the use case of using the phone as a scale.

This may be a bigger issue than just concern that customers might ruin their screens (and blame Apple.)

Scales (for commercial use) are regulated, and devices marketed as scales but intended for only non-commercial use are explicitly labeled "not for us in trade"; Apple probably doesn't want to be seen as marketing or endorsing the iPhone as a scale, even implicitly.

That plus the fact that the sensor is probably not reliably calibrated between phones and may degrade with age. Apple doesn't want to deal with complaints about how their phone is doing a crummy job at weighing things.

> imagine using an app like this to weigh spices or coffee beans.

Seriously ?

You would rather potentially ruin your $700 phone by breaking the screen or getting spice particles inside instead of buying a $5 scale.

Let me decide that.

I accept your point but having Apple iNanny watching over my shoulder is boring as hell.

(disclaimer: I don't own an iPhone and cannot see that happening in the near term).

You already can decide that. You can build the app and deploy it your phone.

Putting this app on the store however is an implicit endorsement of it.

For $99/yr. Edit: + the price of a Mac of some kind.

Well, just the mac now, since you can "sideload" apps onto your phone with xcode: http://9to5mac.com/2015/06/10/xcode-7-allows-anyone-to-downl...

Sorry for the uninformed response. Been out of the iOS game for a few months and I didn't even bother checking if that was still true since I never thought they'd get rid of that silly requirement. Good for them.

Nope, it's free now

... and then carrying that scale around like you do a phone? Lots of things are being replaced by phones/apps because you always have your phone. Do you always have your scale?

While I personally can't recall a time when a scale-in-my-pocket would have measurably improved my life, I will concede that often capability leads utility. Maybe a future where everyone's phones are also reliable scales will fulfill needs we didn't know we had.

Such as reverting to gold for common currency.

One use: grocery stores will stop bother cheating on you with miscalibrated scales.

No I have no need to carry around a scale at all times. But I do have a need to carry around a working phone with a screen that isn't scratched, broken and with a force touch sensor intact.

Again if you are the sort of person that is willing to risk a $700 phone because of the inconvenience of carrying a scale then I suspect you may be a niche consumer for Apple.

>Apple has a moral and ethical onus to make the right choices be it related to the confederate flag, changing drug laws, or using emoji to fight bullying, and we respect that.

I can't decide if he really respects that or if he's still hoping to get his app approved. Companies should not be in the business of trying to enforce (clearly unenforceable) laws by removing features that do perfectly legal things.

But companies equally have a right to own the experience. Creating an app to harvest hardware identifiers and using that to track them is legal. But it tarnishes the experience of their product and is anti-consumer by every definition. Apple should have the ability not to allow that.

Just because something is legal does not make it morally or ethically "right".

The company doesn't own your phone. You do.

Surely YOU should be the one who decides what constitutes "proper" software to run on hardware that you purchased?

I'm a bit torn on this. On the one hand, I hate how not having ultra strict UX guidelines turns Android app ecosystem into shit (with every major app maker providing their own crap experience). On the other hand, I firmly believe the right of a company to control the "experience" I get from using a tool I bought from them should end the second I walk out of their store.

If they are to tell me how I can and can not use my device (above what the law says), then it's not my device, and it's not a tool.

> Companies should not be in the business of trying to enforce (clearly unenforceable) laws by removing features that do perfectly legal things.

Dragon-dick dildos are legal, but that hardly means Wal-Mart is under any obligation to stock them for sale if that's not something they want their brand associated with.

If Apple doesn't want their brand to be associated with racist apps, or pornography, or pony apps, or whatever they choose, why would it not be their right to do the same as Wal-Mart?

As consumers, we can choose where to shop based on what stores do and do not stock. If you don't like what Apple stocks, don't shop in its store, and don't buy their devices.

> As consumers, we can choose where to shop based on what stores do and do not stock. If you don't like what Apple stocks, don't shop in its store, and don't buy their devices.

You're right, but I hate this line of reasoning. At the end of the day, I like using an Apple product and I don't have a problem with 99% of the things they do. So simply telling someone to 'stop buying the product' when they disagree with a relatively minor issue, is silly, and it kills the discussion immediately.

It's like congress passes a law I don't like and you suggest to 'leave the country', instead of focusing on the fact it's a bad law that could be changed without having to do something so drastic as leave the country.

Debate like this can help, calling them out for things that aren't very sensible is okay and it doesn't have to immediately be met with the obvious 'under the law they can do what they want so your only recourse is to simply never use their product ever again, end of discussion'.

Let's also not forget when Apple changed its mind. For example, remember the iPhone 4? It introduced the LED flashlight for its camera, a feature none of the iPhones before had. Immediately flashlight apps were made, and rejected by Apple. Later it changed its mind and they're now a staple in every app store, and later even became an integral part of the OS requiring no app at all, without any changes to the hardware. And it didn't happen because people suddenly sold their iPhone 4 and people stopped buying iPhone 4s because they couldn't get the flashlight app, that'd never have happened. On big features, yeah, not on small stuff.

Then why allow safari? There's so many scary things online, why would they endorse such things?

Because Dateline can't build a concern-trolling episode around "Are iPhones Youth-Corrupting Pornography Machines" when everything and your toaster has a web browser. Every criticism would equally apply to Android and your laptop. It's water off the brand's back.

But if Apple is literally taking money and distributing pornography, a news unit is shooting that story tomorrow.

Nintendo faces many of the same problems, e.g.) http://www.examiner.com/article/pedophiles-could-take-advant...

Explain to simpletons like myself how pornography distribution is like measuring weight. I'd love to draw the connection but I'm afraid logic prevails.

Furthermore, if Dateline is an influencing force in Apple product decisions - remind me to smash my iPhone into a million proprietary pieces.

> Explain to simpletons like myself how pornography distribution is like measuring weight. I'd love to draw the connection but I'm afraid logic prevails.

Reread thread. This grew out of discussion about Apple forbidding apps with confederate flags etc. Inflammatory, controversial content.

Y'know, like pornography.

The weight thing is obviously much simpler: Apple doesn't want to be the punchline on a lolpiece on the 6 o'clock news about "Are people breaking their iPhones with controversial new 'scale' apps? Find out after news and weather with chuckles the rain stooge"

> Furthermore, if Dateline is an influencing force in Apple product decisions - remind me to smash my iPhone into a million proprietary pieces.

News Organizations are absolutely an influencing force in any major brand's decision making processes. All brands live in utter terror of being on the wrong side of a "won't somebody please think of the children??" shit-storm.

You're kidding yourself if you think otherwise.

"Child installs eBay app to purchase dildos - news at 9."

I understand PR is an influencing factor in corporate decision making - but if Apple is choosing to cater to the Dateline crowd rather than satisfy their core audience, Tim might as well purchase dragon dildos for the entire staff.

Allowing or banning an App is PR worthy. Damned if I do or don't type thing. But a developer wasted time from his life that'll never be returned. Responsible adults who wish to use this functionality aren't able to. The proprietary nature of Apple's wall gardened is coming into question. That's the PR Apple should worry about, and this is a gross miscalculation.

The concern here is likely that some idiot will try to measure their own weight with it or some such nonsense, and then break their phone. I'm sure Apple still remembers "bendgate", and has no desire to get a bunch of bad press about how the screen's glass is fragile. Like bendgate, they'll probably be vindicated when actual experiments are run, but that is of little comfort.

Also, the parent was responding to why the same argument doesn't apply to Safari. I'm afraid what prevailed was ignoring context, not logic.

Completely aside from the merits of anti-drug laws, the number of perfectly legitimate applications for "weighing things" is vastly larger than the number of illegal ones.

And this is precisely the problem with centralization. It forces a Yes or No when the appropriate answer is Wu.

>Apple has a moral and ethical onus to make the right choices be it related to the confederate flag, changing drug laws, or using emoji to fight bullying, and we respect that.

Do you, or do you fear retaliation from Apple if you bad mouth them?

There is a Force Touch Javascript api that can be used in Safari, right? Could this app be rewritten as a web page?

brilliant idea!

https://github.com/freinbichler/3d-touch

A year or two ago some developer [0] figured out how to code some sort of pseudo pressure sensitivity into a music making app, which seemed to work well from what I heard. Apple eventually banned the app from their store citing improper use of the code base.

[0] trying to search for it, seems lost to the memory hole

The app was called "Orphion", and it had several methods for detecting gestures/articulations: a gentle finger tip touch, a tap, and a push down. Apple cited forbidden private API use.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/06/hands-off-apple-wants-...

  Apple just called me to nicely tell me I use a private 
  API function to sense the area of the screen which is 
  covered by the finger for its articulation gesture ([CDM] 
  wrote about it). This is crazy – thousands of users love 
  it for this and it makes Orphion so expressive.


  The app will be removed from the App Store in two weeks 
  if I don’t submit a new version without it – and I 
  currently can’t think of Orphion without this gesture.


  So what I can recommend is


  1. Everyone who wants to have the “original” Orphion get 
  it NOW from the app store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app
  /orphion/id495465097), it will be only be there for a few 
  more days

  2. Backup the current version to keep it. (Michael Tyson 
  from Audiobus made this great tutorial)

  3. Tell Apple to make this great function officially 
  usable in apps (Any ideas how to do that?)

  So far… let’s see if this is really the end of Orphion.

...looks like the petition worked and Orphion was allowed to keep the gesture functionality; https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/orphion/id495465097

Apple now allows you to sideload apps from source without paying the developer fee, so it can still be distributed in source format for anyone to install.

Anyone with access to OSX and Xcode.

Note that the 1944 90% silver Washington quarters pictured would weigh 6.25 grams each, while the 1965+ cupro-nickel sandwich quarters weigh 5.67g each.

I doubt that Apple's primary concern is people breaking their screens. It would actually be quite difficult to break your screen by putting heavy weights onto a spoon.

No, Apple's concern is supporting this app to the future. They don't know if they'll be sticking with this same kind of sensor for future models, and they don't know that any future sensor will be backwards compatible for this app. If people get used to using this app, suddenly they'd be under an obligation to keep it working, thus losing options for future designs.

Considering how frequently and heavily Apple pushes developers for other updates (e.g. new iOS version support, 64-bit support, etc.) I'd be shocked if future support were any consideration in the rejection. I'd expect Apple to be perfectly happy to deprecate and/or replace an API, allow changes in undefined behavior in future models and so on. If the app breaks, so be it.

I would happily pay money for this app, a true shame that it has been rejected. This story makes me wish that there were easy to use sideloading opportunities for app developers within iOS.

Xcode 7 lets you compile and run apps on a device without a developer account. It would require giving out your source code, but at least it's available.

You could give your code out as a compiled static library or framework if you were concerned about that. Then the source code would just be the trivial code required to link and present the app.

Can it be coded with the users public key from their device thus limiting it to work o my on the device with the matching private key? IDevices do use public/private keys don't they ;)

I thought this was a great article, until the end where the author not only gives up, but writes a meek apologietic stating that Apple is clearly and wholly right to block people from running any software it doesn't like on their own phones, without explanation.

Does Apple retaliate against people who complain about the App Store review process in public or something?

Pleasantly surprised at the developers' reaction to the rejection. It's like they knew that there was a chance and they weren't really upset when it didn't go their way. Kudos to them for their ingenuity despite the failure.

Kind of like the Plum-O-Meter

http://flexmonkey.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/the-plum-o-meter-we...

It's against the HN guidelines to editorialize titles when submitting stories, so please don't.

(Submitted title was "Apple shuts down app that uses 'Force Touch' to weigh objects".)

Could the heavier weight (not big enough to break the screen) could actually damage the force touch sensor also? But probably the screen damage possibility was the reason for the rejection.

Why the anti-Apple headline edit?

How did it read before? It reads "Apple shuts down app that uses 'Force Touch' to weigh objects " which seems objective to me?

I'd bet a beer Apple comes out with their own version next year.

Drug related? An app allowing reasonably-accurate weighing of samples with 0.1g resolution has significant black market applications.

Except it's not anywhere close to that accurate. Article clearly stated it's more like +/- 1-3 grams.

A phone, a car, a wallet, plastic bags, lighters... they're all ubiquitously used by the drug industry. Preventing scales because of illicit use of weighing something is like banning cutlery because they can be used as weapons, banning cars because they can be getaway cars, banning phones because they can be used to setup illicit trades, etc etc. I think it's a bit silly and I don't think it'd affect the brand any more than it already is (peruse drug culture on social media and you'll find plenty of iphones featured, it hasn't affected the brand at all in a negative way, it's still a luxury item and people still view it as a phone you'd love to gift to family of any age if money is of no concern).

Using an extremely expensive ultra-thin high-resolution touch-sensitive easily-scratched display as a scale is a pretty terrible idea. If Apple allows the app and someone weighs tiny diamonds on the screen, whose fault is it that the display is scratched? Ordinary people may not understand how the Mohs hardness scale works. Ordinary people may not be accurate judges of whether or not something is too heavy to place on a phone without damaging it. Cute hack, but too many unintended consequences in the real world.

RTA! Any object would have to be in a spoon (or something similar). And even diamonds on the screen wouldn't scratch it unless you applied pressure. At which point you don't deserve a scratch-free screen (but can buy one with those diamonds).

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