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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

I'm skeptical about the accuracy of applications like this running on Apple Watch. I bought the Apple Watch Series 3 precisely because of articles like this. I now routinely get messages about how I've achieved my standing goal - while lying in bed watching TV or working on my laptop. If it can't accurately tell whether you're lying down or standing, it is unimaginable to me that it could be remotely accurate in detecting far more complex conditions.

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You get the message that you achieved your standing goal right after the hour in which you achieved it. So it's entirely possible that you stood at 22:10, went to bed at 22:30, and get the achievement message at 23:00.

That's certainly possible, though I have noticed more quirky behavior than just this - the stand goal was just the most amusing one to me and that is why I posted that particular one here. I sometimes meet the exercise goal on a very sedentary day, while I don't meet it when I vigorously exercise, etc. I have a two story house and I climb and descend the steps probably 15+ times per day, yet for the current week, it shows that I have climbed 4 flights of steps. Then other days it seems like it's right on the mark. It just seems to be all over the place.

As the old joke goes, How do you measure altitude with a barometer?

A: Drop it and measure how long it takes to hit the ground.

When I work from home I have a standing desk, and it looks like the watch does not pick me as standing, so I almost never reach the standing goal there

How would it actually know if you're standing, especially if you're hands are on a desk? Heart rate, blood pressure?

Most likely that the absence of movement data is perceived as sitting/standing. Since the stand goal requires standing and moving for at least one minute (the purpose of the stand goal is more to get you moving for at least a minute rather than just stand up - just standing up doesn't count), if you haven't moved for a while (50 minutes in an hour) then it gives you a nudge to do so.

It's a somewhat confusingly named metric. It actually measures "have you been moving around for at least one minute this hour?", where I think "moving around" is basically defined as generating steps.

My reason for this theory is that I sometimes bounce my leg when I'm sitting, and if I have my arm resting on said leg this sometimes triggers the stand goal for the hour.

This happened to me an hour ago. I stood up at my desk and continued working but it didn't count according to the watch. I'd speculate that it wants some lateral movement as well - stand up and get a drink of water, maybe?

It wants you to repeat the process of standing. So, if you stand for an hour, that is only 1 stand procedure. You have to sit for 5 minutes, then stand again.

No, you need to stand and move around for at least 1 minute. Just standing won't do it. The point is to not be sedentary, not just to stand upright.

Yeah I have the same issue. It seems the primary key in triggering a stand hour is having your arms down at your side, or moving around a bit - so keyboard posture doesn't work out.

I have had some entertainment downloading an app that just feeds the accelerometer data to the screen. I did it first as a diagnostic to see if the accelerometer was broken (it was on this machine), but then I have some fun just watching the data on the screen and trying to imagine how on earth you're supposed to extract whether the user is standing or not, or going up stairs, etc.

And I say that from a position of being educated in signal processing, not just staring slackjawed at all the numbers. It's a very noisy signal, even after processing, and while it's correlated with the values you're trying to get out of the data it's not necessarily a very strong correlation. There's a lot of headwinds against getting this data out of the accelerometer. It's a minor miracle that they are as accurate as they are.

I would expect it to be accurate enough to detect the changes: if it is accurate enough to detect stand up and move, it also should pick stood up, moved a bit, didn't stand down. I guess the profile of accelerometer/altimeter data of standing up and moving from sitting is different from stand up and moving without having been seated before.

The stand goal is measured by standing up and moving around for at least one minute https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204517.

> Even if you stand all day, you still need to move around.

The purpose of the standing goal isn't just to be stood up, it's to stretch your legs and get you away from a desk (it doubles as a good reminder to take a break from your computer screen).

I don't stand still, I move around, probably more often than when I'm working on a chair

It's not about whether you've been on your feet. It's about whether you've been moving that hour. The health benefit comes from moving on your feet every hour. When you're standing still for an hour you might as well be sitting.

The thing is, I'm not standing for hours, I move around, specially when thinking through a problem. I'd expect the system to realise there has been a change there.

> I now routinely get messages about how I've achieved my standing goal - while lying in bed watching TV or working on my laptop.

I routinely get messages about having to stand up while standing up on my standing desk at work. (Series 2 here)

That’s supposedly expected behaviour. When I’m standing at my rig in the lab it pings me to stand, just like when I sit at my desk. This actually means get up and/or walk about — which usually works to fill that segment of the ring. But I also get false stands when sitting too.

I’ve a series 0 however with the lesser sensor heart rate sensor so I don’t get any of these new cardio features.

You are supposed to go for a walk, which is a good thing.

Apple calling it a "standing goal" is a misnomer. Its more of a walking goal. I'm pretty confident that they're actually looking for 1 minute of consistent steps every hour.

It doesn't have to be walking. It needs to be one minute of movement in a standing position. You can do jumping jacks or walk in place and it counts.

That's right - the notification itself tells you to get up and walk around for a minute.

After 1 year with the Series 2, I never had an issue with he watch not understanding properly if I was active or not, standing or not. I did calibrate it on the first day though: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204516 and http://www.idownloadblog.com/2015/05/12/how-to-calibrate-app....

I have completed the calorie/move daily goal message while eating a donut. That made me chuckle.

This has never happened to me with the Stand goal, but it sometimes does with the Move goal / calorie count.

It is more like a copy-text / UI design issue. The point is to move around regularly to improve your health.

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