It's a PSA: if you have an implanted defibrillator, don't keep iPhone 12 in a shirt pocket. No need for any more drama than that. Reminds me of antennagate, to which Jobs responded: "Don't hold it that way."
Kinda worth making some drama about it, no?
Note it, inform people about it, mitigate the effects where possible and research ways to eliminate the issue entirely. But it's not exactly an emergency by any reasonable definition and the pearl-clutching "drama" is a bit much.
"ah, you'll be fine" seriously?
Think of the likely user who has a pacemaker. They are probably a man, he's probably in his 60s, 70s, or 80s. He's likely not all that familiar with the intricacies of modern phones. His kids probably convinced him to get a phone so he could stay in touch more easily. That's the audience we're talking about here.
It'll happen a lot and while it's happening the lifesaving device is fully disabled. That's a big deal.
(Which is inaccurate, of course, since it sounds from the article like disabling a pacemaker in this way will only open up an opportunity for your heart to fail.)
I’m also over fifty, overweight, and am more likely than average to need a pacemaker or similar device within the next few years.
I hadn’t considered the iPhone 12 problem until now, after it has been explained to me. Yikes!
It is a responsibility of the designers of the medical devices to assure they are safe. Furthermore they naturally have to be replaced every few years, so it isn't even hard to phase out the outdated design in a coordinated fashion. But I guess this costs money and it is cheaper to blame others.
For what it's worth I think it's still up to the user to be safe and know what they can and cannot have up against their chest. But to say that the medical community can just be "agile" about this is to really misunderstand how those devices are certified and designed.
[1] https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseas...
Also, it is a big deal to redesign an implanted medical device, as it should be. These are not tongue depressors. ICDs are the most tightly regulated device the FDA reviews.
My father had a pacemaker, and for long enough to receive a battery swap. The battery for that particular model was implanted under his shoulder blade; the swap-out was performed under local anaesthetic.
The original implantation was a bit more complex from a surgical perspective, requiring keyhole surgery and an angioplasty to run the wire around his heart as well as to implant the battery and controller. But the point is: these devices can be installed and expected to perform for decades, so the engineering design is of necessity highly conservative and has long-term maintenance in mind. It's also safety-critical: if the device malfunctions, people can die.
PS: a pacemaker is not an implanted defibrillator. (Also, my father died in 2017, so what I'm describing is probably a decade or two behind the state of the art.)
If Apple were two guys in a garage, you could forgive them. But a trillion dollar company... not so much.
Image if a simple magnet could be used to start your car or to unlock your front door.
That a cheap keyfob has more embedded security that a piece of life-giving medical equipment is just unbelievable.
As you have said, powerful magnets have been common in private homes for 50 years.
There's no way this is Apples fault.
So a problem of phone calls disconnecting reminds you of phones causing cardiac problems with people using pacemakers?