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Comment by twoodfin | Hacker News Reader

This is strange to me: We’re likely less than two weeks out from this device being announced alongside the new iPhones. How can “small-scale” production only be beginning now?

I think the reporting is confusing issues with 2022’s Apple Watch & the upcoming 2021 edition.

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If this report is true, Apple will delay the announcement. They're not going to pull an AirPower with a product as important as the Watch.

They can announce mid September and release in October. Maybe the rumor is surfacing now but the production issue happened weeks ago.

Why not? They do it with their Macbook all the time

When they announce that a Mac will be released in a month, that's because it's already in volume production and they know there are no manufacturing problems. If the manufacturing is still being worked on and they can't know when it will be ready then it isn't safe to announce the product.

> and they know there are no manufacturing problems

There are always manufacturing problems, and new, even significant ones, are discovered all the time.

They might delay the announcement, but at some point the cost of further delays will grow beyond their projections of what shipping a first batch of faulty products will cost them in repairs/replacements/legal fees.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/382260/segments-share-re...

Mac revenue is somewhat small and stagnant while wearables revenue is growing and it's probably their future.

I wouldn't be so sure, the device is being announced in two weeks but it is unlikely that we will be able to buy it straight away.

We might find that the release date for purchase is some time away.

Edit: Actually the article refers to blood glucose monitoring, which points so it being the 2022 model. However, the article does say there is a complete resign, which is also rumoured for this year model. Who know.

Blood glucose monitoring is defined going to be interesting to watch. I wonder if they're planning on doing it in a similar way to supersapiens.

There's no way Apple would design any device which would, I quote, "insert a thin, sterile filament into the skin" to draw interstitial fluid. The Abbott sensor is designed to be worn for weeks on end.

How else are they going to monitor blood glucose? Finger prick tests?

They could miniaturize a specialized spectrometer of some sort I suppose. I don't know. If I knew, I'd be doing it now - that's quite literally tens of billions of dollars that people would throw at you faster than you'd be able to catch it.

E.g. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1757-899X/104/1/0...

'January 2017 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the company unveiled the Changhong H2 with NIR spectrometer', not sure if this was ever released, but suggests miniature spectrometry is a thing...

Yeah, that’d be a very rewarding problem to solve.

The rumor (based on acquisitions Apple has made) is that it will be based on sweat, using sensors built into new watch bands.

I read that it would be stricly optical:

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/07/14/apple-supplier-la...

"Rockley Photonics says that its system uses infrared spectrophotometers to detect and monitor a wider range of health issue than the green LED systems in most wrist devices."

I also remember paging through this fascinating investor presentation document from Rockley:

https://rockleyphotonics.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Rock...

HN discussion from a few months ago on this specific topic:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27030689

Looking at Rockley stuff in particular makes me hopeful this could be solved, if it's solvable with spectrophotometry at all. I'd even be OK with something larger, perhaps ankle-worn, as long as I don't have to puncture my skin at all.

You know how expensive it is currently. Even if it is not perfect just a few mouth recover the costs for health style user. ( not group 1 please )

If the Apple TV 4K is any indication, there's at least a month lag between announcement and shipments.

Even with a month’s lag products would already be in mass production, it regularly takes over a month just to ship goods from China to the US & Europe. Lead time on a new production line can easily run from six months to over a year depending on complexity.

If they’re still having problems with the production lines they’re not going to be shipping to customers in a little over a month, short of using air freight to get goods across, and that would make a substantial dent in profit margins at scale.

Apple does fly a lot of their products out of China so it doesn't take a month.

Yup. Last year I bought Apple Watch and it left China in next day.

> short of using air freight to get goods across

Most iPhones and Apple Watches I’ve ever purchased on launch day ship via air from China to a FedEx hub somewhere in CONUS, then on to me. Takes about 3 days…

mentioning the blood pressure sensors is probably a sign that this isn't the 2021 Apple Watch

The article also says that the watch has a complete redesign, which as we know is rumoured to occur this year? So that adds more confusion.

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