Comment by wholien | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wholien | Hacker News Reader

Hmm, some of the details of this story doesn't seem to agree with most Apple-watchers (as in people who try to figure out what the new features on the new products will be).

For example, the story mentions the addition of blood pressure sensors as a reason for the issues:

> The next Apple Watch will come with new features such as blood pressure measurement, they said, which means production involves fitting a greater number of components into a similar size body.

Mark Gurman of Bloomberg says there is "no chance" [0] that the Apple Watch 7 will have blood pressure sensors. He points to his story with Debby Wu [1] instead:

> The new watches also have screen technology that brings that display closer to the cover glass using a different lamination technique, Bloomberg previously reported. That display layer may be causing some of the production woes, the person said.

It's probably a combination of larger watch sizes, new techniques/technologies, the usual upgrades, COUPLED with covid-related disruptions that are causing the delays!

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0: https://twitter.com/markgurman/status/1432798940676730886

1: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-31/apple-s-n...

>some of the details of this story doesn't seem to agree with most Apple-watchers

This is Nikkei, they have an exceptionally poor track record on anything Apple, as a matter of fact I cant even remember single decent signal coming from them. They are even worst than Digitimes.

Basically a few years ago every single news media saw Apple headline drive click rate, and they decide to join the rumour race. And you mention Mark Gurman of Bloomberg, but before ~2015/2016 he was at 9to5mac.

> This is Nikkei, they have an exceptionally poor track record on anything Apple, as a matter of fact I cant even remember single decent signal coming from them. They are even worst than Digitimes.

> worse than Digitimes

What's wrong with digitimes?

My own guess though is that manufacturing in Vietnam not working out for them.

> What's wrong with digitimes?

They publish pretty much any rumor that comes to them with close to 0 verification. Hard to trust anything when they are the root source.

And not just on Apple btw, on anything IT.

Nikkei weaponizes headlines. Not a tabloid but highly politicized. They run "weather balloon" articles and partially fabricated leaks all the time.

And they own the Financial Times now too.

Re potential features such as blood pressure, there's an ArsTechnica article [1] today that might be useful - if you like Ars, that is.

Headline and sub-head read:

> Report: Big new health features are coming to the Apple Watch—just not this year

> Temperature and blood glucose tracking could arrive as soon as 2022.

Ars refers to the conflicting analyst reports in its intro:

Analysts and reporters have published conflicting reports about what to expect from the next Apple Watch. Some, like Nikkei, claimed it will have new health sensors, but others like Bloomberg's Mark Gurman have said that this year's model will offer no major new hardware features amidst production constraints.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/report-big-new-healt...

nice find! No real opinion on Ars, though Nikkei is probably towards the bottom of trustworthiness for this kind of stuff

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.

The new Samsung Watch 4 can measure blood pressure, but only after calibration with another device.

I wonder what the accuracy of that is vs on-wrist measurement of something like SpO2. If it’s anything like the latter then it’s essentially nothing more than a worthless gimmick.

I had an samsung active watch. It took them over a year to roll out blood pressure and only worked in conjunction with a samsung phone(although the functionality itself had nothing to do with the phone).

It was decently accurate at reproducing results that were close to the calibration device. I do remember people complaining that it was only accurate when the BP was close to what you calibrated it to though. Say for example you measure in rest and then you try to measure during heavy exercise the heavy exercise measurement was off.

So basically another gimmick like SpO2 then.

> It's probably a combination of larger watch sizes, new techniques/technologies, the usual upgrades, COUPLED with covid-related disruptions that are causing the delays!

I believe the explanation is much simpler, and it is they havent't yet finished moving manufacturing to Foxconn's Vietnam factory

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