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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

Yesterday my friend was trying to take pulse ox measurements on his Apple Watch. After searching on the web, he downloaded an app called Blood Oxygen App, [1] which costs $20/yr. It didn't work without a subscription, it seemed, so he asked me for help. I figured out that the Apple Watch comes with a built-in app called Blood Oxygen (no "App" at the end) that does this for free.

I can't believe Apple let this through their review process. Think of how much money they've made by fooling people into thinking their app is the official Apple app.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blood-oxygen-app/id1541992656

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I just gave this app a try it doesn't seem like an out-right scam to me.

It has 20,000 reviews and plenty of them look like they're written by real humans that actually appreciate the app. The app also works with other bluetooth SpO2 sensors, and I believe that Apple's official "Blood Oxygen" app is only available if you have an Apple Watch! (Though in either case presumably the app is just leveraging iOS's built in functionality?). Also the app seems to focus on data sharing which Apple's Blood Oxygen and Health apps don't provide. There are some 1 star reviews, but they seems mainly from people that are upset this app can't track SpO2 by itself without a watch or other hardware.

Also the app works fine without a subscription. It does aggressively prompt you to subscribe when you first open the app so it might not have been clear it was optional. Making this non-obvious is sketchy. Subscribing enables Apple Health syncing, sharing, and stats. There's plenty of out right scams on the App Store but this doesn't seem like one.

It sounds like you're looking at the iOS app, which may well have a sensible reason to exist.

I presume the GP, on the other hand, is talking about an Apple Watch app, which would only be doing something the Apple Watch already does.

They're the same thing. There's no separate Apple Watch app. This iOS app just has an Apple Watch app component that can be installed on the watch if you have one. So the reviews include both. (I think this is true in general and every Watch app is also an iOS app. You can't even setup an Apple Watch without having an iphone to pair it with.)

There aren’t really Apple Watch apps. Just iOS apps with Watch interfaces

> I can't believe Apple let this through their review process. Think of how much money they've made by fooling people into thinking their app is the official Apple app.

I can, given that there are multimillion dollar scams on the App Store[1]. Last time I looked, I found about a half dozen Chinese Bonzi Buddy clones on the Mac App Store, as well.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/8/22272849/apple-app-store-s...

Think about how much money Apple made by letting this app developer fool people into thinking it was the official app.

Thinking about zero dollars. The App Store states the developer name prominently. The graphics look nothing like an official Apple app. It nowhere claims any official anything.

I think GP was referring to Apple’s 30% cut (just 15% if this dev is clearing less than $1M annually).

Edit: subbed < for >

It’s 15% if it’s less than a million annually.

Only when applied and approved. Lots of Dev are still paying for 30% to this day.

https://mjtsai.com/blog/2022/04/05/apple-sitting-on-applicat...

It's a fine line to walk and one that I don't think they can sustain for much longer.

On one hand, they deny it and the app developer posts a medium sob story about Apple crowding out independent devs. that gets traction on Hacker News.

On the other hand, they let it through and this article gets posted.

I wonder how heavy the head that wears the crown gets before it's chopped off.

They don't need to walk a fine line. They decided to make a walled garden, but they do a terrible job of moderating it such that there are way too many of both false positives and false negatives.

I doubt it is much compared to Apple's balance sheet. Doesn't seem like a real motivation.

Doesn’t App Store utilization by both end users/consumers and perhaps more importantly developers, who make apps for end users, reflect indirectly in the share price?

If this were the case, the revenue to app developers in this instance could motivate Apple to not discourage this type of confusion.

I doubt leaving a BP app on there has any influence at all.

You're just restating the original point in a more convoluted way. Yes, Apple makes money from scams such as this. No, it's unlikely to be anywhere near the amount where it would matter, even in aggregate.

If it were a real motivation they could execute it much more effectively by not including their first-party app at all.

Do you think Apple had that 1 trillion dollars entry in their balance sheet spontaneously appear in one majestic swoop of same sale?

Do you?

It's almost like they enjoy hypocrisy, that it's a game for them.

It was very much a game when Steve Jobs had his infamous invitations for potential acquisitions that never panned out: https://twitter.com/apartovi/status/1447251334814523392?lang...

While I think modern Apple is the definition of pure hypocrisy. I honestly dont see how that is hypocrisy from Steve.

And I dont see how that is infamous. I actually thought Steve was very polite in replying. Had the decency to give him a straight answer.

I didn't say it was hypocrisy from Steve, I said it was a game. I think it probably is though - he calls him a liar but I think he misrepresented his offer. He was very unlikely to pony up 50 million for iLike. A good faith offer shouldn't explode like that. Calling someone a liar while you're lying is hypocrisy.

But again in the second paragraph I didn't say or imply that he was being a hypocrite. Just that he was playing a game. When I said hypocrisy I was talking about the current app store approval process. Steve Jobs was only involved in that for about 3 years more than a decade ago.

Wow, that hurt to read.

I've been using Apple products for almost 30 years (good ol' System 7.5) but this absolute bullshit of user hostility has made me switch to a Pixel 6 most recently.

The App Store, the Lightning connector, two huge hassles that only exist to make Apple more money on top of the premium you already paid for the hardware. It's my device! I paid a premium for it!

> I paid a premium for it!

You sure paid a lot for a rental. You cant even run your own programs on it, unless you pay $100/yr to them IN ADDITION TO "buying" the hardware.

You don't actually need to do that. You can use Xcode to put any app you compile onto an iPhone connected to your Mac, regardless of whether you're paying. However, if you're not paying then those apps will only work for 7 days before you have to re-deploy them.

I'm not saying this is great. Just that you were wrong. :D

(To be fair, this is a fairly recent change. 2019 or so, I think?)

is the bar really so low that "need to connect your mac and redeploy the app every 7 days" is acceptable??

I did say it wasn't great. It's just not as bad as the poster claimed.

For "ownership", thats a LOT of terms of restriction. Sure sounds like a rental.

If you think what you typed was somehow a "gotcha", its not. It just shows how stupid apple users are willing to defend their abuses.

It’s not a gotcha, friend. It’s just that you were wrong. You can now say the accurate thing instead and still be making a good point.

I believe you’re limited to 3 apps this way, as well as being limited to 10 App IDs (most popular apps will include multiple App IDs for things like extensions, widgets, etc).

If you have the $99/yr Apple Developer account that the user mentioned, those restrictions don’t apply.

Apologies in advance for the rant:

> the Lightning connector

Lightning is the better-engineered physical connector. Quite-heavy phones can be held up on a charging cradle with 100% of the load placed on the Lightning connector, while this would destroy a USB-C connector. A Lightning jack is a solid piece of aluminum, plus two plastic bits on either side with wires running up them. It's simple and robust. The socket is equally simple.

USB-C — all of the USBs, really — give unneeded opportunity to catch debris inside the connectors and then force said debris into the slots, gumming it up. Lightning avoids this; the jack is designed to be completely flat+smooth+convex, so no debris collects on/in it.

The only reason USB-C doesn't just use a Lightning connector is spite. IIRC, Apple offered the USB Forum the Lightning connector patents if they wanted them, but they refused. Instead, the USB Forum copied what they considered the desirable features of Lightning — e.g. reversibility; but implemented them worse (with non-mirrored sense pins requiring USB PHYs to understand orientation); and then sought extra trouble trying to solve problems that people provably hadn't been having with Lightning (e.g. re-adding a shroud for the pins — presumably to protect from scratches/rust — when nobody has ever had a Lightning cable fail for this reason; where this design choice increased the failure rate of USB-C sockets. The cables are supposed to have the sacrificial side of the connection!)

Hah! I had to clean pocket lint out of my XS like a half dozen times in the two years I used it. I've known a few people with iPhones that have had this problem too where it stops charging and the culprit is lint. Apple even has a special tool just for this for purpose they give to Geniuses. Maybe it doesn't happen cable end but it sure happens pocket end. I've mostly had Android phones and haven't had to clean as many USB C ports as the XS.

Lightning also has that problem where the 4th pin burns out and now you have a cable that charges one way. I've yet to have that happen on a USB C cable.

That's a lot of lint! I've had iPhones from day 1 and only needed to clean out 4-5 times total. Easy to do with a toothpick or canned air!

> Maybe it doesn't happen cable end but it sure happens pocket end. I've mostly had Android phones and haven't had to clean as many USB C ports as the XS.

I mean, from an engineering/repair POV, these sorts of short-term, user-correctable connection faults are a good trade-off for having fewer long-term, actual-repair-needed "junk getting in there and breaking something" problems.

See, on the complete opposite end of engineering robustness: the butterfly keyboard. The hinges in those things just loved to hoover in debris, and then ground themselves apart, with user repair (i.e. popping off the keycaps to get the debris out before it can break your keyboard) being "inadvisable" at best (i.e. likely destroying the hinges just as well as the debris would have.)

> Lightning also has that problem where the 4th pin burns out and now you have a cable that charges one way.

This is true, but it's due to the electrical design (sense and VCC right next to each-other), not the physical connector design. If USB-C had used a Lightning physical connector, they could have corrected this problem just by ordering the pinout differently.

To me, the device with the Lightning connector (my phone, my AirPods) spends far more time in places (like my jacket, jeans, shirt pocket, etc.) than do any of the connector ends in my many USB-C cables.

That’s odd, I have never cleaned lint from an iPhone and I am on a long upgrade cycle. It might be an issue with your case or something.

Does no one use the Nintendo cartridge solution anymore?

Doesn't work. The lightning connector compacts the dust tightly and it can't be blown away.

You must be using a dust repelling, perfectly engineered, made of naturally occurring purest of metals, first time in any iPhone kinda lighting connector because mine needs dust cleaning often.

I must be living somewhere with minimal dust because I have never dust cleaned any of my or my family member’s iPhones, in years. Especially not the lighting jack.

>The only reason USB-C doesn't just use a Lightning connector is spite. IIRC, Apple offered the USB Forum the Lightning connector patents if they wanted them, but they refused.

I'd love to read more about this, especially since I also heard somebody claim that USB-C was based on an older Apple power socket.

A few googlers on HN have previously told me that the USB-C connector came out of the Chromebook team

My understanding was some what different and also came from comments made here: apple made both connectors and offered the worse one (type-c) to the USB Forum. Because it was reversible, smaller than usb-A and overall a better design vs usb-A they took it, but lightning is the superior connection.

I don't think you can say Lightning only exists to make Apple money. They did come out with it a decent length of time before USB-C was finalized (2012 vs 2014), and (I think) Lightning is clearly superior to pre-C USB options for a phone.

Then when USB-C was available, Apple had only just switched connectors, and there were enough angry people when they switched away from the 30-pin connector (which had been in use for ~9 years) that switching connectors again after only a few years would have been a massive source of drama. They do seem to be slowly working towards a switch now, with USB-C showing up in iPads over the last few years, but I sincerely think that it'd have been overall bad for their PR to try to switch iPhones away anytime earlier than the last year or two.

The longer they linger now, admittedly, the more money-grubbing it'll seem.

> I figured out that the Apple Watch comes with a built-in app called Blood Oxygen (no "App" at the end) that does this for free.

Only the latest models, or latest few models, come with the sensor necessary. It was a pandemic feature addition that came too late, just like all their other pandemic feature additions.

Sure I’d have liked all these features on March 2020. But at least where I live the pandemic is still very much raging on. We still have mask mandates and vaccine passport checks. Having masked FaceID and vaccine passports in the wallet still makes daily life better.

And also, the pulse oximeter helps build a better image of overall cardiovascular fitness (basically they can estimate VO2 max). This is important for keeping the body in shape to fight off SARS-2 and whatever comes next (people with cardiovascular problems were more likely to die or be hospitalized.)

Where is the pandemic currently raging on ?

Everywhere? Lots of places have decided to basically ignore it but there's still hundreds of COVID deaths a day in the U.S, China has had Shanghai under lockdown for almost month, lots of 3rd world countries lack vaccines. It's not over by a long shot.

The person they replied to is subject to mask mandates and vaccine passports

So I’m also curious to where they are referring to since the US doesn’t have that combination anywhere

I get that you were replying to the semantical words that suggest the pandemic ended

The US absolutely has that combo at plenty of private businesses. I was in NYC last weekend and both Broadway shows required masks and proof of vax to attend. About half of the restaurants we visited also were checking vaccine cards and asking patrons to wear masks if they got up from their tables.

In Portland, it's much the same. Grocery stores are no longer mandating it but many restaurants still are. Concert venues seem about 50/50 at this point. There may no longer be blanket mandates but I'm still showing my proof of vaccine or being asked to wear a mask a couple times a week.

FWIW, daily deaths in the US are currently at exactly the level it was in the month mentioned above, March of 2020.

Sure, but the models that can do it, can do it for free. The models that cannot, can't do it with this scummy app either.

The Exposure Notification API was released in April 2020 or, in other words, at the point where 99.5 % of US deaths had not yet happened. That strikes me as rather early in this pandemic. The feature also strikes me as the most significant of those I can think of, by a healthy margin.

Well, you found something.

We are referring to opening Face ID with a mask on released like a month ago which is beyond the last time I cared to wear a mask anywhere in the US - as no municipality requires it, except rideshares, busses and planes and just for now - as well as the blood oxygen reading requiring a completely new Apple Watch model, but that model was released september 2020 if you like that. The last time I cared was when I was willing to be afraid of the virus before September 2020.

We get it. You hate wearing masks.

It's pretty damn difficult to fault Apple for not enabling a feature that would require adding sensors to phones whose parts were sourced and/or built prior to the pandemic. As for the mask-enabled FaceID, I never enabled it since it goes against the whole security model and eliminates multiple data points in the verification process for about 2 seconds of inconvenience. At this poiont, I can type my 6 digit passcode almost as fast as FaceID would have unlocked my phone.

Before this used to be the norm, there would be at least a quarterly post on HN by some app developer lamenting the fact that Apple killed their business by just releasing an Apple developed version of their app.

I don't know for sure, but I assume that Apple's app was released as soon as the functionality was enabled on the relevant devices (Apple Watch 6 and 7). I don't think this is a case of 'Sherlocking'.

it's because the automation in the review process is a work in progress, given the huge nonstop flow of applications to review

You would think that the non-stop flow of cash apple has at its disposal would be able to offset the issue.

I love how apple has everyone so brainwashed that random people just jump to their defence.

Do you have some excuses for this? I really would like to hear them :-D

LTT Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IHqntr8FjY

I'm not a random person. I worked in Apple engineering for years, and what I said is factual.

Consider how the challenge of reviewing app submissions is an ever evolving game, and you'll see it's genuinely tricky to get right all the time.

You are suggesting a flaw in review automation, while Apple is telling the world how they have people checking every App submissions.

if that's so, that's news to me. ?

Well apologies for assuming you were a random person. I conceed that reviewing app submissions would be quite challenging, but based on all the screenshots provided in that twitter thread, it doesnt look like any effort at all goes in to screening submissions. I would assume (correct me if I am wrong) that comment reviews would be flagged for inappropriate words, and if this assumption is correct, why not also scan / flag on the word "scam". After which, someone would install the app to a test system, and would immediately see that this is in fact a scam / against the rules, etc., etc., because of the immediate paywall thats presented in these examples.

My comment relating to apple brainwashing / jumping to their defence was not so much directed at you, and more directed at, everytime I see a valid complaint, there is always someone that chimes in with, "well thats because of x" (even if x= thats hows its always been done) and I do admit the bit that tripped me into writting a response was "work in progress" from your comment. They make more money than the entire GDP of a few countries, "work in progress" doesnt cut it.

As an ex-apple employee, I am even more curious on your thoughts on the video link I posted. Cheers

It is a fallacy that money gets you everything you need, immediately when you need it. (Tried hiring a reputable general contractor lately?) Even a company with a war chest the size of Apple's can't hire the people they need with the desired skill set. The labor talent pool is not unlimited, and unemployment in the U.S. is at record lows.

How certain are you that this app doesn’t do more than the free app from Apple?

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