It says free for the first 2 years. I'm curious what the yearly cost will be after that, and how it will compare to an Inreach plan. On an ongoing basis, it's the subscription fees that really add up.
My take is the Apple SOS is for people who are unprepared and surprised, and who wouldn’t have bought a satellite comm device and paid for the subscription because they weren’t expecting the emergency.
I’m a happy iPhone 14 user who will get this nice feature, but I’m not planning to cancel my InReach subscription ($20/month, pause/resume any time), which I have never used to call for a rescue but have used a lot to let family know where I am and that things are fine when overlanding. And Inreach works right from the dashboard while driving, no need to get situated perfectly.
Maybe this is a harbinger and future enhancements will kill Inreach, but at least for now it feels like a very different application.
Is it wrong to call for help when you are lost only 300 yards off trail like you said? I would be embarrassed - but is anyone going to be upset?
A lot of my buddies rescues are older people who just got a little lost, or slipped down a steep embankment and can’t get back up. The worst ones are when that happens, but it’s been 3 days and the chances they find a live person are more slim.
The SAR people vastly prefer finding people alive, so if you need help, give them a chance for a happy ending by calling.
Absent some combination of map and compass--in some form--it's super-easy to get totally disoriented absent trail and landmarks. Long before cell phones, I still remember going on a casual short off-trail jaunt to a lighthouse in Nova Scotia and suddenly realizing I really didn't know where I was. Took a deep breath, carefully figured things out, and I was fine (the boundaries were pretty constrained anyway). But it's not hard.
I own a PLB that I use for safety when spearfishing from a kayak in Northern CA, but I don't bother throwing it in my pocket if I'm just walking the dog in the woods for a couple minutes. I can see this being a big help.
And, pretty much every year, there's at least one hiker who goes missing for days. If they're young and lucky, they manage to subsist, and SAR finds them eventually. If not... well, sometimes another hiker finds the body years later, but there's no shortage of names on the missing person list, either.
They would much rather be on alert and be stood down, or assist someone over the phone who called early and is easy to find and help. The problem is that many people wait until conditions deteriorate or they are much more lost.
Sending a team of a few people to go out and call your name along a trail during the day in clear weather is easy. Sending a team of people to find a hypothermic or injured person at night and extract them is an order of magnitude more involved and risky.
In other words, no one will be upset if you call out of caution.
Mistakes happen.
And if you stay lost through the night, hypothermia can get you fast even in places where you only need a t-shirt during the day.
Garmin inReach is a robust and rugged satellite communicator that out classes iPhone emergency SOS greatly
- inreach doesn't require "tracking" the satellite as it has a stronger antenna - inreach is more waterproof, dust proof atd shock resistant (no touch screen) - inreach has higher battery life, SOS can be activated while the device is off - ability to send messages, which can be critical if there are no cell towers that can be boosned/activated
That said, it is a great innovation; I think the Apple Watch Ultra will cut more into the diving watch market than the iPhone into the satellite communicator market
The people that don’t care about AI dive with a perdix or tables, but basically require something you can operate with gloves on. The rest of them with the money for a nice watch really want AI.
Most dive computers make it difficult or impossible to do dive planning for more complex scenarios. For example, the Garmin Descent Mk2 has a Plan Dive activity profile. But it only supports square profile dives, doesn't properly handle travel gas, and doesn't generate contingency plans for loss of deco gas. So we have to do dive planning with other software that can generate tables.
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-120241CE-9583-4...
Personally I use the Mk2 because I mostly do technical dives and have little use for AI, but divers like me are a tiny market niche. The latest Shearwater Perdix models do support AI. If Garmin launches a Descent "Mk3" product line as expected next year it might include AI as a standard feature across all models.
Apple watch with dive computer and air integration though would be awesome. Garmins is $1500 (+700$) so the margin should be there.
I own one and when I brought it on a remote expedition I found it to be a buggy POS: duplicated messages, stuck connection requiring resets, garbled messages.
That being said, the current iPhone 14 satellite function wouldn’t have worked at all for my purpose in those circumstances.
I’m not looking to use it for weeks-long trips. Mostly trail running and maybe a few days in the back country.
1. It's nice to have a backup. 2. The battery life on the inReach is upwards of a month and it's more rugged. 3. You can throw it in your pack, forget about it, and somehow it stills gets a signal. 3. Garmin has a dedicated communications center (IERCC) that has tons of experience coordinating with first responders. They will keep your emergency contacts updated about your rescue. Apple's system is less proven.
Another use case: The there are two highways between my metro area and the Pacific coast. Both are pretty remote through the forest. One has decent coverage with only a couple of mile long dropouts along the way. The other road has essentially zero cell coverage for about 20 miles and spotty coverage for another 20 miles. Winter travelers have gone off the road and not been found for hours or even days. This device could certainly save a life in that case.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=9NWiPDU4gM0JWMfdWFol7A
The new GPS chipsets are absolutely a beast in challenging conditions and incredibly accurate/precise over the older technology.
Having a phone on the handlebar/top tube is cumbersome and annoying, battery life is crap and distractions galore. I don't want needless phone calls from annoying people interrupting my workout and distracting me from watching the road. I've set up my Garmin devices to ignore phone calls and texts from the phone during workouts.
As an FYI, if you have an iPhone, you can set a "Fitness" focus mode that turns on automatically when a workout is started. From there, you can specify which contacts can pop a notification during workouts (or none at all). I let my wife and my parents get through.
But, like you, not that I'd use a phone as a bike computer to begin with.
The latest high-end Garmin devices do support multi-frequency GPS just as accurate as the iPhone 14. Those chips aren't included in Garmin's mid-range products like Edge 5XX/8XX series bike computers but will probably be added in the next refresh.
More casual cyclists might use their phones since they already have those and don't want to buy an extra bike computer - but that was already true in the past.