Apple Watch no longer sold with blood oxygen monitoring after patent battle loss
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
I'd say it's only really useful for people that have a particular concern around those levels.
Appreciate that this isn't what the article is about, but I don't think it will impact sales too much.
Apple now need to go and implement their own Stress or Heart Rate Variability score. That in my mind is a bigger gap.
For example, a minimum SpO2 of 70% during sleep indicates your blood is not oxygenating properly for some reason during that period. Doesn't straight up prove it's due to sleep apnea but you can definitely assume it is and be right more often than not. The full polysomnogram also measures air flow, sleep architecture and more.
I tried to bring the case to my doctor that my Cpap machine setup was not working correctly. His criteria is “do you fall down when you walk because you are out of breath. Then you should be concerned about your lungs and you don’t want to be around anyone with issues like that. “
I would welcome HRV tracking but that will require a better sensor or an additional one. The blood oxygen sensor requires 15 seconds of no movement. ECG requires 30 seconds of wearing watch and holding the crown.
I believe the Apple watch does have the capability to monitor HRV as I think its monitored in the Apple health app for Apple watch wearers. HRV I believe is monitored consistently throughout the day and at night.
HRV is an interesting field. Too high and it can indicate arrhythmia. Too low is also not good.
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/21773-heart-r...
If it is accurate enough, then the particular number isn't necessarily the important, its whether it an measure the same number consistently, then track movements from the baseline. Which is why they often have a % up/down accuracy figure.
Doesn't the sleep apnea machine itself measure whether you are breathing? If the concern is it may not be accurate, the gold standard is probably an in lab sleep study while wearing the machine, but insurance may not feel it is medically necessary and may not pay.
I’ve had a sleep study which determined I need a Cpap machine but they never did the study while wearing it and my readings vary greatly from 3 to 30 AHI per hour with it on.
In hindsight, I have exceedingly “freakishly” large lungs which may explain the slow breathing. My concern has been waking up with a daily headache which has been suggested by other doctors to be due to uncontrolled sleep apnea.
(Apple's implementation is not super accurate because SpO2 measurement from the wrist is fraught to start with -- it's usually measured from the finger -- and it is biased by skin colors etc.).
Prolonged low blood oxygen means insufficient oxygen is being carried to organs and tissues. Apart from sleep apnea, it can make pre-existing conditions worse.
My ophthalmologist tells me that chronically low blood oxygen can cause problems to organs like the retina which is sensitive to oxygen deprivation.
Any hopes of enabling this feature some time down the line? Assuming they didn’t pull hardware out if the watches.
> Starting today, Apple will only sell the Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2, which both came out in September, with a US Customs and Border Protection-approved software workaround that disables blood oxygen monitoring capabilities. These watches will be available at Apple’s physical and online stores, Apple said. They also have part numbers ending in "LW/A," per updated Apple support materials.
The FDA doesn't regulate "over the counter" oxygen sensors (including those you find at a CVS or Walgreens), but that study suggests that if they did, Apple could get an FDA clearance. They already have several FDA clearances for the Apple Watch's ECG, irregular rhythm notifications, and afib history features.
The oxygen sensor is helpful for detecting, among other things, sleep apnea, where 60-80% of people are undiagnosed.
— Apple Watch ECG App
You’re probably thinking of afib, which I believe the watch will alert for.
Like other consumer device manufacturers they have a disclaimer that it isn't a medical device, with concomitant implications.
I have not compared with medical equipment but am interested in doing so, or hear from others who have.
I have no idea how accurate they are, but they’re very fiddly and don’t produce a reading at all unless conditions are ideal.
So in this case, the taxpayer is paying good money to enforce a measure that hurts them. Why should they be forced to do that? What is the upside in this case? It is purposefully slowing down life-saving technological innovation. I don't see why it is believed that this is helping progress.
https://ipfray.com/u-s-trade-agency-itc-incredibly-portrays-...
There’s an allegation the real reason for the patents/suite is retaliation; that Apple pissed off billionaire owner by not partnering with him and instead hiring away top employees.
This court decision comes with a body count. It is a bad outcome. Nobody should support it.
That company is not that much better than a patent troll and AFAIK they didn’t even agree to license their “technology” (they wanted to have control over the development of the Apple Watch instead).
But I’ve never understood or cared much about my blood oxygen reading.
I’m curious - did anyone out there really use that stat? If so what for?
Was useful for the couple of times I had covid too.
Which is to say it’s very useful to me a few times a month. I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy a Massimo watch for the feature though.
High elevation seems to have a big effect on blood oxygen but does vary person to person. It’s interesting to see one’s own response. I get why my sleep is shitty the first couple days at altitude after seeing the numbers.
Turns out I needed a CPAP, which was confirmed by a complicated medical contraption I had to sleep with.
This is apologist. Masimo claims, and multiple court cases have agreed that Apple did, in fact, use patented technology without payment (and frankly, even as an all Apple person, their behavior in this whole situation was entirely shitty).
Couching this all as “claims” gives Apple a benefit of the doubt, similar to the people who refer to Masimo as “nothing but patent trolls”. Previous discussions here had multiple people referring to them being “butthurt that Apple hadn’t offered to acquire them”, or that they “lacked the product chops to bring their own solution to market”.
[1] https://ipfray.com/u-s-trade-agency-itc-incredibly-portrays-...
Also AFAIK Masimo didn’t just want to be paid they wanted to have some direct on the development of Apple Watch.
Also… the patents themselves seem like a joke and shouldn’t be valid.
They had concerns about some of Apple's design and functionality decisions around the sensor on the watch. They didn't want their technology to be associated with a poorer user experience...
... you know, kinda like how Apple has a whole review process and has input on the development of your apps for their platform?
Conflating that as "they wanted to be have some direction on the development of the Watch" is a notable exaggeration.
The patent holder is a medical device company that is probably used to much more expensive price points than consumer tech. So having a $300 watch available that does o2 readings as much as a multi thousand dollar medical device is probably something they aren’t super thrilled about being in the market.
Link to their smartwatch: https://www.masimopersonalhealth.com/products/masimo-w1 It's actually in the same price range as the Apple Watch Series 9.
So their reluctance to license the patent to Apple may be probably partly about competing with Apple, partly about Apple's alleged bad-faith behavior in past dealings with them, and possibly also disinclination on the part of Apple to pay them for a license. But not about Apple's retail price point per unit.
Without a doubt. I would imagine the number of people that would actually choose to not buy an Apple Watch because it doesn’t have a blood oxygen sensor is really really small. I also believe it’s likely that people considering upgrading an existing Apple Watch will not be deterred by the removal of the feature. My sense is that Apple felt that it had basically nothing to lose. They were going to incur some legal costs in this anyway, why not let that play out? Remove it if you lose the battle. If you lose out on maybe <500 watch sales no biggie, you still have the optics to your customer base that you exhausted all options to keep the feature.
Their devices tie in to hospital EMRs, do brain activity monitoring, and all sorts of other thing’s that aren’t in the same ballpark as an Apple Watch.
It's not about just any blood oxigen measuring tech, there's various ways you can do it and apparently Apple's newest watch is implementing a very accurate technique developed by Masimo.
Those $20 devices exist because measuring blood oxygen accurately via light refracted through flesh is way easier than via light reflect off the flesh(especially as you move around), which is what this fight is all about.
>Seems odd that they couldn’t use their weight to secure a license.
Or, you know, pay for it? It's not like Apple is scrapping for change behind the couch cushions.
I’m not sure it’s very technologically complex though. Seems like the patent just covers the positioning of a few sensors. It’s about as silly as allowing “multitouch” to be patented…
> He clashed with managers, demanded multimillion-dollar budgets and wanted the ability to hire his own engineers without approval, Hotelling said in a deposition that was part of a court fight between the companies. After weeks of discussions, Lamego left Apple. After his stint at Apple, Lamego ended up starting his own company, True Wearables. In 2016, he released a device called the Oxxiom, which he called the world’s first continuous and disposable blood-oxygen sensor. Masimo sued the start-up and won a court order blocking it from selling the product.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/the-late-night-ema...
The actual case around the patent infringement is still going through the courts and if I understand correctly nothing has been decided with that.
I know a lot of people that got it for that specific feature. Not one of them got it for COVID or medical reasons.
There are huge communities of people that really like this feature. Notably, many people that do things at altitude.
I won't pretend that my narrow experience is a market maker, but I also won't generalize it to say something as broad as its a feature "nobody cares about now and moves zero units."
Try to think beyond your own experiences and worldview.
This is yet another case where it is easy to fall into the "product manager trap" -- that is: designing for "most people". The trap is to de-feature things where "most people" have only modest engagement, but a few (likely your most evangelical customers) care intensely about that feature. Don't fall into that trap. The goal is to create a feature collection of "the one thing" that each segment cares intensely about, not to create a basket of meh features that everyone finds meh.
Unfortunately, patents can entirely block the use of a technology, even if enormous sums of money are being offered to use the tech.
Was it wrong what Apple did? The moral position is irrelevant. We might as well argue over the color of the bikeshed.
That hardly makes sense since Masimo had to disclose that themselves when filling the patent for their “tech”
Giants should get body slammed by the DOJ when they treat little companies like this.
Let this be a lesson to every startup: file patents!
Patents are why corporations can get paid for people inventing nice things
Apple has more than enough money to license this patent if they so choose.
Apple needs serious competition. And that won't happen with their massive scale until regulators start nipping away at their all-encompassing competitive moat.
The largest companies are barely innovating at all, and that should speak volumes. They're camping their position and raking in easy money from the folks doing all the hard work at the bottom.
The two patents describe a device with 4 leds, a temperature sensor, and a processor.
The invention of the pulse ox was innovation. Putting it on a portable device and increasing the number of LEDs to 4 is not the level of contribution that really justifies 20 years of legal protection.
Regulators are the worst way to create competition. Apple has extremely serious competition in the form of Android. iPhone's global market share just hit its highest ever, at 20.1%[0].
> The largest companies are barely innovating at all
If you don't see any mobile phone innovation that's happened, I don't know what to tell you. Go back only 20 years and you'll see an incredible difference.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/01/apple-hits-all-time-...
Complete and utter hogwash!
> Apple has extremely serious competition in the form of Android.
This is a duopoly of devices, and you are forced to buy into their fiefdoms.
Each company taxes every single form of commerce, transaction, and customer connection on their devices. Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
Smartphones are used to navigate, take photos, find dates, order food (at restaurants!), pay at point of sale, schedule events, network, email, do work, find jobs, order kitchen supplies, do workouts, ...
These are more important than the internet itself at this point, and there are only two companies. They choose what you can do, what you can deploy, when you can deploy, what tech you can use, and they tax you 30%. You have to fit into their payments and login stack, jump through their upgrade hurdles, and they're nice enough to let competitors place ads against you.
I won't even begin to speak towards the insane anti-consumer behavior they have, like green bubble fomo for children and 3rd party parts DRMing.
These devices - smartphones - need to be regulated with the force of every country's legal and judicial power.
> iPhone's global market share just hit its highest ever, at 20.1%[0].
It's over 50% in the US, and they're egregious to US businesses and consumers.
Because of the companies you say are "barely innovating at all". Schrödinger would like a word.
> Each company taxes every single form of commerce, transaction, and customer connection on their devices. Devices that have become the most essential piece of operating as a person in this century.
You're conflating the device being essential (well, useful, not essential) with the apps. My banking app is free, for example, or any shopping apps I have. How many of these essential apps are paid?
> They choose what you can do, what you can deploy, when you can deploy, what tech you can use, and they tax you 30%.
You're thinking of governments. You choose to buy a phone as a convenience value add to your life. You must pay 30% in tax, regardless of what you get back.
> These are more important than the internet itself at this point
They aren't. They need the internet to work. And you can do lots of nonessentials with them, but lots of essential things can be done with a Web browser, and if a service is locked behind an app store, that's a service delivery problem, not an app store problem.
> there are only two companies
There aren't only two companies. There are lots of companies making phones. There are two main OSes though, it's true. And with those, nothing stops anyone creating a third, e.g. PinePhone, except ability and financial environment.
Hooray.
> The largest companies are barely innovating at all
Well, Apple had an oxygen monitor integrated into their smartwatch. That's pretty innovative.
... Until the government forces them to stop I guess.
When it's not subsidized by the unrelated business unit profit of a monopoly, well, yeah.
> That's pretty innovative. ... Until the government forces them to stop I guess.
Apple's finally getting the treatment they give to their developers!
Indeed. And that sucks for the consumer. Why should we consider subsidizing less profitable beneficial offerings with more profitable offerings a bad thing? That's how every charity the industrial barons put together that still maintain some of the civic spaces in the US came to be. The steel boom funding a library and an opera house and all that.
Masimo has zero interest in increasing the degree of competition in the industry. Also the patent in question itself seems dubious, and it’s rather silly that it’s even valid
may not be enough for the ITC