Handwashing with an Apple Watch

One of the two standout features in WatchOS 7 for me was handwashing. Today, it has been just over a week since I turned on handwashing notifications.

Some background on the new feature:

• Apple Watch can now detect when hands are being washed and encourages you with gentle taps on your wrist to continue for atleast 20 seconds.
• When your return home, it can now remind you to wash your hands.

My observations so far:

• When I said “Hand washing countdowns are cute and I love that they exist ☺️,” 3 months ago, I under-estimated it.
• Handwashing is detected only when actually washing hands, typically about 5 seconds after I start scrubbing my hands.
• It appears to be relying on accelerometer movements to determine when hands are being scrubbed, not microphone to determine flow of water.
• I haven’t experienced a single false positive yet on notifications to continue washing my hand.
• No false positives when rinsing hands or doing the dishes.
• The first time I returned home after turning this on, I was reminded to wash my hands just after I had removed my shoes as I was about to change my clothes. Pretty darn incredible feeling, that.
• That same day, a permission dialog popped up asking how frequently I wanted ‘Handwashing’ to have access to my location. Cute.
• It does not detect movement within my apartment complex (mailbox, parking) as leaving the home and returning.
• It can, however, get reminders for returning home wrong. I was once asked to wash my hands just as I was driving out of the parking garage.
• It doesn’t appear to be using barometer readings to determine the height, so the parking level is treated the same as my home (a couple levels over).
• I was out camping over the last weekend, and washed my hands with water that was a few degrees over freezing. Those were some pretty rough 20-seconds, but the Watch’s motivation made it a game that I had to win.
• I didn’t realize just how many times I had a tendency to not scrub my hands for a full 20-seconds; it seems I was often in the 15-second range. (No, I do not have a handwashing song.)
• I appreciate the gentle nudges whether I am anticipating them or not. It leaves me with a smile on my face everytime I wash my hands :).

Definitely one of those Apple-y things that surprise and delight. Truly.

Online Privacy Should Be Modeled on Real-World Privacy

I read Daring Fireball often and one of the things I strongly agree with Gruber on is privacy. I think privacy ought to be a fundamental right and I loathe the practices of tech companies that are formulated on invading it. That is also why I use DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.

John Gruber wrote this post following Apple’s new iPhone ad (watch it, it is a great one) about companies act as privacy thieves by tracking people across the internet. I agree with it in its entirety.

They have zero right, none, to the tracking they’ve been getting away with. We, as a society, have implicitly accepted it because we never really noticed it. You, the user, have no way of seeing it happen. Our brains are naturally attuned to detect and viscerally reject, with outrage and alarm, real-world intrusions into our privacy. Real-world marketers could never get away with tracking us like online marketers do.

We definitely wouldn’t accept this type of behavior in the real world!

The tracking industry is correct that iOS 14 users are going to overwhelmingly deny permission to track them. That’s not because Apple’s permission dialog is unnecessarily scaring them — it’s because Apple’s permission dialog is accurately explaining what is going on in plain language, and it is repulsive. Apple’s tracking permission dialog is something no sane person would agree to because this sort of tracking is something no sane person would agree to.

Yes.

The privacy thieves have, unsurprisingly, come out against these expected changes coming in iOS 14, and tried to defend their entitlement. They should have none. And they would have none if their business models were based on asking users for permission (as Apple’s system is expected to).

More privacy for one and all.