The case for a dedicated Heart Rate ‘mode’ in watchOS

The Heart Rate monitoring features of Apple Watch are simply great. It is that which sets it apart from other smartwatches at the moment (I write while looking sadly at my Pebble Time).

Currently as of watchOS 2.2, Apple Watch measures the heart rate of a wearer in two separate ways: Every 10 minutes in the ‘background’ - giving you an indication of general resting heart rate trends throughout the day, and when the watch is in a dedicated “Workout” mode - meaning a user has told the watch they’re currently exercising and want it to measure their heart rate and activity. The heart rate monitor is surprisingly accurate during a cardio workout, typically only a beat or two per minute off from the elliptical machine at the gym which also reports heart rate. During a dedicated workout, the watch will measure heart rate continuously (updating the reading approximately 10 times per minute, or every 6 seconds). This gives a pleasantly detailed and accurate view of your heart rate during exercise. Unfortunately the heart rate sensor - which shines green LED lights onto a wearers wrist, measuring their heart rate through a process known as photoplethysmography - cannot run continuously throughout the day due to battery life constraints.

The Apple solution to this is to take a “background” reading periodically every 10 minutes, so long as the wearer is still at the time of the reading. This works great for providing a general overview of trends throughout the day.

In a perfect world, the Apple Watch would measure resting heart rate continuously, however we probably won’t reach a point where this is possible for another few years at least. In the meantime, I’d like to propose a dedicated “heart rate” mode for Apple Watch. This mode would allow a user to tell the watch they’d like continuous monitoring of their heart rate for a specified period of time, while acknowledging they understand the watch battery will drain faster than normal during this time. The current solution is to start a workout, however this is less than ideal as a workout is meant for just that - when you’re working out - and only provides a single figure displaying “average” heart rate upon completion. A dedicated heart rate mode on Apple Watch would allow for this continuous monitoring and a nice interface to accompany the data. Perhaps a colour-coded graph displaying all recorded data on your iPhone at the end of the heart rate monitoring period.

There are many use cases for this dedicated heart rate mode - watching live sport, watching a horror movie, during a job interview, or even just wanting more accurate heart rate monitoring at certain times throughout the day (just after you drink a coffee, perhaps?) Personally, I’d love to see the dramatic swing of my heart rate while watching live football and be able to analyse the trends in this data later on - how high did my heart rate jump during extra time? There are undoubtedly endless useful ways in which this technology could be used, and it would be fantastic to see Apple introduce a feature such as this dedicated heart rate monitoring mode for Apple Watch.

Here’s to the changes coming in watchOS 3.0 at WWDC 2016!

Schedule sleep on your calendar

No seriously, do it.

After listening to Episode 24 of the increasingly excellent Cortex Podcast with Myke Hurley and CGP Grey, in which Grey explains his calendaring philosophy, I laughed and ruled Grey out as crazy for having dedicated “sleep” entries on his calendar.

A routine/schedule for sleep? You’ve got to be kidding- no one needs that!

Not sure why, but I decided to try it out. The result? It worked. Having a schedule and sticking to it seems to work. I no longer say, “Just 5 more minutes of this Podcast, or one more Twitter search.” It’s now a matter of, “oh sleep is next on my calendar, I’d better adhere to that.”

It’s not a magical solution and there’s no guarantee that you’re going be able to stick to it just because it appears on your calendar, but I would urge anyone who feels their sleep could do with a bit more routine to try it out- or else you’ll never know if there’s method to CGP Grey’s madness.

PSA: Telstra offering free mobile data to all customers tomorrow April 3rd, 2016

After a series of outages in recent weeks, Australia’s largest telco Telstra are offering customers a day of free data tomorrow, April 3rd 2016. This is the second Sunday so far this year that Telstra are having a #DataDay, and there’s been plenty of warning that this one was coming so I hope you’ve had your downloads queued up! If you’re a Telstra customer go ahead and make the most of the day - stream, share, download, upload, side-load (err) as much as you like. During the last data day on February 14th, there were many reports of severe congestion on the Telstra network, and we can only hope Telstra are better prepared this time around.

It is worth noting that as Daylight Savings ends overnight in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory, these states put the clocks back an hour at 3am and will have a 25 hour long “data day” to enjoy.

So while you’re patiently waiting to begin those downloads as the clock strikes midnight, check out these tips from Trevor Long on “How to (legally) make the most of Telstra’s free data day.”

PSA: Telstra’s mobile network is down nationwide... again

For the second time in six weeks, the Telstra mobile network has gone down all around Australia. These reports have been rolling in for nearly an hour as I type this, and the only public statement Telstra have provided comes from their Twitter page and is as follows: 

We are aware of an issue affecting some of our mobile customers. We’re working to fix this as soon as possible. Sorry for inconvenience.

- Telstra (@Telstra)

March 17, 2016

Hardly useful when millions of customers want to know where their service has gone… Some report just 4G is down, most can’t make calls, and many say their service isn’t working at all - with their phone reporting “SOS only.” 

Poor Telstra customers. Here’s to hoping the outage doesn’t last much longer, and that customers are compensated in a more meaningful way than they were when this happened last month.

Meanwhile, I’ll sit back and watch social media explode over this incident all while enjoying my reliable connection to the Optus mobile network. 

Update: Nearly an hour later with no reason or explanation from Telstra. The closest thing to any relevant update comes from Trevor Long on Twitter: 

My information is that @telstra has around 4000 sites down. Around half their network is my understanding #telstra

- Trevor Long (@trevorlong)

March 17, 2016

According to the latest information from OzTowers, Telstra have 7455 active sites around the nation (as of writing this on 17th March 2016.) 4000 down is indeed just over 50%, but when you consider the load on the remaining ~3500 due to the congestion as a result of the outage, I daresay the number of customers who can get online at the moment is significantly less than 50%. 

The 28-day billing cycle

This morning I woke to the news that my favourite Australian mobile carrier, amaysim, have made some changes to their Unlimited plans. Great - more data, extra international call allowances, what’s not to love?! Turns out, they’re switching to a 28-day billing cycle. This is becoming increasingly popular in the Australian phone plan market, and I’m here to tell you why it matters.

I am not a fan of this new “trend” towards 28-day billing cycles on mobile plans, generally on prepaid or “no lock-in” services. While some people may look at it and think, “It’s only two days less, that hardly makes any difference,” there is something to worry about. Now it’s great that amaysim are increasing the data allowance per month at no ‘additional cost’ however you aren’t getting this extra data for nothing, and let no one tell you you are.

Lets analyse the whole 28-vs-30 day billing cycle for a moment…

If you’re paying $39.90 (the price of the most popular amaysim Unlimited plan) per recharge - or billing cycle - you pay $485.45 for a years worth of service. This figure was calculated by multiplying the price per month by the amount of recharges per year - in this case 12.17 (30 goes into 365 approx. 12.17 times). This ends up being $5.45 more per year than someone who pays every “month” where the billing cycle begins and ends on a set date per month. No biggie. But lets compare that to paying per 28 days, you will recharge 13.04 times per year, paying $520.13 - that’s $34.68 more over the course of a year, nearly the cost of a whole extra recharge.

Now I know that 30-odd dollars isn’t much, and that it shouldn’t really warrant a complaint, however I just wanted to make it known that these changes are significant. Particularly for someone with limited budget who thinks they’re paying $39.90 per month for service, when in fact they’re paying $43.34. It isn’t just amaysim, but by moving to 28-day billing cycles all of the carriers including the big three - Telstra, Optus, and Vodafone - with their prepare plans, manage to squeeze nearly a whole extra recharge out of each customer per year. Just keep that in mind when you sign up for a mobile plan on a 28-day billing cycle.

Customer Letter - Apple

Encryption. That’s a word which gets thrown around a lot in todays modern world of smart, connected, “internet of things” devices. Tonight, CEO of Apple Tim Cook has boldly gone ahead and written, “A Message to Our Customers” which now appears on the Apple.com website homepage. In his letter, Tim has arguably hit the nail on the head by openly reiterating Apple’s pro-encryption methods of software and hardware development saying, “We have even put that data out of our own reach, because we believe the contents of your iPhone are none of our business.”

For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data. Criminals and bad actors will still encrypt, using tools that are readily available to them.

Here’s the thing: The bad guys will always find a way to get what they want, and we shouldn’t be making it easy for them. There are arguments that suggest encrypted services such as iMessage shouldn’t exist, because criminals can use them to communicate without being tracked. Here’s the thing, if iMessage (or iOS in general) loses its encryption, a criminal can pay a small fee per month for a VPN service which allows them to stay anonymous online anyway. By taking away this encryption, you’d be exposing literally billions of devices full of information to hackers in attempt to catch a few out who are already capable of having an almost-zero digital footprint. The only way to open this data up to the government involves making it easily accessible to hackers, a tradeoff which shouldn’t be considered.

[…] it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

This begs the question, is it worth giving up the data of millions of innocent individuals for almost no gain? The answer is unequivocally no. You know what would also discourage terrorism? Attaching a microphone to every citizen, have it recording 24/7, and then analysed for information on potential terrorism plans. Is this going to happen in the near future? No. Is this extreme? Yes, and that’s why it won’t happen. Giving up the privacy of millions in the hope of catching a few doesn’t seem like the best tradeoff, particularly when there will always be other ways for these people to hide. Hence there is no guarantee that even by giving up this data, the government will be closer to finding out about and preventing acts of terrorism.

And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect.

Tim’s closing line is powerful and speaks the world of truth. There needs to be a line, and a backdoor in iOS certainly crosses it. You don’t promote freedom and safety by exposing personal data. It doesn’t, and can’t, work both ways. Apple currently have established themselves as market leaders in privacy and encryption, leading to a competitive advantage. This sells iPhones and is a big deal to the privacy conscious. It’s great for customers to have choice, and should Apple be forced to decrypt iOS this will begin a slippery slope down a path to a world where all our data is insecurely stored. Apple have always made privacy and security a priority, and it’s great for consumers to have this choice. We need ensure this continues and isn’t disallowed going forward.

I’ll end this post with what, for me, was the Tweet of the night related to Tim’s letter:

To be totally secure, it need to be physically impossible. As long as there’s a human deciding what’s possible & not, there’ll be conflict

— Steve T-S (@stroughtonsmith)

February 17, 2016

This matter can’t be left to human judgement. It needs to be impossible for Apple, their engineers, and the government to access this data, or else the keys will undoubtedly be abused.

Inside Facebook’s Ambitious Plan to Connect the Whole World

This is a great Wired feature article on Zuckerberg, Facebook and Internet.org, well worth your time to read. There are two ways to look at this - Zuck’s noble intentions of connecting the world via Internet.org are fantastic, but the scaled back version of the Internet provided by the service is worrying. It violates “Net Neutrality,” which many believe to be crucial to the success of the Internet. I’m not going to ramble on here about net neutrality, but if you want a good, pro-Net Neutrality, case against Internet.org, listen to Om Malik’s explanation on last weeks episode of the TWiT podcast. The other way to look at a something like this is a little more frightening, and it’s got to do with the power Facebook gain as they pursue these endeavours. They already have such a large collection of data on so many people, which has been achieved through the provision of a ‘free’, ad-supported social network. A few lines from the Wired article are particularly noteworthy (emphasis mine): 

Wallace thinks local entrepreneurs like Namalale may be the key to making the Internet take off here. He imagines ways he could enlist her to sell small data packages for local carriers, and, in return, Facebook and Isizwe could build more comfortable seating around her chicken stand.

While I do believe the tech giant is truly trying to do great things for people and make a difference in the world, this becomes about more than just collecting data to advertise to. They’re using their clout to offer people things they can’t won't refuse. At what point does the conflict of interest become too much? Perhaps the whole idea of Internet.org needs to be rethought and pursued by an independent third party with a much stronger consideration for Net Neutrality. 

Apple Music offline

My three month ‘free’ trial of Apple Music began just over a month ago. Since then, I’ve enjoyed all the conveniences of a modern music streaming service… practically all the music I could ever want, smart recommendations and playlists and a hassle-free way to locally store any album I can think of. 

Having heard the Apple Music experience is better if started fresh, I deleted my entire iTunes library (after backing it up for safekeeping, of course) and started by re-downloading all of my previous iTunes Media in the form of Apple Music files. Knowing that I had a vacation trip coming up, I added extra music to my Apple Music library in preparation for the plane flight and for my time at the potential Internet-less resort. Great!

Next step was to download these onto my iPod touch for the trip. This was simple enough, by selecting each artist individually and pressing “Make Available Offline” I was able to get my iPod to download and store locally all 1600 songs now in my Apple Music library. 

Time to go on the trip. I fortunately had Wi-Fi at the airport to use, but spent this time listening to Podcasts instead of Music. Why this is relevant, you’ll realise in a minute. 

Plane takes off, I pull out my iPod to listen when lo and behold this message pops up:

What? Apple Music is telling me to delete these songs I’d downloaded in preparation for the flight, not only that but to turn off iCloud Music Library. It wanted me to wipe my iPod clean of music. I confirmed in my device settings that the music was, in fact, downloaded onto my iPod. That wasn’t the problem. The problem here was that Apple Music wouldn’t let me play music offline. I don’t know what caused the error - I’d been connected to the Internet only moments ago, so Apple know my account is still active. And yet I can’t play my music. Angrily, I restarted my device in the hope of getting it to work. Still nothing. Giving up, I accept Podcast episodes as my only form of audio entertainment for the flight. Frustrating. Turns out, had I listened to any music whatsoever at the airport with an Internet connection, I would’ve been able to listen on the flight. 

No where previously have I heard that Apple Music isn’t available offline. As a new subscriber, this isn’t leaving a very good impression.

Upon landing, I connected to Wi-Fi again and found that I could play all of my music library with no dramas. Investigating this weird situation further I conclude that Apple Music can be listened to offline, but the listening “session” has to be started before you lose connection to the Internet. e.g. If you know you’re going to be offline for a while, start playing a song, pause it, and leave the Music app open. This is a terrible user experience, and I’m not sure what Apple are playing at. Is it a bug? And if it is, how long until Apple fix it? Some luck if you’re out of connection to the Internet for an extended period of time. 

Apple Music as a service is still buggy these many months later, and a far cry from the fruit company of old who used to pride itself on products and services which, “just work.” This situation is simply disappointing. It isn’t a terrible problem, as far as problems go, and it’s very first-world, however I still feel as though it’s worthy of being brought to your attention. Hopefully Apple will do something about it in the future, particularly as, going forward, they attempt to convince me to give them money each and every month for this service. 

Ergonomics

Greatly inspired by this episode of the new podcast Under The Radar with Marco Arment and ‘underscore’ David Smith, computer ergonomics has been on my mind a lot lately, and as I spend more and more time working on one I feel it’s important to ensure I’m doing the right thing by myself by considering the ergonomics of my setup. 

Having worked exclusively off of a 13″ laptop for the last four years, it’s certainly time for some upgrades. Yesterday began the transition, by moving to an old 21.5″ monitor. Unfortunately the screen quality isn’t quite where I’d like it to be, but it’s a nice temporary solution until I purchase a larger, higher resolution monitor. Not having to slouch over to read a tiny screen is a nice, comfortable change. 

Today was part two, where I bought an external keyboard. Seeing as though this upgrade focuses on ergonomics, I went with the Microsoft Comfort Curve 3000. Aside from the horrible name, I really like this thing. The keys slope up in what is supposedly an ergonomic position and, as far as desktop keyboard go, it’s fairly quiet to type on. I’ve only written a few hundred words on it so far and I don’t think it’ll take very long to adapt completely. My biggest gripe is the fact it’s clearly designed for Windows and hence some of the keys are in different positions, or have different functions than on my MacBook Pro’s keyboard. (Side note: I now have a number pad - yay!) 

The keyboard and mouse I’m using are both wired, and of course that called for a USB hub (who says USB is dead?!) It’s a little weird to have a few wires around my desk in 2016, but you’ve got do what you have to. 

So, as I write this my MacBook Pro is sitting next to the external monitor with its screen shut, feeding it with content while the screen is off. It’s weird to even consider that it’s powered on still, let alone I’m operating from it without looking at it. 

Next step… an external monitor (how does this 2K one from Asus look?) and a much better chair to enhance posture. 

Monday - 2:01am

You can take the fact that I’m awake at 2:01am on a Monday and conclude that my week must be off to a terrible start.

Or you may look at the “Stand” activity ring on my Apple Watch and note that I’ve filled out 3/12 hours for the day and realise my week is off to a great start.

My thoughts are more aligned with the latter. 😄