Apple is giving $49 Apple Watches to seniors

#21

Sometimes I wish my employee badge was implanted in my arm so I wouldn’t forget it all the time :rofl:

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#22

It would be great if there was a single international wireless security system and then all future devices then contained.

But look at what happened with Samsung then Apple then Google, they each invented their own stovepipes and forced the problems of alignment with banks and retail.

Imagine a new building security system accepted only Apple Watch then employees ask for them for free from employers.

I have an early LTE smartwatch, the LG Watch Urbane 2, support Google Pay, was out November 2015, nearly 2 years before Apple September 2017. It is a quasi independent phone, with nanosim , Google Pay, speaker.

I still use it in summer when I don’t want to go with a phone in pocket. But it was critically flawed of poor battery life. Apple did a much better implementation, as did Samsung. Samsung did a good battery life implementation but failed with its own app store.

Google has yet to do all 3 of good battery life and LTE and app store in an unlocked was watch.

#23

What a waste of.time n money.

They won’t remember to take them off and charge them every day.

Would-be been better giving away an Alexa speaker (or equivalent) that way they can set reminders, and not worry about charging it every single day.

#24

There are plenty of diseases we’d find cures faster if many more had biometric sensors. For example if all Chinese citizens had them we’d have spotted the virus earlier and contained it faster. The notion of freedom, anonymity, does come at a price.

(welcome back from your time-off-community for personal reasons)

Also I doubt Apple is wasting money. Chances are the incremental (just component hardware) cost is not far off $49, plus bragging rights, marketing, positive impact on sales, etc. The $49 is useful to weed out time wasters.

#25

This is exactly what is happening. Apple isn’t actually giving away the watches for $49. They are participating in a 3-year Johnson & Johnson study aiming to be the largest digital-health study ever. They will be exploring how Apple Watch can enable earlier detection of atrial fibrillation (AFib), a leading cause of stroke.

All participants must be a medicare member and must sign up for the heart study. The participants can also earn up to $150 by completing certain activities.

#26

Big brother is watching you! NOT ME!:angry:

#27

Apple knows how to multiply money. If they are offering these watches for $49 then they are seeing some huge value coming in the near future that we don’t see…
Samsung may be wondering what’s going on :rofl:

#28

For one, they will be getting all the data. So that’s already a huge value.
Plus I’m sure some tax write off for being part of the study.
And goodwill.

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#29

If you are going to the loo in the night often you might get some advertising (special pills) :joy:

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#30

Lol… I want to say something here but I refrain from doing that :rofl:

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#31

Yes not so many intimacies. :rofl:

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#32

This is a cool idea! I’d just need to make sure the charging stand is near so that they keep the watch charged at all times.

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#33

Apple isnt giving away these devices. The study is funding it and eating the cost of the watch. And let me tell you, $399 for a medical device IS CHEAP AS HELL. I’d be jumping for joy if I could buy any kind of actual useful medical device for that little in mass quantities.

I’m buying ‘medical’ Android devices with Snapdragon 650s with Android 6.0 for $1500 DOLLARS A PIECE.

ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS EACH

#34

I know.

What we don’t know is the price Apple is charging the medical trial. I do though think it is less than retail price to get bragging marketing rights. For all we know there was a competitive negotiation which is breach-of-contract to publish.

#35

For these kinds of studies there generally isn’t that big of a discount anyway. Its certainly not like 50% off or anything (Apple doesnt do that even for giant orders of things from Fortune 500 companies) Its probably a modest discount of like 20% which isn’t much better than what you get from working at Apple.

Partnering with Apple directly just allows you to get consistent pricing, availability, centralized billing, and custom configuration of all the stuff you buy. Local Apple stores already do that for businesses anyway, they have people dedicated to just local B2B stuff at each store.

The publicity is more geared so that people actually sign up for the study in the first place. They want A LOT of people (hoping for 150,000 users means this is a giant study) and likely the publicity is simply a mechanism so they can get that many people to sign up for the study. Because normally it’d be very hard to get even a few thousand people to actually sign up for these kinds of things.

Smartwatches and smart phones aleviate several major problems with studies

  1. users are terrible in taking notes or tracking data, also users like lying
  2. even if you bribe people into office visits, you only see a single data point in time

It’ll be interesting to see if more studies in the future try to leverage smart devices users likely already have in some kind of way to more accurately collect data over time.