THE APP, CALLED "APPLE HEART STUDY", WILL BE USING APPLE WATCH'S HEART RATE SENSOR. Apple has launched an app to collect data from Apple Watch users in order to detect and notify them when they experience irregular heart rhythms, like atrial fibrillation -- a leading cause of strokes.
The app, called "Apple Heart Study", will be using Apple Watch's heart rate sensor. Apple said it is collaborating with Stanford University to improve the technology which is used to detect and analyse irregular heart rhythms. "Working alongside the medical community, not only can we inform people of certain health conditions, we also hope to advance discoveries in heart science," said Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer. The Apple Heart Study app is available in the US App Store to customers who are 22 years or older and have an Apple Watch Series 1 or later, Apple said in a statement on Thursday. To calculate heart rate and rhythm, Apple Watch's sensor uses green LED lights flashing hundreds of times per second and light-sensitive photodiodes to detect the amount of blood flowing through the wrist. The sensor's optical design gathers signals from four distinct points on the wrist, and when combined with powerful software algorithms, Apple Watch isolates heart rhythms from other noise. The Apple Heart Study app uses this technology to identify an irregular heart rhythm. As part of the study, if an irregular heart rhythm is identified, participants will receive a notification on their Apple Watch and iPhone, a free consultation with a study doctor and an electrocardiogram (ECG) patch for additional monitoring, Apple said. "We're excited to work with Apple on this breakthrough heart study," said Lloyd Minor, Dean of Stanford University School of Medicine. The Nokia Threat Intelligence Report 2017 claimed that the main findings were worrisome. Recently, a research done by Nokia stated that Android is the worst operating system out there. The Nokia Threat Intelligence Report 2017 claimed that the main findings were worrisome. Ransomware was the largest threat in 2017, and even though security patches were available, WannaCry and NotPetya spread like wildfire through enterprise networks. Other than the desktop and network threats, Android smartphones were the worst, where even efforts from Google to secure their mobile operating system platform and Android ecosystem are being overpowered by attackers. ‘Android remains the main target for mobile malware with 68% of the occurrences,’ said the report, continuing that it is attributed to ‘the prevalence of side-loading apps from third party app stores and other sources.’ The genie is out of the bottle is China for example, where third party app stores account for 96% of the app market. Mobile adware is becoming more and more aggressive and most of it is associated to ad-funded apps from reputed app stores.
The report puts Android as the worst attacked and vulnerable mobile operating system, while credits Apple’s iOS platform to be highly secure in comparison. ‘Android devices were responsible for 68.50 per cent, Windows/PCs for 27.96 percent, with 3.54 per cent coming from iPhones and other mobile devices,’ claims the research. The 3.54 per cent figure consists of iPhone and other devices, which puts Apple’s iOS in a practically safer zone by being lower than that figure. It clearly states that iPhone users are less targeted by malware infections — thanks to Apple’s secure operating system and sandboxing of apps that does not allow the infections to spread beyond a particular point. Android becomes highly vulnerable because of the sideloading option/feature that can be obtained with great ease, using which, Android users can download and install apps from the internet without being scanned or authenticated by Google Play Store. It needs more time to refine its first smart speaker. We hope you weren't counting on giving (or getting) a HomePod for the holidays -- Apple has delayed the release of the Siri-powered speaker from December to early 2018. In a statement, the company said it needed a "little more time" before the device was ready for its initial release in Australia, the UK and the US. It's not yet clear how this will affect releases in other countries (we've asked the company if it can elaborate), but we wouldn't be surprised if it pushed back their releases slightly as well. They were already being asked to wait until early 2018. You can read the full statement below. While the exact reasons for the delay aren't clear, it's not completely surprising. This is Apple's first entry into the smart speaker realm, and it has to nail the experience if it's going to compete. At the same time, Apple is effectively ceding holiday sales to a wave of new higher-end speakers like Amazon's Echo Plus, Google's Home Max and the Sonos One. The HomePod isn't necessarily in trouble (Amazon and Sonos can only sell fully-featured devices in countries where Alexa works), but it may face a tougher battle than it did beforehand. "We can't wait for people to experience HomePod, Apple's breakthrough wireless speaker for the home, but we need a little more time before it's ready for our customers. We'll start shipping in the US, UK and Australia in early 2018."
Anything Apple can do... The iPhone X has seen Apple moving from fingerprint sensors to advanced 3D face recognition sensors, and if a new report out of Asia is to be believed, Android manufacturers are going to follow the same path as 2018 unfolds.
A report in DigiTimes says the likes of Huawei, Oppo and Xiaomi are working on some 3D sensing technology of their own, the advanced face scanning cameras that make Face ID so accurate (and that make those Snapchat lenses so realistic). Citing "industry sources", the article says the suppliers who build the necessary technology are getting a steady stream of incoming orders, which means you can expect to see the same forward-facing scanning happening on many an Android flagship next year. Your face is your password while iris scanning and face unlocking has been available on phones for several years, the TrueDepth front camera fitted to the iPhone X marks a step up in terms of accuracy and precision - according to Apple, there's a one in a million chance of a random face beating Face ID (compared with one in 50,000 for Touch ID and fingerprints). Now it seems like Android manufacturers are eager to get the same technology installed on their own phones. We've already heard rumors that Samsung is planning to fit a 3D sensor into the front camera on the Galaxy S9 due out next year. With Qualcomm working on more advanced sensors of its own, it looks like 2018 is going to be another good year to buy yourself a new flagship smartphone - and chances are it's going to have some kind of advanced face unlock technology, no matter which manufacturer you decide to go with. |
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