“As the Apple Watch prepares to turn three, Apple’s preeminent wearable has hit an interesting inflection point,” Dan Moren writes for Macworld. “It’s neither the raw, ‘does everything and the kitchen sink’ device that it was when the company first announced it, but neither is its path forward obvious.”
“With an Apple Watch Series 4 probably on the horizon, what is there left to expect?” Moren writes. “What’s going to keep the Apple Watch ticking away — if you’ll pardon the expression — into the next decade.”
“Given Apple’s general drive to constantly make its devices smaller and thinner, it’s impressive that the Watch has stayed the same for this long. Apple has instead focused on squeezing more and more power into the existing chassis,” Moren writes. “I think Apple’s plenty happy with the shape of the Apple Watch… [it’s] square screen has become one of its most defining features… Look for Apple to follow its traditional pattern of making cases thinner, shrinking bezels, and having the display become an even more prominent part of the device.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Health and fitness – and health insurance benefits for wearing an Apple Watch should be Apple’s continued focus.
Next we need a way for Apple Watch to detect smokers and charge them more, too. People who make the effort to be healthy, regardless of whether they actually are lucky enough to be healthy or not*, should pay less for their health insurance as they tax the system far less than those who are sedentary, obese and/or smoke. Just as life insurance costs more for those who live unhealthy lifestyles, their health insurance should cost more, too. (Life insurers should utilize Apple Watches in much the same way.)
*If a person is obese for reasons beyond a sedentary, unhealthy lifestyle, who is actively trying to be healthy as shown by their Apple Watch, but other conditions prevent fat loss (Hypothyroidism, Cushing’s syndrome, hormonal imbalances, Syndrome X, medications, etc.) they should get a lower rate than those who are simply leading sedentary, unhealthy lifestyles. Most cases of obesity are due to sedentary lifestyles and consuming more calories than required, not medical conditions.
Read more here.
SEE ALSO:
John Hancock offers Apple Watch Series 3 for only $25 to all Vitality life insurance customers – October 23, 2017
Apple and the future of the insurance industry – August 15, 2017
Apple and Aetna hold secret meetings to bring Apple Watch to the insurer’s 23 million members – August 14, 2017
In major win for Apple, Aetna becomes first insurance company to subsidize Apple Watch – September 27, 2016
New ‘SweatCoin’ iPhone app pays people to get fit – May 5, 2016
Why you’ll wear an Apple Watch to keep your job – March 14, 2016
Share your fitness data for an Apple Watch – or cash – March 2, 2016
Tim Cook hints Apple might build a health device – November 10, 2015
Apple should double down on Apple Watch’s health sensors, battery life, and waterproofing – October 2, 2015
Health insurer will charge more for lazy people, less for active people, based on Apple Watch sensors – September 18, 2015
Dalrymple reviews Apple Watch: ‘My most personal review ever’ – June 16, 2015
Best part is, Apple tries to help people want to move around more. Before, I moved when I had to, and didn’t really think about it much. Now, I move just that little bit more to complete, or in most cases over complete my move goal. No, I’m not an overachiever, it just happens naturally. Of course, the day will come when I get to that balance where 300 calories burned may be just enough, but I’m not there quite yet. Devin Prater Assistive Technology Instructor
, Microsoft Outlook, Excel, Word, and Powerpoint instructor certified by World Services for the Blind
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The point of insurance is not that healthy people pay for sick people. The point of insurance is that you pay when you are healthy in order to reduce your own financial risk when you eventually become sick.
The ideal way to do this would be simply to save your own money, to put it aside while you are healthy so that you have a fund to draw on when you need medical treatment. This would work perfectly, if you knew exactly when you were going to need it and exactly how much it was going to cost. But there’s no way to know this, so everyone faces a risk. What if I become sick before I have enough money set aside? What if I get some sort of cancer that’s horrifically expensive to treat? Hence the need for insurance.
The point of health insurance is not to provide health care. The point is to hedge against financial risk. It is a form of finance. You still set aside a certain amount every month, as you do with savings, but you control for the short-term risk of needing your benefits before you have fully paid for them. Some people will pay premiums for only a few months before they need the benefits. Others will pay for decades without needing them. You accept this because you don’t know ahead of time which one of those people you are going to be.
But you can make calculations about which one of those people you are likely to be. So you want your premiums to be correlated to your own level of risk and not just be a slush fund to be “shared” with others, because that looks a whole lot like getting ripped off. If you find yourself required to pay extremely high premiums while you’re still young and healthy and with a healthy lifestyle, and therefore with a very low risk of using much of your coverage, then you may well decide you’re better off without insurance. The steep premiums you are paying are not justified by the relatively small amount of risk they defray.
If you want a system that is actually based on involuntary “sharing,” on the outright redistribution of money from one group of people to another—well, there’s a name for that, but it’s not “insurance.” It’s “welfare.”
— Robert Tracinski, March 10, 2017
It is true that you can make calculations about which people are likely to need more expensive care someday, But you can’t predict who will need catastrophic coverage due to car crashes when the other driver was drunk, industrial accidents, changes in the climate… the list goes on and on. What happens if your four year old daughter develops a rare and horrendously expensive to treat form of cancer and, even though you’ve been a prudent saver all your life, you exhaust your savings in one year. What happens to her? Most people would say that we should not let the her die, so that means the cost of her care care is shifted to someone else. Who would that be?
Tracinski can voice an articular position, and he has a very consistent political point of view, but that doesn’t make it right.
Also, it is a libertarian fantasy that the health (or lack of health) of other people in your society doesn’t affect you. It DOES affect you, so even if you are a perfectly selfish actor, you should care about the health of other human beings in your society.
One possible solution to that is some kind of fascist purity attitude. But, that’s been tried in the past century, and hopefully will remain rejected.
The other solution is providing a baseline level of care that allows everyone to be cared for in a way that benefits the public. That includes mental health care, as other unhealthy behaviors/outcomes are caused by a person’s poor mental health.
“What does the future hold?”
It’s a watch. Time will tell.
Hey there youngie, that was a timeless observation. Clock on!
If smokers are charged more then certainly those who engage in dangerous sexual practices, like homosexual sex and many sexual partners should also be charged more.
Trump will never agree to increasing his own premiums.
if the wig fits.
I had no idea Trump was gay, Kent. I wonder what Melania thinks?
Does Melania think?
Forget smokers – the states are continually increasing taxes and that is shrinking the user base as well as use levels. My only thought in that area is that the taxes should be used to take care of medical conditions (like lung cancer) that smoking caused.
As for the next Apple Watch I am looking at what it might bring in terms of medical advances, EKGs, pulse, etc are there now in one form or another. I care about PulseOx, blood sugar levels, and the Stanford Heart Study. I need to choose between buying now for the Stanford Study or waiting for the next version for potential improvements in health care.
Apple has made significant inroads in Medicine and this is what I’m looking for, especially since the FDA has a strong relationship with Apple.