Apple’s iPhone 14, Apple Watch Ultra Promise Peace of Mind as Their Killer App
Apple’s new iPhone 14 has better cameras and faster chips, but it also has features that could save people’s lives.
James Martin/CNET
This story is part of Focal Point iPhone 2022, CNET’s collection of news, tips and advice around Apple’s most popular product.
It happened to Chuck Noland when the airplane he was on one Christmas Eve for work was caught in a terrible storm and crashed into the ocean. He was the only survivor. For four years, he was stuck, alone, on an island. If he’d had Apple’s iPhone 14, he may have been able to signal for help.
Noland is a fictional character, played by Tom Hanks in the hit 2000 survival movie Cast Away. But the iPhone 14 is very much real.
On Wednesday, Apple introduced a series of features built to make people feel more safe, be it while diving in the ocean or hiking off the grid or during more everyday tasks like looking for a friend in a crowd or driving home from school. Among them, car crash detection and a way to use satellites to call for help even when you don’t have cell service.
“These products have become essential in our lives,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said during the company’s event Wednesday. As if to emphasize the point, company executives repeated the word “essential” nearly a dozen times while showing off its newest products. “They’re always with you, useful wherever and whenever you need them, and are designed to work seamlessly together on their own.”
While many of these features may seem extreme — how often do you go backpacking in the desert? — they add to a sense of trust Apple’s hoping to forge. At a time when much of our collective faith in the tech industry has been shaken by seemingly endless privacy breaches, political controversies and bald-face lies from tech executives, the very idea that Apple wants us to trust it even more may seem silly.
And if we’re not reckoning with the tech industry’s power in our lives, we’re debating whether we’ve become too dependent on it all. It’s gotten so bad that some people regularly go on “digital detoxes,” seeking out vacation spots beyond the signals of cellular carriers, in hopes of?disconnecting from the seeming nonstop pace of modern life.
But the iPhone maker is charting a path by leaning on its health and safety features, alongside a growing list of privacy enhancements so effective they’ve frustrated advertisers, law enforcement and other tech companies.
“Apple’s developing this concept of personal safety, and bringing it to a whole new level,” said Tim Bajarin, an analyst with Creative Strategies. He added that Apple’s competitors will likely try to replicate Apple’s safety features too, but the tech giant’s larger approach to security, privacy and now personal safety will help it stand out. “Fundamentally, they’re saying, ‘Look, we’re going to look out for you, we’ve got your back.'”
The Apple Watch has been credited with warning many people of previously undetected heart conditions.
AppleIncreasing safety
Though Apple’s still adding new safety features to its devices, it’s been focused on these ideas for many years.?
In 2017, Apple added an optional feature to the Apple Watch to detect abnormal heartbeats, something that many customers have since said?warned them of health issues before a potential heart attack or stroke. In 2018, the company added fall detection for the Apple Watch, which calls emergency contacts and the authorities if you don’t respond?that you’re OK after a tumble. That too has gone on to save lives.
“We’re in a world where people just want to go out the door with their phone or their watch and not worry about it.”
Maribel Lopez, Lopez Research
While new features like crash detection and satellite calls for help may be designed for Apple’s latest iPhone, the company appears to be trying to add safety technology to older devices as well. With its free iOS 16 software update for iPhones and iPads later this month, Apple will include Safety Check to help domestic violence victims?more easily escape abusive situations. It’s also adding Lockdown Mode,?meant to restrict iPhone communication features to protect the owner from a potential hacking attack.
It doesn’t take much to imagine how Apple’s new satellite functionality will help people in an emergency. There are so many examples of people like Aaron Ralston, a hiker and rock climber who in 2003?got stuck for days in Utah’s Canyonlands National Park without a phone or any other way to call for help.?
What will set Apple apart, industry watchers say, is that creating these technologies required complex interplay of software, sensors and infrastructure like enough satellites in the sky for it to work.
Apple said it worked with first responders to develop its emergency satellite feature, asking users questions about whether they’ve been hurt and how badly to more efficiently relay information to people getting help. It also had to build relay stations to call 911 in places where emergency operators don’t accept text messages.
“It took years to make this vision a reality through game changing hardware software and infrastructure innovation,” Ashley Williams, a manager of satellite modeling and simulation at Apple, said during the company’s presentation Wednesday.
Though no other tech companies currently offer a similar feature, T-Mobile and SpaceX have announced plans to offer similar technologies in the next couple years as well. Verizon has a similar partnership with Amazon’s Project Kuiper. Analysts say more are likely on the way.
Apple’s new car crash detection, on the Apple Watch Series 8.
Apple/Screenshot by Sarah Lord/CNETA growing trend
As Apple passes its 15th year making iPhones, one of the toughest challenges it faces is how to reinvent the supercomputer in our pockets. Sure, the company can make the device work faster, and improves the camera each year, but what more can it do?
Longtime Apple watchers say this year’s Apple Watch and iPhone may hold the key. “They’re trying to figure out the real issues that real people are struggling with,” said Maribel Lopez, an analyst at Lopez Research.?
“Some of the features were for everybody, and some of them were for very specific people,” she added. But they all revolved around solving longstanding problems, like what to do when cellular service isn’t working, in addition to basic stuff like making the devices less likely to break when we drop them. “We’re in a world where people just want to go out the door with their phone or their watch and not worry about it.”