I want to make a public service announcement. Some of this you’ve heard about, but I wanted this to be a standalone article for people to share with their friends and family.
A few weeks ago, I told you about how I tripped on a walk with my dog, Kepler. There was a concrete cover for the water meter that had sunk more than an inch below the sidewalk. When I tripped over it, I flipped nose first onto the concrete. I had no time to even get my hands up to help break the fall.
When I fell, my Apple Watch noted that it looked like I’d taken a hard fall and offered to call emergency services. Even in my state of shock, I knew the right answer to this question, and immediately pushed the red, circular SOS button. But nothing happened. So I pushed it again, and again, and again, and nothing happened.
Guess what? It’s a SLIDER, not a button!
If you look closely at the screenshot in the shownotes, you’ll see that the round, red SOS button is sitting inside a rounded rectangle that says “Emergency Call”. Evidently, Apple thinks that it’s obvious that the Emergency call part of the rounded rectangle is a slot that you were supposed to slide the SOS button across.
I can tell you that in all the time I’ve been looking at this button over the years since it was implemented in the Apple Watch, I never noticed the slot and always thought it was a button. Perhaps you are more observant than I am, and would be more observant with blood gushing out of your nose than I was, but it never occurred to me it was a slider.
I was also under the impression that if you didn’t dismiss this alert, the Apple Watch would automatically call emergency services. While bleeding on the sidewalk, I did not take the time to read the Apple support documentation, where they explain that the only time emergency services will be contacted automatically is if you do not move for one minute.
It would be good news to me if everyone who hears this PSA from me thinks to themselves, “I always thought it was a slider…”, but if there’s just one of you out there who thought it was a button too, then it was worth me writing this public service announcement.
