Edoardo Sangiorgi

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The past 20 years have been of crucial importance in cementing Apple’s spot as an industry leader in the realm of consumer electronics. Odds are you can’t spend a single day without coming across an iPhone or MacBook, that in itself should be sufficient to assess Apple’s reach. Greatly contributing to Apple’s success is its willingness to constantly innovate and implement new features into its products.

Such is the case with the newly released iPhone 14, as the addition of an improved 3-axis gyroscope and accelerometer allowed for the development of a car crash detection system (Humphries 2022). This new feature is meant to detect when the owner of the phone is involved in an accident and automatically contact first responders thereafter. Its implementation was praised as people started picturing the number of lives that this technology could save, yet things did not exactly go as planned.

A few weeks after the release of the iPhone 14, dispatchers across the world started receiving calls from unaware people casually going about their day. It was then that the calls were traced back to the newly implemented crash detection system, one that appeared to mistake a variety of scenarios for traffic accidents. A 911 dispatch center near Kings Island amusement park even reported receiving up to 6 calls in a single day from unaware people riding rollercoasters.

Apple has been quick to address the issue and advise users on how to tweak settings to avoid this unfortunate occurrence from taking place. After a careful analysis technicians were also able to trace the issue back to the software around which the detection functionality was built, meaning a simple software update should be able to take care of the issue.

In light of this issue, Apple has dealt with scrutiny concerning the number of testing hours involved in the implementation of new features, however full cooperation in a small-scale investigation was offered and no wrongdoing was found.

We are to see in the coming months if the American company will be able to develop an appropriate update or if the feature will have to be scrapped entirely. What we can gather is that this incident, pun intended, is that a simple hiccup won’t stop Apple on its path to innovation.

References

Mathew Humphfries (2022), Iphone 14 Crash Detection Calls 911 on Roller Coasters, [online] , accessed 10/10/2022, https://www.pcmag.com/news/iphone-14-crash-detection-calls-911-on-roller-coasters

Emma Roth (2022), The Iphone 14 Keeps calling 911 on Rollercoasters, [online] , accessed 11/10/2022, https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/9/23395222/iphone-14-calling-911-rollercoasters-apple-crash-detection

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Over the course of the past few months, Twitter has been at the center of attention for a variety of reasons. At first it was due to Elon Musk’s interest in the acquisition of the American social network; share price surged as people associated a new ownership to the implementation of long-awaited features yet with limited information on negotiations the initial excitement quickly dissipated. What got people talking about twitter again is their recent decision to implement the long-awaited “edit” functionality.

For many years an edit button has been a basic tool blogs and social media platforms offered their users, yet Twitter had held back on its implementation for unknown reasons. Some imagined it had to do with accountability, as not being able to modify a post after its publication would make users choose their words carefully so as to not leave their tweets up to interpretation. The result was an abundance of tweets riddled with spelling mistakes and people being forced into deleting and posting again, a practice undoubtedly driving the number of actions per user up, an interesting point for thought.

Having said that Twitter has officially started rolling out an edit button. The tool will be granted initially to employees and influencers, with the plan being rolling the feature out to the rest of the user base further on, following its current testing phase.

Users are then left pondering what the effects of this feature will be on the long-standing platform, the reality being that there most likely aren’t going to be any. This is because under each edited tweet a history of the older versions is displayed, meaning users will know the exact time of editing as well as the specific changes made. It is then clear that the effects of this long-awaited feature will be strictly positive and its implementation shall serve as further proof that even the biggest platforms are ready to leave their roots for the benefit of their users.

References

Christ Stokel Walker (2022), Wired: Twitter Finally Gets an Edit Button [online] accessed 06/10/2022, https://www.wired.co.uk/article/twitter-gets-an-edit-button#:~:text=An%20edit%20button%20could%20be,a%20larger%20group%20of%20users

Ivan Mehta (2022). Twitter is finally rolling out an edit button later this month, [online] accessed 07/10/2022, https://techcrunch.com/2022/09/01/twitter-is-finally-rolling-out-an-edit-button-later-this-month-first-to-twitter-blue-subscribers/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAMS7pVxYq_VkLdDVDrZbLUy-bOMgbMhj3Og3sH_PufAremBSGYKQpmaGEDqltmmQbXvNWhjypH6QgFUaKkUICe9A-6kwDJVdvEep48R817vh7H1g3g2XWFsDzB8ShbiaEKHfQWbjwe4p5-P_VAazC7Un1TxktvjGhS5253-zK4tz

The Rocky Launch of Apple’s Crash Detection Feature

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