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Comment by rbinv | Hacker News Reader

Wow, I did not expect the Apple Watch to be able to detect those gestures shown in the video. Impressive.

It mentions using the heart rate sensor. I can imagine it went a little like this: A: "People clenching their fists keeps messing up the heart rate readings!" B: "I wonder if..."

Reminds me of the old hack someone did using the accelerometer in a Macbook hard drive to switch between Spaces:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uvQTTPr9Rw

I don't think there would be that spontaneous of heart rate change due to clenching a fist but I would expect the sensors to get a large jump from baseline due to skin, veins, etc. deforming from clenching.

Seconded, and I can't wait to try these out - case in point that accessibility options really are for everybody!

Yea that's really neat. Thanks to GP I actually went and checked out the video. Clenching and pinching, if that smooth, seem like they'd be less error prone than trying to use the tiny touch screen on the Apple Watch half the time.

Exactly accessibility really benefits everyone. I currently use the floating home button on my iPhone even though I have no physical problems with using the volume and power buttons to take a screenshot, I like using the home button better.

The watch gestures seem useful whenever you have a handful of groceries and need to answer a call.

Supposedly the original motivation for the taptic/fake home button in iPhones was they noticed a lot of people had turned on assistive touch just because they were worried about their home buttons wearing out.

I always felt that single arm control of Apple watch was the future because the way it ties up both hands felt anachronistic(the hand your watch is on is doing nothing and is constrained while your other hand interacts with the watch, making it less liberating than a phone) but couldn't imagine how this would be solved. Bravo Apple on this brilliant solution.

There’s a startup [1] that I don’t think has shipped yet, but they have a great idea about using nerve conductance sensors to use hand gestures to control the watch. Looks pretty exciting

[1] https://www.mudra-band.com/

Oof, at a glance some of the gestures and ideas look pretty similar to what Apple just launched. I wouldn't be surprised if this either fizzles out, or gets nerfed by Apple for competing with built-in OS features.

It's possible the extra hardware in the watch band makes it work much better, which would be cool! But it's hard to beat built-in. And I presume relying on those comm ports in the watch band connector and watchOS functionality is... risky.

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