Mountain biker Ryan McConnaughey took his usual daily ride near San Diego only to find himself going over the handlebars in a steep section. He slammed into the ground, head-first, helmet on.
Sprawled on his back, he soon found he couldn’t move from the neck down. “I knew for sure that I needed to get medical attention as quickly as possible. My brain kind of kicked into survival mode,” he said.
With his iPhone in his backpack, he began talking to his Apple Watch.
After strong currents swept an Australian kayaker more than two miles out to sea, he summoned help with the Emergency SOS feature of Apple Watch. That triggered his rescue by helicopter.
Here’s a word to the wise: Always carry your charged iPhone, and don’t ski or snowboard “off-piste” in the Alps at 10,000 feet by yourself. Tim Blakey got the first part right, just barely, and that’s why he’s alive today.
The British personal trainer was snowboarding solo off of marked trails near Zermatt, Switzerland — on a glacier — when he plunged about 15 feet down into a crevasse and got stuck. He couldn’t scale its icy walls. He was alive for the moment down there, but he was alone.
Alone, that is, except for an iPhone clinging to 3% battery life and a weak 3G signal.
Should you find yourself in a situation where a police officer or federal agent — like a TSA person at the airport — requests or demands your iPhone, should you hand it over? Many folks say no, never. But if you do, at least know how to hard-lock it in a hurry before it leaves your hand. That will help protect your data on the device.
A woman in Virginia Beach used the Emergency SOS feature on her iPhone to contact emergency services during an attempted assault.
The feature, which is activated by holding down the side button and volume button on an iPhone, alerted emergency services to what was happening. The would-be assailant was subsequently arrested by police.
Emergency responders in Elk Grove and Sacramento Country have received over 1,600 accidental 911 calls from Apple repair facilities in the past four months.
The calls waste valuable time and resources and potentially slow down the response to genuine emergencies. The problem seems to have been introduced by iOS 11, which added an Emergency SOS shortcut to iPhone and Apple Watch.
Apple released its second iOS 10.2 beta this week, and while we all got excited for brand new emojis and the TV app, we missed an awesome new feature that’s even more important: Emergency SOS.
Adopted from Apple Watch, Emergency SOS lets you discreetly contact the police in an emergency.
When Apple launches watchOS 3 to the public later this fall, Apple Watch wearers will be able to automatically call for help if they find themselves in an emergency situation.
The new SOS feature in watchOS 3 will make Apple Watch even more of a lifesaver for wearers by placing a 911 call within 10 seconds, even if they don’t have their iPhone.
Here’s how it works:
