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Earlier this week, I used to be nearly to take a seat all the way down to dinner once I glanced at my wrist and observed that my Apple Watch was going completely haywire. The display screen was furiously flittering amongst apps as if managed by some invisible one who was urgent buttons at lightning velocity. Inside seconds, my Sequence 9 had by some means modified my every day health objectives, despatched a random Slack message to all my coworkers (“Hiya!”), and, to my horror, was now calling 911. Which I used to be helpless to cease.
“911, what’s your emergency?” the operator requested.
“I’m sorry,” I sheepishly muttered into my wrist, “My Apple Watch by accident referred to as you.”
“Okay,” she replied, sounding unsurprised. She requested for my identify.
After she hung up, my watch knowledgeable me that it was now calling my emergency contacts.
In desperation, I took the machine off my wrist, and, as traditional when it isn’t being worn, it asks for a passcode. However the phantom was nonetheless going, typing random numbers into the keypad, as if on a mission to guess my passcode utilizing each mixture attainable.
I set the watch down and regarded on-line to see if this was occurring to anybody else—and if there have been any fixes. To my shock, there have been fairly a number of posts on Apple’s dialogue boards from others experiencing the identical points with the Series 9 and Ultra 2 models over the previous few months. “My watch went loopy at present, flicking between totally different screens, typing its personal texts, I couldn’t cease it or flip it off, needed to simply anticipate battery to go flat to cease,” wrote one Extremely 2 consumer.
“My Apple Watch 9 (purchased mid-December 2023) simply began going loopy,” wrote one other consumer. “It was switching apps, attempting to enter passcode, after which lastly, after two minutes of attempting to cease it, sounded the siren and referred to as 911.” The consumer famous that the emergency operator, like mine, appeared unfazed that the decision was made in error by an Apple Watch and questioned if it was a typical prevalence. (Apparently, it is.)
I additionally noticed a report from February claiming that Apple was “conscious of” and “investigating” the problem of so-called ghost touches on some Sequence 9 and Extremely 2 gadgets. I hoped that my watch was merely haunted and hadn’t been hacked.
Rebooting it, as some customers advised, quickly cleared up the problem for me. I nonetheless felt slightly disturbed about what had occurred—and was instantly very aware of how little I actually learn about this machine that I put on on my physique virtually 24 hours a day.
A spokesperson for Apple didn’t present any further details about the reason for the problem, however instructed Quick Firm that it was addressed within the newest watchOS 10.4 update, which was launched in March and “resolves a problem that causes some customers to expertise false touches on the show.”
It’s nonetheless unclear to me why my watch didn’t robotically replace to the brand new watchOS, since I’ve automated updates turned on for each my iPhone and Apple Watch. However I’ve since up to date my watch, and hopefully any malevolent Apple Watch spirits have been exorcized.
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