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firefoxd 6 hours ago [-]
These are the type of problems that are completely invisible to someone who doesn't experience it. I wouldn't have even known it was a problem to solve.
A few years back we played an escape room game online with the whole team. One of the clues was in one of my colleagues "room". All he had to do was read it. "Come one read it man, we can win this." He froze. We all insisted he reads it. He could not read it. We thought he had an internet connection issue. Somehow we managed to escape the room and kept going.
The next day he told me he was embarrassed because he couldn't understand what we were talking about. He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.
seizethecheese 9 minutes ago [-]
I’m colorblind and the weird thing is that it’s somewhat unpredictable when I will not see things. It’s not so simple as “can’t read red on green”. Shading and lighting matter enormously. An orange frisbee is harder to find in grass then a red one.
The strange thing is that I somehow convinced myself that I wasn’t colorblind during my childhood, in spite of obvious evidence, because I often could figure out colors. Then during an eye exam at 19 years old I failed 11/12 vision tests.
albedoa 4 hours ago [-]
> He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.
A similar thing happened to a friend who was over for game night. We were playing the Monopoly Deal card game when he put a brown and a red card next to each other with kind of a confused silence. Look at this:
(Pictured: Three red property cards next to two brown property cards.) They use only color to indicate property group. I was surprised that such a recognizable brand would allow this to get through. About one in twelve men cannot play this game without assistance.
thi2 3 hours ago [-]
At my first job our project manager was colorblind (red-orange/yellow).
One day he dropped a photo of his cars dashboard at a red light with an orange "check engine light"
> "Quick, is this red or orange I need to know if it'll blow".
I'm sure it's a really annoying condition but at the time it was pretty funny and he joked around with it a lot
SoftTalker 8 minutes ago [-]
Just FYI, the check engine light (orange or yellow) is never an emergency. It's normally something emissions-related. Oil and temperature, yes those are much more critical but those are separate (red) indicators. You don't need to rely on color if you know this.
somehnguy 2 minutes ago [-]
Solid color yeah. A flashing check engine light can be an emergency if you want to avoid more costly repairs later
behringer 10 minutes ago [-]
google lens can probably answer these kinds of questions for him, but uh, he should be aware not to trust his car blowing up with AI!
sandworm101 2 hours ago [-]
Being colorblind and having motion sickness are totally different things. One cannot get over being colorblind. It can never go away. Motion sickness (99% of cases) can be managed. Exposure therapy works. Look at every navy ship. They start the voyage with half the crew seasick. But after a few months it practically disappears.
One interesting stat from the miltary: cadets who were competative swimmers generally dont get motion sickness. The combination of 0g floating and constant head rotations along diferent axis (flip turns) normalizes the sensations.
tokai 1 hours ago [-]
Being from a place with many fishermen and navy personel I can assure you that it does not necessarily go away with exposure. Some sailors are just sick when they are at sea.
sandworm101 1 hours ago [-]
Yup. Lord Nelson was famously sick every day of his time at sea. But such cases are exceptions. Most do get over it with time. My father was always sick on boafs, unless he was driving. Then he was fine. Each person is different.
anon_acc5415 1 hours ago [-]
> One cannot get over being colorblind. It can never go away.
Bizzare and fascinating thing, but that's perhaps not as rock-solid as it might appear.
Some (or at least 1) people have reported improved color perception post magic mushrooms.
> Though the subject reported intensification of colors while under the acute effects of psilocybin, his score on plates 1–21 improved only slightly to 15 at 12 h post-administration. However, by 24 h post-mushroom administration, his score reached 18, above the cut-off of 17 required by the Ishihara Test for classification of normal color vision,” the report states. “His score peaked at 19 on day eight post-administration. At approximately four months post-mushroom administration, his score remained elevated at 18,” the researchers write.
Now, you might say, "Well, that's hogwash, maybe that guy was lying."
To which I say... I experienced it myself! During the experience, colors were significantly more vivid and saturated. (I actually think I "saw" how women for eg see more subtlety between different shades.) Sure, the breeze felt amazing, and nature and trees were peaceful... but I spent a disproportionate amount of time staring at the street and marveling at the colors.
Want a twist? I'll give you two.
1. I'm not color blind, afaik. I've done a number of (admittedly basic) tests and passed them all.
2. The substance I (alledgly) took was not mushrooms. It wasn't even a plant based - or illicit thing! It was a prescription drug/medicine!
I'll leave you to guess it if you want, semi-spoilers below.
It was a drug used (and famously known) primarily as a wakefulness agent for narcolepsy, and I might have taken the R-enantiomer of it.
anon_acc5415 13 minutes ago [-]
Damn, I really didn't expect to get a downvote on this. Anything I said wrong, or someone just disagreeing?
I'd think the concept of "brain tweaks can improve color vision" is a good thing.
sssilver 11 hours ago [-]
I have no idea how something like this is ideated, then prototyped, then validated, but it does work wonders for me, and I am so grateful it exists.
latexr 7 hours ago [-]
Seems pretty straightforward.
1. Be a developer and you (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.
2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear indicates you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.
3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.
4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.
5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.
If anything, I’m surprised it took a decade and a half to come up with it.
usrusr 4 hours ago [-]
And this is exactly how things in large corporations don't happen. Things in large corporations who pay so well that nobody makes it through the recruitment filters and competition who's more than 2% off from being a pure assessment metrics maximiser. In my mind, chasing an idea like this just does not match the type.
Why it isn't likely to have happened before: trying is only easy for a developer who is not only very familiar with the API for reading those motion sensors but also with the API for system wide overlay. This a strict no for your run of the mill to-do list app. Combine that with the requirement of being affected themselves (or someone close), having the idea, having the time to try and no competing side quests that take up all attention. And the requirement of when the experiment was successful, having the kind of access that actually serves as a conduit for ideas not only on paper to someone in the position to make it a product. That's a lot of stars that need to align. Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle: would still need someone in the know to try it, but chances are that knowledge combined with a bit of prompting could be a path to PoC implementation that could clear effort thresholds that would stand in the way of conventional coding.
latexr 3 hours ago [-]
That has nothing to do with the feature being “ideated, then prototyped, then validated”, which is the crux of the conversation. It having taken so long is but a footnote.
> Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle
I would bet money there wasn’t. The feature was introduced in early 2024, meaning it has to be thought about, developed, and tested before that.
Thank you so much for sharing this. I’ve been saying to my wife for about a year now that I wish MacBooks had the motion cues feature… turns out I just needed to search for it!
fletchowns 12 hours ago [-]
It works great on Macbook. I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected! I have a feeling a lot of people don't know it exists.
I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.
embedding-shape 5 hours ago [-]
> I don't know why they don't suggest it to folks when car or train movement is detected
Apple whole idea to UX seems to be "Mostly hidden by default, let people trigger it accidentally to learn about it, or reading about it somewhere else" as even after having my iPhone 12 Mini for so long, I still "discover" new things every now and then that nothing or no one told me about.
Like how are people supposed to "discover" the whole "shake the phone to undo" shortcut unless they accidentally trigger that? I see nothing in the UI that indicates when this is possible either, some apps use that for reporting feedback instead.
dylan604 1 hours ago [-]
Younger me used to "explore" the OS or any software by clicking all the things. It was part of growing and learning. I was never afraid to click the wrong thing. It's similar to those that take things apart just to see what's inside. I had no idea that I was the edge case of personality types.
Things that are "hidden" are just discoveries waiting to happen for those that look. For those that need their hands held and guided through the world, those things might stay "hidden". Just as you feel irked that things are hidden, I feel irked by people that don't go looking. Push all the buttons. Turn all the knobs. Click all the things.
Rohansi 11 hours ago [-]
> I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet.
You don't need to wait. You can get apps that do the same thing on Android.
asimovDev 3 hours ago [-]
this helped me tremendously when I had to work in the backseat of a moving car. Felt sick pretty quick when I started using the laptop until I remembered about this feature because someone on HN recently posted / commented about it
yonatan8070 11 hours ago [-]
Very cool that apple made it
I wonder if any other laptops have IMUs that can be used to implement this on Linux/Windows
avycado13 1 hours ago [-]
This feature has helped me so much since i found it. I have kinda bad motion sickness and this has really helped me
ascorbic 7 hours ago [-]
There was a discussion about this a few weeks ago, where I discovered KineStop which is an app that does the same on Android. I've only tried it a few times but it has worked every time.
wongarsu 7 hours ago [-]
Worth checking first whether your phone already has this natively. My one year old Android by Honor has it built in and exposed in the quick settings (sliding the right down). I know a couple others also have it, but not all of them as discoverable
crossroadsguy 4 hours ago [-]
Motion sickness person here. iPhone’s stock one doesn’t work for me. Haven’t tried that on Android. Will see if something similar is available on iOS as third party app.
wffurr 2 hours ago [-]
There's also glasses for this that put a fluid filled tube in your peripheral vision. I want to try it next time I'm on a sailboat and have to do something inside the boat while it's pitching.
Cider9986 6 hours ago [-]
I use KineStop and it works better than Apple's version on iOS did for me. Hopefully AOSP implements one because you do have to give KineStop rather invasive permissions.
Eventually I will try the open source offerings.
bicepjai 22 minutes ago [-]
I was so skeptical of this feature, now I cannot live without this.
NateEag 12 hours ago [-]
There is a nice little app that does this on Android available on F-droid:
I tried this and it did nothing for me. For a start, the white dots disappear on a white background, so not a good start. The main thing, though, is while it picked up on the vehicle turning it didn't pick up on acceleration much, which is what actually gives me motion sickness.
deivid 2 hours ago [-]
It's supposed to handle acceleration though, if you bring your phone to your face quickly dots get larger. I've done some in-car testing, but things get squeamish quickly so it's not the easiest to validate.
Changing the color / adding some contrast would be quite a simple change
tacomagick 8 hours ago [-]
The biggest issue Android has both with Kinestop amd this app is unlike Apple's system it does not count for acceleration. I find myself having to look ahead when under acceleration or braking. I have experienced the Apple's motion cues when my friend got curious if it would work because he had no use for it since he did not have motion sickness and I'm unsure if it was just psychological but it felt better than Kinestop which I use.
regularfry 3 hours ago [-]
When did you try it? I got a bit confused by your comment because there's no obvious reason why the accelerometers in an android phone would have a problem reporting forward/backward acceleration any less accurately than lateral. So I installed it and the 'Dots' mode definitely responds to acceleration normal to the screen, but that mode is marked as 'New' so might not have been present when you last looked.
mplanchard 1 hours ago [-]
I have been too nervous to really try using the phone as a passenger in a car, but it has also activated for me on trains and planes, where I suffer less from motion sickness anyway.
Not enough experience yet to say for sure whether they work, but the dots look so cool that I will keep it on regardless.
Sharing this here in case anyone wants to check out the discussion there and see how it looks in the Verge's short review.
esperent 11 hours ago [-]
My Android phone has this too (Vivo). Maybe they all do?
It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.
orbital-decay 2 hours ago [-]
This was invented long ago in an app, it got cloned in other apps, vendors paid attention and made it a built-in feature. Same as Swype.
wongarsu 7 hours ago [-]
Honor phones have this in the quick settings (the thing that opens when you slide the right side of the top bar down), labeled "Motion Sickness". Felt well-explained and discoverable.
But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others
esperent 5 hours ago [-]
On Vivo it's called "Motion Cues". Subtitle: "Dots shift forwards and backwards during acceleration and deceleration". And then it says in tiny font it's for motion sickness, I guess I didn't read that far last time.
JSR_FDED 29 minutes ago [-]
Another super useful feature is Accessibility > Zoom > Use keyboard shortcuts.
The you can use Command+Option+Plus and Command+Option+Minus to zoom the entire screen.
It’s a great way to zoom in on anything regardless of whether an app supports it or not. Sometimes I help family members remotely and look through a bad camera at a document on their side, and applying this zoom makes the difference between being able to decipher the content and not.
oasisbob 8 hours ago [-]
I'm curious how this feature chooses to turn itself on with automatic detection.
Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.
I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.
thebruce87m 6 hours ago [-]
I think two accelerometers would do it at different ends of the phone. Normal hand-based motion will rarely include a sustained exact acceleration in one direction on both of these at the same time e.
parkersweb 7 hours ago [-]
I always assumed this is triggered by Bluetooth connection to the car?
hav 7 hours ago [-]
It’s likely based on motion through the gyro/accelerometers, it triggers on any vehicle I’ve tried. Works wonders on trains and subways as well.
bschne 7 hours ago [-]
a fun one is seeing the dots go wild when you're on a plane that's taking off
aflinik 7 hours ago [-]
It triggers for me on trains too, so I think it's just accelerometer + location
norbert515 6 hours ago [-]
I would assume the acceleration pattern of being in a vehicle is somewhat distinct.
I'd be curious what happens when you are in a vehicle that drives completely steady (no turns/acceleration/deceleration) - would it eventually turn off? I guess you wouldn't get motion sick in that case either way.
King-Aaron 12 hours ago [-]
This has been reposted here several times in the last few weeks, but it is a very neat feature. I find myself getting quite motion sick on the bus if I look at my phone, but these dots help me at least check messages here and there without immediately feeling like I'm going to throw up.
m-s-y 3 hours ago [-]
Great submission summary! This feature came out years ago, why the eyes on this today? And with zero context?
consp 7 hours ago [-]
Is this related to roll and pitch motion in sea sickness where by knowing the horizon and direction of travel can help?
aqme28 4 hours ago [-]
I wish this worked a little better. It doesn't solve motion sickness for me when looking at my phone in a car, but it does seem to make it a little less severe.
myself248 11 hours ago [-]
This should've been possible with the Thinkpad HDAPS accelerometer back in the day. (If it detected the laptop was falling, it would park the HDD heads in anticipation of impact.) Shame nobody thought of it then!
disillusioned 9 hours ago [-]
Were a lot of people rawdogging their Thinkpads while driving back in the day? Plugged into an inverter into the cigarette lighter to trickle charge? :-)
myself248 1 hours ago [-]
I've had 12-volt-input power supplies for every laptop I've ever owned. Lind makes the most reliable ones, but they're expensive, and there's a thriving aftermarket of alternatives too.
Also, Lind is the brand you're likely to find sold alongside an ex-public-safety Toughbook. Since these were my first serious car computers, that's just how the majority of my mobile computing looked for a decade or more.
However, Toughbooks encased their HDD's in gel, and had been doing so since long before the advent of MEMS accelerometers, so they didn't jump on the HDAPS innovation along with IBM.
ga_to 8 hours ago [-]
Passengers already existed back then, which this intended for.
The motion cues are not meant to decrease motion sickness for a driver doom scrolling on their phone while operating their vehicle.
Tempest1981 6 hours ago [-]
I like the "bubbling" dots effect that occurs in an airplane when making a turn. Anyone know the reason?
I guess they're moving in the opposite direction of the turn to force the perception of turning.
atorodius 8 hours ago [-]
I use this a lot on my MacBook Air when working in cabs. It’s beautiful and works well for me
neko_ranger 12 hours ago [-]
This is an easy enable with "Automatic Detection". Are there any other phone "Accessibility" options that are useful to everyone?
Crespyl 11 hours ago [-]
Not technically "Accessibility" but Android has a "developer" setting called "Show Touches" which puts little dots on screen when you touch it.
I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.
hidroto 9 hours ago [-]
I think that this setting should be promoted out of developer settings as i find it so useful
jonasmst 8 hours ago [-]
Bit of a niche, but I use inverted colors and the camera app to find ticks on my dog. Enabled by triple-clicking the lock button under Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Shortcut -> Classic invert
duskwuff 12 hours ago [-]
Under "Display & Text Size": "on/off labels" and "increase contrast". "Reduce transparency" is a bit of a mixed bag but is worth trying out.
Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.
Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.
There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.
superb_dev 11 hours ago [-]
I love the background sounds feature. You can add a shortcut in the control center to turn it on and off. I used it a ton when I lived in an apartment with particularly noisy neighbors
aprilnya 11 hours ago [-]
As for Reduce Transparency, next iOS version has a proper slider to adjust the transparency of Liquid Glass - worth playing with for anyone on the beta
bschwindHN 10 hours ago [-]
I use the magnifier on iOS to examine small electronics on a PCB, or other small detailed things.
Similarly, on MacOS I use the Zoom feature (Command Key + mouse scroll) to pixel peep when doing graphical work.
Dylan16807 10 hours ago [-]
What do you mean useful to everyone?
Do you think everyone gets motion sickness?
3 hours ago [-]
SturgeonsLaw 10 hours ago [-]
On Android I use super dim, as someone who enjoys low light situations, even the darkest brightness setting can be too bright sometimes
Piterniel 6 hours ago [-]
In case you have a problem with the iPhone performance, make sure inside settings disable `Dynamic` pattern for this feature.
iPhone 12 Pro (26.5.2)
pilif 7 hours ago [-]
Once this was announced a few years back, I was very skeptical that a few dots on the screen would be all that's needed to help me.
And yet, apparently it was.
It's not perfect, but the dots help me to go from instantly feeling sick to lasting 30-40 minutes before I have to stop looking at the screen.
mynameyeff 4 hours ago [-]
It's pretty cool but it does hog CPU a bit.
wuming2 7 hours ago [-]
Would it also work onboard a ship? Or movements are too slow to provide enough visual cues on a small screen.
willyyr 6 hours ago [-]
It absolutely is working on a ship. At least for me it helps e.g. when traveling on a big ferry etc. but I guess everybody has a different level of tolerance.
wuming2 5 hours ago [-]
Interested because this autumn will board a ferry for an overnight journey. Sometimes I did suffer seasickness and have read taking medication when onboard already is too late. So I am happy to know there may be a potential solution available. Just in case. Thanks.
texruska 7 hours ago [-]
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romulobribeiro 4 hours ago [-]
Saw someone using this on the train, looked cool
jdross 13 hours ago [-]
One of the best and most clever "hidden" features. Very Apple.
I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.
d--b 10 hours ago [-]
The question I have is whether a phone with motion cues causes less nausea than no phone at all in a window-less boat.
michelb 9 hours ago [-]
It did for me, but n=1.
JSR_FDED 13 hours ago [-]
Works surprisingly well, had a super sensitive passenger in the car the other day and zero signs of nausea.
warrenmiller 7 hours ago [-]
Any reason this doesn’t work in CarPlay?
GuB-42 2 hours ago [-]
Just speculation here. CarPlay is intended to be used on the dashboard, so you already have the view of the road as a reference, and these dots may be considered a distraction to the driver.
dzhiurgis 5 hours ago [-]
Wonder if Tesla should add something like this to rear screen. It’s not very useful for most adults due to how low it is, but kids willing to get screen time on anything (not that I condone).
reywilliams 10 hours ago [-]
n=1, but it works great for me!
mohammedmsgm 7 hours ago [-]
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DonHopkins 6 hours ago [-]
Can you play back virtual time shifted vehicle motion cues, to make yourself barf on demand? This could be a godsend for bulemics. Accessibility at its finest.
devandanger 2 hours ago [-]
I think this is a good example of how Apple is doing well in the application of AI and also uncharacteristically doing poorly in the application of AI.
Doing well as it quietly is coming up with helpful product updates like this which are buried in support docs and limited splash.
I kind of prefer this more quiet usage of application of AI.
wffurr 2 hours ago [-]
What about this is "AI"?
bogzz 2 hours ago [-]
Everything's computer.
azeemba 2 hours ago [-]
This is not AI related at all though. The phone has the accelerometer which tells it all the info this feature needs
A few years back we played an escape room game online with the whole team. One of the clues was in one of my colleagues "room". All he had to do was read it. "Come one read it man, we can win this." He froze. We all insisted he reads it. He could not read it. We thought he had an internet connection issue. Somehow we managed to escape the room and kept going.
The next day he told me he was embarrassed because he couldn't understand what we were talking about. He could not see the note we were talking about because he is colorblind.
The strange thing is that I somehow convinced myself that I wasn’t colorblind during my childhood, in spite of obvious evidence, because I often could figure out colors. Then during an eye exam at 19 years old I failed 11/12 vision tests.
A similar thing happened to a friend who was over for game night. We were playing the Monopoly Deal card game when he put a brown and a red card next to each other with kind of a confused silence. Look at this:
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/374991_dc4dfa2a6f0d4ebb81...
(Pictured: Three red property cards next to two brown property cards.) They use only color to indicate property group. I was surprised that such a recognizable brand would allow this to get through. About one in twelve men cannot play this game without assistance.
> "Quick, is this red or orange I need to know if it'll blow".
I'm sure it's a really annoying condition but at the time it was pretty funny and he joked around with it a lot
One interesting stat from the miltary: cadets who were competative swimmers generally dont get motion sickness. The combination of 0g floating and constant head rotations along diferent axis (flip turns) normalizes the sensations.
Bizzare and fascinating thing, but that's perhaps not as rock-solid as it might appear.
Some (or at least 1) people have reported improved color perception post magic mushrooms.
> Though the subject reported intensification of colors while under the acute effects of psilocybin, his score on plates 1–21 improved only slightly to 15 at 12 h post-administration. However, by 24 h post-mushroom administration, his score reached 18, above the cut-off of 17 required by the Ishihara Test for classification of normal color vision,” the report states. “His score peaked at 19 on day eight post-administration. At approximately four months post-mushroom administration, his score remained elevated at 18,” the researchers write.
From https://www.mdlinx.com/article/can-magic-mushrooms-solve-col...
Now, you might say, "Well, that's hogwash, maybe that guy was lying."
To which I say... I experienced it myself! During the experience, colors were significantly more vivid and saturated. (I actually think I "saw" how women for eg see more subtlety between different shades.) Sure, the breeze felt amazing, and nature and trees were peaceful... but I spent a disproportionate amount of time staring at the street and marveling at the colors.
Want a twist? I'll give you two.
1. I'm not color blind, afaik. I've done a number of (admittedly basic) tests and passed them all.
2. The substance I (alledgly) took was not mushrooms. It wasn't even a plant based - or illicit thing! It was a prescription drug/medicine!
I'll leave you to guess it if you want, semi-spoilers below.
It was a drug used (and famously known) primarily as a wakefulness agent for narcolepsy, and I might have taken the R-enantiomer of it.
I'd think the concept of "brain tweaks can improve color vision" is a good thing.
1. Be a developer and you (or a spouse/child/friend) get motion sickness when looking at the phone while travelling.
2. We’ve known the mechanisms of motion sickness (looking at something static while your inner ear indicates you’re moving) from before smartphones were a thing.
3. We already have a ton of information on the phone to know when we’re in a vehicle, how fast we’re moving, direction, so on.
4. Try adding something to the static screen so it moves in tandem with you and thus reduce the cause of motion sickness.
5. Get the people who get sick to try it out.
If anything, I’m surprised it took a decade and a half to come up with it.
Why it isn't likely to have happened before: trying is only easy for a developer who is not only very familiar with the API for reading those motion sensors but also with the API for system wide overlay. This a strict no for your run of the mill to-do list app. Combine that with the requirement of being affected themselves (or someone close), having the idea, having the time to try and no competing side quests that take up all attention. And the requirement of when the experiment was successful, having the kind of access that actually serves as a conduit for ideas not only on paper to someone in the position to make it a product. That's a lot of stars that need to align. Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle: would still need someone in the know to try it, but chances are that knowledge combined with a bit of prompting could be a path to PoC implementation that could clear effort thresholds that would stand in the way of conventional coding.
> Personally I wouldn't even be surprised if there was an LLM angle
I would bet money there wasn’t. The feature was introduced in early 2024, meaning it has to be thought about, developed, and tested before that.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/05/apple-announces-new-a...
This would have saved me a lot of grief during a recent road trip through some mountains.
https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-motion-setti...
I wish my Pixel 9 had it but I guess it hasn't trickled down yet. I think it's in the latest Android on latest Pixel devices though.
Apple whole idea to UX seems to be "Mostly hidden by default, let people trigger it accidentally to learn about it, or reading about it somewhere else" as even after having my iPhone 12 Mini for so long, I still "discover" new things every now and then that nothing or no one told me about.
Like how are people supposed to "discover" the whole "shake the phone to undo" shortcut unless they accidentally trigger that? I see nothing in the UI that indicates when this is possible either, some apps use that for reporting feedback instead.
Things that are "hidden" are just discoveries waiting to happen for those that look. For those that need their hands held and guided through the world, those things might stay "hidden". Just as you feel irked that things are hidden, I feel irked by people that don't go looking. Push all the buttons. Turn all the knobs. Click all the things.
You don't need to wait. You can get apps that do the same thing on Android.
I wonder if any other laptops have IMUs that can be used to implement this on Linux/Windows
Eventually I will try the open source offerings.
https://f-droid.org/packages/dev.davidv.motionsickness
Changing the color / adding some contrast would be quite a simple change
Not enough experience yet to say for sure whether they work, but the dots look so cool that I will keep it on regardless.
Sharing this here in case anyone wants to check out the discussion there and see how it looks in the Verge's short review.
It wasn't well explained what it was for though, I discovered it while messing with the settings and thought it was just a cool random feature to visualize motion. I'm just now learning it's for motion sickness.
But the beauty and pain of Android is every brand having slightly different UI. This might well be a manufacturer-specific feature. Or maybe it's a common Android thing that some brands just expose better than others
The you can use Command+Option+Plus and Command+Option+Minus to zoom the entire screen.
It’s a great way to zoom in on anything regardless of whether an app supports it or not. Sometimes I help family members remotely and look through a bad camera at a document on their side, and applying this zoom makes the difference between being able to decipher the content and not.
Somehow managed to fool it the other day by shutting a car trunk, helping someone load up, with me on the outside. It activated the dots for the rest of my walk afterwards, when I was using the phone.
I get the impression there are much more sophisticated signals and classification methods to determine whether someone is in a vehicle or not, beyond the accelerometers.
I'd be curious what happens when you are in a vehicle that drives completely steady (no turns/acceleration/deceleration) - would it eventually turn off? I guess you wouldn't get motion sick in that case either way.
Also, Lind is the brand you're likely to find sold alongside an ex-public-safety Toughbook. Since these were my first serious car computers, that's just how the majority of my mobile computing looked for a decade or more.
However, Toughbooks encased their HDD's in gel, and had been doing so since long before the advent of MEMS accelerometers, so they didn't jump on the HDAPS innovation along with IBM.
I guess they're moving in the opposite direction of the turn to force the perception of turning.
I find it acts a little like being able to see the cursor on a desktop or laptop; it provides a little bit of immediate feedback that the system recognized your intent, and helps make it clear whether it's the OS or just the app when things are getting laggy.
Under "Audio & Visual", "background sounds" is a built-in 'white noise' generator and can be useful for relaxing / sleeping. You wouldn't want to leave it on all the time, of course.
Under "Touch": "Back Touch" lets you map a double/triple tap on the back of the phone to various actions.
There's a lot of other neat features in iOS Accessibility (eye-tracking control! automatic captions! sound recognition!) and I'd encourage you to poke around to see what's available.
Similarly, on MacOS I use the Zoom feature (Command Key + mouse scroll) to pixel peep when doing graphical work.
Do you think everyone gets motion sickness?
iPhone 12 Pro (26.5.2)
And yet, apparently it was.
It's not perfect, but the dots help me to go from instantly feeling sick to lasting 30-40 minutes before I have to stop looking at the screen.
I never get nauseous looking at my phone in an Uber anymore. My wife can barely handle looking at a screen in a car and this feature allows her to work with no issue.
Doing well as it quietly is coming up with helpful product updates like this which are buried in support docs and limited splash.
I kind of prefer this more quiet usage of application of AI.