Force-Refresh Data on iOS Health App

I use the iOS Health app on my iPhone from time to time to review my walking + running distances. I've written in the past about distance tracking accuracy here and about a strange issue here. I also want to highlight that I find it inconvenient at times when I launch the Health app, only to find that it has yet to update walking + running distances from the past several hours. Example:

      

In the screenshot on the left, notice that the time is 5:27 PM and that no walking or running activity has been registered since 7:00 AM. At this time, the total distance is 0.59 miles. Tapping on "Show All Data" yields the screenshot in the middle, and it shows that the total distance for the day is actually 5 miles. Tapping on "Back" takes us back to the original Walking + Running Distance screen which now displays recorded distances from 8:00 AM to 5:27 PM, including the 5 total miles spread throughout the day.

This issue has occurred on my iPhone for the past several months, and only recently did I discover that navigating to the "Show All Data" screen forces a refresh. Maybe this is a bug that can be fixed in a future release.

Inconceivably Regular Activity

The Apple iOS Health app on my phone (iPhone 6 Plus, iOS 12.0.1) suits my simple needs. It tracks my walking + running distance and lets me view my activity data in increments of days, weeks, months, and even years. Since I don't use any GPS-enabled apps to accurately track my distances, I've compared known running distances against Apple Health and have found it to be fairly accurate. However, something strange happened the other day. I noticed that Health was registering just under 0.2 miles/hour for every hour of the day:

      

On October 24 (left image), the Health app correctly logged the distances that I logged at 7 AM and 8 AM as I walked my child to school and walked back home. Then at 4 PM, it began recording distances of just under 0.2 miles/hour for the remainder of the day. This continued for all 24 hours of October 25 (center image) and lasted until 9 AM on October 26 (right image).

Obviously I did not really perform that activity at such a regular pace for 42 straight hours. I also did not place the phone on a vibrating surface or any other surface that was in motion for that time frame. In fact, I had a pretty normal routine where I left the phone on my desk while working and picked it up only to make phone calls, use mobile apps, or when leaving home.

The total distance of 4.5 miles on October 25 is a little on the low side since I walked my child to school (round trip of 1.75 miles) and ran/walked 3.75 miles (my usual route) which adds up to 5.5 miles, so maybe the app was simply not recognizing movement correctly for that 42-hour timespan. That being said, I suppose this could be within the margin of error of distance tracking without a GPS. Thinking about possible data corruption issues, I don't recall my iPhone crashing or being dropped during that time, nor had I experienced an unexpected shutdown due to complete battery drainage.

So I'm not quite sure what happened, but in the last 48+ hours (it's now October 28), the app appears to have returned to normal activity tracking. If you've seen this sort of strangely consistent recorded activity on your iOS Health app or even know why this is happening, let me know.

Selficide

A recent study explores the causes of selfie-related deaths and the distribution of deaths across age, gender, and country. Here are the tables figures:

Selfie-related deaths have become so common that "selficide" has been suggested as a new word to be added to the English dictionary.

While less specifically related to death, the 10th version of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) includes Y93.C2 which represents, "Activity, hand held interactive electronic device" and is written about in this blog.



Have fun taking selfies, and remember to be safe.

Presidential and Non-presidential Text Alerts

Yesterday I was in the San Antonio International Airport when suddenly I heard the sound of a loud alert resonate throughout the airport. I didn't realize it at the time, but my phone was producing the sound in concert with hundreds of other phones. This was the reason why:



According to an announcement from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a nationwide test of the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) and Emergency Alert System was scheduled for yesterday afternoon. The announcement says, "The WEA system is used to warn the public about dangerous weather, missing children, and other critical situations through alerts on cell phones."

I wonder why this was called a "Presidential Alert" and am guessing that it has to do with our president compensating for his feelings of inadequacy related to relief efforts in Puerto Rico following Hurricane Maria. It would have been more appropriate to call it a "National Alert" or something similar.

Anyway, did you know that in addition to these national alerting systems, there are local emergency alerting programs too? If you live in Los Angeles, here are a couple that might be of interest:

Alert LA County: https://www.lacounty.gov/emergency/alert-la/
NotifyLA: http://emergency.lacity.org/notifyla

There are local alerting programs in other metropolitan areas too. Try searching Google for "text alert [city]" to learn more. Stay safe and be alert! After all, the world needs more lerts (rimshot).

How NOT to Update macOS (BONUS: How to Start Up in Safe Mode)

I perform routine maintenance on my parents' iMacs when I visit them. Yesterday I noticed that on one iMac running macOS High Sierra 10.13.4, an update to 10.13.5 had been downloaded and was waiting to be installed. In the "old days" of Mac OS X, it was often recommended to repair disk permissions before installing operating system updates or upgrading to a new operating system. That option appears to be no longer recommended nowadays, but I've still gotten into the habit of doing "spring cleaning" before updating an operating system. Since I was using CleanMyMac 3 to uninstall some old applications at the time, I decided to use the "Smart Cleanup" option to more thoroughly clean the iMac by deleting system junk, photo junk, iTunes junk, etc. Everything went fine, the iMac was as clean as a whistle, and I decided it was a good time to update the operating system.

When launching the App Store and electing to update the operating system, it immediately prompted me to restart the computer since it had previously downloaded the installer (possibly a month ago or more, based on its availability as of June 1, 2018). Having updated macOS many times before, I knew it could take a while to install, so I restarted and came back about an hour later to find a disturbing "macOS could not be installed on your computer" error. It went on to say something about being unable to locate a resource--I pressed command-shift-3 to take a screenshot, but I found out later that the screenshot was not saved (since the Finder was not running), so I don't remember the exact wording. I did successfully save the installer log, but it did not appear to have the same language as what I saw on the screen, which looked similar to, but possibly not exactly like, this screenshot (image grabbed from this site):



In any case, my only option at that point was to restart the computer. Restarting the iMac simply resulted in an infinite loop with the installer generating the "macOS could not be installed on your computer" error minutes later and then prompting me to restart. I noticed that the internet connection was down, so I was hoping that the installer was trying to download something and wasn't able to establish a connection to do so. I rebooted the router and got the internet connection working again, as verified on another device. Still no luck--rebooting kept resulting in the same error and providing no recourse but to restart.

I nearly crapped in my pants.

Did I brick the computer? Would I have to reinstall the operating system from a DVD or flash drive? Worse yet, would I have to service the iMac from a "professional" and drain half the money out of my savings account? Then I decided to reach into my bag of tricks by restarting in safe mode to see if I could bypass the macOS installer. This is done by holding the shift key while restarting. I was able to launch macOS 10.13.4 and get to the Finder. Bingo! From there, I opened the App Store and checked for updates. It said that a software update to 10.13.5 was available. Hooray! I clicked the "update" button and waited anxiously as it downloaded the 2.12 GB installer.



After restarting the machine, the macOS installer seemed to be working correctly, and a little less than an hour later, the machine rebooted into a working installation of macOS High Sierra 10.13.5.

Craptastrophe avoided.

Reflecting on this experience, I have 2 recommendations to share:

1. Install OS updates as soon as possible after downloading them. Specifically, in this case I wonder if cleaning up "system junk" with Clean My Mac might have stripped away resources from the mac OS installer which prevented the installer from functioning properly. I can't say for sure that this was the problem, nor will I ever attempt to reproduce the issue, but that's my best guess as to why the macOS installer failed. Downloading and immediately installing a macOS update is probably a safer thing to do in general.
2. Learn how to start up your Mac in safe mode. It could save your skin, as it did mine. Even if you can't completely resolve the issue in safe mode, the ability to launch the Finder will at least enable you to grab a copy of important files from your hard drive.

I hope you've benefited from this. Happy macOS updating!

The Answer is 10.5

In recent days (maybe weeks?) I've noticed that my macOS High Sierra 10.13.5 calculator widget in the Notification Center has been defaulting to a value of 10.5:

If I clear the value, it will display 0. If I perform a calculation, it will correctly display the result. However, once I close and re-open the Notification Center, the calculator widget will display a value of 10.5.

Do you think my iMac is trying to tell me something? Will Los Angeles County sales tax increase to 10.5%? Should I use the numbers 10 and 5 next time I play the lottery? Will the world end on October 5?

Expedia Price Match Promise

I recently purchased 3 plane tickets through Expedia for a total price of $877.20. During the checkout process, I was given the option to purchase a Price Match Promise for $5 per ticket ($15 for all 3 tickets) which, according to the program rules, would result in a refund being issued for the difference if the price were to drop below my purchase price between the purchase date and the date of travel. I decided to purchase the Price Match Promise, and I did in fact qualify for a refund:



A couple of things to point out… First, the Price Match Promise relies on the user to manually check for price updates. There is no automated process for Expedia to check on the purchaser’s behalf. After all, why should they make any efforts to refund any of your money?

Second, I started wondering when my airplane ticket price would reach its nadir before climbing in the week or two before the flight. Here’s a chart that shows the dates and prices:



In summary, the nadir of $793.20 occurred on Tuesday, May 22, 2018 which was 25 days before my flight. The prices rose in the last 2 weeks before my flight, and another sharp increase occurred 3 days before departure.

I’m sure that many people have performed more comprehensive analyses of ticket prices relative to departure dates and have stratified results by domestic vs. international travel, one way vs. round trip, day of the week of departure, and other factors. However, this was my personal experience. I hope it helps someone decide whether or not to invest $5/ticket on Expedia’s Price Match Promise.