World News for Students of English

14-05-2015 15:00

Early adopters of the Apple Watch who are also bearers of tattoos are complaining that a number of its key functions are disrupted by their ink. Tattooed owners of the new gadget have found that their inked skin confuses the sensors on the underside of the device. Users of the watch, which went on sale last week, took to social media on Thursday under the hashtag “tattoogate,” voicing their frustration with the flaw.

One anonymous user on website Reddit said the device’s locking mechanism which should disengage when the watch detects it’s being worn, failed to work on tattooed skin. The user wrote, “My hand isn’t tattooed and the watch stayed unlocked. Once I put it back on the area that is tattooed with black ink, the watch would automatically lock again.”

An Apple support article says the watch uses green LED lights paired with light-sensitive photo diodes to detect the amount of blood flowing through the wrist and calculate the frequency of heart beats. A website support page from the company also says that tattoos can interfere with readings from the heartrate monitor but does not mention interference with other functions.

Difficult words: bearer (someone who wears something), disrupt (to stop something), ink (a tattoo), gadget (an electronic thing), hashtag (the symbol # that people use to find information on something), -gate (things that end in “gate” are embarrassing for someone – this is based on an American political event in the 1970s), disengnage (to open or to stop working), detect (to sense), flaw (a problem), diode (a small electronic piece), interfere (to stop something from happening).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com