Apple iOS 17 new features cause embarrassment, fireworks special effects appear in remote diagnosis and treatment video

CTOnews.com, Oct. 15 (Xinhua)-- SimplePractice, a telemedicine platform, recently warned patients that Apple's "respond by gesture" feature in video calls could cause people to inadvertently emit heart-shaped expressions or virtual fireworks during telemedicine video calls, causing embarrassment.

According to a Matt Haughey post on Mastodon, a friend of his gave a thumbs up to a therapist's question during a video consultation with a therapist, resulting in a fireworks effect on the screen. SimplePractice informed patients that Apple devices "may display emoticons in video calls" and that SimplePractice cannot control these settings. SimplePractice provides guidance on how to turn off this feature on iOS and macOS.

CTOnews.com notes that this feature is a new feature of iOS 17 and macOS Sonoma, and when the feature is enabled (enabled by default), users can use gestures to display certain expressions and animations. For example, making a heart will add a heart-shaped expression, while the thumbs up of your hands will show virtual fireworks, and there are eight responses that can be activated by gestures.

In general, this feature is very interesting. But in some cases (for example, video therapy conversations or important litigation calls), it is a bit out of place. These special effects responses use relatively common gestures, such as a single thumb, inverted thumb and two peace gestures, so they are more likely to be accidentally activated. And because these responses are enabled by default, people may trigger them without knowing it.