Owners of the FreeStyle Libre 3, one of Abbott Laboratories’ flagship glucose monitors, received an email this week warning them to “disable automatic system updates on your iPhone” because the new operating system’s StandBy Mode and Assistive Access Mode “may impact your ability to receive time-sensitive notifications including glucose alarms and notifications indicating that alarms are unavailable.”
“Key Steps to Optimize your FreeStyle Libre System on iOS 17,” the email reads. “While our teams are working quickly to verify and confirm compatibility, we recommend that you disable automatic operating system updates on the smartphone using the mentioned apps. Please check the compatibility guide on myfreestyle.com before the new operating system is installed.”
Abbott is telling customers who have already upgraded to disable StandBy Mode, which activates the iPhone’s Lock Screen while it’s charging and placed on its side. They are also being advised to turn off “Assistive Access” mode, an accessibility mode for people with disabilities. Abbott says that this mode “will impact your ability to activate a sensor, modify your alarm settings, or receive glucose alarm notifications from our apps.”
Abbott writes on its website that failure to take action when users get an alarm, or failure to use the device “as instructed in labeling may result in missing a severe low or high glucose event and/or making a treatment decision, resulting in injury.”
iOS is way worse when it comes to support for things like this. IOS started super restrictive and slowly allowed for slightly more background app support, but anything off the beaten path of “open app, view stuff, leave app” is not well supported on iOS.
Android would historically allow apps to do whatever the fuck they wanted, but in the past like 6 years started adding restrictions, and then started adding some mechanisms for users to allow exceptions.
It’s very unsurprising for Android to support these cases better, but they’re honestly both getting worse, because “battery optimization”, and it really hurts “off the beaten path” applications.
Well I mean you can disable battery optimizations easily on Pixel. Not really Google’s fault for what other OEMs do.
In fact, apps that require running in the background will ask if they can disable battery optimization on first launch, and all you have to do is tap “yes”.
https://dontkillmyapp.com/
Yeah, that’s kind of my point.
On the other hand, as mentioned above, including that request is regulated by Google Play and it will trigger a manual review process. It’s possible, yes. And Google is upfront about it.
But it’s still just removing app specific battery policies. It doesn’t stop the device from sleeping itself etc. Disabling these battery optimizations drastically expands where, when, and how often you can run. But it’s not as open ended as Android was 10 years ago. Many of the APIs and system behaviors have changed since then. This gets you like halfway back though. But still only halfway.
On the other hand, iOS is super restrictive and a massive pain in the ass. It’s not surprising the OP mentions Android supporting these cases better.
Google are pretty strict about background operating these days… you don’t get on the play store with that permission without a manual review and they want a evidence that it’s necessary. OTOH they’re upfront about it - you can get the review during the open testing stage, and it’s valid for all versions.
Apple wait until you try to release, reject the app then ask for justification, which delays release and is a general PITA (although I find the apple system pretty much a test of patience anyway… it all depends who you get, and whether they actually read any of the notes you give them).