Apple: Relax, fanbois! We never meant to read your heart rate during wild wrist action

Apple – having tweaked how its Watch monitors a customer's heart rate – has been forced to explain the change, after fitness freaks freaked out about the gizmo's irregular tracking function.

On Saturday, in an update on its support page, the iThing maker explained that Apple's wristjob "attempts to measure your heart rate every 10 minutes, but won't record it when you're in motion or your arm is moving."

A cached version of the same page, dated 29 April, had told fanbois that the Watch "measures your heart rate every 10 minutes and stores it in the Health app."

However, as noted by 9to5Mac, Apple's update to the Watch software had alarmed some folk, who suddenly spotted that fewer records of their heart rate were being stored on the device.

Some fanbois suggested that Apple was grappling with a glitch. Not so, apparently. Yup, it's a feature, not a bug ...

Cupertino has now confirmed that, if you're flapping around, the Watch – under its default mode – will ignore your heart rate until you sit still for at least 10 minutes.

Apple added that functions such as Glance and the Workout app allow gym bunnies, for example, to check their heart rate at any time on the device. ®