Sometimes your Apple Watch fails, and per Steven Spielberg’s example you just have to throw it

We have all experienced those moments when our tech fails us, and we just want to throw it. It turns out that Steven Spielberg, the prestigious director behind Jurassic Park, Jaws, and West Side Story, is just like the rest of us, as that’s exactly what he did over the weekend when his Apple Watch mistakenly thought he had fallen.

On Saturday, Steven Spielberg was speaking at the Tribeca Festival in celebration of the 50th anniversary of his film, The Sugarland Express. During his talk, according to Variety, his Apple Watch had something to say.

Lexi Carson at Variety:

Apple, or at least its technology, was worried about the health and well-being of Hollywood’s greatest director. In the middle of Steven Spielberg‘s Tribeca Festival talk on Saturday, where the filmmaker was celebrating the 50th anniversary of his debut feature, “The Sugarland Express,” he was interrupted by his Apple watch with a message that read “It looks like you’ve taken a hard fall.” Spielberg jokingly said “I’m not going to press the SOS [button]” before throwing it on the ground. “I’ll pick it up later,” he said, only to retrieve it a few minutes later when it started issuing some sort of distress signal.

What’s funny is that Spielberg throwing it on the ground may have inadvertently made the problem worse, as the distress signal that was emitted may have been caused by the extra impact felt from being tossed.

The Apple Watch has absolutely saved lives with its health features, but both it and the iPhone have also certainly had a lot of occasions like this one. A health or safety feature is triggered accidentally, at an inopportune moment, and it’s not great.

Have you ever had a funny or not-so-funny false trigger of an Apple Watch feature? How did you respond? Let us know in the comments.