Competition by Apple and Google in these areas will imo always be a bit asymmetrical as long as Apple makes its money off of selling luxury products and services while Google instead makes its money off of advertisers or data.
I mean... at what point does something become a luxury product? What does it mean to be a luxury product? I see homeless people with iPhones, people put Apple watches on payment plans.
I agree with your point about Google and ads, but I feel like this meme of Apple being a luxury product is slowly just not making sense to me.
Yeah, I don't really buy the "luxury product" label either, but I suppose everything is relative. All the major brands of smartphones have offerings at similar price points to the iPhone lineup. And in the United States, iPhones have around 50% of the smartphone market share.
The same largely applies to Apple's other product lines too, which the exception that they simply don't attempt to compete in the bottom-dollar markets for laptops or desktop PCs. So I would definitely say that Apple doesn't make junk for the race-to-the-bottom market, but I'm hesitant to call them a luxury brand.
Thanks. I certainly think it’s a luxury product in certain markets, but not in the US. I’ve had others say it’s a status symbol or luxury product and I’m always thinking... a Ferrari is a luxury product. Moet and Chandon is a luxury product... but an iPhone that 50% of Americans have?
It's the only reason why its perceived value is so high in the US, and later gets carried to other foreign markets (like China). Apple is this single entity that creates these products that run this unique OS alone, while Android manufacturers are a dime a dozen - too visible. If I don't get the latest Samsung, I don't mind because I'll just go ahead and buy the latest OnePlus or Huawei or something. But I have nowhere to go if Apple stores run out of the iPhone, and if I'm really bought into the whole design oo-la-lah shtick, I'll just camp outside the Apple store (aside: I have seen fewer campers with each passing year).
Ferrari is a luxury product because every engine made is a machining masterpiece largely created by hand. Most and Chandon is a luxury product because it takes a good year and tons of time to perfect that taste. Apple fans may have had something to boast about with the design quality during the Steve Jobs years, but right now, there's little to boast about their mass-produced devices made by underpaid workers in a Chinese/Vietnamese/Indian factory, so they generate artificial oomph over things like the fonts or the app store or whatever. As a Tesla owner, I've seen the same kind of behavior from other Tesla owners, although I find Tesla to be a relatively flawed product compared to other cars such as a Porsche or an Audi.
Honestly, I suspect that if Jobs were alive right now, he wouldn't be really happy with today's Apple. Out of the nearly a decade since he's passed, the only thing that was really revolutionary on Apple's part were the Airbuds. And with Jony gone, I suspect there's going to be less of that too.
I would say products where the product price is high, the social status of using the product is high, and the profit margin of the product is high. You could add some other details, but I generally think of those things when I use that term. With that said, it's true the term is a bit overused for a company like Apple. But regardless of the labeling, I think customers of Apple fitness devices will, on average, be happier than customers of Google fitness devices for the aforementioned reason.
To me what makes the AW a luxury product is its something that absolutely no one needs (Except maybe old people). For almost all people buying it, its just a nice to have thing that makes things you could do before a little easier/better.
For me I really enjoy using it for walking directions in the city. Yes I could use my phone but this lets me walk more naturally without looking like a phone zombie.
A completely unresearched wild-assed guess: and order of magnitude fewer. But they're nuts, and they are loyal repeat customers and evangelists for the platform.
After getting 2 hand me downs from a friend who upgraded, my partner sprung for a new one. Killer features for her: battery life of a week instead of a day and good backcountry navigation.
Garmin connect does exercise challenges too, so there's a social aspect as well.
Probably somewhere in between? So maybe an order of magnitude and a half fewer? But yeah, the charger thing is real. Her new Garmin uses this weird housed pogo pin connector for charging. The last one used a cradle that hugged the back of the watch; no idea what the electrical connection is.
I can only assume there's a good reason for the non-standard connector, and that it probably involves waterproofing?
The Garmin Fenix is waterproof. I swim with it, I find it really great. I can even operate the watch in the water since it's not a touchscreen. And it would be worth the price just for having an ultra-compact GPS navigation unit for hiking. (It can run turn-by-turn navigation for 2-3 days, in the default low-power mode it can last 3 weeks with heart rate + step tracking + other basic metrics.)
The software is pretty good actually. Have a Galaxy Active2, two day battery life, good health sensors, and I find the interface incredible easy to use (after one or two day of adaptation). The fact that it is round is a plus for me too (it looks like a watch if you turn Always on screen, though I use it off in mine).
I don't know about the SDK though, but it does seem to have some apps (not that I use many of them).
I have had a Samsung smartwatch for 5 years now and have been very satisfied. I'm not a big user of health functions, but sleep tracking, being able to see messages quickly without having to reach for my phone, and having an alarm on my wrist that is guaranteed to wake me up are the 3 biggest benefits. I also prefer a round watch face, it give a more classic feel. I feel a rectangular watch face shouts "I'm a smartwatch user!" a bit too much.
For me at least, a round watch face blends better, and it's harder to tell whether it is a smartwatch or not out of the corner of your eye without specifically checking the face of the watch. For square watches, I can pretty much tell it's a smartwatch, starting from the Pebble days.
The Apple watch is only an option to iphone users. Since the majority of phone users do not have an iphone it means that the majority of people can not use an Apple watch.
The only killer feature that's still missing for me would be alarm clock tracking sleep phases and waking me up when it's most appropriate. I'll buy Apple Watch instantly. I've used iPhone apps but they're rather limited, but I really liked what they did even with that limitation.
After 5 years, I still have to peck at buttons on my watch to pause/unpause workouts or switch songs when I bet you some slap gestures could do the trick
why don't you talk to your watch? That's what I do. I don't find the voice interface that useful on the phone (and completely disabled it on my iPad and Mac -- ugh). But on the watch it makes a lot of sense.
I guess I just don't tweak things much while doing stuff. I only know of one gesture of the kind you mention: cover the watch face with your palm to silence an alarm or incoming call.
Do you see antitrust action rising with regards to the health data implications that smartwatches like the Apple Watch bring? In the EU already, we're seeing heavy probes on Fitbit:
I don’t get it. Monopoly doesn’t mean just a market that one product is clearly superior to the competitors. Monopoly is a market which has either natural or artificial barriers which preclude competition.
What’s the natural or artificial barrier to entry in the fitness wearable market? It seems highly competitive to me.
The natural/artificial barrier is the data silo created by the fitness tracking. Monopoly isn't necessarily the right word, but it is rather frustrating that all these smartwatches by default beam all of your biometrics into a non-hippa-compliant datastore, and that these datastores don't interoperate.
It's really tricky because right now Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, and the others are all basically financing their data portals through device sales. Which makes sense because I wouldn't have paid a subscription for it before I bought the watch, but now that I have the watch (Garmin) it is an invaluable service. But it seems wrong that the watch manufacturer owns the data - I would like a data storage company with strong privacy guarantees and strong analytics. But I'm not sure I trust any of these companies, it seems like they're all trying to figure out how to monetize my data by selling analytics to third-parties. (Even Apple.)
The user data is valuable, it could even create some degree of individual user lock-in. Lock-in becomes barrier to entry as the market becomes saturated. I’m not sure how many people feel that strongly about keeping long-term historical fitness data.
If the data creates powerful network effects in a way that results in a winner-take-all effect then in theory a monopoly could emerge even before market saturation. Is there a strong case for that?
App developers will want to create apps for devices that are popular, so that is an effect. Eventually enough apps could potentially create a barrier to entry, if “volume of apps” is the buying criteria.
But often the volume of apps is pretty irrelevant. Show a user a compelling experience with 10 mind-blowing apps and you can still compete against an App Store filled largely with trash.
In the end it’s a couple hundred dollar device you put on your wrist. There may be extremely compelling products that have large market share, but I’m just not seeing how that can become a monopoly.
I will get one as soon as an iPhone is not required. I know they now have a "family" option, but it is still quite limited. I would love to be able to use my iPad Pro (with active data sim) for this. There is no technical reason for me not being able to do this. I am never going to switch to an iPhone, so it's on them. If they want to expand their market, this is an easy one for them.
I like being able to open a shell on my phone. (Yes, I know there are some limited options to do this on an iPhone that don't involve jail breaking. They all involve emulation and have limits to their usefulness.) I like running an FTP server on my phone. When combined with wireless tethering, it's the only way to get data directly from a phone onto a government laptop. There are plenty of hackerish/security apps I use that are simply unavailable on the iPhone. Sharing data between apps is now at least possible on an iPhone, but it's still very cumbersome. I understand the need for security, but it comes at a cost to performance or usability.
This is not an ideological issue. Everyone else in my family has iPhones, and I use my iPad all the time. It's just a personal choice that is driven by my use cases for a phone.
I've always had Android so am well used to it. They seem cheaper, more open, more colorful, faster to type. My wife's iphone drives me nuts. I dont understand why they're so popular.
I just switched from android after using it for the last 10 years. Largely I find them to be the same, the few things that really bother me is the lack of a back button and the lack of having photos sorted in the gallery. Its stupid how my camera photos get mixed in with memes saved off the internet.
But the main reason by far I picked an iphone this time is Apple is not an advertising company and therefore doesn't have to disrespect my privacy. Its always comforting to open a page on an apple app and see a very plain text explanation of exactly what data the app stores, how it is always kept locally and if shared, apple only requests the bare minimum rights to provide the feature you are using.
And then you look at a Google ToS that says "We can and will do whatever we want"
Yeah, agreed about the not-an-ad-company thing. Another selling point for Apple is their phones are supported for like 5 years of full OS updates, which is much longer than any Android phone.
I also just switched away from Android this summer, which I've been using since the very first days of smartphones. I had an iPhone 4S mixed in there for ~6mo when I broke my android and a friend let me have their old iPhone.
Now I'm on the new iPhone SE, entirely because I lost trust in Google. I had been worried about Google for a while, but it all kicked off when a new job last year gave me a MacBook, and I realized that Apple things weren't actually as bad as I thought they were. The laptop was a little more expensive than a comparable linux laptop, but I liked a lot of things about it too.
Ended up cutting out Google entirely, and couldn't be happier. Definitely makes me excited to talk about how I took back my privacy, even though it's still a bit weird paying the "actual cost" of web services rather than getting them for "free".
There's something sticky about mobile operating systems.
When I get on a Windows or Linux machine (assuming the latter isn't too... special), there are always a few things which trip me up. But a keyboard is a keyboard, same with mice and trackpads or whatever; I can get around, remind myself to hit control instead of command, use a few less shortcuts, get stuff done.
But when I use an Android device I'm just... lost. Nothing works the way I expect, I don't like it and I don't want to learn. I can't even type on the damn things.
None of that is Android's fault, it's because in the first case, the muscle memory is the input device, in the second case, the muscle memory is the operating system.
Long Term support. Once I buy a phone (second hand, 1 year old) I don’t have to think about getting another one for at least 3 years since Apple will support it for at least that period.
Cost - I normally get last years model second hand for £400-600. Generally I end up approx £100-£200/year when averaged over the remaining support period with a £100-£200 resale value at the end, beating all decent androids in price too.
Consistently - My phone is a tool. I need it to get out of my way. I can’t be dealing with learning a new text message apps quirks every 2 weeks (Allo, Hangouts etc).
Privacy - Apple, at least at the moment every move Apple makes seems to be in the opposite direction than most of its competitors. The illusion of some androids being cheaper is shattered when you consider that you are being sold too.
I still have an iPhone because I'm a prisoner of their ecosystem, but I wish I could get that new surface duo. I read a lot with my phone and that phone seems like the future to me.
But who likes the design? In my view, Apple tried to cater to the desires of both men and women simultaneously, and ended up with a sex-less watch that looks like it was designed by a committee.
For many, a watch is a fashion accessory. Thus, a watch that fits their style is important. If their fashion style identifies strongly with a particular sex, then a watch that clashes with that style would be less appealing.
From what I have seen in the watch scene, a rolex is the equivalent of driving an enormous 4wd, its compensating for insecurity or to show off more than appreciation for watches.
Someone who actually likes watches is more likely to go with something premium from Seiko or Tag Heuer
There are other smart watches on the market and they don't seem to have a fraction of the users as the AW. Android Wear tries to look more like a normal watch but it ends up not looking as nice as a normal watch and not working well as a smart watch due to the round screen.
When you can choose the watch face and change out the band, it's not so much designed by committee as providing options. The watch itself is just a roundish square of metal and glass. Not a bad design for those who are buying it!
It's gotten a lot better since the Series 4 rounded corners, and the bands are excellent. Reception seems mixed with the watch faces that mimic traditional ones.
upvoting because this thread needs a convo on the design. I thought it was weird, but now I have one and I started to like it. I think Apple did right here in choosing one design and sticking to it through generations. My guess is that they will never deprecate this design, so that it becomes an accepted watch design, but instead will introduce a new competing design for the 10y birthday of the Apple watch.
...I don't hate it. I'm glad it's not a glass brick on my wrist wearing lipstick, and what else could it be, really?
To my eye, round smartwatches that are all screen look fake, but my Mom has one and loves it. I had a Withings Steel and it looks way better, but it just doesn't do much, and the dealbreaker for me was that the heart rate monitor was seriously inaccurate, probably a compromise for the battery, which lasts weeks.
I haven’t ever been too keen on smartwatches and never really tried anything beyond a Fitbit. I recently ordered a Series 6 and I’m absolutely loving it.
I can positively say this device on my wrist is the best thing I’ve done for my health. The multitude of sensors are great, sure, but the real magic is how the watch motivates you. Closing rings is like crack. It makes me want to leave the bed and go for a quick run or cycle at 11PM.
Having a cellular connection is fantastic and on occasion even lets me leave my phone behind. Coupled with their usually reliable software, I can 100% see why Apple’s approaching 100M Apple Watch users.
I've never owned a smartwatch, but I can't think of another device that completely distracts users and breaks focus away from in-person conversations quite like these do. Maybe I just notice it more than folks that just use phones, but every time I'm talking to someone who checks their watch while we're talking reinforces my decision not to purchase one.
Sometimes I feel like I've teleported from another decade or something when complaining about the lack of digital etiquette in our society, but there's just no way I can justify buying another notification factory.
Just wait until smart glasses finally take off! At least people can ignore their smart watches, it'll be hard to ignore a flashing icon in your field of view.
Philosophically, it's kinda hard to envision material gains in quality-of-life without major consequences with these kinds of technologies. They largely exist to take us out of our physical, in-person interactions because there's something more important to look at/respond to/whatever on the screen. Stuff like the Apple Watch and smart glasses definitely give me Black Mirror vibes a whole lot quicker than mobile technology ever did, but then again, Black Mirror came out after mobile had already largely taken off.
By tuning my Apple Watch notifications, I now only get the most important interruptions on it, and I can almost always tell what it is by the haptics.
So my phone can buzz and beep all it wants, I can ignore it. My watch can buzz and depending on what’s going on around me, I can sneak a peek or disregard it.
Furthermore, the watch is incapable of subsuming my attention like the phone. On a phone I have all of my usual distractions. My watch is too small to take me away from the people I’m with (as if that’s anything to worry about this year, sadly).
The watch has liberated me from distractions when I’m among people. If the people you’re interacting with are being distracted, that’s their failing, not the watch’s.
Yeah, this was my experience as well. My phone was pretty distracting, but I was really able to cut down on the notifications I got on the watch and they were only the important ones, so now I'm more engaged than I was previously.
Hmm. I'm a little older, it was engrained in me that looking at your watch when you're talking to someone is a clear and pretty rude signal that they're boring you, wasting your time, and that in general you'd like the conversation to be done.
Like if I so much as glanced at my watch while talking to someone, I'd immediately say sorry and explain why I have to keep track of time.
Having a smart watch has changed this in one way, which is if someone starts blowing up my notifications I'll say "sorry let me fix that" and turn it to silent.
I don't have a good fix for conveying this etiquette to people who never got the message, but I'm with you: that's rude, people need to stop doing it.
No need to blame the device though. I'm with everyone else who says that the notifications are way less distracting than they would be on a phone.
> The multitude of sensors are great, sure, but the real magic is how the watch motivates you. Closing rings is like crack.
I second that. I have had my Series 4 for 514 days. I currently have a 514 day Move streak and 72 perfect weeks (All Activity).
My one major complaint would be exercise minutes during outdoor walks. I will sometimes do, say, a 40 minute walk and only get 32 minutes of exercise credit. It will be giving me one minute per minute of walking for say 25 minutes, then go 8 minutes with no credit, then give me one for one for the remaining 7 minutes of the walk.
I'm frequently checking heart rate and pace during all this, and the 8 minutes of no credit portion matches the rest of the walk on both of those. Checking the map of the walk afterwards, where it color codes sections where your pace was above or below average shows no slowdowns during where it drops minutes. Checking the detailed heart rate data afterwards in case there were slowdowns that I just didn't notice during the walk shows that there were none.
I wish they would add an "explain exercise minutes" option that would look at a workout and tell you why you didn't get credit for some minutes.
Yeah this literally just happened to me this morning hence the usually reliable comment on the software. Took a bit of Googling to figure out what the Watch considers as exercise: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8287317
I have been really happy with the Garmin Fenix. It has an "exercise load" feature which I've found a lot more useful than "exercise minutes" (which Garmin also collects.) Exercise load uses some sort of a dynamic scale that weights time based on how long you spend in the heavier heart rate zones. Walking on level ground pretty much never counts for "exercise load" since my HR stays under 130, but hills/running/biking can get up to 140+ where I get exercise load points.
A slightly clunky thing with the Fenix is that you have to explicitly tell it you're doing an activity to get some metrics - but the heart rate/step count/calorie data is always being gathered. And the Fenix has at a minimum twice the battery life of an Apple Watch, and keeping it in no-GPS mode lets it extend to weeks of battery life while still gathering most of the key metrics.
> I second that. I have had my Series 4 for 514 days. I currently have a 514 day Move streak and 72 perfect weeks (All Activity).
I used to second that, until I got to 689 days and then the heart rate sensor stopped working on my watch.
I now have a longest move streak that is pretty hard to reach again, no way to reset it, and my motivation largely got destroyed after 2 weeks of no rings closed at all, due to Apple refusing to provide me with a proactive replacement for what was clearly a hardware defect. After nearly 2 perfect years.
A couple of months later, Covid happened, and I now have a pretty poor end result, as the rings no longer matter having lost the ability to continue streak tracking (the only way to see your streak is if you're setting a new record).
I think the lesson here is beware on relying too much on this crack for motivation. If you're not developing the appropriate discipline alongside it, and just relying on the crack, you may find you fail like I did when the crack disappears.
Streaks are such a useless all or nothing system that fail in ways like you describe. A better method would be a 4 week average or some other system that prioritizes consistency without letting tiny mess ups ruin everything.
I'd like to see them cut down the streak timeframe to a week, e.g. 'you've had 84 perfect weeks'.
This would allow a few slip ups, vacations, etc, and when looking back on your activity you wouldn't feel guilty or annoyed that you had missed that one day a year and a half ago, you'd just see the '84 perfect weeks' record and be content.
That's the reason I never liked the streak system to motivate me. I used to use it on Duolingo, and found it a rising source of stress when I got it going, and a strong demotivator when I lost one. In the end I wasn't using the app to learn but to not lose the streak.
It might work for others but I prefer to ignore streaks, and avoid apps that put them in your face.
I've noticed a very consistent pattern over the years: any time someone mentions some device, or dietary choice, or habit, etc, that has had a large positive impact in their behavior, it's almost always a recent change. A few months, maybe half a year or a little more. It's been a pattern in my life too.
I do hope it's a lifelong positive change for you but I've just gotta discount any glowing reports that come from a recent change like this heavily.
Mixed feelings on this. Only because it paints the Apple Watch as the brainchild of this new-age health platform
Watch still is an exclusive way to drive consumers to iPhone. Today, it's more capable than ever, but smartwatches weren't exclusive to Apple - Pebble, Android Wear, Fitbit and Garmin (which I had) did them. And better in some aspects.
4 years later, I'm still not blown away at the sensor technology on Apple Watch. (disc. I have one) Sleep tracking wasn't added till the latest release!!?? It's def. a fashion statement. Like blue iMessage bubbles, Apple Watch is a sign of luxury and exclusivity, and it looks solid.
Apple owns an ecosystem, and at the center is the user. A computer on the wrist makes sense, it's always on, always there, and it's still a connected experience for when you can't have your phone. But I can't say Apple created a whole new industry - it only works because they own an ecosystem. Not because they have a fantastic wearable watch.
>4 years later, I'm still not blown away at the sensor technology on Apple Watch. (disc. I have one) Sleep tracking wasn't added till the latest release!!??
I didn't buy an Apple Watch because of a) the cost and b) not wanting to charge a watch every day. My Amazfit Bip is 2.5 years old, and has
* Heart rate detection up to every minute (automatically speeds up to real time during workout)
* Bluetooth Smart sensor functionality, so I can use it to report heart rate to compliant apps like iSmoothRun
* Sleep tracking
* 25 days of battery life (real world, not specification)
* GPS (although I never use it, preferring GPS on my phone through iSmoothRun)
* Notifications display
* More than 20,000 user-contributed watch faces
* $60 price when I bought it; the successor Bip S is about the same price today
It doesn't have Apple Watch's arrythmia or blood oxygen detection, and there is a UI bug that the company never fixed after it appeared last year, but otherwise Bip has done exactly what it promised and more.
it is useful sometimes, but a fashion statement most of the time. I feel like it is doing integration really well, but it is quickly going to get stuck with the sad segregation of ecosystems we have now. Battery life sucks, I've never used the sleep tracking and I doubt anyone can use it if you're supposed to charge the watch during the night.
I hate to say it, but having an Apple Watch is a little bit like it was having a cell phone for the first time. It unloads a lot of mental tasks, and quickly feels essential.
With the cell phone, I didn’t have to remember peoples phone numbers anymore, and I could call or be called from anywhere. Eventually texting became a thing, but at first it was just that freedom to make much looser plans and adjust them on the fly, which was really difficult before cell phones.
With the watch, it feels the same, but about health. Knowing how much I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc. makes it a lot easier to understand what’s going on with my body and be more proactive about it.
It’s also becoming a replacement for the cell phone. I usually still keep my phone with me because I want the camera, but I increasingly don’t take my phone with me when I want peace and quiet. I know that if a family member urgently needed to reach me they could get through to my watch. Meanwhile the watch does not distract me from what’s going on in real life around me.
I suspect that if they do pull off the glasses, this is going to be the trifecta. Eventually the glasses can capture a visual record of whatever you saw, the AirPods potentially can capture whatever you heard, and the watch is capturing what’s going on with your body. It’s sort of a kindler, gentler Cybernetic future than I think earlier eras anticipated.
> With the watch, it feels the same, but about health. Knowing how much I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc. makes it a lot easier to understand what’s going on with my body and be more proactive about it.
Fitbit does the exact same thing and has for years!
> Eventually the glasses can capture a visual record of whatever you saw, the AirPods potentially can capture whatever you heard,
But this is Apple, so of course we're not up in arms about it.
I'm really sick of the praise this company gets while it continues to strong arm citizens into locked-down computing devices. Your pocket computers can't run binaries as freely as American speech, and pretty soon your Macs won't be able to either. They've neutered the web browser and forced everyone under their thumb.
Apple is setting itself up in front of every transnational activity its users perform. They're already a tax on everyone else trying to breathe air in the system, but just wait. Apple wants more of the pie and isn't going to stop.
Apple isn't good. The DOJ needs to force them to open their platform or split them up.
I wear a watch to bed, but then again, I did even before watches got clever. These days, I like it for the sleep tracking and knowing I can get alerted or have my alarm go off without waking my spouse.
I find the Apple Watch MOST useful in bed. We don't have a clock in the bedroom (like to keep it pitch black), so it's nice to know what time it is.
My wife is a super light sleeper, and I get up first, and the watch gives me a perfectly silent alarm.
I have 4 kids, and the watch makes the perfect flashlight for when you have to get up at 3am and check on someone. It's nice and dim, instantly available, and you still have two free hands (although they messed this up a bit with the sleep mode in the most recent version).
You can switch between a white light and red light. The light automatically dims if you look at the watch and brightens when you aim it away. You can turn off the light by putting your palm on the display.
This is called User eXperience, which is what Apple excels at. Other companies quite often have the exact same features before Apple does - on paper - but the implementation is haphazard at best.
Of course you are being downvoted, criticizing Apple is the number one downvote reason on HN. I agree with you and will take my share of downvotes for expressing my opinion and respecting all the other HN rules.
Also, please don't post "boo $BigCo" vs. "yay $BigCo" flamewar comments to HN—they're tedious. Obviously some users love Apple and some users hate Apple and they go after each other all the time. Each group thinks that HN is all on the opposite side. The rest of us are rather bored by this.
> With the watch, it feels the same, but about health. Knowing how much I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc. makes it a lot easier to understand what’s going on with my body and be more proactive about it.
I'm interested in a device that can measure respiratory rate, but so far Apple only offers a breathing app that does nothing more than just tell the user how to breathe, i.e. without any feedback based on actual respiration.
This is extremely difficult because you need something around your lungs/diaphragm or mouth/nose to accurately measure your breathing rate. Even with precise readings of your pulse, blood pressure, etc... you can’t even remotely calculate your breathing rate.
Apple has a related patent from back in 2009. Physical size seems problematic for AirPods when you could use that space for more battery, but I could see this showing up in Power Beats Pro in the not too distant future.
> The sensor can also be other than (or in addition to) an activity sensor, such as a psychological or biometric sensors which could measure temperature, heartbeat, etc. of a user of the monitoring system. Since sensors can be positioned proximate to the head or ear of the user, useful psychological or biometric data can be acquired. The sensor can also be other than (or in addition to) an activity sensor, such as a global positioning system (GPS) receiver or a proximity sensor.
There's enough room to tinker with the dimensions that adding a temperature probe seems feasible. Like the stem of the Pros is actually shorter, which was clever because it means people know you have the fancy new ones. This couldn't add more than a few cubic millimeters.
Breath tracking is pure software, offloaded to the phone, opt-in to auto activate when in exercise mode.
I think we'll see both in the next few iterations, the fitness push is huge and the temperature monitoring would be timely. We'll see.
Even if it's physically possible in the standard AirPods, they might still put it in Power Beats for branding reasons, since those are the more fitness-focused headphones.
Then a year or two down the line, it could make its way down to regular AirPods if the size/cost isn't an issue.
Very cool. I had no idea things had gotten that accurate. My grandpa was a cardio-thoracic surgeon so I always had a bit of hobbyist’s interest. Most of my reading materials were obviously a bit dated.
No worries. Wrist measurements are noisy and difficult, but there is a great deal of info to be extracted from heart rate data. Lots of teams, including Apple, are working to figure it out. The better the extraction of heart rate from the data, the more that can be done done with it. For example, there are groups using heart rate variability (HRV) characteristics to predict neonatal sepsis, a leading cause of death in infants.
But you can't reliably get beat by beat interval data from a wrist PPG under normal living conditions. Also, to get breathing rate from beat intervals only really works when the parasympathetic nervous system is dominating, and isn't very observable in older people.
I have a Garmin 245 that reports respiration without a chest strap. It tracks throughout the day. You can view on a line chart, or view awake/asleep averages. No idea how it measures, or if it’s accurate.
I've been testing this with and without the chest strap and it's not at all correct. I deliberately slow my breathing to 1-2 breaths per minute and it goes from saying 13 to 12. The metric is there, I don't trust it at all.
I have spent some time testing it, it is useless. Maybe it's accurate if you're not doing controlled breathing. I haven't had someone else watch me and compare. (I am also a trained vocalist and do a fair amount of yoga, it might be that it's only accurate for people with minimal breath training, or people with more exercise-focused breath training.)
>Eventually the glasses can capture a visual record of whatever you saw, the AirPods potentially can capture what you heard
I expect the glasses might have built in audio capture, potentially even playback, themselves and if executed properly will be at least as successful as you predict. I think the current use and popularity of live-streaming and social video apps points to what an impact the ability to live stream to record a complete capture of your first-person experience will have. It’s also going to have immense utility from a practical standpoint, being able to functionally capture any experience for later reference or processing. The utility of live streaming through first person devices is already proven out with remote assistance tech.
on its own, a device does little. but with all the electronics we’re surrounded by (phone, watch, airpods, laptop, etc), it may have a cumulative effect.
There is going a lot on with us. Cancer rates in young adults are increasing and many more health problems.
I do t want to say its because of smartphones! Something is happening and nobody is quite sure whats the reason. To say nothing is wrong with it because we dont know of any side effect is absolutely wrong.
It does, but we’re increasingly so busy, distracted, and “up in our heads” all day that the time and energy required for that kind of mindfulness becomes unaffordable to many people “having to function” day-to-day. The way we structure modern society and work life is antithetical to both mental and physical health (“sitting is the new smoking”).
They say “what gets measured gets managed”, and if your internal biological sensors don’t get used enough because your attention is busy processing other, seemingly more urgent, instructions all day, the watch can help take on some of those tasks and theow in an interrupt to “take a break, go move” every once in a while.
> With the watch, it feels the same, but about health. Knowing how much I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc. makes it a lot easier to understand what’s going on with my body and be more proactive about it.
meh, I had exactly the same with the withings, which is a normal watch but with captors, and it's a gimmick. I have an Apple watch now, and I don't use it all the time (it's truly a hassle to recharge it all the time), but it manages to integrate really well with everything and always surprises me in how useful it is. Today I was at the doctor with Kaiser and they texted me when they were ready to take me with the floor and room number I had to go to, I quickly saw the notification on my watch and went there. Being able to take calls when I just can't reach my phone is amazing also. When I watch a movie or listen to music I can quickly decrease/increase the sound. I can use it as a remote for keynote. I'm still discovering things every week. If only they could make it so that it would last longer than 1 day.
Some other favorite uses in no particular order: TOTP codes (Authy, Duo, 1Password), habit tracking and reminders (Streaks), QR codes that scan as my contact info or to easily join my WiFi network (Visual Codes), record voice memos that sync to my other devices when I want to just make a quick note, check things off my to-do list (Things, Reminders), run shortcuts for Hue lighting scenes.
New capabilities for shortcuts recently too, you can make a shortcut to toggle some watch settings (like always-on display) and run it from a complication on a watch face. And you can change watch faces automatically by time of day using automations on your phone, if you want something like a watch face with weather forecast and next calendar event for when you’re getting ready in the morning, then something else for when you’re out of the house.
I’m already not a big phone person (2016 SE) and my favorite thing after the health features is all the times I don’t have to pull my phone out to do something.
I like Streaks, though I’m sure there’s a lot of apps in a similar space. Especially handy for things that can check themselves off from HealthKit data like whether I’ve stepped on my scale today or kept to my target sleeping hours.
The Garmin Fenix, lasts over 2 days at a minimum, and with the no-pulse-ox configuration can last as long as 3 weeks. I find with about 10 hours of exercise I charge it at most once a week. The tradeoff is that to get GPS tracking you need to put it into activity mode. But even with GPS off there are a ton of useful metrics - heart rate, step counts, calories, sleep tracking.
I have disabled all the smartwatch notification features though, I don't want the distraction, I just want to measure/map my exercise.
Garmin fitness watches have always been far better than smart watches with battery life. But they're only fitness watches with some smartphone integration. You're not going to get the features the Apple Watch has on the Garmin with over 2-3+ days of battery life right now.
That might be true of some of the lower-end models but I don't think it's true of the Fenix 6. And the most powerful Fenix can do turn-by-turn navigation for 2-3 days with color offline maps. I don't think the Apple Watch is more featureful - they make different feature tradeoffs. Big ones are cost and weight.
Curious as to why you say the watch is a hassle to charge all the time. I guess if you sleep with it that’s a valid concern. I don’t and so I have to take it off anyway - so it’s not a big deal to just place it on the charger next to my bed and grab it first thing in the morning. The magnetic ‘clickiness’ of the desktop dock is nice and very smooth to drop on and take off.
Thank you for this... I still can’t convince myself to get one.
The health aspect I wonder if it really actually makes things easier to improve yourself... or is it just tracking new things for you that keep you accountable to yourself?
I guess they both work... maybe I’m old fashioned but my wife loves it and I can’t figure out why it’s so great to know how many steps (roughly) you walked every day...
A while back I went to the hospital because of a potentially nasty infection. The doctor was pretty surprised and excited when I opened up the Health app with temperature logs (from a smart thermometer), but they were even more intrigued by the consistently elevated heart rate (from my watch) that had started a few days before the fever. I believe it helped guide the treatment, but I can’t be entirely sure.
For more general health/fitness, the rings can be motivating in a bit of a gamification way. The easier availability of stats from workouts also points out things for me to improve on, or to make changes during the activity. For example, it’s easier for me to see if my pace is slipping while I’m hiking and pick it up, or notice if I’m pushing harder than I should and slow it down so I have the energy for the end (the watch can also be really helpful with navigating as well).
I think health features like this will become pretty commonplace in the future and more doctors/nurses will utilize it. In Formula 1 racing they've been integrating sensors and transmitters for vital stats into the drivers' gloves. This allows the medical team to see what's going on as they're driving out to the crash. I believe they keep the gloves on if possible during patient transport so they can continue monitoring.
I imagine being able to provide a doctor with historical data on your vitals can be extremely beneficial. Taking your vitals while you're sitting in a clinic doesn't give the full picture. What does your heart rate mean at that time if they don't know what's normal for you? What if your temp is not high enough to be considered a fever, but it's elevated 3+ degrees higher than typical for you? Of course the accuracy of the sensor could be called into question, but if it's precise enough you can still use it to analyze trends and anomalies.
> I wonder if it really actually makes things easier to improve yourself
Yes, significantly, at least for me. I tried repeatedly to use a calorie counting app where you enter every food you ate. It had all kinds of conveniences for scanning barcodes, and saving meals you regularly ate, and had every chain restaurant's data. It was such a pain in the ass to use. Manually entering everything, even with the ability to scan barcodes, was too tedious. And it was always inaccurate. How many grams of potatoes did I have when I cooked dinner tonight? I have no idea!
With the watch, I just click a button to say I'm going for a walk or a run, and it tracks my heart rate and knows my weight and height and does a fairly accurate calculation of my calories burned.
It also was a lot more fun than entering calories into an app. I would get little badges for making progress and rewards for reaching a goal. It wasn't much, but it was a reminder that I was moving forward. I ended up "closing my rings" every day for 2 years straight (minus one week where I had the flu). That's the most exercise I've ever done and the most consistently I've ever done it.
If you just need health aspects get a hybrid smarwatch (I recommend Withings or Fossil hybrid HR) - it has pedometer, HR monitor, ECG and VO2 max sensor, sleep tracking - but most importantly it lasts about 20 days on a charge, is super lite and actually looks like a nice watch - really low key.
There are others too, but I don't recommend Garmin Vivo move - I got the 500€ gold one for my wife and it has constant issues, the battery barely goes 4 days, etc.
I currently use a Samsung galaxy watch I got as a gift and the full smarwatch experience has a few advantages :
- find my phone - I constantly mute my phone and this lets me ring it up even when it's muted so I can find where k put it - also helped me once I left my phone in a wordrobe in the mall - no reason why hybrids don't have this but they don't
- reject calls/turn off alarms without touching your phone - again no reason why hybrids don't have this but they don't
- music controls/smart home controls
- talking through the watch - was actually useful more than once - imagine cooking and not having to grab your phone to answer your wife or stuff like that
My wife also has Apple watch 3.
Overall a smarwatch is a chore to charge and you can't get good sleep tracking because you often charge over night - hybrid watches last 2+ weeks in practice but sacrifice some features
>> I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc. makes it a lot easier to understand what’s going on with my body and be more proactive about it.
It would be great if it was accurate. How accurate is this data?
I have an Apple Watch and iPhone and use all the health tracking stuff. I’m a little bit suspicious of the accuracy of sleep tracking, but so far I haven’t had any experiences to suggest that it’s not reasonably accurate.
And there’s no reason to believe that heart rate and step counting isn’t extremely accurate—seems fairly trivial to measure.
Being consistent is almost as good — essentially as good in fact.
I have a glucose meter that’s quite wrong, but the shape of its curve isn’t bad (the error isn’t linear, but is consistent— around 100 it measures about 82; at 150 it measures 130) but now I’m used to it it tells me what I need to know. And the strips are cheap.
I don’t need the watch to tell me if my heart rate is too high but it’s useful if it tells me my heart rate was about the same the whole run.
I used smart watches (not apple watch) for a week and can't get over recharging them every night and went straight back to my solar G-Shock.
Step counting is what my phone does too and I really don't need too much accuracy for that. Glancing at notifications would be nice in a busy work environment between meetings but at home, it makes not much sense to me. The rest (hand washing reminder, breathing reminder, etc.) are all gimmicks IMO.
So I am yet to see the utility of smart watches in their current form. Smart glasses on the other hand have way more potential
Apple Watch also has Apple Pay, call, text, directions, music, podcasts, etc.
More and more I’m leaving my phone at home and opting to go solo watch. This has done wonders in breaking my habit of always reaching for my phone to fill in every empty space in the day.
You don't need a watch for health data. It can be dedicated to health, like my Whoop strap that costs me $30/month. The Apple Watch isn't serious enough about health for my use cases.
I have a 3. I got it in January and I'm still on the fence about it. It's okay, but not awesome, and sometimes darn irritating. I guess there's some merit as a cellphone replacement but I find the screen too small for that and Siri is just so-so.
If I take my series 6 of the charger at 07:00 and wear it all day and all night, when I wake up at 07:00 again its at 50% charge. I can then charge it while having a shower. This seems to work fine for me. I take my watch off anyway while having a shower so putting it down on the charger is no issue.
I've worn a watch all my life, but going from a battery that lasts a year to one that lasts a few days is a giant leap of inconvenience for me. Also, watch platforms seem to me even tinier walled gardens than those of mobile phones. If I could see myself using anything, it would be more akin to the Pine Time[0] than the Apple Watch. I realize the Pine is still in it's infancy.
I'm somewhat excited for the Pine Time. On one hand battery life is good and you get multiple interesting software platforms, on the other hand none is quite ready yet (sure, time will probably deal with that), and the hardware is just a bit meh.
With an e-paper screen (see Amazfit Bip or Pebble Time), more buttons and a more precise haptic feedback device the thing could be amazing.
I might still buy it for the freedom aspect, but especially the first 2 are frustrating. I don't want to have to swipe around on the display of my watch.
You can see any Apple device as a trojan horse for people to get into the Apple ecosystem, so probably never. It is extremely annoying to be honest, I have a few google Home and I can't play Apple music on them. It's ridiculous.
I remember when the first Apple watch came out, many of my co-workers bought one (company discount). We'd be halfway through a meeting and suddenly they'd all stand up in unison because their watch told them to.
When I got the watch it was on a weekend and I figured the stand ring was useless because how do you manage to not stand once in an hour. Then monday hit and it was telling me to stand up every hour and it always feels like it was just 10 minutes ago since the last reminder.
You were all starting to suffer lower back compression, and no doubt the CO2 levels in that room were off the charts.
Better would be to make a rule that all meetings must conclude when people's watches start telling them "knock it off, you're an animal not a machine, stand up now or spend your last couple decades in pain".
Yes it is. If you haven't stood for 1 minute in the last hour then at 50 minutes into the hour you get a notification telling you that. I, too, work in an office of iOS users, and this frequently happens in our meetings. Everyone's watch goes off at the same time at the end of the hour.
No matter what you do, a smart watch will always look worse than a regular watch without seriously crippling the watches features. If you want something that looks nice then get a normal watch. The core feature of a smart watch is fitness tracking. I love using mine for going on a run and seeing my heart rate as well as switching music. And then if I stop at a cafe I can use it to pay. All without bringing any phone or wallet with me.
- convenient timers on a complication: use this a few times a day
- an alarm which can wake me up without jarring my brain, this being the only alarm I've ever used where that's the case: five times a week
- 2048
- ability to set reminders by speaking to it
- heart rate tracker which actually works. I let my heart rate get below 130 between weight sets, and like to check my peak after a set as well. Also, it likes to alert me when I'm having one of my infrequent panic attacks. You'd think I'd notice anyway, but, not always
- unlocks my computer when I'm wearing it. This is a tiny affordance but really a nice one
- pay for groceries without bringing my phone or wallet out. Do I have to? No. Do I like to? Yeah, I'll cop to that. It's nice
- take the occasional call when my phone is in another room or I don't want to dig it out. Works long enough to say "hey I'll call you back", which is usually about all I want to say
- remind me what the date is, because I'm terrible at that. Granted that my automatic watches would do that too
- when I'm feeling nostalgic, load up a watch face that shows me pictures of times when I was happy, and people I love
- pause and play music/podcasts/whatever
I'm sure I'm missing a few, but I'll also say this: it's way less fashionable than my automatics. It's actually kinda dorky when you get right down to it.
But it's so much more functional that I just don't care, I've made my peace with it.
Someday, I'll get to leave the house again and do fancy things, and I have a couple timepieces for those occasions. But in the meantime, and the rest of the time, it's a smartwatch for me.
A cute one: when using CarPlay for driving directions, AW taps your wrist when it’s time to make a turn. And the tap pattern is distinct for left and right.
> an alarm which can wake me up without jarring my brain
Which watch do you use? Sadly it seems Apple are the only ones not messing this up, as the other watches I tried alarms on, while effective in waking me up quietly, made me feel like my hand was going to fall of for the whole day.
The haptics in general are one of the best things about it. The only other smartwatch I've had to compare it to is the Withings Steel, which is just a very different beast.
it must be nice to drink apple kool-aid. I have a garmin fenix. I have the so called apple health features. crazy features like hike tracking, offline maps. and you know what my battery lasts a month on average.
I tried one on at an expo before a half-marathon years ago. I also borrowed one from my trainer to see how I liked it (it is expensive and he was actually planning to sell it to get the latest iteration). The battery life and utility for offline use are fantastic. But, it was also really damn heavy. Noticeably heavy (maybe the latest incarnations aren't so heavy?). As someone who always wears a watch, but usually ones with few complications and relatively small (compared to many men's watches) it was uncomfortable.
That was my biggest take away and the main reason (besides the fact I don't do any long backpacking trips anymore so the offline mapping and really long battery life were less critical) I selected the Apple Watch. A watch, to me, shouldn't make you notice it's presence whenever you move your arm. Plus they're even more expensive than the Apple Watch.
I’ve had one sine series 0. Have the 6 now. I love all of the details and small tools I can pack into complications. I have multiple faces with various functions I routinely use. I am rarely without it.
I would have never spent more than $100 on a traditional watch, and any watch I had before I could never get consistent about wearing.
It’s so interesting how many single uses of the watch make it hard to go back to life beforehand. In other words, even if I did nothing else with the watch, I’d still miss it if it was gone.
For instance, Apple Pay on a watch seems magical (and even better with COVID): you double-click, move your wrist closer and you’ve paid, after a pleasing confirmation “bzzz” on your wrist. As amazing as paying with your phone was, that just seems clunky once you use the watch.
Now Apple just needs to make watch faces easily customizable. The rush to customize phone screens in iOS 14 should show them, people want to personalize their stuff!! Having the same OK-ish face gallery for years is easily the main downside of the Apple Watch.
I actually felt much better once I took of my watch, it's been lying in a drawer for almost two years now, and I don't miss it at all.
The constant notifications made life really stressful (I know you can turn them off), I even had a few people ask me if I had to go somewhere, because every time I had a notification, I had the urge to just look what it was.
The health tracking was really great, although I didn't had the cellular version, so I always had my phone with me anyway, which made the watch kind of useless. I'm sure it might be different if you have the cellular version and you can go for a run just with your watch.
Apple Pay always felt kind of awkward, mostly because of the placement of the terminals, so I always had to turn my wrist very awkwardly. Plus I always had my phone with me anyway, which does the same thing.
That's my experience with the Series 3, it's possible I might have a different experience now, but I really have no desire to buy a new one.
The watch is kind of meh for me, and I have the cellular version.
Sometimes the notifications are handy. But if I want to respond to a text, the watch is useless unless I just want one of the canned responses like “Ok”.
It is handy for working out.
As an actual watch, I have one of the older ones without an always-on screen. So when I worked in an office, I actually went back to an old-fashioned watch because it’s hard to discreetly turn on the Apple Watch screen. So I would just wear the Apple Watch when working out. Now that I work from home I wear the Apple Watch all day but I don’t get a ton of utility out of it. I do check the outside temperature occasionally but for that I could just open my front door.
Overall, if I knew this thing would be only as marginally useful as it is I’m not sure I’d buy one. The always-on face would make it more useful but I’m not eager to go spend even more money on this category.
Since I am not too active, I find the the Pebble Time does exactly what I want - time, messages, alarms, timers and lasts three to four days. I am grateful to Rebel to making it still work on Android 10. If Android stops supporting it, I'll mournfully have to replace it. Until then, I have a backup ready.
Lots of praise for the Apple Watch here. Here's my take as a first-time Apple Watch Series 6 user who really tried to make it work, but just couldn't. I returned the watch today as the 14-day return window came to a close.
For a smart watch, it's remarkably dumb. To me it felt like you have to tell it everything you do, when you plan to go to sleep, when you start exercising, etc. You can enable the "automatic workout detection feature", but it's automatic in name only. Instead, it will literally pop-up a dialog for you to pick an activity from a list as you're working out. Same thing when you stop, another manual confirmation required. The heartrate function isn't continuous at all, something I was unware of. It samples at a 10 minute internal, except if your arm is moving (what). The sleep tracking has zero details. All of these are things that a $150 Fitbit nailed 5 years ago (I haven't worn one of those either for years): automatic workouts, continuous heart rate, automatic rem stage tracking etc. The audio handling is bizarre, press play in Spotify or Overcast and my iPhone 50 feet away starts playing, despite having Airpods in and paired. Why would you ever want to do that? Audio routing and making the watch have a silent vibrate-only with no alarm on the iPhone is two things I never did figure out in the two weeks I had the watch.
But worst of all, as someone else said, it's a massive notification factory. I mean, constant, continuous, incessant pinging, buzzing, vibrating, unread red dots etc. Out of the box, it probably pinged me 25 times an hour, a lot of it emails sure, Slack, but also remembering to breath and stand and wash my hands and everything in-between, all of the latter ones I ended up disabling within the first week as too annoying. Yes, you can (must) configure notifications in detail (depending on how many apps you use, literally hundreds of toggles), but what a terrible experience.
Ultimately I decided that I want something that makes my life simpler, not another gadget that I have to babysit (and charge every day), with anxiety inducing notifications. That's without going into the bugs... in the 14 days I had to unlink and re-pair the watch twice as it permanently lost the connection to my iPhone 11 Pro despite power cycling both devices multiple times. From reading Reddit this seems to have been a persistent issue over the years with the watch and nothing unusual. Except when you do, you have to literally start from scratch in creating your watch faces, configuring your zillion notifications, etc. After returning the device, I just felt relieved.
Just reading this stresses me out. I have a habit of checking my phone every half hour or so for notification, but that's it, almost everything is turned off (vibration and sound) exceptions being my wife and kids. Half hour checks (or hourly) is enough for just about anyone. The human race got by without smartwatches for a million years or so, we don't really need them and they just sound like an interruption strapped to your wrist.
A really interesting read, and I agree with a lot of the points made - except this one:
> Apple created an entirely new industry – something that isn’t found much in the traditional Apple playbook.
I would have thought this is exactly what Apple's blockbuster successes are known for. The original Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch - all industry-defining products.
289 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 120 ms ] thread5 years ago I wrote a blog post essentially saying everyone will wear a smart watch for health and safety reasons:
https://h4labs.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/in-the-future-everyo...
It’s disappointing that Google hasn’t done a better job of competing. The industry needs 2 strong competitors.
I agree with your point about Google and ads, but I feel like this meme of Apple being a luxury product is slowly just not making sense to me.
The same largely applies to Apple's other product lines too, which the exception that they simply don't attempt to compete in the bottom-dollar markets for laptops or desktop PCs. So I would definitely say that Apple doesn't make junk for the race-to-the-bottom market, but I'm hesitant to call them a luxury brand.
It's the only reason why its perceived value is so high in the US, and later gets carried to other foreign markets (like China). Apple is this single entity that creates these products that run this unique OS alone, while Android manufacturers are a dime a dozen - too visible. If I don't get the latest Samsung, I don't mind because I'll just go ahead and buy the latest OnePlus or Huawei or something. But I have nowhere to go if Apple stores run out of the iPhone, and if I'm really bought into the whole design oo-la-lah shtick, I'll just camp outside the Apple store (aside: I have seen fewer campers with each passing year).
Ferrari is a luxury product because every engine made is a machining masterpiece largely created by hand. Most and Chandon is a luxury product because it takes a good year and tons of time to perfect that taste. Apple fans may have had something to boast about with the design quality during the Steve Jobs years, but right now, there's little to boast about their mass-produced devices made by underpaid workers in a Chinese/Vietnamese/Indian factory, so they generate artificial oomph over things like the fonts or the app store or whatever. As a Tesla owner, I've seen the same kind of behavior from other Tesla owners, although I find Tesla to be a relatively flawed product compared to other cars such as a Porsche or an Audi.
Honestly, I suspect that if Jobs were alive right now, he wouldn't be really happy with today's Apple. Out of the nearly a decade since he's passed, the only thing that was really revolutionary on Apple's part were the Airbuds. And with Jony gone, I suspect there's going to be less of that too.
For me I really enjoy using it for walking directions in the city. Yes I could use my phone but this lets me walk more naturally without looking like a phone zombie.
After getting 2 hand me downs from a friend who upgraded, my partner sprung for a new one. Killer features for her: battery life of a week instead of a day and good backcountry navigation.
Garmin connect does exercise challenges too, so there's a social aspect as well.
I would definitely like longer battery life on my Apple watch.
Barring that it’d be convenient if the chargers were like lightning and usb-c: available in every gas station, drug store, and dollar store.
I can only assume there's a good reason for the non-standard connector, and that it probably involves waterproofing?
I have no horse in this race, to be clear.
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200506006138/en/Str...
I don't know about the SDK though, but it does seem to have some apps (not that I use many of them).
If any are, it's just one. Apple/Microsoft and Apple/Google.
Everyone else is still regurgitating the same garbage with their watches.
I'll also be shocked if this isn't a native feature of Apple's Sleep app within a year.
[0] https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/12/sleep-cycle-apple-watch-app/
I think it needs more than two.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fitbit-m-a-alphabet-eu/he...
What’s the natural or artificial barrier to entry in the fitness wearable market? It seems highly competitive to me.
It's really tricky because right now Garmin, Fitbit, Apple, and the others are all basically financing their data portals through device sales. Which makes sense because I wouldn't have paid a subscription for it before I bought the watch, but now that I have the watch (Garmin) it is an invaluable service. But it seems wrong that the watch manufacturer owns the data - I would like a data storage company with strong privacy guarantees and strong analytics. But I'm not sure I trust any of these companies, it seems like they're all trying to figure out how to monetize my data by selling analytics to third-parties. (Even Apple.)
If the data creates powerful network effects in a way that results in a winner-take-all effect then in theory a monopoly could emerge even before market saturation. Is there a strong case for that?
App developers will want to create apps for devices that are popular, so that is an effect. Eventually enough apps could potentially create a barrier to entry, if “volume of apps” is the buying criteria.
But often the volume of apps is pretty irrelevant. Show a user a compelling experience with 10 mind-blowing apps and you can still compete against an App Store filled largely with trash.
In the end it’s a couple hundred dollar device you put on your wrist. There may be extremely compelling products that have large market share, but I’m just not seeing how that can become a monopoly.
Out of curiosity, why?
This is not an ideological issue. Everyone else in my family has iPhones, and I use my iPad all the time. It's just a personal choice that is driven by my use cases for a phone.
But the main reason by far I picked an iphone this time is Apple is not an advertising company and therefore doesn't have to disrespect my privacy. Its always comforting to open a page on an apple app and see a very plain text explanation of exactly what data the app stores, how it is always kept locally and if shared, apple only requests the bare minimum rights to provide the feature you are using.
And then you look at a Google ToS that says "We can and will do whatever we want"
Now I'm on the new iPhone SE, entirely because I lost trust in Google. I had been worried about Google for a while, but it all kicked off when a new job last year gave me a MacBook, and I realized that Apple things weren't actually as bad as I thought they were. The laptop was a little more expensive than a comparable linux laptop, but I liked a lot of things about it too.
Ended up cutting out Google entirely, and couldn't be happier. Definitely makes me excited to talk about how I took back my privacy, even though it's still a bit weird paying the "actual cost" of web services rather than getting them for "free".
When I get on a Windows or Linux machine (assuming the latter isn't too... special), there are always a few things which trip me up. But a keyboard is a keyboard, same with mice and trackpads or whatever; I can get around, remind myself to hit control instead of command, use a few less shortcuts, get stuff done.
But when I use an Android device I'm just... lost. Nothing works the way I expect, I don't like it and I don't want to learn. I can't even type on the damn things.
None of that is Android's fault, it's because in the first case, the muscle memory is the input device, in the second case, the muscle memory is the operating system.
Long Term support. Once I buy a phone (second hand, 1 year old) I don’t have to think about getting another one for at least 3 years since Apple will support it for at least that period.
Cost - I normally get last years model second hand for £400-600. Generally I end up approx £100-£200/year when averaged over the remaining support period with a £100-£200 resale value at the end, beating all decent androids in price too.
Consistently - My phone is a tool. I need it to get out of my way. I can’t be dealing with learning a new text message apps quirks every 2 weeks (Allo, Hangouts etc).
Privacy - Apple, at least at the moment every move Apple makes seems to be in the opposite direction than most of its competitors. The illusion of some androids being cheaper is shattered when you consider that you are being sold too.
If you'd ask that question in a Rolex board-meeting, they'd show you the door ...
Someone who actually likes watches is more likely to go with something premium from Seiko or Tag Heuer
Rolex is for people with more money than taste, and who want you to know it.
And when we look at the epidemic of rock-bottom testosterone levels in men, this makes sense.
Really interesting sidebar topic tbh. Haven’t thought of it until now.
...I don't hate it. I'm glad it's not a glass brick on my wrist wearing lipstick, and what else could it be, really?
To my eye, round smartwatches that are all screen look fake, but my Mom has one and loves it. I had a Withings Steel and it looks way better, but it just doesn't do much, and the dealbreaker for me was that the heart rate monitor was seriously inaccurate, probably a compromise for the battery, which lasts weeks.
You still have to cross the border to get to an Apple Store!
It's bizarre that they have one in Belfast but not Dublin. I've never understood the logic.
I can positively say this device on my wrist is the best thing I’ve done for my health. The multitude of sensors are great, sure, but the real magic is how the watch motivates you. Closing rings is like crack. It makes me want to leave the bed and go for a quick run or cycle at 11PM.
Having a cellular connection is fantastic and on occasion even lets me leave my phone behind. Coupled with their usually reliable software, I can 100% see why Apple’s approaching 100M Apple Watch users.
Sometimes I feel like I've teleported from another decade or something when complaining about the lack of digital etiquette in our society, but there's just no way I can justify buying another notification factory.
Philosophically, it's kinda hard to envision material gains in quality-of-life without major consequences with these kinds of technologies. They largely exist to take us out of our physical, in-person interactions because there's something more important to look at/respond to/whatever on the screen. Stuff like the Apple Watch and smart glasses definitely give me Black Mirror vibes a whole lot quicker than mobile technology ever did, but then again, Black Mirror came out after mobile had already largely taken off.
The only useful thing I ever learnt from my art teacher was when he taught us how to pretend to make eye contact with people.
By tuning my Apple Watch notifications, I now only get the most important interruptions on it, and I can almost always tell what it is by the haptics.
So my phone can buzz and beep all it wants, I can ignore it. My watch can buzz and depending on what’s going on around me, I can sneak a peek or disregard it.
Furthermore, the watch is incapable of subsuming my attention like the phone. On a phone I have all of my usual distractions. My watch is too small to take me away from the people I’m with (as if that’s anything to worry about this year, sadly).
The watch has liberated me from distractions when I’m among people. If the people you’re interacting with are being distracted, that’s their failing, not the watch’s.
Like if I so much as glanced at my watch while talking to someone, I'd immediately say sorry and explain why I have to keep track of time.
Having a smart watch has changed this in one way, which is if someone starts blowing up my notifications I'll say "sorry let me fix that" and turn it to silent.
I don't have a good fix for conveying this etiquette to people who never got the message, but I'm with you: that's rude, people need to stop doing it.
No need to blame the device though. I'm with everyone else who says that the notifications are way less distracting than they would be on a phone.
Yes, some people take that very seriously :-O
https://youtu.be/8Aq5BUiruPg?t=2112
I second that. I have had my Series 4 for 514 days. I currently have a 514 day Move streak and 72 perfect weeks (All Activity).
My one major complaint would be exercise minutes during outdoor walks. I will sometimes do, say, a 40 minute walk and only get 32 minutes of exercise credit. It will be giving me one minute per minute of walking for say 25 minutes, then go 8 minutes with no credit, then give me one for one for the remaining 7 minutes of the walk.
I'm frequently checking heart rate and pace during all this, and the 8 minutes of no credit portion matches the rest of the walk on both of those. Checking the map of the walk afterwards, where it color codes sections where your pace was above or below average shows no slowdowns during where it drops minutes. Checking the detailed heart rate data afterwards in case there were slowdowns that I just didn't notice during the walk shows that there were none.
I wish they would add an "explain exercise minutes" option that would look at a workout and tell you why you didn't get credit for some minutes.
A slightly clunky thing with the Fenix is that you have to explicitly tell it you're doing an activity to get some metrics - but the heart rate/step count/calorie data is always being gathered. And the Fenix has at a minimum twice the battery life of an Apple Watch, and keeping it in no-GPS mode lets it extend to weeks of battery life while still gathering most of the key metrics.
I used to second that, until I got to 689 days and then the heart rate sensor stopped working on my watch.
I now have a longest move streak that is pretty hard to reach again, no way to reset it, and my motivation largely got destroyed after 2 weeks of no rings closed at all, due to Apple refusing to provide me with a proactive replacement for what was clearly a hardware defect. After nearly 2 perfect years.
A couple of months later, Covid happened, and I now have a pretty poor end result, as the rings no longer matter having lost the ability to continue streak tracking (the only way to see your streak is if you're setting a new record).
I think the lesson here is beware on relying too much on this crack for motivation. If you're not developing the appropriate discipline alongside it, and just relying on the crack, you may find you fail like I did when the crack disappears.
This would allow a few slip ups, vacations, etc, and when looking back on your activity you wouldn't feel guilty or annoyed that you had missed that one day a year and a half ago, you'd just see the '84 perfect weeks' record and be content.
It might work for others but I prefer to ignore streaks, and avoid apps that put them in your face.
I do hope it's a lifelong positive change for you but I've just gotta discount any glowing reports that come from a recent change like this heavily.
Personally I lose interest pretty quickly but it really seems it's good for some people.
Watch still is an exclusive way to drive consumers to iPhone. Today, it's more capable than ever, but smartwatches weren't exclusive to Apple - Pebble, Android Wear, Fitbit and Garmin (which I had) did them. And better in some aspects.
4 years later, I'm still not blown away at the sensor technology on Apple Watch. (disc. I have one) Sleep tracking wasn't added till the latest release!!?? It's def. a fashion statement. Like blue iMessage bubbles, Apple Watch is a sign of luxury and exclusivity, and it looks solid.
Apple owns an ecosystem, and at the center is the user. A computer on the wrist makes sense, it's always on, always there, and it's still a connected experience for when you can't have your phone. But I can't say Apple created a whole new industry - it only works because they own an ecosystem. Not because they have a fantastic wearable watch.
I didn't buy an Apple Watch because of a) the cost and b) not wanting to charge a watch every day. My Amazfit Bip is 2.5 years old, and has
* Heart rate detection up to every minute (automatically speeds up to real time during workout)
* Bluetooth Smart sensor functionality, so I can use it to report heart rate to compliant apps like iSmoothRun
* Sleep tracking
* 25 days of battery life (real world, not specification)
* GPS (although I never use it, preferring GPS on my phone through iSmoothRun)
* Notifications display
* More than 20,000 user-contributed watch faces
* $60 price when I bought it; the successor Bip S is about the same price today
It doesn't have Apple Watch's arrythmia or blood oxygen detection, and there is a UI bug that the company never fixed after it appeared last year, but otherwise Bip has done exactly what it promised and more.
With the cell phone, I didn’t have to remember peoples phone numbers anymore, and I could call or be called from anywhere. Eventually texting became a thing, but at first it was just that freedom to make much looser plans and adjust them on the fly, which was really difficult before cell phones.
With the watch, it feels the same, but about health. Knowing how much I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc. makes it a lot easier to understand what’s going on with my body and be more proactive about it.
It’s also becoming a replacement for the cell phone. I usually still keep my phone with me because I want the camera, but I increasingly don’t take my phone with me when I want peace and quiet. I know that if a family member urgently needed to reach me they could get through to my watch. Meanwhile the watch does not distract me from what’s going on in real life around me.
I suspect that if they do pull off the glasses, this is going to be the trifecta. Eventually the glasses can capture a visual record of whatever you saw, the AirPods potentially can capture whatever you heard, and the watch is capturing what’s going on with your body. It’s sort of a kindler, gentler Cybernetic future than I think earlier eras anticipated.
Fitbit does the exact same thing and has for years!
> Eventually the glasses can capture a visual record of whatever you saw, the AirPods potentially can capture whatever you heard,
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/10494231/The-p...
But this is Apple, so of course we're not up in arms about it.
I'm really sick of the praise this company gets while it continues to strong arm citizens into locked-down computing devices. Your pocket computers can't run binaries as freely as American speech, and pretty soon your Macs won't be able to either. They've neutered the web browser and forced everyone under their thumb.
Apple is setting itself up in front of every transnational activity its users perform. They're already a tax on everyone else trying to breathe air in the system, but just wait. Apple wants more of the pie and isn't going to stop.
Apple isn't good. The DOJ needs to force them to open their platform or split them up.
And of course I'm going to be downvoted.
My wife is a super light sleeper, and I get up first, and the watch gives me a perfectly silent alarm.
I have 4 kids, and the watch makes the perfect flashlight for when you have to get up at 3am and check on someone. It's nice and dim, instantly available, and you still have two free hands (although they messed this up a bit with the sleep mode in the most recent version).
It's fascinating, and somewhat exasperating, to see how well their brand marketing works. They've managed to take over the word Watch-with-a-capital.
But implemented with care, as always.
You can switch between a white light and red light. The light automatically dims if you look at the watch and brightens when you aim it away. You can turn off the light by putting your palm on the display.
This is called User eXperience, which is what Apple excels at. Other companies quite often have the exact same features before Apple does - on paper - but the implementation is haphazard at best.
https://dev.fitbit.com/
https://gallery.fitbit.com/apps
Also, please don't post "boo $BigCo" vs. "yay $BigCo" flamewar comments to HN—they're tedious. Obviously some users love Apple and some users hate Apple and they go after each other all the time. Each group thinks that HN is all on the opposite side. The rest of us are rather bored by this.
I'm interested in a device that can measure respiratory rate, but so far Apple only offers a breathing app that does nothing more than just tell the user how to breathe, i.e. without any feedback based on actual respiration.
https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/breathe-apd371dfe3d7/w...
https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/06/apple-watch-breathe-misconcep...
I'm hoping this will happen. I don't wear my AirPods continually, unlike my watch; but I do wear them daily, and pretty consistently while exercising.
https://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2009/04/apple-r...
> The sensor can also be other than (or in addition to) an activity sensor, such as a psychological or biometric sensors which could measure temperature, heartbeat, etc. of a user of the monitoring system. Since sensors can be positioned proximate to the head or ear of the user, useful psychological or biometric data can be acquired. The sensor can also be other than (or in addition to) an activity sensor, such as a global positioning system (GPS) receiver or a proximity sensor.
Breath tracking is pure software, offloaded to the phone, opt-in to auto activate when in exercise mode.
I think we'll see both in the next few iterations, the fitness push is huge and the temperature monitoring would be timely. We'll see.
Then a year or two down the line, it could make its way down to regular AirPods if the size/cost isn't an issue.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5390977/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31295130/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11134441/
That work is not with a watch of course, but it is extending the understanding of the relationships of HRV to other physiological issues. Good stuff.
https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=2yEgS0Pax53UDqUH7q4WC6
I expect the glasses might have built in audio capture, potentially even playback, themselves and if executed properly will be at least as successful as you predict. I think the current use and popularity of live-streaming and social video apps points to what an impact the ability to live stream to record a complete capture of your first-person experience will have. It’s also going to have immense utility from a practical standpoint, being able to functionally capture any experience for later reference or processing. The utility of live streaming through first person devices is already proven out with remote assistance tech.
on its own, a device does little. but with all the electronics we’re surrounded by (phone, watch, airpods, laptop, etc), it may have a cumulative effect.
I do t want to say its because of smartphones! Something is happening and nobody is quite sure whats the reason. To say nothing is wrong with it because we dont know of any side effect is absolutely wrong.
Doesn't your body already have built in sensors to provide this information?
They say “what gets measured gets managed”, and if your internal biological sensors don’t get used enough because your attention is busy processing other, seemingly more urgent, instructions all day, the watch can help take on some of those tasks and theow in an interrupt to “take a break, go move” every once in a while.
meh, I had exactly the same with the withings, which is a normal watch but with captors, and it's a gimmick. I have an Apple watch now, and I don't use it all the time (it's truly a hassle to recharge it all the time), but it manages to integrate really well with everything and always surprises me in how useful it is. Today I was at the doctor with Kaiser and they texted me when they were ready to take me with the floor and room number I had to go to, I quickly saw the notification on my watch and went there. Being able to take calls when I just can't reach my phone is amazing also. When I watch a movie or listen to music I can quickly decrease/increase the sound. I can use it as a remote for keynote. I'm still discovering things every week. If only they could make it so that it would last longer than 1 day.
New capabilities for shortcuts recently too, you can make a shortcut to toggle some watch settings (like always-on display) and run it from a complication on a watch face. And you can change watch faces automatically by time of day using automations on your phone, if you want something like a watch face with weather forecast and next calendar event for when you’re getting ready in the morning, then something else for when you’re out of the house.
I’m already not a big phone person (2016 SE) and my favorite thing after the health features is all the times I don’t have to pull my phone out to do something.
Streaks is an app? (Edit: 5$, hope it’s worth it :D)
I like Streaks, though I’m sure there’s a lot of apps in a similar space. Especially handy for things that can check themselves off from HealthKit data like whether I’ve stepped on my scale today or kept to my target sleeping hours.
I have disabled all the smartwatch notification features though, I don't want the distraction, I just want to measure/map my exercise.
- You can’t even activate do not disturb using Siri.
- “theatre mode” take you to web search results.
- doing some of these actions simply crashes it.
The health aspect I wonder if it really actually makes things easier to improve yourself... or is it just tracking new things for you that keep you accountable to yourself?
I guess they both work... maybe I’m old fashioned but my wife loves it and I can’t figure out why it’s so great to know how many steps (roughly) you walked every day...
For more general health/fitness, the rings can be motivating in a bit of a gamification way. The easier availability of stats from workouts also points out things for me to improve on, or to make changes during the activity. For example, it’s easier for me to see if my pace is slipping while I’m hiking and pick it up, or notice if I’m pushing harder than I should and slow it down so I have the energy for the end (the watch can also be really helpful with navigating as well).
I imagine being able to provide a doctor with historical data on your vitals can be extremely beneficial. Taking your vitals while you're sitting in a clinic doesn't give the full picture. What does your heart rate mean at that time if they don't know what's normal for you? What if your temp is not high enough to be considered a fever, but it's elevated 3+ degrees higher than typical for you? Of course the accuracy of the sensor could be called into question, but if it's precise enough you can still use it to analyze trends and anomalies.
Yes, significantly, at least for me. I tried repeatedly to use a calorie counting app where you enter every food you ate. It had all kinds of conveniences for scanning barcodes, and saving meals you regularly ate, and had every chain restaurant's data. It was such a pain in the ass to use. Manually entering everything, even with the ability to scan barcodes, was too tedious. And it was always inaccurate. How many grams of potatoes did I have when I cooked dinner tonight? I have no idea!
With the watch, I just click a button to say I'm going for a walk or a run, and it tracks my heart rate and knows my weight and height and does a fairly accurate calculation of my calories burned.
It also was a lot more fun than entering calories into an app. I would get little badges for making progress and rewards for reaching a goal. It wasn't much, but it was a reminder that I was moving forward. I ended up "closing my rings" every day for 2 years straight (minus one week where I had the flu). That's the most exercise I've ever done and the most consistently I've ever done it.
There are others too, but I don't recommend Garmin Vivo move - I got the 500€ gold one for my wife and it has constant issues, the battery barely goes 4 days, etc.
I currently use a Samsung galaxy watch I got as a gift and the full smarwatch experience has a few advantages :
- find my phone - I constantly mute my phone and this lets me ring it up even when it's muted so I can find where k put it - also helped me once I left my phone in a wordrobe in the mall - no reason why hybrids don't have this but they don't
- reject calls/turn off alarms without touching your phone - again no reason why hybrids don't have this but they don't
- music controls/smart home controls
- talking through the watch - was actually useful more than once - imagine cooking and not having to grab your phone to answer your wife or stuff like that
My wife also has Apple watch 3.
Overall a smarwatch is a chore to charge and you can't get good sleep tracking because you often charge over night - hybrid watches last 2+ weeks in practice but sacrifice some features
It would be great if it was accurate. How accurate is this data?
And there’s no reason to believe that heart rate and step counting isn’t extremely accurate—seems fairly trivial to measure.
I have a glucose meter that’s quite wrong, but the shape of its curve isn’t bad (the error isn’t linear, but is consistent— around 100 it measures about 82; at 150 it measures 130) but now I’m used to it it tells me what I need to know. And the strips are cheap.
I don’t need the watch to tell me if my heart rate is too high but it’s useful if it tells me my heart rate was about the same the whole run.
Step counting is what my phone does too and I really don't need too much accuracy for that. Glancing at notifications would be nice in a busy work environment between meetings but at home, it makes not much sense to me. The rest (hand washing reminder, breathing reminder, etc.) are all gimmicks IMO.
So I am yet to see the utility of smart watches in their current form. Smart glasses on the other hand have way more potential
More and more I’m leaving my phone at home and opting to go solo watch. This has done wonders in breaking my habit of always reaching for my phone to fill in every empty space in the day.
When I'm done, I charge my watch.
[0]: https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/
With an e-paper screen (see Amazfit Bip or Pebble Time), more buttons and a more precise haptic feedback device the thing could be amazing.
I might still buy it for the freedom aspect, but especially the first 2 are frustrating. I don't want to have to swipe around on the display of my watch.
There's a new feature called Family Sharing that allows your kids and parents to have an Apple Watch without requiring that they have an iPhone.
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/09/apple-extends-the-app...
You were all starting to suffer lower back compression, and no doubt the CO2 levels in that room were off the charts.
Better would be to make a rule that all meetings must conclude when people's watches start telling them "knock it off, you're an animal not a machine, stand up now or spend your last couple decades in pain".
The core functionality is just gamification like step counts, "hey get up reminders" and some rather pointless blood metrics.
What is great imho is the customizable watches and bands. The bands are like 1$ each and the are like a thousand of brilliant watch faces.
I think smart watches are much better for fashion than function.
- convenient timers on a complication: use this a few times a day
- an alarm which can wake me up without jarring my brain, this being the only alarm I've ever used where that's the case: five times a week
- 2048
- ability to set reminders by speaking to it
- heart rate tracker which actually works. I let my heart rate get below 130 between weight sets, and like to check my peak after a set as well. Also, it likes to alert me when I'm having one of my infrequent panic attacks. You'd think I'd notice anyway, but, not always
- unlocks my computer when I'm wearing it. This is a tiny affordance but really a nice one
- pay for groceries without bringing my phone or wallet out. Do I have to? No. Do I like to? Yeah, I'll cop to that. It's nice
- take the occasional call when my phone is in another room or I don't want to dig it out. Works long enough to say "hey I'll call you back", which is usually about all I want to say
- remind me what the date is, because I'm terrible at that. Granted that my automatic watches would do that too
- when I'm feeling nostalgic, load up a watch face that shows me pictures of times when I was happy, and people I love
- pause and play music/podcasts/whatever
I'm sure I'm missing a few, but I'll also say this: it's way less fashionable than my automatics. It's actually kinda dorky when you get right down to it.
But it's so much more functional that I just don't care, I've made my peace with it.
Someday, I'll get to leave the house again and do fancy things, and I have a couple timepieces for those occasions. But in the meantime, and the rest of the time, it's a smartwatch for me.
I had been using Google Maps just out of habit, and switched because of this. I'm distractible and it helps a lot.
Which watch do you use? Sadly it seems Apple are the only ones not messing this up, as the other watches I tried alarms on, while effective in waking me up quietly, made me feel like my hand was going to fall of for the whole day.
The haptics in general are one of the best things about it. The only other smartwatch I've had to compare it to is the Withings Steel, which is just a very different beast.
That was my biggest take away and the main reason (besides the fact I don't do any long backpacking trips anymore so the offline mapping and really long battery life were less critical) I selected the Apple Watch. A watch, to me, shouldn't make you notice it's presence whenever you move your arm. Plus they're even more expensive than the Apple Watch.
I would have never spent more than $100 on a traditional watch, and any watch I had before I could never get consistent about wearing.
For instance, Apple Pay on a watch seems magical (and even better with COVID): you double-click, move your wrist closer and you’ve paid, after a pleasing confirmation “bzzz” on your wrist. As amazing as paying with your phone was, that just seems clunky once you use the watch.
Now Apple just needs to make watch faces easily customizable. The rush to customize phone screens in iOS 14 should show them, people want to personalize their stuff!! Having the same OK-ish face gallery for years is easily the main downside of the Apple Watch.
The constant notifications made life really stressful (I know you can turn them off), I even had a few people ask me if I had to go somewhere, because every time I had a notification, I had the urge to just look what it was.
The health tracking was really great, although I didn't had the cellular version, so I always had my phone with me anyway, which made the watch kind of useless. I'm sure it might be different if you have the cellular version and you can go for a run just with your watch.
Apple Pay always felt kind of awkward, mostly because of the placement of the terminals, so I always had to turn my wrist very awkwardly. Plus I always had my phone with me anyway, which does the same thing.
That's my experience with the Series 3, it's possible I might have a different experience now, but I really have no desire to buy a new one.
Sometimes the notifications are handy. But if I want to respond to a text, the watch is useless unless I just want one of the canned responses like “Ok”.
It is handy for working out.
As an actual watch, I have one of the older ones without an always-on screen. So when I worked in an office, I actually went back to an old-fashioned watch because it’s hard to discreetly turn on the Apple Watch screen. So I would just wear the Apple Watch when working out. Now that I work from home I wear the Apple Watch all day but I don’t get a ton of utility out of it. I do check the outside temperature occasionally but for that I could just open my front door.
Overall, if I knew this thing would be only as marginally useful as it is I’m not sure I’d buy one. The always-on face would make it more useful but I’m not eager to go spend even more money on this category.
For a smart watch, it's remarkably dumb. To me it felt like you have to tell it everything you do, when you plan to go to sleep, when you start exercising, etc. You can enable the "automatic workout detection feature", but it's automatic in name only. Instead, it will literally pop-up a dialog for you to pick an activity from a list as you're working out. Same thing when you stop, another manual confirmation required. The heartrate function isn't continuous at all, something I was unware of. It samples at a 10 minute internal, except if your arm is moving (what). The sleep tracking has zero details. All of these are things that a $150 Fitbit nailed 5 years ago (I haven't worn one of those either for years): automatic workouts, continuous heart rate, automatic rem stage tracking etc. The audio handling is bizarre, press play in Spotify or Overcast and my iPhone 50 feet away starts playing, despite having Airpods in and paired. Why would you ever want to do that? Audio routing and making the watch have a silent vibrate-only with no alarm on the iPhone is two things I never did figure out in the two weeks I had the watch.
But worst of all, as someone else said, it's a massive notification factory. I mean, constant, continuous, incessant pinging, buzzing, vibrating, unread red dots etc. Out of the box, it probably pinged me 25 times an hour, a lot of it emails sure, Slack, but also remembering to breath and stand and wash my hands and everything in-between, all of the latter ones I ended up disabling within the first week as too annoying. Yes, you can (must) configure notifications in detail (depending on how many apps you use, literally hundreds of toggles), but what a terrible experience.
Ultimately I decided that I want something that makes my life simpler, not another gadget that I have to babysit (and charge every day), with anxiety inducing notifications. That's without going into the bugs... in the 14 days I had to unlink and re-pair the watch twice as it permanently lost the connection to my iPhone 11 Pro despite power cycling both devices multiple times. From reading Reddit this seems to have been a persistent issue over the years with the watch and nothing unusual. Except when you do, you have to literally start from scratch in creating your watch faces, configuring your zillion notifications, etc. After returning the device, I just felt relieved.
> Apple created an entirely new industry – something that isn’t found much in the traditional Apple playbook.
I would have thought this is exactly what Apple's blockbuster successes are known for. The original Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch - all industry-defining products.