I listened to a couple of podcasts I had downloaded offline with Watch Player. Then I switched to streaming Apple Music. About 5 miles into the run I got a phone call from the mechanic which I answered, to confirm that I was still coming to pick up the vehicle. I also stopped in to a pharmacy and bought an energy bar using Apple Pay.
When I got to the mechanic, I picked up the car, and used Apple Maps driving directions to navigate home, while listening to Apple Music, connected to the bluetooth stereo in my car. I was also able to make a phone call to my girlfriend to tell her that I was on my way back and make dinner plans.
So yes, people actually use them, and download and use apps.
Battery life can drain quite rapidly if you leave your cell antenna on during a run. It seems like they should figure out a way to more intelligently toggle the antenna or define a different use case where I don't have to go remember to go turn it back on if I actively want to use data but in the meantime it remains disabled (and if I don't receive incoming calls that's maybe ok? Despite the example in my original post...).
I wish Yelp and some other apps would operate in standalone mode without the phone. This is likely related to the SDK limitations, but it's also a matter of app developer priorities of course.
A flip phone and an iPod Shuffle cost me 100$, and a 25$/mo plan, unlimited talk/text, almost 15 years ago.
Now we have a flip phone + shuffle on your wrist, for 500$, plus you almost certainly have an iPhone - 50-100$/mo plan, plus what, 200-500$ flat fee for the phone? Oh, how much are those airPods? Add 150$ to that bill.
The same functionality from 10-20 years ago, should cost less, not more, if we are to use a little common sense. It feels like Apple's fantastic feel for aesthetics and horrid android offerings, have led people to believe it's reasonable to spend roughly a thousand dollars a year if not more, to do the same things you did 15 years ago for 1/5th if not 1/10 the cost. We're getting the same functionality, in a SLIGHTLY more convenient (arguable) wrapper, and it costs way more! This is the opposite of progress.
Before anyone jumps out and tells me how useful their 'smart'-phone is, let me remind you the most used apps on there are pure empty entertainment (social media, games), with very questionable long-term costs (I predict an epidemic of neck and shoulder problems hitting the developed countries in the next 20-30 years)
I don't think it's the same experience as running with just a smartwatch.
There's less dread that you're going to drop and destroy an expensive heavy device if you focus on your run.
I also didn't and don't pay anything near your prices, and don't find Apple's aesthetics that great, or Android's offerings that horrible.
There's less dread that you're going to drop and destroy
an expensive heavy device if you focus on your run.
And again, 400 is a silly price to pay for small tech, but that's not a criticism of watches, it's a criticism of Apple. Did you see the teardown of Beats headphones and their cheap components? There are lots of lousy ways to conspicuously give Apple too much money without watches.
You could get a cheap smartphone and an entry level watch for a third of the price of some people's iPhones, and if you share my somewhat odd preferences, have a better experience for it.
- iPod Shuffle weighed LESS than Apple Watch, and cost 1/5th the price. I think it had comparable battery life or better?
- Flip phone cost almost nothing 15 years ago, there has been no progress in the way we make phonecalls or send text messages over the past 15 years.
Now, iPhone does MORE than a flip phone, apple watch does MORE than an ipod shuffle.
How much more? 5 times more? Because the pricetag is 5 times more.
Now, progress, is when you pay LESS for the same thing you had 15 years ago, because it is now CHEAPER to produce, test, and deliver that same product.
So to re-iterate:
- Same functionality should cost the same or LESS. It should be BETTER for the same price.
- More convenient form factor and extra !!!OPTIONAL!!! features are great and welcome, I'd be willing to pay 10-15% more for them.
- Apple products have gone UP in price, while providing absolutely no extra UTILITY. You're paying incredible prices for nice-to-haves that most people do not need (heart rate monitor, better camera, more pixels, better pixels)
The market is the final arbiter of what makes a successful product. Not your perception of what constitutes value or utility.
The thought of having a watch that is better in all dimensions and is smaller is amazing. On top of that it has cellular.
I also tried running with just my phone using Nike+ GPS back in the day and quickly went back to my Garmin watch.
I'm coming from an Android Wear based Polar M600. It was nice, but Android Wear 2.0 was a bit of a dumpster fire and kind of ruined it (random battery rundown, Music removed on every f/w update, hard to sync Music, could not shuffle Music after Android Wear 2.0 update). In the end, I could not count on more than 8hr of battery life unless I put it in airplane mode with the screen off.
Before I settled on the Garmin, my Nexus died. I was seriously considering switching to an iPhone just to be able to use an Apple Watch. But then I learned that the AW3 has a battery life of only 18 hours. So I just updated to a Pixel and got the Garmin.
It seems like using Android / iOS for a watch OS may just be the problem. I was also considering the Fitbit Ionic, which has a comparable battery life to the Garmin. There just don't seem to be any Android Wear watches with a 5+ day battery life.
The traffic directions are pretty important when you’re driving in NYC during rush hour.
I also use it to control my music on my commute, or when I'm playing music while doing something around the house, and if I have to head into my bedroom, where the blinds are always down, I can tell it to turn on the corner lamp for me.
It's massively handy to have Siri on my wrist while cooking: What's half a pound in grams? Also, start a timer for fifteen minutes.
I don't have to carry anything else around with me everywhere. I can head over to the store to buy milk and bread, and I don't need to carry my phone or my wallet, even if I want to listen to music on the trip.
Where did I leave my phone? I'll ping it from my watch. Where did I leave my keys? I'll ping my tile from my watch.
And, y'know, you can do most of this from a phone, that's true. But I do it from my watch, and I quite like it that way.
Doesn't it bother you to have to recharge it, though?
I don't personally use an Apple Watch. I have a Garmin Fenix that I don't use much. (I usually just wear a $30 Timex.) But I can see why people might like them.
(a little, but it’s fine; i’m asleep)
Looking at the responses to your post there are clearly some fans here, I do wonder though how many are sat with a flat battery in a drawer somewhere.
-Mainly, it's a very handy, very low-distraction way of getting notifications. The vibration is a lot more noticeable/unmistakable than a phone through a pair of pants, so I find myself doing far less habitual checking of my phone (or watch, for that matter). You can really tune out of your phone/social media, but respond to an urgent text/call.
-IMHO, at work, checking my wrist is a much better "look" than scrolling through my phone notifications (and, tbh, often getting distracted and checking in on news).
-Having weather info available at a glance is surprisingly nice. I live in Michigan, so it's often consequential information - having it at the flip of a wrist instead of even opening an app or asking Siri is, believe it or not, a really nice benefit.
-Having a watchface with a rotating collection of Live Photos is a great way of showing off my kids to people without handing them my full photo collection.
I'm still using my Series 0 on a daily basis. I use it for:
1. telling the time (duh)
2. as an activity tracker
3. unlocking my Mac
4. Apple Pay
5. Discreet notifications
As for battery recharging, it's a minor inconvenience but not a deal breaker. I thought it would be an issue but it isn't. A non-tech wise old man said "I'll just follow my routine and charge it by my bedside every night". Even if you don't follow the routine and forget about charging it, it recharges relatively quickly.
That's if you can charge it. I (and a couple of friends) routinely sleep out of our own home for a couple or three days on a whim. We can easily come by Lightning or micro-USB chargers if need be but we'd be hard pressed to find a smartwatch charger†, which means a dead watch soon enough.
† Qi largely isn't popular enough, and even then if it were an Apple Watch it's been walled into only working with Apple's chargers.
1. My default face includes my next appointment from my calendar. This is really useful.
2. Notifications are GREAT. Meeting coming up? Call coming in? Text? Important email? Something else (yeah, okay, I even let a game send me watch notifications)? It's useful to me to have this on my wrist.
3. Even better: Being able to easily acknowledge or even reply to texts from the watch is super, super useful to me. A good chunk of the appeal here is that I'm a cyclist, so I can do this at a stop light without needing to pull my phone out of my jersey pocket, but it's also great generally.
4. Quick access to things like timers, weather forecasts, my calendar, etc -- again, without reaching for my phone -- is a real boon. The way Apple has implemented this is natural and easy.
5. My initial use case was running + bike notifications, because my OG Pebble had died (which I always used when riding) and I was training for a half. I tried a lower-end Garmin, but it was pants. The S0 Apple Watch + the Strava app was GREAT for this, though.
6. It's hard to overstate how useful the watch is for remote control of music on the phone. I use this the most when I'm on my cycling trainer, but it's also great just generally, because it's always RIGHT THERE.
7. Finally, I will admit that I use the "make your phone emit a pinging sound" feature VERY often, because I tend to misplace it in my house. My wife, bless her heart, is very nice about not pointing out how often the resulting chime turns out to come from one of my pockets.
8. Ah, forgot about ApplePay! It's SO convenient from the watch. Using it from the phone is good, and still faster than a chip card (US), but paying from the watch is nearly frictionless. I love it.
Sales are showing someone likes it.
I think that changes a bit with the series 3 and LTE support. I would be willing to deal with cumbersome interfaces more frequently if it meant I could leave my phone at home and still have access to essential functions (phone calls, text messages, etc). And I could see myself downloading a lot more 3rd party apps to have with me just in case (slack, 1password, authy, etc).
The only thing stopping me from getting the series 3 is the fact that I get cell service through a cheap MVNO that doesn't support the apple watch yet. Hopefully it's just a matter of time now before it is possible to use apple watch LTE service with MVNOs.
I discovered that if all you want is activity tracking, notifications and calendar, other brands of watch do this for far less money without the hassle of charging every day. Check out some of the newer Garmin or Fitbit watches.
* Clock functionality (duh!)
* Calendar - what's my next appointment.
* Check the weather before I step outside.
* Walking directions on maps - keep phone in pocket, get guided by discrete tap on my wrist.
* Fitness tracking (though, as you mention, there are other options)
* Notifications (the power of the watch is that you DON'T have to take your phone out of your pocket).
* Apple Pay (that's a big one for me. Much more convenient on watch than on phone).
* Automatically unlocks my macs when I sit down to use them.
A handful of these are third party apps. I use Trails to track my walks. The lyft widget seems kind of useful. Wunderground is better than Apple's built in weather app.
One example: I never use siri on my phone - it’s too slow and flaky and typing is so much faster. I use Siri on my watch all the time because they apparently have a better QA team and I don’t need two hands to use it which is really good on my bike or as a new parent, especially now that our son is jealous of attention going to a phone.
Some people use their phones more efficiently than others by combining tasks in the one session. More info can be read, more browsed on the large screen. On the other hand, some people use their phones in part to avoid social awkwardness, or fill in otherwise restful moments. This is significant because it's behaviour many wouldn't want to give up, even if we should.
It raises the question of how connected to things we ought to be, a watch means you are more "jacked in" permanently. I'm not sure I want that. When I put my phone away in my bag, I'm putting the internet away, I've "disconnected". A watch feels like it's always there ready to pounce.
Just for you, here's an angle that you'll see as "silly and bad"...
The name "Apple Watch" is a misnomer. It's not a "watch" in the sense of its primary function as a timepiece. If you insist it is a timepiece, then given the short battery life, it's the worst timepiece since the invention of the watch.
It's a device that does a few different things that happens to be strapped to your wrist.
I find it curious that the Apple engineer and another person in this thread has listed as their number one use of the Apple Watch "telling the time (duh)"... why add "duh"? If you use other apps primarily, the time may not be visible, or only in tiny digits, or even a blank screen. "Duh" is not needed because telling the time seems to be something the Apple Watch does only under certain circumstances like "have you recharged" or "is your wrist angled the correct way".
People are listing "telling the time (duh)" because it's OBVIOUSLY a watch. I guess I could assemble a face that doesn't include the time, but I certainly haven't wanted to. Obviously I consult it for the time several times a day. Obviously, that's the primary role of a wristwatch.
I suspect people here, like myself, have omitted "telling the time" when outlining reasons the Apple Watch is useful are doing so because, duh, it's a watch. It tells time.
Incidentally, there remain no small number of manual-wind watches in use that require daily winding. Are they also examples of the worst watches ever made?
Stop pretending you know what motivates my contributions, that's rude.
Bias? We're talking about a tech product, not immigration policy. I am not loyal to any brand, I own examples of most brands and will praise or criticise as needed, as anyone should. Brand loyalty is where you'll find bias, so perhaps take a look in the mirror.
"Duh" is a silly word to use on any occasion. When used as part of an answer to a question, you risk giving the impression the questioner has asked a stupid question. "Duh" does not mean "obviously".
If you're standing or sitting with arms folded then look down at the time, you may see a blank screen, therefore the primary role of your wristwatch is inferior to even those watches that require daily winding. And no, I would not describe a watch that requires daily winding as a great watch.
I look forward to vastly improved battery life in smart watches and more hybrid-mechanical or traditional digital watch design so that the watch part is not an "app".
It doesn't seem like you can discuss the product without going after the person, so hopefully this interaction is at an end.
Ah, the brave one, speaking truth when others are clouded by bias!
>this interaction is at an end
Thank God.
Much better to get a visual idea of the area, so you know where you are, distances to expect, and layout of the land... kind of like a normal map!
I get that looking at a map is not practical when cycling, but I think most cyclists know exactly where they and following familiar routes.
It's useful, when navigating, to be free of the need to stare at one's phone or a map the whole time. That's the boon here.
But, again, I note you're the guy who seems really invested in hating the watch -- even to the point of dismissing as invalid reasons another poster enjoys it! -- so it's not clear why I'm replying.
It's nice for calendar reminder and text alerts. It's also decent for outdoor runs (if you're not a super athlete, otherwise you probably have a Garmin).
He used it for a couple of weeks, but I don't think I wouldn't have lasted more than 2-3 days having yet another thing I have to charge every day.
Do a lot of people actually use them and download and use apps? Why would I want to carry a smartwatch besides for exercising (where I'd personally want something much lighter and a lot cheaper) when I have my cell phone with me at all times?
I'm not making fun, just curious.