I purchased the Apple Watch when the cellular version came out. You can bet that my smartphone usage has gone down since I've stopped carrying it around.

I get my messages, my calls, and my emails. I can get directions if necessary. I even get my wallet, my weather, my reminders/schedule AND my music. What else do I need?

EDIT: Did I mention it also tells time?

Fuji X series have the IQ of a "real" camera but a very portable form factor.

I currently carry a Nikon FE film camera around when I want a camera small enough to forget about, but I am itching to get an X100F in particular.

I got the fuji x-pro2 for this reason. I used to carry a bunch of canon gear... till I stopped bringing it anywhere because it was too heavy.

I traded it all in for a fuji, and 2 small primes, and I bring that camera everywhere.

Unfortunately one can't beat physics.

If you need reach and magnification, for example at an airshow, then you need a long lens with a lot of glass. At that point the weight of the camera becomes irrelevant.

If you just need a couple of primes for street shooting then just about any camera manufacturer will sell you something small and lightweight. Fuji don't have any particular light-attracting or gravity-defeating magic.

I had one, the colours were brilliant but the autofocus, operation and lowlight were all poor.

Can you elaborate? I thought that sensor was at least OK in low light

Actually you are correct - the X100F looks like a huge upgrade, I had the previous model!

Do you have a camera for photos? I have an LTE watch. That + written notes are the two big things I miss.

Also can't wait till all apps are phone independent. Right now most third party apps stop working without a phone.

I do not. I'm in the market for a camera that's the size of the AirPods case so I could bring it on vacation. It'd be great if I could have something like the cameras off of today's latest and greatest phones but in a much more miniature and standalone form factor.

The apps I'm waiting for are Car2Go or Uber that work totally independently. Also, unfortunately, Google Hangout for work.

While I'm making wishes, it'd be amazing if I could sync with my MBP instead of my iPhone.

Finding a decent camera in that size is damned near impossible, but something like a LUMIX ZS60S or a Sony DSCW830 is pretty tiny and takes much nicer photos than a phone once you've spent a little time getting used to the camera and what it can actually do. (Often your phone can also take much better photographs than your automatic settings will, but fiddling with it is a pain.)

Do camera makers have any recent models that small, or do we generally need to look at old versions, since the point and shoot market tanked?

There are plenty of superzooms (which are basically a mirrorless or DSLR without an interchangeable lens) that cost too much and get you too little and are too big, but the compact market is weird and tiny and not great.

Sony's current compact line seems OK, though I haven't used them--the DSCWX cameras. They've got Exmor sensors (their mirrorlesses all use Exmor sensors) and reasonable lenses. You won't get mirrorless performance, but you're not expecting to, so, yeah.

A GoPro is a pretty similar size to the AirPods case and gets you a pretty rugged camera.

Do they do a non-fisheye lens version though? Whilst it's great for action films, it's bloody terrible for plain old photos.

That's actually a great idea. Thanks!

You have to admire their ingenuity in fighting smartphone addiction by selling you another smart device.

Regardless of whether they intended it or not, smartphone addiction was one of two reasons I bought Apple Watch (the other reason being I don't like to carry something in my hand or pockets, just to be within reach).

Well, a distant third reason is that voice recognition is finally good enough for basic text messaging.

I just bought a LTE LG Watch (should be in tomorrow) just so I could leave my phone behind exactly due to this kind of effect. I have come to the realization that a huge junk of the time I and virtual everyone around me spends on our phones is wasteful and unproductive. Looking up from my phone around a bar and seeing so many tables full of people staring at their phones kind of makes me nostalgic for the dumb phone era. I am hoping that the smartwatch will be a good compromise between staying connected and not encouraging my own bad habits.

There's a quote in a book that I like that says:

"In order to live free and happily, you must sacrifice boredom. It is not always an easy sacrifice."

I think about that a lot when I notice things like what you mention, where everybody is distracted and cell phones are ruling our lives.

Interesting story. But it seems to me they're just substituting addiction with distraction. The Apple watch ad always made me cringe: they basically listed how the wonderful moments of our life are distracted by digital devices. These devices used to be feet away: radio, phones, computers... now I have to bloody wear it on me? No fucking way.

I'm not sure I follow your reasoning. I (and others) have noticed that the effect I reported is true: wearing the Watch prevents distraction more than it enables it. I spend less time on my phone doing unimportant things than I used to, and I don't get as distracted while attempting to work on other things because the Watch actually makes it easier to ignore notifications.

I understand if you're not sold on it, and maybe phone distraction isn't a problem that you have anyway, but I think that there is certainly anecdotal evidence that the Apple Watch can be more helpful than harmful in these situations.

Wasn't the town hall's content confidential? If you are going to leak things, at least do it anonymously.

I don't think I breached any agreements here, but in any case this handle is not my real name, and personal information I give through it is not all factual. :)

That would be kind of a strange thing to do for interns...if that's what they really were

There were definitely specific things that they asked us not to talk about. One example: Angela Ahrendts (SVP Retail) talked to us about the new Chicago Apple Store [0] and asked us not to discuss it until its public announcement.

I don't think the town hall events were confidential. My understanding was that they asked us not to take notes or use electronic devices to be polite to the speakers. They explicitly told us when certain information was meant to be kept secret.

[0] https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/10/apple-michigan-avenue...

This argument seems to imply the opposite, taking the "addicting" notifications and strapping them to your wrist doesn't exactly reduce the behavior. Most studies show any addicting effect is directly tied to the dopamine release from receiving the notifications. The decreased frequency in unlocking the phone is simply moved to your arm.

Just bought a smart watch over the weekend, I'll keep you posted ;)

What's important is the reduction in functionality. I can't do nearly as much from my Watch as I can with my phone, and specifically I can't just browse through Reddit or Facebook. While I may interact with the same number of notifications, I interact with them for significantly less time (because there's not much to do with them from the Watch), and any such interaction is unlikely to cause me to browse my phone in a more general way.

So that's the key: the Watch frees me from the trap of "Well I'm already on my phone, so I may as well open up Instagram/Twitter and scroll through my feed again."

Don't you need your phone in your pocket to use it?

For non-LTE models, yes. But if you are notified via your wrist, you still have to go through the effort of retrieving your phone, unlocking it, and then tending to the notification before you get to the “time wasting” stage, and I think its that’s a barrier to entry that’s causing people to use their phone less.

Yes, I have a Series 2 so I need to have my phone nearby (or on the same WiFi) for the Watch to be useful.

The difference is that now I can dismiss notifications from my wrist and I am less tempted to actually unlock my phone directly, which is what was causing me to get distracted before.

I've noticed with watch notifications I'm far more likely to mentally dismiss them without losing my train of thought.

Phone notificaions, on the other hand, clog up the unlock screen, and seem to demand action when I pull down notification center and see old ones.

I still keep notifications low, mind you. Watch ones are still a distraction. But on balance I find it much less.