> 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.

https://support.apple.com/guide/watch/breathe-apd371dfe3d7/w...

https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/06/apple-watch-breathe-misconcep...

Out of curiosity, what are you trying to track wrt respiratory rate? Like what behaviors would you be modifying based on respiratory rate?

I have trouble to keep breathing normally while I work. At the end of the day, my breath is usually shallow.

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.

Not true. Respiration can be extracted from heart beat by beat interval data. Happens all the time in heart rate monitors.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5390977/

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.

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.

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.

AirPods could do it. AirPods could accurately take your temperature as well.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Some Garmin watches offer a "breaths per minute" metric.

https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=2yEgS0Pax53UDqUH7q4WC6

It doesn't work without a chest strap.

My VivoActive 4 tracks this without any external accessories. I've never really looked at the data and can't tell you how accurate it is though.

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.)

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.

The whoop strap tracks breaths per min as well

I was excited for a minute thinking this was a strap for the Apple Watch that also tracks respiratory data.

> 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.

You can use authy as well? Does it sync w your phone?

Streaks is an app? (Edit: 5$, hope it’s worth it :D)

Yes, Authy syncs with phone.

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.

I’m used to not charging my watch at all, so that’s quite a change you can imagine.

For a moment there I thought you were about to say 'now I can see the time just by looking!'

That's the typical "Apple User" for you and the typical Apple product announcement.

Siri can work a lot better:

- 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.

>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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Apple’s return policies are pretty generous, there’s no harm in getting one and trying it out for a couple weeks.

You had me up until that last paragraph. Thankfully battery tech for that doesn’t seem to be here yet.

All I need is the spotify watch app streaming test to roll out to everyone, then I really wont need my phone much. (and better texting)

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.

>> 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?

Doesn't need to be accurate, just consistent in its inaccuracies over time. It's about changing behavior, not diagnosis.

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 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.

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.

> Knowing how much I walked around each day, how well I slept, what my heart rate was, etc.

Doesn't your body already have built in sensors to provide this information?

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.

So you would think, but with apple watch I’ve realized that some days I feel like I’ve walked a lot, it’s actually much less than i had thought.

how long have you had it?

This is true, I don't understand the appeal when Fitbit has done the same thing for years. Also, who wears a watch to bed? I'd hate it on my wrist.

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).

None of that functionality is specific to an "Apple Watch" though.

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.

Not specific to Apple, as always.

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.

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.

Please don't break the site guidelines, which ask you not to post like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (read them to the end and you'll see why).

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 understand your point and I agree with you, I just wish I could downvote downvotes sometimes :)

You can run anything you want on your fitbit?

Yes.

https://dev.fitbit.com/

https://gallery.fitbit.com/apps

not concerned about EMF/RF exposure?

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.

Not at all. We have been carrying phones in our pockets and next to our heads for decades now. If something really was wrong we would know about it.

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.

You got any sources to back these claims up?