Stopped using my calculator after it broke and bought an abacus.

- Always on

- Infinite battery life

- No accidental resets

- Looks pretty on my desk

I look at my abacus with joy everyday.

I think you're being satirical, but actually I've always wanted to learn to use an abacus - and I suspect the knowledge would actually be useful in enhancing my understanding of small math operations and making my on-the-fly calculations more accurate. Better isn't always better.

First time I went to China (1991), we visited a department store where we were checked out by someone with a cash register and abacus on their table. They ignored the calculator on the register, and only used its cash drawer while summing our purchases with the abacus.

I have a mechanical watch which is similar.

Good luck with that!

PTSD from notifications hit hard.

I thought a phone was addictive, but at-least you could put it in your pocket / bag / car and keep a distance.

A watch is like that tightly hugging tail-wagging dog.

"Look at me, look at me, look at me !"

I find the opposite to be true - with a smart watch I can glance at what the notifications are about and avoid reaching for my phone for way longer.

Yep I'm super happy with my nasty old android watch for exactly this reason.

I mentioned this elsewhere but I really like hybrid smart watches for this - battery on my withings scanwatch goes 20 days, does notifications OK, activity longing, sleep tracking, HR monitoring.

Features I'm missing from galaxy watch are find my phone and answering phone on the watch, but it's so much lighter I don't need to take it off (the bulky strap on my galaxy watch would bother me when resting my hands on laptop edge), and it's very low key - I can wear it in any setting. Smart watches look like toys to me TBH.

This makes sense, but I guess personal disposition makes a difference.

I don't get the problem here. You're able to select which notifications are allowed to come through to the watch.

I only have notifications from a few apps allowed to come through, and out of those I also filter them with the in-app settings to only get ones I'm interested in getting pinged about.

I never get more notifications than I can handle, and especially not ones I don't want to be harassed by.

So why don’t you disable the notifications you don’t like?

I don't know how to answer to these points, especially in tech debates.

"Why don't you put your phone in flight mode?" "Why don't you turn off the internet" "Why don't you just turn off your PC and go to sleep"

The questions are easy. The actions are too damn hard to pull off.

Turning off notifications is a set and forget thing. It’s a setting. It’s not a habit, not a technique, not a vague concept. It is a literal toggle switch.

Is it ? Is it too damn hard to turn off notifications? I fail to see how disabling one feature is equivalent to Airplane mode or turning off a PC which disables multiple functionalities (with the later making it unusable). The matters are obviously not solutions since other use cases require their useless. Turning off notifications have no effect on any other feature of the watch.

When you get a notification on your watch, spend 5 seconds thinking "Do I want this notification on my watch?" This question is apparently the easy part.

Now for the "hard" part: swipe to the left on the notification, tap the "..." button, and tap "Turn Off on Apple Watch". Now you won't get notifications from that app on your watch. Should take you about 2 seconds.

> The actions are too damn hard to pull off.

Wow, I am surprised by this sentiment. In iOS notifications are an opt-in situation, I just never turn them on for anything but the smallest subset of apps (iMessage, Discord, Slack, Signal currently). For those apps I’m super aggressive about limiting noise, I’ll unsubscribe to things and tweak notification settings literally every time I get spam.

It has been pretty easy for me because they let you filter exactly which apps can notify your watch.

I find this complaint surprising. You can turn notifications off. I have everything disabled apart from health metrics on my watch.

Just turn off those notifications

It baffles me that notifications are on by default. It’s also weird to complain that you didn’t turn them off, but each to their own.

I believe I did turn them off but after some update they got turned back on. I got tired of maintaining/troubleshooting my watch like any other computer. Also, I accidentally scratched the display which couldn't be repaired without much expense. I don't want to wear something that precious/fragile on my wrist.

Most basic Casio watches last at least 10 years on one battery.

Even better!

I guess it's a matter of perspective. I could never replace my smart phone with a flip phone... because I don't really use it as a phone. In the same way I don't really use my smart watch as a watch. My smart watch is a fitness tracker first, and the watch part is a bonus feature.

That's why that famous model number (can't look up at the moment) for $12 will never die, it's fashionable, cool, practical, and no one know if you're wearing the one you got when you were 12yr old or you vanity seek and seen a celeb in GQ and thought yeah minimalist man I'll dip that trust fund twelve dollars and have it air delivered. Decent watch for a watch, apple watch can potentially disrupt the medical scene though so thats my interest in these new devices (cgm, EKG,sleep) but fully agree on the casio

But no voice recording. I bought mine mainly to have a recorder one tap away. Don't really care about them showing time.