Apple Watch

Watch is hit and miss. Enough value to get me to wear a watch again. Annoying quirks that could be easily fixed. Watch is hit and miss for me. Enough value to get me to wear a watch again. Annoying quirks that could be easily fixed. Kevin Lynch was my old boss at Adobe, so I was sort of rooting for him. And I like the idea of wearables, and there are usecases that add enough value. But 7 years, and it still can't keep up-to-date, or have a multi-day battery? ℹ️ Info           ~ Aristotle Sabouni Created: 2022-10-05

Initial Reactions

• Smaller than I thought it would be (I got the 38mm), easy to change bands, even without reading directions.
• Notifications are sometimes helpful meetings=good, turned off some of the others.
• Some fun features (like the "get off your ass, you've been sitting for 55 minutes" tap-tap-tap).
• Works great indoors. Still gets a bit washed out in direct mid-day sunlight. I can read the dial or digital numbers, but barely.
• Still, easy enough to use, and you can quickly get used to it. Not as revolutionary as the smart phone, but definitely handy a few times a day.

What I like

The killer app (what makes it worth wearing, for me):

Adobe has embarassingly bad/annoying password management

The OTP (One Time Password) that I need to enter about 15x per day, is MUCH MUCH better on a wrist tap, than pocket diving for the phone.

I had to enter the goddamn thing at least 15 times a day (and it's a horrid multi-factor auth thing, with a password that it can't remember AND a pager code number). I was wasting 20 minutes a day just swearing at the incomprehensible badness and disruption that it causes each and every workflow or email that takes a reference to a wiki, authorizing access to directories, and so on. The watch gets the IM directly, which prevents me from pocket-diving every time I need to log-in -- just a flick of the wrist, and I'm in. It's a reasonable hack around a system that makes we want to nad-kick whoever designed it. I'd pay $350 for that one feature. Adobe improved it over the next 7 years, and it dropped to about 5x per day. But the watch is still nicer than the phone or alternatives.

• Swimming/Fitness The fitness App (on iPhone/Mac) sucks at logging/displaying. Every other fitness tracker (over time) is better. But on tracking a single work-out, it's not horrible. It drops a lap or two here and there, and can occasionally get in a weird state (where you have to spin the dial to unlock it and do anything, but it won't let you until you do something first... and you can't until you unlock it). But other than that, it's good enough.

What I don't like

• 24 hour battery life In 2015 and 1.0? Sure. By 2022, with version 8? Fitbits and other devices can last weeks. Apple should have a model that can last more than 24 hours.

• The fucking thing can't update It does things I don't want, like downloads all my music to it, then it's full, and doesn't have enough space to update. So it hangs on updating. Or gets into a state where you need to update to do anything, but you can't update because it doesn't have enough memory to update.

• Horrid iPhone UI Something simple like I want to delete music off the watch, it impossible. I can't do it on the watch -- it tells me to use the phone. And the phone doesn't have a simple way to remove what I don't want from the watch. This doesn't have to be that hard. 1.0, I give them a little grace. But after 7 years, you're fucking incompetent.

Failed Predictions

Fast Co

Predicted: "The Apple Watch Is Going To Flop, Right?" They totally blew chunks on that prediction. My prediction were that it wouldn't be an iPhone, but did have enough value to be around in 5 years. I was right, they blew it.

My take on first use: Predicting a flop is as dumb as declaring it will change the company. Unless you've lived with it a month, it's dumb to make big predictions. I don't think the device will significantly alter apples financials in the short term (that would take a ridiculous volume), but I don't think that's how success is or should be measured. They should hit critical mass or MVP in wearables that will fund its own development and innovation for the next decade and be a great placeholder to allow them to exploit advances in the segment, and keep capturing more customers (or keeping ecosystem lock-in) as they go.

CNN/Money

They also predicted the end of the Watch and sales were down 55%.

https://money.cnn.com/2016/07/22/news/companies/apple-watch-smartwatch-sales-report/index.html

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🔗 More

Apple Some things I've experienced or observed while working at/for/with Apple.

Tech Reviews A list of Technology Reviews.

Hardware In computerese, if you can touch it, it's hardware. The computer, keyboard, screen, mouse, peripherals, rocks.

🔗 Links

• Fast Co: You Guys Realize The Apple Watch Is Going To Flop, Right? Yup, they totally blew chunks on that prediction.

Tags: Apple  Technology Reviews  Hardware