Apple Introduces Apple Watch Ultra

I finally upgraded my ageing 935 to a 955 after 3 or more years and I actually find the 955 to be a joyous experience day to day for everything I need to do and way more. The UI/UX actually feels somewhat well polished now.

Sure, some features and functions are buried, but the amount of functionality packed into it, which is quickly and easily accessible when you get the basic UI structure is unsurpassed IMO. Nothing ever feels more than a few button presses or swipes away, which is honestly a huge achievement given just how much they are packing in now.

The new daily reports and training/workout suggestions are almost always bang on in terms of matching I how feel along with their suggestions for easy days / hard days. The battery life and abundance of buttons just leaves Apple for dust IMO. Add in features like PacePro, easy workout building, training programs, race day planning, integration with everything imaginable - Di2 gears, power meters, etc. Apple will probably never handle a triathlon event - jumping seamlessly from Garmin watch -> Garmin cycle computer -> Garmin watch. I don't think Garmin should feel threatened by Apple here.

Nothing about Apple Watch appeals to me for my use case - running, cycling, swimming, hiking, training status, sleep tracking/recommendations, notifications, music/spotify integration. I've had a couple of Apple Watches over the years and they both got handed on to family members within a month or two. I've wanted to like it, but they are a long way off realistically serving my use-case and this new Ultra version doesn't look to come close either.

I've certainly had issues with Garmin - that atrocious week long service outage a year or two back and also some software updates that made me wonder if any internal QA had been done at all, but overall, Garmin have given me rock solid devices that are best in class IMO. My 935 still looked almost brand new after 3 years of hard usage and still gave me nearly week long battery life (with 5-7hrs running a week).

I have a Series 4. I stick it on the charger in the evening when I've settled down on the couch to do the NYT crossword puzzle, watch TV, and read. I inevitably fall asleep sometime during that. Sometime in the next two hours I'll wake up to go pee, see that the watch is charged, and put it on, go pee, maybe go get a drink of water, and head to bed.

When I'm in bed I have the watch in theater mode and with notifications silenced.

When I'm awake, but not exercising, I generally have it in theater mode with notifications not silenced. I'll toggle it out of theater mode if I'm doing something where I'll want to look at the watch more than sporadically.

When I'm exercising I turn off theater mode. That's typically about 40 minutes every morning.

Most evenings when I stick it on the charger it is above 50%. A fair number of days it is above 66%.

Meanwhile Apple's competition is flailing around releasing literally hundreds of minor model variations each, which all require design, parts sourcing, warehousing, warranty support[1], standards licensing, FCC approvals, etc...

Remember Nokia? They had something like over 100 phone models when Apple release the iPhone!

More models isn't more choice. It's more confusion, more fragmentation, more overhead, and more upset customers that can't get the combination of features they want.

[1] This one in particular is a killer, especially in some markets like California and Australia. Needing to keep spares on hand for legally-mandated warranty drags down the profitability or jacks up the price for a lot of companies that don't "get" the Apple Way of having fewer SKUs.