The thought of the thing buzzing when one of serveral very talkative/verbose friends starts spamming me with SMSes drives me into a rage. And thats just thinking about it.
The Apple Watch
321–330 of 863 posts
Re: The Apple Watch
#322My two cents: I don't know any person who is into serious running (I'm into triathlon, so add cycling and swimming) who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch and additionally you are required to have your iPhone with you to use the GPS. A sports watch without GPS, IMHO is a no go at $350. For (I won't comment on the lack of info on battery life and water resistance). *Edit: changed from water resistant to waterproof.
Exactly. I put off buying a GPS watch because I wanted to see what Apple was going to offer. Answer: Nothing. I really cannot imagine a more useless product than this watch. It requires an iPhone and seems to essentially serve as a small, remote interface for your phone. And how do I navigate that small interface? With an even smaller "digital crown." I hate trying to set the time on my watch, and now they expect me…
You cannot imagine a more useless product?
Re: The Apple Watch
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
The swim stroke tracker is hit-and-miss for me (sometimes guesses the wrong stroke and length points) but that probably says more about my swimming (which is awful) than the watch. But I can definitely vouch for the excellent battery life, resilience to water, and usefulness on a bike laden with sensors. The only gripe I have is that you can have multiple sets of bike sensors but not anything else. That and their app…
Good to know, thanks! Sadly, it might be outside of my price range. It does look like it's the perfect thing for tracking my workouts, but damn is that one hell of an investment.
It's also due to be replaced any day now (it's the last piece of the Garmin series that hasn't been updated in for.ev.er.).
Once the new version comes out, 910xt's should be pretty cheap to pickup.
Re: The Apple Watch
#324Earlier quoted context omitted.
This comment reminded me of CmdrTaco's slashdot comment after the iPod launch: http://t.co/RPAX2r93kx I think Garmin forerunner will be to the future of wearables what Nomad was to the future of music in 2002.
I'll ignore your slightly pedantic tone. I'm not calling this a failure or lame. Don't read between the lines. I'm just saying that at $350, for people who take sports seriously (a very very very small niche), there are better alternatives. This is Apple Watch 1.0, I'm sure there are better things down the line. Thinking otherwise is just a mistake. I said it before https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8292596
There are better alternatives-- IF and only IF you value certain features that the Apple watch lacks over the features that it has, but that the frontrunner lacks.
The front runner has GPS so you can get GPS without carrying your phone around. That's great. But what use is that GPS? (seriously, I don't get it- it's a 80s era LCD display).
The Apple watch has GPS (in the phone) but also gives you maps and haptic feedback to send you along your route without ever looking at the watch. I presume the frontrunner doesn't do that (how do you put a route into a watch without a map display?)
Re: The Apple Watch
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think Apple needs that handful of extra dollars from early adaptors. The reason the initial price is high is because its easier to decrease a retail price than it is to increase it.
Apple tends not to lower their prices. Instead, they offer newer models will with more features at stable price points. If prices do drop (e.g. the 5s) it's because an older product is still being sold alongside a newer one at the standard price.
This is not the case with first run products. The original iPhone's price was $599 (8GB) and $499 (4GB) when it was released in June 2007. Then in September of the same year they discontinued the 4GB model and dropped the price of the 8GB down to $400.
I'm not saying that they will drop the price of the watch but there is a history of them doing this with the first run of a product. Also someone mentioned they did something similar with the MBA in this thread.
Re: The Apple Watch
#326Super disappointed with this. I was hoping for a bunch of sensors that fed my iPhone. Not something to discretely take meetings during a meeting. Here is what is missing for me: 1. Sweat sensor. 2. Insulin sensor. 3. Smarter/more accelerometers to intelligently automatically detect what I'm doing. For example, if I start lifting 50 lbs in a dumbell bench press it should know that! My iPhone should auto update a fitne…
I don't think you can get much more information than heart rate from a non-invasive device whose only input is the surface contact with your wrist.
Electrical Skin Resistance ("Sweat sensor") would be possible to measure, but in my brief experience with it is very unreliable as the sole source of information, since you get the same physical response from many different causes.
Re: The Apple Watch
#327Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. I put off buying a GPS watch because I wanted to see what Apple was going to offer. Answer: Nothing. I really cannot imagine a more useless product than this watch. It requires an iPhone and seems to essentially serve as a small, remote interface for your phone. And how do I navigate that small interface? With an even smaller "digital crown." I hate trying to set the time on my watch, and now they expect me…
>Imagine a typical scenario. You are walking down the street and suddenly need to navigate somewhere. How many minutes are you going to waste playing with that little nub and resizing things on the screen before finally pulling out your phone and just using that. Reminds me of a joke I heard: A local school board was trying to find ways to increase the efficiency of their schools. A local computer programmer had come…
I like the watch idea personally. Say you're riding your bike and you receive a text message. in order to see what's going on you will probably have to stop and take the phone out of your pocket. with a watch you can simply look at your wrist quickly.
Re: The Apple Watch
#328My two cents: I don't know any person who is into serious running (I'm into triathlon, so add cycling and swimming) who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch and additionally you are required to have your iPhone with you to use the GPS. A sports watch without GPS, IMHO is a no go at $350. For (I won't comment on the lack of info on battery life and water resistance). *Edit: changed from water resistant to waterproof.
> My two cents: I don't know any person who is into serious running (I'm into triathlon, so add cycling and swimming) who would spend $350 on the Apple Watch and additionally you are required to have your iPhone with you to use the GPS. Yeah, it's for the sligltly LESS serious runners, of which there are millions...
No, this is a huge impediment to its usefulness. Having to carry around a phone while running is a drudge regardless of how serious of a runner or athlete you are. Not to mention so many other sports that could benefit from this but won't. This is especially so considering the larger size of the iPhone 6 and especially the iPhone 6 plus.
Re: The Apple Watch
#329Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's a general limitation of the optical heart rate trackers that they aren't quite "24/7". At least on all the Android Wear devices that feature one, you have to ask it to take a reading, and it's pretty unreliable if you're moving. I didn't see it mentioned in the Apple coverage, but I assume it's probably similarly limited there?
My Basis watch takes readings regularly (not sure the interval once a minute, maybe) of my heart rate. Battery lasts about 3-4 days.
I would have bought one since that's exactly what I want but they're -still- not shipping outside the US. Think they may have missed their chance now...
Re: The Apple Watch
#330Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good to know, thanks! Sadly, it might be outside of my price range. It does look like it's the perfect thing for tracking my workouts, but damn is that one hell of an investment.
It's also due to be replaced any day now (it's the last piece of the Garmin series that hasn't been updated in for.ev.er.). Once the new version comes out, 910xt's should be pretty cheap to pickup.
I believe the Fenix 2 has already replaced it - http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/03/garmin-fenix2-multisport....