I don't think this will be a useful dive computer for most people. When I first heard the Apple Watch would work as a dive computer I was very excited, but having spent some time thinking about it, and having done 20 dives since the watch was announced, I have changed my mind. The first problem is battery life. I didn't have to replace the battery on my computer for the 20 dives over a week I did recently. If I had g…
It's not about being useful.
It's about marketing to people that want to signal.
I would highly recommend at least buying a cheaper secondary dive computer to take with you in case something goes wrong.
That’s standard diving practice. You have a backup regulator and a backup dice computer. And in the event of both primært and secondsry familier you have a plan for how to handle it. But both the backup regulator and dice computer is on your companion. You don’t dive with two yourself.
I don't see the point of a backup dive computer for most people.
Every dive I've done has been on a boat with quite a few people all doing the same sites during the day. If your computer failed you can still estimate NDL from others on the boat and just err on the side of caution. Or even just rely on paper charts like people did for decades.
If you're doing cave diving then obviously a whole different story.
Garmin and Suunto already have dive computers with full smart watch capabilities. Most importantly without a subscription model to use the features.
Those are like $1200 though; same price as Apple Watch Ultra with 5 years of scuba subscription; and have substantially worse displays, ergonomics, and smart watch UX. I went diving with a friend wearing a Suunto smart dive computer, and he couldn’t figure out how to silence the smart watch notifications because the UX was poor; I’ll never have that kind of issue with Apple device.
There’s a huge market for the Fenix/Epix/Descent line from Garmin, which has always been (much!) more expensive than an Apple Watch. The fitness features and general activity tracking on those is far, far better than what you get from an Apple Watch. The UX is amazing, especially when you’re underwater/wearing thick gloves/running hard. The screens are adequate, if you really want super bright punchy colors you can get that but you’ll pay for it in worse battery life. Oh, and also air integration.
What do you mean? It’s rated to 100m, which is quite a bit below the 40m limit for most recreational diving.
“Rated to 100m” does not mean what you think it means. It means, essentially, that it theoretically would be safe at 100m depth, assuming you lower it slowly and don’t move it about at all . IIUC, local water pressure varies significantly when you move something around underwater, which is why “100m pressure proof” does not mean “can be brought down to 100m depth”.
Sure but this rating is the same for Garmin or Suunto dive computers. EN13319, 100M water resistant. It’s industry standard.
I truly wonder. Why is Apple doing that? If I'm not mistaken, it is a small niche in terms of revenue.
My hypothesis is that this is perhaps a new approach for marketing: find hobbies that correlate the most with the populations with the biggest potential revenue, taking into account the networking and demographic effects within such a population.
Just throwing this off the top of my head. Bear with me :-).
GPS doesn't work underwater. Would it be for finding your way back to the boat after resurfacing?
Also for tagging your dives. Your watch would know where you descended/ascended. It’s great for when you’re in the middle of nowhere on a liveaboard and you forget the names of the dive sites. My Suunto watch uses the phone’s GPS for the same purpose.
Yes exactly, it's for tagging dives. Times and locations only, nothing about what happens underwater.
Edit: actually my computer does that too, well, the app does sort of: the app I have for capturing data from it takes the GPS location when you trigger a sync. Since I don't sync on the boat (why play with a phone?!) it's not very useful. You can easily edit though, drag a pin around and plop the rough location. MacDive, it's a decent bit of software.
I truly wonder. Why is Apple doing that? If I'm not mistaken, it is a small niche in terms of revenue. My hypothesis is that this is perhaps a new approach for marketing: find hobbies that correlate the most with the populations with the biggest potential revenue, taking into account the networking and demographic effects within such a population. Just throwing this off the top of my head. Bear with me :-).
Everything about the Ultra model is like this. It's pure aspiration porn made physical.
It worked really well for Apple in the '00s. Their computer hardware was expensive enough that most people wouldn't think to buy it over a similar PC. Today, Apple's phones, watches and tablets are much more commodity items (cue someone telling me the sales figures tell a different story). The economics are still largely the same now, but the perception of Apple hardware has changed. They use the XDR screen, the Mac Pro (the big boxy one) and now the Ultra series watch to create the sense of mystique.
Those are like $1200 though; same price as Apple Watch Ultra with 5 years of scuba subscription; and have substantially worse displays, ergonomics, and smart watch UX. I went diving with a friend wearing a Suunto smart dive computer, and he couldn’t figure out how to silence the smart watch notifications because the UX was poor; I’ll never have that kind of issue with Apple device.
To me, it seems that your friend was too lazy to read the manual rather than poor UX.