Thanks for all the feedback!
As Paul Graham said, "Live in the future and build what's missing!" - Going Apple watch-only might allow us to find a ton of interesting audio-first ideas like clubhouse.
I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
41–50 of 87 posts
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#42Voice control has recently improved to Barely Useful, but still certainly Not Usable. I now listen to audiobooks, podcasts for ~2 hours daily, while walking my dog. If there's a way to control apps, navigate options, perform useful dictation, I haven't found it. I can barely get Siri to reliably start and stop audio playback. I'm now curious how blind people manage these things. Also, I dimly recall Marvin Minsky or…
Siri is bad. Voice control over audio playback with google assistant on my nest hub works perfectly well. Actually it performs better in my native danish than siri does in English...
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#43Does anyone know if AirPods work with the Apple Watch without an iPhone? As in, if I leave my phone at home, will I be able to stream music and calls from my watch to my AirPods while I go for a run? Or does it have to route through the phone?
Yes, not only AirPods but any Bluetooth headphones work. This is exactly what I do: sync my favorite running playlists to my Wifi-only (cellular not available in my country) watch, leave my iPhone home, and go running. No issues at all, works great.
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#44Does anyone understand why Apple Watch only works with some mobile networks? I have an LTE version, but it’s not “supported” by any networks in my country. I’ve owned it for many years and it’s not really useful unless in proximity of the phone. I’d love to be without phone and perform simple productivity tasks, “queries”, etc.
Your carrier needs support for eSIM, which may be the holdup.
I’m not sure it’s so straightforward. There are networks that support eSIM for other devices. Maybe this is an Apple partnership issue, rather than a technology one?
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#45Instead of going watch-only, I went tablet-only for a while. That also discouraged doomscrolling as you’d have to dig the tablet from a bag instead of just grabbing a phone from a pocket.
Sadly most tablets are not waterproof, and are quite awkward as cameras. Otherwise I’d probably still go without a phone (I have zero need for telephone calls or SMS)
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#46Voice control has recently improved to Barely Useful, but still certainly Not Usable. I now listen to audiobooks, podcasts for ~2 hours daily, while walking my dog. If there's a way to control apps, navigate options, perform useful dictation, I haven't found it. I can barely get Siri to reliably start and stop audio playback. I'm now curious how blind people manage these things. Also, I dimly recall Marvin Minsky or…
I'm honestly a bit surprised we still don't have decent voice control for mobile. Is it really such a hard problem? Or is it that there's little incentive to help users look at their screens less? Audio advertising is much more disrupting than on-screen ads alongside the desired content...
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#47I followed the link from the article to the Mudita phone kickstarter[1] and am surprised at how unbelievably big that simple phone is. Greater than 14mm thick.
Contrast this with my favorite phone, the MOTO FONE[2] from 2006 which also had an e-ink display and had dimensions of 47 x 114 x 9.1 mm.
This has been true of many of the "modern dumb phones" - dimensions, particularly thickness, have been surprisingly large.
EDIT: On the other hand, the "Light Phone" linked from the article has dimensions of 95.85 x 55.85 x 8.75mm which is, at least, not silly ...
[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mudita/mudita-pure-your...
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your carrier needs support for eSIM, which may be the holdup.
It has to be more than that because Google Fi doesn’t seem to support them.
Google Fi doesn't seem to support any kind of watches or tablets like other carriers do, they probably don't have the billing infrastructure to support it (why that is, considering it's Google, I don't know).
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#49Voice control has recently improved to Barely Useful, but still certainly Not Usable. I now listen to audiobooks, podcasts for ~2 hours daily, while walking my dog. If there's a way to control apps, navigate options, perform useful dictation, I haven't found it. I can barely get Siri to reliably start and stop audio playback. I'm now curious how blind people manage these things. Also, I dimly recall Marvin Minsky or…
> If there's a way to control apps, navigate options, perform useful dictation, I haven't found it. I can barely get Siri to reliably start and stop audio playback. google assistant is getting close https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GILvyiWB7xY
Is this available on Android yet? I haven't heard much about this since the demo.
Re: I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you have the cellular version, yes. However, I have found that the handoff from WiFi to Cellular is terrible. It takes a few minutes for the watch to realize it's not going to reconnect to WiFi soon, and in the meantime you're just sort of left waiting for when it decides to switch over to cellular. This is especially annoying if you're listening to streaming radio (like NPR) and going for a walk. It will just dro…
> If you have the cellular version, yes No, you can use AirPods on a non-cellular watch just fine, it has bluetooth. Cellular only affects your ability to stream content (eg. Music or podcasts), but you are also able to download/cache those while on WiFi on the non-cellular watch.
The OP's definition of "work" went beyond whether the AirPods connected directly to the Apple Watch:
>As in, if I leave my phone at home, will I be able to stream music and calls from my watch to my AirPods while I go for a run?
For my response, I assumed two things:
(1)"Streaming music" meant listening to music that is not stored on the device.
(2) "Calls from my watch to AirPods" meant that during a run, OP was not in constant range of a remembered, open WiFi network.