My First Apple Watch and I am conflicted…

[honglong1976]

I am the opposite. Since having an Apple Watch I can never go back to a watch that just tells the time. Sure, it may make a heartbeat, but it's not real, it has no soul. It's just a watch.

It sounds like you have an emotional attachment to the old watch, so it might be hard to move to the Apple Watch.

I purchased an Apple Watch Stainless Steel Series 2, with the link bracelet, and it feels more like a watch to me, and it's mint and only cost £85. I also have a normal watch purchased in Japan, and while I love it, I won't ever wear it or a normal watch ever again.

 

[stanza.richi]

Ah yes the Rolex. Pay too dollar for something that doesn’t do much, turns you into a target and attracts the wrong kind of of the opposite gender. Good investment ?

I speak from experience here with my brother in law who managed to end up in debt, divorced from a gold digger and was kicked in for it.

AW doesn’t cost much, attracts fit and healthy folk of the opposite gender and the dude mugging you already has one anyway so doesn’t want it ?

I’m sorry for your brother, maybe he was unlucky. But if you want to talk about investment, I’m sorry again but you are wrong: I paid 8.5k for my Submariner and if I want to sell it tomorrow I will easy receive 12-13k in the grey market. Wrong kid are everywhere, sometimes try to steal iphone or ipad or car or wallet, not only luxury watches; gender irony is not funny in my opinion.

 

[hagjohn]

tl;dr
I miss my old mechanical watch and the Apple Watch just doesn't thrill me as much as all the hype would lead me to believe.


For the record, I am 58 years old, so it might be an age thing.

After years of avoiding getting an Apple Watch — there have been some close calls where temptation was huge — I finally bought myself an Apple Watch SE.
Bog standard, 40mm, silver aluminium and blue band.

I get the whole mechanical watch thing but honestly, you should have gotten the "normal" Apple Watch. Heart rate, irregular rhythm (AFib), etc... along with the fall protection makes the Apple Watch something good for people our age (in the 50's) is when some of these issues can present themselves and it is good to get an early warning before things get bad. SE doesn't do all these things. Just a thought.

 

[Howard2k]

I get the whole mechanical watch thing but honestly, you should have gotten the "normal" Apple Watch. Heart rate, irregular rhythm (AFib), etc... along with the fall protection makes the Apple Watch something good for people our age (in the 50's) is when some of these issues can present themselves and it is good to get an early warning before things get bad. SE doesn't do all these things. Just a thought.

Yes it does.

Apple Watch - Compare Models

Compare specs for the latest Apple Watch models: Apple Watch Ultra 2, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch SE.

www.apple.com

 

[hagjohn]

Yes it does.

Apple Watch - Compare Models

Compare specs for the latest Apple Watch models: Apple Watch Ultra 2, Apple Watch Series 10 and Apple Watch SE.

www.apple.com

SE doesn't do ECG or blood oxygen but yes, it does the others.

 

[TimmKook]

tl;dr
I miss my old mechanical watch and the Apple Watch just doesn't thrill me as much as all the hype would lead me to believe.


For the record, I am 58 years old, so it might be an age thing.

After years of avoiding getting an Apple Watch — there have been some close calls where temptation was huge — I finally bought myself an Apple Watch SE.
Bog standard, 40mm, silver aluminium and blue band.

My daily watch for the past… 20 years have been my 1914 Trench watch, solid silver case.
It gains or loses a minute or so depending on the weather.
I have it serviced every couple years and it keeps on ticking.

It has a lovely comforting ticking sound, a mechanical heartbeat. It has character and history… 108 years old.

Even now as I sit here typing this with the new Apple gizmo on my wrist I can faintly hear the watch ticking away as it sits on my desk.

This is going to sound weird, but I miss it.

The Apple Watch is just I don't know… soulless.

Yes, I've used it to buy stuff… milk, wine, headache tablets.
Yes, I've closed my exercise and standing and what not rings…
Yes, it alerts me to messages — and I had fun (of a kind) trying to scribble a reply. What larks!
Yes, I know what my heartrate is…

Don't get me wrong, it is a lovely bit of kit. Apple do gorgeous things. But it does nothing for me more than my iPhone already does.

Anyway… I don't know. I am just left a bit empty.

My 1914 mechanical does one thing. It tells me the time… and I am very fond of it.

Anyway! Who knows maybe today it will all click in place and I will find that magical "How did I get along without my Apple Watch!"

But right now it seems to me I am desperately trying to find uses for it to justify having it.

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A

I've purchased many an Apple Watch, and gave them all away. Couldn't stand it. Same reason as you probably. They have no soul. It's an iPhone for the wrist. I don't want pings every 5 seconds.

Mechanical watches are fantastic. I have a few solar+atomic G shocks too. Love them all way more than the Apple Watch. You're not alone.

 

[Night Spring]

I don't want pings every 5 seconds.

In that case, you can turn off on-watch notifications.

I think what people mean when they say this is they don't have a need for a notification device on their wrist. Which is a perfectly valid point of view to have. But the watch does have functions other than notifications. And it's easy to turn off notifications if you don't want them.

 

[TimmKook]

In that case, you can turn off on-watch notifications.

I think what people mean when they say this is they don't have a need for a notification device on their wrist. Which is a perfectly valid point of view to have. But the watch does have functions other than notifications. And it's easy to turn off notifications if you don't want them.

More about it lacking soul. Every time I buy a new Apple Watch (which I've purchased... more than I'd like to admit), I hate it after a few weeks. And I'm a watch collector. It's strange. I always just end up giving them away to friends and family.

Normal people love them! But it seems in the watch community (from what I've seen), people can't get behind them, and I'm one of them. No soul, feels redundant (basically a less-featured iPhone strapped to my wrist), requires bluetooth to be on 24/7 for half of the features, and more.

But mostly, I find no joy in them. And watches are one of the few pieces of jewelry a man can wear to express himself. And I can relate to OP, mechanical watches give you a special feeling. AW doesn't. Wish they did though.

To each his own! I know most people love their AW so for them, I'm happy. Everyone has to find what works for them.

 

[Wildkraut]

Welll I had two Apple Watches(Series 0 & 4) and now I‘m happy to have a free wrist at night that wears sometimes an analog watch during the day.

Heartrate was interesting, maybe I get me a Garmin Watch with longer battery life, solely for sport, to get rid of the chest belt.

ECG is interesting, but as long it’s not automatically taken 24/7 it’s just a gimmick.

Breathing feature pissed me off, and i turned it off.

I generally hate notifications, except for appointments and wife msgs, i turned them all off, had the mobile with me anyway.

What else? Forgot…

I have no usage for the Apple Watch, and it’s ugly and clunky too.

Your mechanical watch looks far better than this modern crap which will turn unusable once Apple declares it for unsupported.

I doubt the Apple Watch will run 108 years like your mechanical one.

Give the Apple Watch 5-10 years max and it’s done, it’s a pure waste of money, too.
Somebody would need 10-15 Apple Watches during his whole life time, maybe even more because of Apples marketing, instead of buying a decent long lasting analog Watch.

 

[JustAnExpat]

I think an Apple Watch and a beautiful mechanical watch are completely different devices. An Apple Watch is a tool, it's a device to help a person learn more about their body by establishing baselines, and allows easy communication with other people - and telling time is not the main purpose. A beautiful mechanical watch is a fashion piece, it's used to tell time.

It's like comparing a car to a fancy desk. Two completely different things, with two different purposes. My advice, return the watch if it doesn't give you value and you're still within the return period.

 

[Howard2k]

More about it lacking soul. Every time I buy a new Apple Watch (which I've purchased... more than I'd like to admit), I hate it after a few weeks. And I'm a watch collector. It's strange. I always just end up giving them away to friends and family.

Normal people love them! But it seems in the watch community (from what I've seen), people can't get behind them, and I'm one of them. No soul, feels redundant (basically a less-featured iPhone strapped to my wrist), requires bluetooth to be on 24/7 for half of the features, and more.

But mostly, I find no joy in them. And watches are one of the few pieces of jewelry a man can wear to express himself. And I can relate to OP, mechanical watches give you a special feeling. AW doesn't. Wish they did though.

To each his own! I know most people love their AW so for them, I'm happy. Everyone has to find what works for them.

No Soul? Could there possibly be a more useless metric?

 

[JustAnExpat]

More about it lacking soul. Every time I buy a new Apple Watch (which I've purchased... more than I'd like to admit), I hate it after a few weeks. And I'm a watch collector. It's strange. I always just end up giving them away to friends and family.

Normal people love them! But it seems in the watch community (from what I've seen), people can't get behind them, and I'm one of them. No soul, feels redundant (basically a less-featured iPhone strapped to my wrist), requires bluetooth to be on 24/7 for half of the features, and more.

But mostly, I find no joy in them. And watches are one of the few pieces of jewelry a man can wear to express himself. And I can relate to OP, mechanical watches give you a special feeling. AW doesn't. Wish they did though.

To each his own! I know most people love their AW so for them, I'm happy. Everyone has to find what works for them.

I think what watch collectors don't understand about the Apple Watch is that... it isn't. It's a tool, and fashion is secondary. I know I'll eventually sell or dispose of my watch someday, and it's ok. If my watch was from the turn of the (last) century, I would do whatever I can to keep it.

 

[magicMac]

I was an early adopter of the Apple Watch, I couldn’t stop talking about it when the first one came out. Checking rumours daily , placing a pre-order etc. the apps were slow but the activity tracking was very addictive.

I briefly become unsure of the vision of the watch due to app performance and dependence on the phone. I sold it but a few weeks later the series 2 came out with GPS. I got the series 2 and was really happy with the watch again, and even got a series 3 cellular when it came out !

I started commuting to London by this time and the activity tracking was more important than ever, I would even start a fast paced walk workout on it each way to the office and back. It really taught me a lot about the amount of exercise required for a certain calorie burn. Still didn’t use many third party apps - just a select few that were useful on the go. I still didn’t interact with the watch much beyond time, calendar, weather, exercise and activity tracking.

Even after the series 4 came out I kept my series 3 for a while but eventually decided I would really like bigger watch faces. Really enjoyed my series 4, this was the best an Apple Watch could be almost, and the last Apple Watch I bought. I spent alot of time customising watch faces to take advantage of the bigger screen.

About a year ago I sold my series 4, with covid lockdown I wasn’t really using the activity tracking so much , and mostly used it to tell the time and to unlock my phone while wearing a mask !

TLDR: I’m not sure if I will ever get an Apple Watch again - they’re a great idea, they taught me a lot about the amount of activity I should be doing everyday and standing up and moving about more - but it’s become such a burnt in behaviour for me I don’t really need the watch to tell me this anymore. Now I just wear a swatch watch that only tells the time.

If apple launches a watch which doesn’t need to ever be charged up (solar or kinetic, etc) and maybe just focussed on fitness and activity and not communication and apps, then I might consider it. Actually nice to have less technology on the wrist for a change. People keep asking me all the time why I don’t wewr an Apple Watch anymore - which is hard to explain when i couldn’t stop talking about them at one point ! What a life story ha !

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

I have quite a few mechanical watches and before I got an AW it was a big hobby of mine. Now I wear them occasionally and I have to say, it’s a fantastic feeling putting a proper watch on. The AW is useful for its functionality and I can’t live without one now, but it will never compete with the aesthetics and beauty of a nice mechanical watch. People not really into watches will never get that though but that is in itself out of the allure of the Watch world

 

[deckard666]

It looks like a mechanical "real" watch but its not......I never wore a watch before my AW but I can see what watch people mean... I have a really good digital Kawai piano , in every respect its better than a "real" piano - it does more, its portable (compared to a grand) and has a headphone jack and is a 10th the cost of a "real" piano but to "proper" pianists it cannot remotely compete.

Give it some time and see if the love arrives otherwise its just "not for you" plus possibly try and engage with it a little using the fitness and music apps ? Sometimes its the little things - hubby loves he can listen to his local radio podcast on it and just skip through the news from his wrist rather than having to go to his bluetooth speaker and hold down several buttons....

Mine is never going anywhere as its just too handy for apple pay - after my beach swim I can just walk to the beach cafe in my swim shorts and get a coffee and cake with it.

 

[lezmace]

Welll I had two Apple Watches(Series 0 & 4) and now I‘m happy to have a free wrist at night that wears sometimes an analog watch during the day.

Heartrate was interesting, maybe I get me a Garmin Watch with longer battery life, solely for sport, to get rid of the chest belt.

ECG is interesting, but as long it’s not automatically taken 24/7 it’s just a gimmick.

Breathing feature pissed me off, and i turned it off.

I generally hate notifications, except for appointments and wife msgs, i turned them all off, had the mobile with me anyway.

What else? Forgot…

I have no usage for the Apple Watch, and it’s ugly and clunky too.

Your mechanical watch looks far better than this modern crap which will turn unusable once Apple declares it for unsupported.

I doubt the Apple Watch will run 108 years like your mechanical one.

Give the Apple Watch 5-10 years max and it’s done, it’s a pure waste of money, too.
Somebody would need 10-15 Apple Watches during his whole life time, maybe even more because of Apples marketing, instead of buying a decent long lasting analog Watch.

Well, that’s nearly my attitude towards Apple Watch. I now use my SE just for sports.

 

[Velin]

I am the opposite. Since having an Apple Watch I can never go back to a watch that just tells the time.

Same. I've been amazed at how many things the Apple Watch Series 7 can do. And I use it every day for notifications (especially incoming calls), timers, alarms, and calendar. I especially appreciate being able to do calls, messages, and emails silently, i.e. turn off all the bells and ringers, and just let the wrist haptic alert do its thing for all notifications. It's really, really great when out, at meetings, at dinner, and when away from the cell phone. I just about always have Apple Watch in theater mode. It's a total stealth communication gamechanger, and I really appreciate the tech that makes it possible.

Also, Apple Watch is the best travel watch I've ever owned, period. Makes dealing with multiple time zones a breeze. Same with catching flights, etc. It's just so easy to set and manipulate timers, calendar, secondary time zones -- and I am using those features all the time, including multiple watch faces set up for different things.

Don't think I'm ever going back to "traditional" watches. I've seen the wisdom, the functionality, of Apple Watch, and I'm going to be buying every release.

BTW, the prices on some mechanical/automatic watches are beyond ridic at this point. Some brands are going full-on scarcity marketing and Veblen goods. Not interested in playing that game. And the maintenance/servicing fees for mechanicals/automatics are out-of-control, too. You know, I am just done with that product category and market (not that I participated to a great degree). Don't like the scarcity games, the enormous markups, the servicing costs and delays, I'm simply done with it. So much happier with the smartwatch product category and the smartwatch market. And I think iPhone + Apple Watch is my only communication and travel platform for a long time to come.

 

[deckard666]

Plus and this is a tiny but great thing for me I love the haptic feedback alarm - always wakes me up and never wakes up hubby. Its in the details sometimes.

 

[LeeW]

I miss my old mechanical watch and the Apple Watch just doesn't thrill me as much as all the hype would lead me to believe.

I was the same initially, I have a nice mechanical collection built over the years but I wear them probably no more than 4/5 times a year now.

Today I just couldn't be without my Apple Watch. Whether for fitness tracking, being able to go on a run without my phone but still have music and the ability to make/receive calls, messages, reminders and so on.

It has to be useful enough for it to be a replacement for your traditional watch.

 

[Dobbel]

tl;dr
I miss my old mechanical watch and the Apple Watch just doesn't thrill me as much as all the hype would lead me to believe.


For the record, I am 58 years old, so it might be an age thing.

After years of avoiding getting an Apple Watch — there have been some close calls where temptation was huge — I finally bought myself an Apple Watch SE.
Bog standard, 40mm, silver aluminium and blue band.

My daily watch for the past… 20 years have been my 1914 Trench watch, solid silver case.
It gains or loses a minute or so depending on the weather.
I have it serviced every couple years and it keeps on ticking.

It has a lovely comforting ticking sound, a mechanical heartbeat. It has character and history… 108 years old.

Even now as I sit here typing this with the new Apple gizmo on my wrist I can faintly hear the watch ticking away as it sits on my desk.

This is going to sound weird, but I miss it.

The Apple Watch is just I don't know… soulless.

Yes, I've used it to buy stuff… milk, wine, headache tablets.
Yes, I've closed my exercise and standing and what not rings…
Yes, it alerts me to messages — and I had fun (of a kind) trying to scribble a reply. What larks!
Yes, I know what my heartrate is…

Don't get me wrong, it is a lovely bit of kit. Apple do gorgeous things. But it does nothing for me more than my iPhone already does.

Anyway… I don't know. I am just left a bit empty.

My 1914 mechanical does one thing. It tells me the time… and I am very fond of it.

Anyway! Who knows maybe today it will all click in place and I will find that magical "How did I get along without my Apple Watch!"

But right now it seems to me I am desperately trying to find uses for it to justify having it.

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Again, i said it before…..the applewatch is no watch!
From an 76 years old very old age aw fan

 

[A Happening in Hades]

The Apple Watch would be terrific, if it were solar powered or if you only had to swap out the battery every couple of years. Having to charge it every day is just too much of a drag.

 

[TimmKook]

No Soul? Could there possibly be a more useless metric?

For you, probably not.

 

[TimmKook]

I think what watch collectors don't understand about the Apple Watch is that... it isn't. It's a tool, and fashion is secondary. I know I'll eventually sell or dispose of my watch someday, and it's ok. If my watch was from the turn of the (last) century, I would do whatever I can to keep it.

It's not about that though, every watch is a tool to some extent. Do I wish my Rolexes could record my heart rate? Sure. But that's about it. I understand everyone has a different "want". AW just doesn't excite me (and apparently many others). Different strokes for different folks! It's nice that everyone has a choice.

Now, if a company could create a wearable that was unobtrusive (aka not a watch) and didn't have a monthly subscription fee, THAT would be awesome. Oura Ring and Whoop bands are out of the question.

 

[utzelu]

I am also into mechanical and quartz watches and have a modest but varied collection. I also wore the AW S0 briefly and the S5 for 1.5 years before selling it. I found the AW very useful and quite well designed, although having a bit of a featureless case design. My main issue is battery life during the day and the expected lifetime of 4-5 years. I would like to get a stainless steel model, for a more traditional watch look and feel, but cannot justify spending so much just to throw it away when the battery dies out in 3-4 years.

 

[Devin Breeding]

For the record, I am 58 years old, so it might be an age thing.

After years of avoiding getting an Apple Watch — there have been some close calls where temptation was huge — I finally bought myself an Apple Watch SE.
Bog standard, 40mm, silver aluminium and blue band.

My daily watch for the past… 20 years have been my 1914 Trench watch, solid silver case.
It gains or loses a minute or so depending on the weather.
I have it serviced every couple years and it keeps on ticking.

It has a lovely comforting ticking sound, a mechanical heartbeat. It has character and history… 108 years old.

Even now as I sit here typing this with the new Apple gizmo on my wrist I can faintly hear the watch ticking away as it sits on my desk.

This is going to sound weird, but I miss it.

The Apple Watch is just I don't know… soulless.

Yes, I've used it to buy stuff… milk, wine, headache tablets.
Yes, I've closed my exercise and standing and what not rings…
Yes, it alerts me to messages — and I had fun (of a kind) trying to scribble a reply. What larks!
Yes, I know what my heartrate is…

Don't get me wrong, it is a lovely bit of kit. Apple do gorgeous things. But it does nothing for me more than my iPhone already does.

Anyway… I don't know. I am just left a bit empty.

My 1914 mechanical does one thing. It tells me the time… and I am very fond of it.

Anyway! Who knows maybe today it will all click in place and I will find that magical "How did I get along without my Apple Watch!"

But right now it seems to me I am desperately trying to find uses for it to justify having it.

View attachment 1953676
A

I agree with you on many of your sentiments and at the end of the day it may not be for you. Personally, I really liked standard analogue dial watches before I started to understand the utility of what an Apple Watch can do.

One of the things that helped me transition was choosing a band and watch face that maintained the classic look.

Titanium band of eBay with square California face

Another thing that really helped me really start to appreciate it was to change my mentality of what I think it is meant to do. For me it is first a watch, health device and a really good remote control for your iPhone. You are correct, for most things you could also pull out your iPhone but for me the purpose is to use it for simple things to stay off your iPhone (apple pay, quick messages, checking weather, etc). One tip for messages, go into watch settings and delete all quick replies and try to think of your most used 1-4 word replies to people and add them with how you would punctuate. Anything needed outside of that, use the phone. You’ll find as you add more quick replies in, most of your simple messages can be done on the watch. For example, these are mine.