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So should I keep this watch or what?
- Thread starter Sill
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Your idea is completely wrong. For some reason people keep jumping back to purchase tracking, probably because they're assuming that I use credit/debit cards, and for that reason they can have an easy "aha!" moment, look at each other knowingly (ok, post wink emojis to each other) and depart in triumph. The fact that you can't think outside purchase data kind of shows a weakness in your reason that you should address.
So, I don't use credit cards, I don't use debit cards. I take nothing but large bills during a withdrawal, which I break at one particular place every time for smaller bills. The serial numbers on large bill bundles are not tracked past the federal district they're introduced in, nor are those serial numbers read during a cash counting operation during a bulk deposit. The bigger problem is if the cash has RFID tags, but since practically no POS systems have RFID readers that work with those tags, I'm not really worried about it.
Yawn. Yet again you prove you don't read what people say. The Watch is not my worry. The services required to get any use out of it are my worry.
Like I said, this guy doesn't read things through. You can safely ignore him.
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You're done, remember? I thought you said you were done.
It's really simple. I'm going to leave the tinfoil hat stuff aside, say this, and then remove this thread from my watched list because it's garbage.
You don't need any services whatsoever to make use of AW. As a watch and fitness tracker it is broadly competitive with the others. As far as services are concerned they are exactly the same set of trade-offs as using them on the iPhone or any other device and indeed you would have to use them on iPhone to use them on watch. The thread has nothing to do with watch, doesn't belong in the watch sub-forum (if it indeed belongs anywhere on MacRumors) and is blatant trolling of no value. No doubt I'll be moderated for saying so and the thread will trundle on with the usual suspects.
For the minor investment it cost me, I felt I should at least give the Watch a chance. In fact I had criticized the Watch in a far earlier thread here and that was almost precisely the argument a couple of people had used. The gist of it was "Don't buy it if you don't want it, but you should give it a chance you might like it". I do like the Watch. I just wish there was more I could do with it given my particular dislike for personal monitoring. The intent of my thread was to find out if there was anything evident that I hadn't discovered yet.
Getting told to "Google it" was ridiculous. I think it would be a much more focused use of time if I tried to have a civilized (?) talk with people here who had a lot more experience with the Watch. Little did I know that people would get so focused on my motivation that they couldn't even answer the question. It seems almost like a blindly religious response. When people feel their own motivations are threatened they get defensive and even combative, and I guess thats what I walked into here.
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Leaving aside your personal attacks for the moment, I'm really glad you're leaving. I just hope you commit to it this time.
And, once again proving that you never read much of my posts but instead just painted them with your broad brush which now comes out ("tinfoil hat stuff"), I have to remind you that I don't use those services on the iPhone. You also missed that I don't use the Calendar because it has no benefit to my job, and I don't use Reminders because damned if I can figure out how to get them to work consistently. None of that involves pressed metal chapeaus.
Again, my point is that since I don't use those services, I would like to find out if there is any kind of value I could get out of this thing besides the clock face, weather, and the occasional notification. Theres a lot of smart people here who do some amazing stuff with technology, and sometimes its so original its practically triumphant. The guy who went on Shark Tank and showed the sharks how to make an iPhone 5S spin using the silent alarm while taking pics is one great example.
I doubt you could be moderated, but one can hope. Its really not great to ask a bona fide question, get grilled about my motivations, and then jumped on when those motivations don't fit the respondent's happy universe.
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Based on what was stated in the original post it seems there was no reason or need to purchase the watch in the first place. Myself and everyone I personally know already knew how it would be useful to us before purchase and it has fulfilled those uses. I would have bought one of the Pebbles if Apple had not released this.
But from your post you had no clear uses for such a device and did not discover any after purchase.
But from your post you had no clear uses for such a device and did not discover any after purchase.
So why in the world are you asking us "So should I keep this watch or what?"
Or did you just want to rant for the heck of it?
That was about the tenth different title I put for the thread. I honestly had no idea what to put that would not make it seem like I was trying to troll. I was so concerned about that connotation that I even called it out at the end of my first post, if you recall.
I got the Watch on a whim, for a great price, and I had hoped it would prove invaluable over time, as my iPhone has. I'm still waiting for that hidden value to manifest. I know very well that the things other people like about the Watch are not things that I choose to use, so I'm just trying to give it a fair chance at providing some value to me.
Based on other threads I felt that instead of an answer to my question I was going to get presented with a long list of reasons why I should use this or that feature, and I wanted to get it right out up front that I wasn't going to use those things. My frustration with a couple things probably showed through, which again, I pointed out in the first post.
Or you could have done what most people did, which is return the AW after road testing it without putting up such a rant.
You've obviously been doing more reading about anti-government and anti-corporate paranoia than about the watch, iPhone data security, and… I don't know, relevant information about the technology.
Surely all the effort you've spent typing could have been used for reading about how everyone else uses theirs.
Surely all the effort you've spent typing could have been used for reading about how everyone else uses theirs.
Sounds like he just wanted to rant. What does a normal watch do...tell time. I guess all the extra that the Apple Watch does is icing on the cake.
Is someone (maybe your wife, waaaaaaapishhhhhhh) forcing you to answer calls on your watch? I hope not. Treat it like a watch.
Is someone (maybe your wife, waaaaaaapishhhhhhh) forcing you to answer calls on your watch? I hope not. Treat it like a watch.
In lieu of copy-pasting what I've written here and elsewhere, I'll try to see how concise I can be:
Alarm clock: It wakes me every single morning. Even if I set it to just tap my wrist (I charge it the evening before and wear it into bed), it grabs my attention and wakes me up.
Phone calls: I can answer them anywhere in the house without hustling to pick up the phone. I've answered in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in bed, and even in the shower. I don't like to talk on the phone in the car, but at least the watch lets me easily -- and more safely, although it's not foolproof -- see if a call is important enough to pull over somewhere and return the call.
Texting: I use the AW almost exclusively to text my wife when I'm walking home. I tell her I'm on my way and ask if she needs me to pick up anything. I can leave my phone in my backpack instead of trying to type and walk at the same time. And, of course, just like phone calls, I can use it anywhere in the house.
Fitness tracking: It's a curiosity with me mostly because I'm not a workout data fiend (I've had a Garmin 410 for five years and hardly ever look back at its data). But, it's handy when my wife and I go for a long walk and she wants to know how far we've gone.
Weather: I use it every morning when I'm getting dressed. During springtime, I also used it to see if I needed my jacket for the return home. Heck, I use the Weather complication so often that I miss it when I wear a regular watch.
Directions: I almost never use my phone anymore to navigate. A couple taps, a couple dings, and the necessary info is right there on my wrist.
I check the news with News360 when I'm sitting on the john in the morning. I get sports scores from ESPN when we're hanging out with Grandma. I can see weather radar with RadarScope. I get messages from Slack. I use Apple Pay whenever I can because I've been burned enough with stolen card info. I get reminders to, uh, remind me to do things (duh). I play a couple games on it (Rules! is fun, quick, and a native app).
And, oh yeah, I get the time of day and the date.
Alarm clock: It wakes me every single morning. Even if I set it to just tap my wrist (I charge it the evening before and wear it into bed), it grabs my attention and wakes me up.
Phone calls: I can answer them anywhere in the house without hustling to pick up the phone. I've answered in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in bed, and even in the shower. I don't like to talk on the phone in the car, but at least the watch lets me easily -- and more safely, although it's not foolproof -- see if a call is important enough to pull over somewhere and return the call.
Texting: I use the AW almost exclusively to text my wife when I'm walking home. I tell her I'm on my way and ask if she needs me to pick up anything. I can leave my phone in my backpack instead of trying to type and walk at the same time. And, of course, just like phone calls, I can use it anywhere in the house.
Fitness tracking: It's a curiosity with me mostly because I'm not a workout data fiend (I've had a Garmin 410 for five years and hardly ever look back at its data). But, it's handy when my wife and I go for a long walk and she wants to know how far we've gone.
Weather: I use it every morning when I'm getting dressed. During springtime, I also used it to see if I needed my jacket for the return home. Heck, I use the Weather complication so often that I miss it when I wear a regular watch.
Directions: I almost never use my phone anymore to navigate. A couple taps, a couple dings, and the necessary info is right there on my wrist.
I check the news with News360 when I'm sitting on the john in the morning. I get sports scores from ESPN when we're hanging out with Grandma. I can see weather radar with RadarScope. I get messages from Slack. I use Apple Pay whenever I can because I've been burned enough with stolen card info. I get reminders to, uh, remind me to do things (duh). I play a couple games on it (Rules! is fun, quick, and a native app).
And, oh yeah, I get the time of day and the date.
Conversely, people could have helped with the question, rather than put up a defensive wall.
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I'm well versed in all of the above. I couldn't have objections to the technology if I didn't know how it worked. In fact my objections stem from knowing precisely how it works.
Yeah, I spent quite a bit of time reviewing threads here, going all the way back to when the watch was first released. I also paid attention in minute detail to the technology behind the watch since it was announced. The problem there is that Apple and the world at large is so obsessed with the whole mantra of constant connectivity and tracking that they ignore the local functions of the device. Even the apps that have a lot of good local function (Notes, Pages, Numbers for example) are lost in songs of praise of how well they "work with the cloud".
Yesterday I took a look at the Apple System Status page. For the people here who have never seen it, the page shows the operating status of Apple's 45 iCloud services. Out of their long list, I only use App Store, AppleTV, iMessage, Mail, and Maps. Yet I never lack for getting things done with my iPhone or iMac. I believed that I'd find the same usefulness with the Watch.
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I"ve reread that several times and still don't get what you're saying. I don't answer calls on the watch because it, frankly, seems ridiculous to me. I have a phone on my belt, why would I stand somewhere and talk to my watch? Thats nearly as off-putting as the clowns who stand in a public place and talk to the bottom edge of their phone, Nextel style.
People don't typically help with or respond to rants.
Next time, avoid inflammatory statements like "Seriously, don't people look at a map before they drive?!?", "People who talk on their AW are like clowns," etc. and they'd be more responsive.
I appreciate the effort you put in on this post, so please consider my responses conversational and showing my own use cases and not confrontational and criticizing yours. Evidently everyone thinks I started this thread to somehow attack people I had no idea would stop in the thread, instead of trying to find uses for the Watch that I haven't yet discovered.
Thats a good use. I personally couldn't wear the Watch to sleep, though. I use my previous iPhone (now demoted to iPod Touch duty) as my bedside reader, email, and alarm clock. Once the phone alarm wakes me up (turned on silent, the vibration is more than enough to wake me) and I deactivate it I can go right to checking email and commodities, etc. If I didn't have the iPhone, I'd probably have the Watch sitting there instead, but due to the small screen size it wouldn't be much use to me.
My phone generally isn't too far away from where I am in the house - when I'm home that is. I spend about 14 hours a day out of the house, and the phone is always on my belt so its nothing to take a look at the callerID. I can't wear the Watch on the job, as I mentioned earlier.
BTW - you really keep the Watch on in the shower?
So... you leave the phone in your backpack so you don't type and walk at the same time, but you don't have a problem -what - sketching a response on the Watch? I don't know how you'd get all that on the Watch since it doesn't have a keyboard. I looked through the canned responses and I didn't see anything like that in there.
Thats about the only use I could see for that tracker. Like I said earlier, my job at certain points is more physical than anything that tracker would be useful for. Leaving aside all the biometric collection that I dislike, Activity is biased towards walking and running. What if you're a powerlifter? There's nothing there for that. I could put anyone through a workout under iron that would basically destroy them for the next three days and yet the tracker would be nudging them to "get up from that chair and take a walk!" every 30 minutes. What about rock or rope climbing? Kettlebell work?
The Weather app in watchOS is insanely useful. Easy to navigate, loaded with functions that are very intuitive to get to. It is a throwback to all of the simple yet brilliant stuff Apple was built on.
Yeah, but how do you get the address info into the Watch? You have to enter it into the phone, right?
This is my major difference with just about everyone where smart phones are concerned. I'm really, really glad to have Maps. But the way I use it is to look up where I'm going and plot my own route there in my head. I learn the street names around my turns and final destination. I keep my situational awareness high that way.
Contrast that with my best friend, who gets out of the Corps, and he's now so technology-dependent he refuses to study a map. Everywhere he goes out of town its done with turn by turn directions on his phone. We take a trip to go look for a classic car for sale and he refuses to tell me the address or even the general area, because he thinks he's going to prove a point over how awesome TbT is. When we get there and look over the car, we decide to have lunch. He knew nothing besides the name of the street we were last on, and the town we were in. Except he's now completely disoriented and has no idea what is around him because he was so dependent on TbT. Yet because I was looking around getting my bearings the whole way, I knew exactly where I was and what restaurants we had passed to get there.
Lol... I went to the News360 site, and with all my tracker blocking software, there was practically nothing on the screen except for an image of the phone screen with a couple of sample articles on it. I shouldn't be surprised since the beginning of their pitch says "News360 learns what you like..." I bet it does.
I have no experience with Slack, but from a skim of their site it looks like Novell GroupWare for the iPhone age. What do you use it for?
RadarScope for the phone looks pretty cool (I have an interest in weather stuff), but the screen shots for the Watch look almost useless. How is it in real life?
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i have to ask is why did you buy the watch in the first place. Its not like you didn't know what the watch did or didn't do. So you had to know you wouldn't utilize most of the features on the watch. And if you didn't then you should of done more research on the watch before you bought it.
I have to ask if you read the thread or not. Your questions are answered there in detail.
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Tell you what, you tell me the right way to ask the question and I'll change the first post or start a new thread and petition the mods to delete this thread. Fair enough?
As far as the tone, well thats my frustration speaking. It really does seem ridiculous to me that people don't learn where they go before they get in their car. My frustration with social behavior largely aligns with George Carlin's observational humor. If he was alive to see this he would say "you're not being helped - you're being conditioned. Tap tap, go this way, tap tap, stop here. Raise your hand to pay, don't worry we have everything covered. And thanks for handing us your life."
YES I READ YOUR ORIGINAL POST
And most people would know if they would utilize something before they buy it. lol
BUT YOU DIDN'T READ THE THREAD!! YOU DIDN"T EVEN READ THE QUESTION I POSTED TO YOU!!111oneone. LOLZ. Points for the word "utilize" instead of "use".
rolleyes.gif, and all that.
I started wearing watches to sleep when I noticed I was getting lazy about tapping snooze on my phone and not looking at the time. Having the time on my wrist, where it's easy to retrieve -- and easy to see with my amazingly nearsighted eyeballs -- takes away my excuse to not look for the time. I was using watches with good "lume" on their dials before the AW, and they were bright enough for my sleep-adjusted eyes.
That sucks, although I've known of workplace restrictions due to safety or security. I've got a couple relatives who work at secure places -- one can't bring a personal phone inside, and the other couldn't even wear a Fitbit. Can you wear regular watches?
Yup, it's how I keep it clean. Same with my other watches, at least the ones that aren't vintage or on leather straps.
I don't have watchOS 3 (I'm not going to run beta software on my daily-use devices), so I still either use dictation, canned or custom responses, and emojis. As long as I speak clearly, Siri's been maybe 90% accurate, which is good enough for short sentences like, "Tell my wife I'm on my way home now" (and Siri sends, "I'm on my way home now" to my wife). I will always feel weird saying, "smiley face," into my watch, but my wife uses emojis a lot.
I could envision maybe using Scribble when I'm standing around or sitting down, but I doubt it's a good idea for walking. Maybe it's good enough where I could scribble on the screen without looking, but I don't know yet.
I've mentioned elsewhere how I think the stock Activity app has been meant for general workouts and being simple to use. More specialized workout logging can be done with third-party apps, and at least a few can do exactly what you're looking for. Check Fitness Builder and Gymaholic (off the top of my head).
Not always. The watch is pretty good at taking dictation and looking up the location. Normally, though, I'll look it up on the phone and hit Start when it comes time to depart, then I put the phone in my car's console (or my pocket or backpack) where I can't see it and use the watch for reference. Sometimes, in the car, I'll use the phone's audio for TbT, but the watch can easily show me info for the next turn anytime I want -- which helps when I've forgotten what Siri last said.
That's your friend's problem, not TbT's. Ask him why he forgot how to use a compass and map like they taught him in land nav.
I've still got paper maps in the door pockets of my car, but I haven't used them in ages. With the phone, I can check out the surrounding area near my destination and see what there is to eat. I suppose I could ask the watch, "Where's the nearest McDonald's?" and get directions (McD's isn't a destination, but an indicator; they say McD's does more market research than anyone, and when a new one pops up, other businesses bet that the new location must be good).
But, anyway, I'm midway between you and your friend. I'm still the type to check maps for more info, and I still watch where I'm going to find out what else might be nearby. But for at least the first few times I try to go somewhere, I'm all about using turn-by-turn so I don't have to look away from the road.
I haven't used News360's site, and I hardly use their phone app anymore. I keep it on my watch because I want to get some news, and I think it shows just enough info from an article to be worth reading but not so much that it gets awkward. The NYT's Watch app is basically useless -- a photo and a headline; the Washington Post used to display entire articles, which is crazy on a watch, but has recently changed to a photo and a sentence, which is almost as bad as NYT. If anything, the difference between AW news apps shows how developers' opinions about AW software differs, too.
Slack is what we used in my computer coding class. Maybe it's like Novell, which I've never used. It's like an invite-only messaging platform. We used it for links to lesson plans, sending code snippets, etc. I set up another channel for a side project, and I think it's a lot handier than trying to keep track of our email thread which often gets lost in my regular emails.
RadarScope is still a little slow on the watch (maybe because it has to load a lot of data), but it can display and animate many of the radar products available in the iPhone app. I don't bother using it on the watch unless rough weather is on the way and my phone isn't nearby. But, when I get a little animation of Doppler velocity on my wristwatch, I think it's pretty danged cool.
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When I got my AW, I decided to try using it the way Apple intended and NOT try to force it into replacing my phone. I could now name a dozen or two things I do with it -- some of which can be done with more detail on a phone, but most can be done with more convenience on the watch. It's like my regular watches being able to give me the time and date with a split-second glance, yet I can get so many other bits of info. I've tried wearing my other watches over the past year, but each time I do, I have moments when I wish I had my AW instead.
I wrote this thread earlier this year:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/comparing-my-aw-to-the-rest-of-my-collection-pic-heavy.1946056/
You know i am really sorry that you bought something that you regret. But I'm even more sorry that you have to come on macrumors and ask for help about keeping the watch or not.
No i didn't read the entire THREAD but i did read your original question. And i asked myself WHY would this person even buy the apple watch. Then have to come and ask everyone on if they should keep it or not. It sounds like you can't make a decision for yourself.
It doesn't make a lot of sense to go past two or three pages of a thread just to ask questions that could be answered by reading the thread to begin with. Plus, if you think I posted the thread to have people help me make my mind up about keeping the Watch, then you really DIDN'T read the first post, much less anything after that. I came here to discuss uses for the Watch that were admittedly outside the typical, not have people simply give a thumbs up or thumbs down on the Watch. I could have created a poll if I wanted that.
But, if you really believe I can't make a decision for myself, based on what I said in the first post, then I have to ask you - do you ever have a normal conversation with friends about your decisions? Do you not ever seek their input, bounce ideas off of them, or accept their critical input? Or do you approach them with your decisions made and your heels dug in?
I'd say you need more work on this yourself, given the inflammatory and off-putting statements in your OP.
