So should I keep this watch or what?

[Sill]

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?

I can, and at one point I wore an old school G-Shock which also doubled as my dive watch. My restriction from wearing a watch is voluntary, not a condition of employment. I spend a significant portion of my work day out in the elements doing intense physical labor. Without getting into details, the best analogy I could give you would be combine oil rig worker with physical therapist with - I don't know - being a character in a video game. I have a long list of tasks that I need to complete weekly but I have to be able to respond in real time to obstacles. At the end of my typical 14 hour day I'm covered in grime and sweat and I look and feel like a guy who did tunnel clearing during the Vietnam unpleasantness.

The G survives to this day but its badly marred and sits in a drawer. That was with a rubberized exterior and polycarbonate face. The bands would fall apart too, and after a certain point I could no longer get proper replacements, which is one reason its decommissioned.

I could add a case, but the Watch is already borderline too-big for my tastes. Not as ridiculous as the G-Shock was, but that was an activity watch and I accepted its tremendous bulk because of the purpose. The Apple Watch can pull formal-wear duty, and for that I prefer the slim lines it has, as-is.

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 clean mine with alcohol, and thats just from wearing it casually, out of work. If I had it on at work - and it survived - I'd still have to take it off to clean it, and me!

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 take heat for saying I'm not going to use Siri dictation, but its from my own fears over voice printing as well as data capture. I don't object to the things it can help us with. I mean, initially it was one of those "Why bother when a keyboard and trackpad are so much more useful?" things, but then I saw a mechanic using it to text someone while he was elbows deep in a project and didn't want to get his iPhone dirty. That was one of those illuminating moments for me.
Siri is very cool, I just wish it was completely local and not cloud-based.

I'm curious about the way you have your Contacts set up: Exactly how do you have your wife listed in your numbers? Do you have her under "wife", "my wife", "<her name>, etc? I'm trying to understand how Siri is sending her that text if you start the command with "Tell my wife.."

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.

Right now, dictation to my iPhone wouldn't offer me anything over typing, since I'm extremely good at typing without looking at the screen. Not so much on my current 6S vs. my previous 5, since the larger screen means bigger finger movements. If I had the phone packed away as you usually do, I'm certain dictation via the Watch would be useful, but I always have the phone on a belt clip (yes, I know thats sooo Nokia ca. 2002) so its just as easy for me to grab it as it would be to raise the Watch and bring up the dictation.

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).

I'll give those a look-see. Thanks.

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 did. He said why should he bother with maps when the phone can do it?

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).

Funny you mention that... I've heard the same thing. But yesterday I was at a branch of my bank, out in a relatively rural area that I don't get to very often, and there's a McDonald's right next door. Aside from a pizza delivery chain store and a neighborhood eatery, there was nothing else for miles. I'm looking at the place thinking "Where is everyone else?" lol

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.

Yet if you have the streets in your head, your going to be looking at the road just as much if not more, aren't you?

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.

GroupWare was the original "whiteboard in the cloud" back before there was such a thing. It was from the dawn of collaborative software, maybe 1994-1995 or so, and was fine for the limited uses people had back then. Sharing documents and such.

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.

I'm looking for an app that can turn off the time-lapse block shifts and go to pixel shifts in real time, with an acceleration slider. Does RadarScope allow for something like that? I just loathe all the weather broadcasts that show clouds jumping miles at a time. Some of my local outlets are increasing the granularity in their time lapses and just increasing the speed of the shift, which makes it a lot more pleasant to watch, but they're still not there yet.

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 too thought it was odd that people were expecting the full functions of the phone to exist inside of the Watch, and they were upset when they couldn't just leave their phones at home. Simple logic would tell me that if Apple could do that, they would have just put the Watch innards in the iPhone and filled the extra space with a giant battery with a two week charge. So my big thing was to find out what the Watch could do on its own, i.e. what could that particular form factor be good for that the isn't?

So far, the obvious thing is that it tells the time. It does this better than any watch I've ever owned. I can change the face to suit my mood and requirements. The band swaps are way easier than trying to use a jewelers screwdriver to press in those little metal pistons on any other watch. I like the notifications. And the weather app, as I mentioned earlier, is a joy to use. I had a lot of fun exploring it. If the Watch was capable of doing three or four atmospheres, I'd add decompression tables valid for air, Nitrox, Heliox, etc, and it would be attached to my arm permanently.
[doublepost=1466359035][/doublepost]

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.

Forgot to answer this... I've found that having the iPhone as my alarm clock helps me wake up, because once I turn of the alarm the temptation to start browsing the news and email is great enough to help me overcome any sleepiness.

I'm thinking about wasting an hour on a nap later, I'm going to try the Watch alarm and see if it can wake me up.

 

[BarracksSi]

The G survives to this day but its badly marred and sits in a drawer. That was with a rubberized exterior and polycarbonate face. The bands would fall apart too, and after a certain point I could no longer get proper replacements, which is one reason its decommissioned.

I wonder if a watch with a steel bracelet would fare better, then. Steel used to be the standard for "sports" watches before properly durable rubber and resins came along. Seiko and Citizen have a good number of all-steel watches with solar power which don't cost too much. Maybe you can get into using NATO straps for them, too.

Siri is very cool, I just wish it was completely local and not cloud-based.

I don't think it'll be possible to run it completely locally because of all the processing necessary to get a response. I think your fears of voice printing are unfounded, though, but that's between you and Apple, not the forums.

I'm curious about the way you have your Contacts set up: Exactly how do you have your wife listed in your numbers? Do you have her under "wife", "my wife", "<her name>, etc? I'm trying to understand how Siri is sending her that text if you start the command with "Tell my wife.."

It's been a while since I got it set up, but I think it involved first asking Siri to text my wife, and Siri replied, "I don't know who your wife is." I probably asked Siri, "Who is my wife?", then it gave me an option to select her from my contacts list; or maybe I said, "(my wife's name) is my wife," and Siri remembered.

I did. He said why should he bother with maps when the phone can do it?

:facepalm:

Yet if you have the streets in your head, your going to be looking at the road just as much if not more, aren't you?

Right, but if I'm not looking at the phone at all, it's pretty much the same thing.

I'm looking for an app that can turn off the time-lapse block shifts and go to pixel shifts in real time, with an acceleration slider. Does RadarScope allow for something like that? I just loathe all the weather broadcasts that show clouds jumping miles at a time. Some of my local outlets are increasing the granularity in their time lapses and just increasing the speed of the shift, which makes it a lot more pleasant to watch, but they're still not there yet.

I don't think so, but it's pretty dense with information for a mobile app. It'll let you choose elevation angles for some of the radar products, too. The time span seems set for about an hour at ten-minute increments, but that's it.

If the Watch was capable of doing three or four atmospheres, I'd add decompression tables valid for air, Nitrox, Heliox, etc, and it would be attached to my arm permanently.

It'd be cool, but I think the Force Touch sensor would freak out, and reengineering the case to not be glued together (my most valid complaint about the AW) would probably make its proportions more brick-shaped.

I'm thinking about wasting an hour on a nap later, I'm going to try the Watch alarm and see if it can wake me up.

I think it'll work fine. Even on silent, with just the taps, it doesn't disturb my wife as it wakes me up.

 

[powerbook911]

I was unimpressed in April last year. However, over weeks and months, I became to appreciate it more, and I plan to buy every generation at this point. ha.

 

[Sill]

I wonder if a watch with a steel bracelet would fare better, then. Steel used to be the standard for "sports" watches before properly durable rubber and resins came along. Seiko and Citizen have a good number of all-steel watches with solar power which don't cost too much. Maybe you can get into using NATO straps for them, too.

Its not on my priority list right now. After the iPhone 4 came out I started using that exclusively as my clock and the G Shock went into the retirement drawer. Since then my iPhone is on my belt, or sits on my dash or desk where I can refer to it as needed, and I can grab it quickly if I need to visit a client. It helps to have it in my view for Message notification and caller ID, all stuff you use the Watch for but I can't.

It's been a while since I got it set up, but I think it involved first asking Siri to text my wife, and Siri replied, "I don't know who your wife is." I probably asked Siri, "Who is my wife?", then it gave me an option to select her from my contacts list; or maybe I said, "(my wife's name) is my wife," and Siri remembered.

I don't know why, but I find that funny and disconcerting at the same time. Every once in a while, where we are in technology and history hits me, and I get that odd feeling I'm living in the midst of a portmanteau of Jarvis from Iron Man and Proteus from Demon Seed.

I think it'll work fine. Even on silent, with just the taps, it doesn't disturb my wife as it wakes me up.

I forgot to try the alarm yesterday, since I got into a different project. I'll check it out today.

Would you believe - I tried the Watch as a communicator yesterday?

The two people I talked to said that it sounded as good on their end as talking to me via my iPhone. Whats more, my typical all-day fiddling with the Watch brings the battery down to about 75-77 percent, yet talking for almost an hour across two phone calls only brought it down to 70 percent by the time I hung the Watch up at bedtime. Points to Apple for good technology.
I can make a personal use case for the Watch as a communicator now, since I can sit at my desk and talk while I type or work on a project. I don't care if I look like a clown in my own home. I have the big shoes too, but thats another story.

 

[xraydoc]

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.

You win. The watch is not for you. Give it away as a gift or sell it on Craigslist.

 

[BarracksSi]

Would you believe - I tried the Watch as a communicator yesterday?
....
I can make a personal use case for the Watch as a communicator now, since I can sit at my desk and talk while I type or work on a project. I don't care if I look like a clown in my own home. I have the big shoes too, but thats another story.

One of the times when the AW's usefulness became more obvious was when I used it, and not my phone, to send messages during my walking commute. I hadn't been sure if I could trust it enough, but one day I just tried it -- I think it was still on watchOS 1, too -- and it worked.

Since then, whenever I wear another watch and walk with my phone in my hand (because I can still miss its vibrations when it's in my pocket), I feel clumsy and awkward. It's like the phone is serving as a wristwatch, except I can't just wear it and leave both hands free.

 

[BlueMoon63]

I had never used the watch for receiving a call for more than a few seconds until I got back to my phone. The other day I was getting ready and a call from my daughter showed on my watch and I took the call on the watch. I figured I wouldn't be able to hear her but it was loud and clear and she said my connection was perfect. Had I known it would work that well and at my age I could hear it clearly was a nice find and I could continue to get ready. Loved it. Still would never talk to my wrist in public.

 

[Tinmania]

The Watch itself is more than an extension of the phone. If you don't understand what those sensors on the back can do, and the misuse they can be put to, perhaps you should consider how biomarkers can be used to control and manipulate people. Consider that right now people are being marketed the latest gee whiz product, smart LED lights. People have already found that the LEDs can be oscillated thousands of times per second to produce mood changes. Now couple that with a watch that can determine when the precise reaction has been achieved. You can induce euphoria, depression, anxiety, etc.

"But when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and fortunately was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge. In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again."

Yea I'm not going down that hole...



Mike

 

[iBreatheApple]

Just in case you were wondering why you're getting some blunt responses, you come off pretty snobby, for lack of a better term.

 

[rockyromero]

Still would never talk to my wrist in public.

I prefer talking on the AW when I receive a call as I'm walking in the city.

So much faster and practical.

No one else seems to be aware of my wrist conversations.

I do keep the AW face on the inside of my wrist for improved comfort and for communicating better.

➰

 

[liquidsuns]

What an ordeal this thread is. Just get rid of the watch, dude.