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watchOS 7 to Include Kids Mode That Shifts Focus of Activity Rings Away From Calories Burned
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Most kids don’t have much direct control over their diets either. School and/or parents tend to decide what, when, and how much they can eat in many cases.
And even if they did, is a child’s brain developed to the point where they can consistently make good eating decisions? I’m skeptical.
No need to be skeptical. The prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain primarily responsible for rational decision-making) isn't fully developed until around age 24.
I just want to recognize you for doing a sadly rare thing these days: realize an error. I wish it happened more. Shows character.
I know a 5th grader whose classmates are already talking about dieting. One girl who does ballet has parents who restrict her to 800 calories a day. 800. Calories. A. Day. For a freaking growing little girl. It’s one thing to be an overweight adult who’s looking at calories in vs calories out. But the less we talk about calories as a substitute for health the better. I unreservedly applaud Apple for seeing this. They still do think different.
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While they’re at it, I’d love to have dynamic complications that are removed/replaced if criteria are met.
I don’t need to look at my rings after they’ve been closed.
I don’t need to look at my rings after they’ve been closed.
Doesn't have to have been bought for them. I wore at S0 from when it launched until S5 launch. When I checked while purchasing, Apple offered to recycle the S0 for me. I've considered giving my S0 to my niece, because she's fascinated by it. That wouldn't be "bought for a kid".
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I'd love to see them update the now-aging Siri face for the S5 and S6 - it had that kind of "show relevant information" concept, but it's gotten clunky (and last I tried it, it kept using a third of my screen to offer me a chance to start a 3 minute timer, because I'd done that a couple times in testing, and there was no way to get it to stop, short of turning off the ability to show timers - I want the face to show the timer or stopwatch if they're running, but not otherwise).
Apple did a research study and discovered that it had grown up an entire generation of anorexic teenagers, enabling obsessive parents to send their kids out for another run until they worked off last night's extra dessert portion.
Well, they have been getting ever closer to a standalone watch - they added LTE, then software updates, then an App Store, then IAPs... I think there's a decent chance the next one will be able to be standalone.
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Absolutely. A first GEN watch would easily suffice for a younger teen, simply just for the basic health measurements and the simplicity of communication through text/calls. I think the notion is, some tend to think that the Apple Watch is a useless device because it’s no longer supported by watchOS, even though it still has full functionality in terms of water can actually be purposeful for a younger demographic.
That's going to be a few more years. Three reasons: one, the face is there all the time, and needs to be carefully balanced between showing data but also not eating too much power; two, the Watch design team consider themselves watch snobs, who know better than anyone else how to make a high-class watch face; and three, a Watch Face Store is going to get inundated with a truly staggering amount of copyright violations for them to weed through - between that and power requirements, they're going to have to reject 99% of submissions and there's going to be a metric boatload of them to wade through.
But when they finally do make a Faces SDK, I'm totally gonna build my own watch faces and run them in developer mode (I've got a collection of Raspberry Pi-based clock/weather-stations running in my house, driven by about 15k lines of Python, and a whole bunch of ideas of what I'd like on a very different watch face).
my 6 year old grandaughter is dying for a watch, she's had 2 so far. both have been lost. lets hope apple DON'T launch a kid size Apple watch
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that would work for me and my grandaughter, she would have the fun part of owning a watch, and i would feel better about her NOT staring into her iphone just yet
In general kids need to eat more calories than they burn since they are still growing. Moving the focus off of calories burned would be a good thing, IMO. The target group for this shouldn't be counting calories at all. If they are, they are already overweight, in which case they should be under a doctor's care for nutrition.
There probably are some of those, but in most families old Apple devices get handed down. You usually don't give your kids brand new iPhones or stuff like that, when they drop it all the time...
I think reason 2 is the big blocker, personally. 1 and 3 are technical and legal issues which Apple has the brains to have solved by now if it wanted too. I think they want to control the image. Every person wearing an Apple Watch is a walking advert for them, after all.
I'd love it if we all had some options on the circles. Personally I'd like steps as one of my circles. It's something my friends and relatives all use on their alternate wrist devices. Would be fun if I had a simple ring to follow. I know I can scroll down into another area and find it. But it's the most common tracked item among fitness wearables, seems silly Apple doesn't give me that option. Or any options. Let us choose Apple. I know it's shocking, but some of us want different things than your decision makers in Cupertino. Thanks. 
For another data point, my 8 year old niece still has, and wears, the (Casio analog) watch I gave her for her 6th birthday, almost 3 years ago. And the 40mm watch is a reasonable size for a kid, they just need some bands that are sized a lot smaller.
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As someone who became a type 1 diabetic at age 9 some 34 years ago, I'd jump through hoops to have access to some of the tools available now. On top of that list: an Apple watch to keep an eye on my blood sugar through the day. Three decades in, I have no interest in calorie burn, but since that time, I've taken careful consideration of what I eat, how much drug I take with my food, and of equal consideration, how much exercise I do each day to try and keep the insulin effective, and feel good. For a fair number of type 1 diabetics, that can/will go down a road of eating disorders if people obsess on the number. Good parents and friends look out for each other though. I would suggest it can be overcome if eating disorders become evident(?).
not "letting it" implies you have some self control. it's entirely possible to not have self control over tracking calories that would lead you into some sort of disorder.