Here's something I just figured out. I've been doing a lot of DMs on Twitter this morning. And I'm just now, hours later, getting them as echoes on my Apple Watch.
I've noticed this on my iPad and iPhone too with Slack messages. They arrive instantaneously in the Slack app. But don't show up in AppleLand for 20-30 minutes, sometimes an hour or two.
What good is the watch or iPhone if you have to go to your laptop to get the real-time message stream?
Earlier today: Paolo Valdemarin tells his 5-day Apple Watch story.
It looks as good as the one from Apple that costs much more. In fact because it's so much less expensive it looks better! :-)
I don't like to waste money on stuff like that. I have really middle class values with everything but technology, and watch bands are not technology, sorry Apple!
Hey I didn't write anything yesterday. Don't take that for a lack of interest. I had kind of a down day. Shit happens. ;-)
Chuck discovered something about the watch which he shared on Facebook.
Interesting tidbit about the Apple Watch. I just discovered that messages work fine without the phone, including voice dictation, as long as you are in range of a known Wifi access point. I went out, forgot my phone, and was totally able to send and receive messages with the watch from a friend's house via wifi.
There are more comments under Chuck's discovery that are worth checking out.
After taking my shower this morning, I forgot to put on my Apple Watch. I realized this only after working for a bit and realizing that I wasn't being nagged that it's time to get up.
I'm a bad person, obviously, because I could put the watch on, I work at home, it's sitting on the night table in the other room. I could get up and put it on. But I didn't. Not yet.
I decided to post this note when I realized the watch wasn't screaming at me from the other room about how I didn't love it, and how much better I would feel if I put it on. I think the watch is being a good sport.
Isn't it funny how we anthropomorphize these things? Well, at least I do! :-)
Update: After posting this I went and got the watch and put it on. I feel much better now. I didn't know I would do this when I started the post, btw.
The battery isn't looking so great today. I'm on the second day of a charge, and it's got 20 percent left. Clearly sometime during the day I'm going to have to charge the watch. So the idea that it runs two days on a single charge is not still true. (Just got a reminder to stand.)
I've been searching for a new watch band, and when you look on Amazon, you also find watch "cases" -- and I wonder why anyone would want one? Then there's a Yahoo piece today saying you don't need a case. I have to agree. You have to worry about dropping phones, since you're always moving them from pocket to hand, and laying them on tables. But the watch is attached to your body. Kind of a different situation. But I do very much still want a new band.
People who say "But you don't need the Apple Watch either" are lonely people searching for attention, and not too smart either. ;-)
To be clear, of course you don't need the watch, and neither do I. But I like the watch. If life only consisted of needs, we'd be living on a human energy farm, as in The Matrix. Maybe you already live there. Possibly I live there too.
BTW, the watch's "is he standing?" algorithm is pretty stupid, it seems. I just got back from a bathroom break, and believe me, there's a bit of standing involved with that. Seems I should have gotten credit, but I didn't. Happened quite a few times yesterday.
I want to get a new watch band, I hate the white band on this thing, looks childish, feels childish. I'd like a nice black leather band, but sorry Apple I just don't think a watch band is worth hundreds of dollars. I'm a middle-class boy! :-)
It's a beachhead. It's computer tech making a landing on the human body and for the first time, sticking.
It provides enough new functionality for some people, including me, to make it stay on my body. And by being there, it creates questions, that will be resolved with new software, and tweaks to the technology.
Time at a glance (I know a regular watch can do this too).
Current temperature. This is something I'm always looking up when I go out. I need the info to know how to dress.
It knows when I'm standing, sitting, exercising. Not perfect at any of it, but it can tell me to stand, and can tell me how much exercise I got. There's value in this, esp if it makes me more fit.
The rest of it right now, that's just gravy. Being able to tell two bits at any time is enough to keep it where it is, along with the potential of generating new ideas.
I like owning products that help stimulate thinking. This is how early adopter markets work. It's not a mature market like the smartphone market was when Apple entered it. This will grow more slowly, and when we figure out how to use the power, it may explode. But it's made a landing. It's not bouncing like Google Glass did.
Yesterday it didn't recognize a 40-minute bike ride as exercise, but today it congratulated me on a 40-minutex walk in the park. So there are some forms that it likes and others it doesn't.
Fully charged it overnight.
I like exercising with the heart rate monitor. This is the first time I've had one of those. I can see what makes my heart rate go up, that's cool. ;-)
Also I noted once today it nagged me about standing up when I was already standing. I won that argument! :-)
I'm going to use the heart rate monitor when I exercise today.
I think today is a walking day not a bike riding day.
Will also be listening to podcasts, if so.
I also let it remind me to get up once an hour and move around. It did it during basketball last night. I did what it told me to do, and when the watch praised me, I felt good. No shit, I really did.
I asked on Twitter and Facebook how to find out what the battery life is, and I now have it in my default watch face. I did not charge the watch last night, because at bedtime it still had over 60 percent left. Now it has 43 percent at 12:30PM. I think it's going to make it another day without a charge. For me, battery life is not an issue.
I didn't like that it nagged me to get out of bed. I'd like to say STFU. Maybe I have to turn Siri on. I don't have it on now.
My conclusion is the early reviewers don't really understand software.
Otherwise, what were the problems exactly??
I usually and the canary in the coalmine for UI difficulty, very sensitive to bad design, easily confused.
I haven't found anything yet that isn't fairly intuitive, and I love how much functionality they get into such a small space.
Still have not figured out how to read an email when it comes in, or view a Facebook post. Also how did Facebook get set up on here? I didn't ask Apple to do that. Hmmm.
My old watch, a Seiko, could charge itself through the motion of the watch. I wonder if Apple considered doing that. I'm constantly moving my watch hand, just typing at the keyboard, and walking around.
Setup could have been a little easier. They could have told me to turn the damn thing on, and how to do it. Eventually I just started pressing buttons. It turned on. From there the setup was almost flawless.
They asked if I wanted to enter a passcode. I said yes. Then a screen showed up. No obvious way to enter anything. This was on my iPhone, which has a pretty standard way to do that.
I haven't worn a watch in years. I now know the time in ways I haven't known it in a long time. Of course my tendency is to look in the upper right corner of whatever reality I'm consuming. Sometimes I look in the upper right corner of the sky, I get so used to seeing the time there.
