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Fitness, Apple Pay, Siri. These are the killer apps for smart watches. Pretty much everything else the Apple Watch does is a waste of time, just replicating fu

Fitness, Apple Pay, Siri. These are the killer apps for smart watches. Pretty much everything else the Apple Watch does is a waste of time, just replicating functionality that is easier and better experienced on your phone. The Apple Watch (and others) are trying to solve a bunch of other non-problems that don't exist for 99% of the real world. They would be better products if they had less features.

pluma 10y ago
> Fitness I don't want or need a fitness tracker. Judging by other comments I'm not the only one. > Apple Pay ...is not supported in most places where I live, so it's a gimmick at best. > Siri Maybe I'm weird but I don't find voice input acceptable in social situations and don't want to rely on speech recognition when it comes to technical terms or mixed language input (I'm not in the US). For me "a controlled subset of your smartphone's notifications on your wrist" is the killer app. Everything else is a gimmick.
- gvurrdon 10y ago
  The Apple watch recently obtained a means to reply to messages by means of handwriting recognition. This works rather well in practice and I find I'm able to send short replies quickly and easily in situations where speaking to the watch would be inappropriate (e.g. on a bus). I find Siri very useful indeed for one thing in particular, which is to set reminders. This has been a very useful feature of smartwatches, and I might even consider it a "killer app". Other than that, sending some messages from the watch and setting timers I don't use Siri. I would agree about the utility of watch notifications. For example, if my Nest camera spots a human figure on my property I get a photograph of them turn up as a notification on my watch, which is awesome. The fitness tracking is of little interest and not really very useful given my main sporting activities involve sparring - blocking punches is not an activity which suits wearing an expensive watch.
  - izacus 10y ago
    I find it funny that reminders are go-to thing that everyone talks about when mentioning Siri. Can it do ANYTHING else well? Especially if you're outside USA?
    - gvurrdon 10y ago
      I don't know and I'm not particularly bothered to find out since I don't want to use it for anything other than reminders, timers and the occasional text message. When I was using Android Wear and Google Now that was all I wanted; the rest of Google Now was far too much of a nuisance. If Pebble could have handled reminders as easily I'd have been using that instead.
deleted 10y ago
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Inthenameofmine 10y ago
Agreed. I would also add a silent vibrating alarm to the list. Though interestingly, non of these features need much of a display or interface. I have a Mi Band 2 with a 1 month battery life. It does everything i Ned. I'm pretty sure all of the above features would be possible with the Mi Band display, at a very low price. I think smartwatches will split inyo fashion (Apple) vs Utility, depending on whether Google or Microsoft figure oit payments and assistants.

pluma 10y ago

> Fitness I don't want or need a fitness tracker. Judging by other comments I'm not the only one. > Apple Pay ...is not supported in most places where I live, so it's a gimmick at best. > Siri Maybe I'm weird but I don't find voice input acceptable in social situations and don't want to rely on speech recognition when it comes to technical terms or mixed language input (I'm not in the US). For me "a controlled subset of your smartphone's notifications on your wrist" is the killer app. Everything else is a gimmick.

gvurrdon 10y ago
The Apple watch recently obtained a means to reply to messages by means of handwriting recognition. This works rather well in practice and I find I'm able to send short replies quickly and easily in situations where speaking to the watch would be inappropriate (e.g. on a bus). I find Siri very useful indeed for one thing in particular, which is to set reminders. This has been a very useful feature of smartwatches, and I might even consider it a "killer app". Other than that, sending some messages from the watch and setting timers I don't use Siri. I would agree about the utility of watch notifications. For example, if my Nest camera spots a human figure on my property I get a photograph of them turn up as a notification on my watch, which is awesome. The fitness tracking is of little interest and not really very useful given my main sporting activities involve sparring - blocking punches is not an activity which suits wearing an expensive watch.
- izacus 10y ago
  I find it funny that reminders are go-to thing that everyone talks about when mentioning Siri. Can it do ANYTHING else well? Especially if you're outside USA?
  - gvurrdon 10y ago
    I don't know and I'm not particularly bothered to find out since I don't want to use it for anything other than reminders, timers and the occasional text message. When I was using Android Wear and Google Now that was all I wanted; the rest of Google Now was far too much of a nuisance. If Pebble could have handled reminders as easily I'd have been using that instead.

deleted 10y ago

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Inthenameofmine 10y ago

Agreed. I would also add a silent vibrating alarm to the list. Though interestingly, non of these features need much of a display or interface. I have a Mi Band 2 with a 1 month battery life. It does everything i Ned. I'm pretty sure all of the above features would be possible with the Mi Band display, at a very low price. I think smartwatches will split inyo fashion (Apple) vs Utility, depending on whether Google or Microsoft figure oit payments and assistants.