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I haven’t ever been too keen on smartwatches and never really tried anything beyond a Fitbit. I recently ordered a Series 6 and I’m absolutely loving it. I can

I haven’t ever been too keen on smartwatches and never really tried anything beyond a Fitbit. I recently ordered a Series 6 and I’m absolutely loving it. I can positively say this device on my wrist is the best thing I’ve done for my health. The multitude of sensors are great, sure, but the real magic is how the watch motivates you. Closing rings is like crack. It makes me want to leave the bed and go for a quick run or cycle at 11PM. Having a cellular connection is fantastic and on occasion even lets me leave my phone behind. Coupled with their usually reliable software, I can 100% see why Apple’s approaching 100M Apple Watch users.

save_ferris 6y ago
I've never owned a smartwatch, but I can't think of another device that completely distracts users and breaks focus away from in-person conversations quite like these do. Maybe I just notice it more than folks that just use phones, but every time I'm talking to someone who checks their watch while we're talking reinforces my decision not to purchase one. Sometimes I feel like I've teleported from another decade or something when complaining about the lack of digital etiquette in our society, but there's just no way I can justify buying another notification factory.
- macintux 6y ago
  I’ve found just the opposite. By tuning my Apple Watch notifications, I now only get the most important interruptions on it, and I can almost always tell what it is by the haptics. So my phone can buzz and beep all it wants, I can ignore it. My watch can buzz and depending on what’s going on around me, I can sneak a peek or disregard it. Furthermore, the watch is incapable of subsuming my attention like the phone. On a phone I have all of my usual distractions. My watch is too small to take me away from the people I’m with (as if that’s anything to worry about this year, sadly). The watch has liberated me from distractions when I’m among people. If the people you’re interacting with are being distracted, that’s their failing, not the watch’s.
  - thewebcount 6y ago
    Yeah, this was my experience as well. My phone was pretty distracting, but I was really able to cut down on the notifications I got on the watch and they were only the important ones, so now I'm more engaged than I was previously.
- shard 6y ago
  Just wait until smart glasses finally take off! At least people can ignore their smart watches, it'll be hard to ignore a flashing icon in your field of view.
  - save_ferris 6y ago
    That's very true. Philosophically, it's kinda hard to envision material gains in quality-of-life without major consequences with these kinds of technologies. They largely exist to take us out of our physical, in-person interactions because there's something more important to look at/respond to/whatever on the screen. Stuff like the Apple Watch and smart glasses definitely give me Black Mirror vibes a whole lot quicker than mobile technology ever did, but then again, Black Mirror came out after mobile had already largely taken off.
  - canada_dry 6y ago
    A whole new subset of body language indicators - eye movement watching - will be part of dealing with AR users.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      Maybe I'm a bit autistic but I already watch people's eyes quite a lot The only useful thing I ever learnt from my art teacher was when he taught us how to pretend to make eye contact with people.
    - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
      Haha you must be a man if you don't already pay attention to eye movement
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tootie 6y ago
  In-person conversations suffer a marginal decrease in attention. Remote communication improves by several orders of magnitude.
- samatman 6y ago
  Hmm. I'm a little older, it was engrained in me that looking at your watch when you're talking to someone is a clear and pretty rude signal that they're boring you, wasting your time, and that in general you'd like the conversation to be done. Like if I so much as glanced at my watch while talking to someone, I'd immediately say sorry and explain why I have to keep track of time. Having a smart watch has changed this in one way, which is if someone starts blowing up my notifications I'll say "sorry let me fix that" and turn it to silent. I don't have a good fix for conveying this etiquette to people who never got the message, but I'm with you: that's rude, people need to stop doing it. No need to blame the device though. I'm with everyone else who says that the notifications are way less distracting than they would be on a phone.
  - elahieh 6y ago
    looking at your watch when you're talking to someone is a clear and pretty rude signal that they're boring you Yes, some people take that very seriously :-O https://youtu.be/8Aq5BUiruPg?t=2112 https://youtu.be/8Aq5BUiruPg?t=2112
tzs 6y ago
> The multitude of sensors are great, sure, but the real magic is how the watch motivates you. Closing rings is like crack. I second that. I have had my Series 4 for 514 days. I currently have a 514 day Move streak and 72 perfect weeks (All Activity). My one major complaint would be exercise minutes during outdoor walks. I will sometimes do, say, a 40 minute walk and only get 32 minutes of exercise credit. It will be giving me one minute per minute of walking for say 25 minutes, then go 8 minutes with no credit, then give me one for one for the remaining 7 minutes of the walk. I'm frequently checking heart rate and pace during all this, and the 8 minutes of no credit portion matches the rest of the walk on both of those. Checking the map of the walk afterwards, where it color codes sections where your pace was above or below average shows no slowdowns during where it drops minutes. Checking the detailed heart rate data afterwards in case there were slowdowns that I just didn't notice during the walk shows that there were none. I wish they would add an "explain exercise minutes" option that would look at a workout and tell you why you didn't get credit for some minutes.
- obviyus 6y ago
  Yeah this literally just happened to me this morning hence the usually reliable comment on the software. Took a bit of Googling to figure out what the Watch considers as exercise: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8287317 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8287317
- lukeschlather 6y ago
  I have been really happy with the Garmin Fenix. It has an "exercise load" feature which I've found a lot more useful than "exercise minutes" (which Garmin also collects.) Exercise load uses some sort of a dynamic scale that weights time based on how long you spend in the heavier heart rate zones. Walking on level ground pretty much never counts for "exercise load" since my HR stays under 130, but hills/running/biking can get up to 140+ where I get exercise load points. A slightly clunky thing with the Fenix is that you have to explicitly tell it you're doing an activity to get some metrics - but the heart rate/step count/calorie data is always being gathered. And the Fenix has at a minimum twice the battery life of an Apple Watch, and keeping it in no-GPS mode lets it extend to weeks of battery life while still gathering most of the key metrics.
furyofantares 6y ago
I've noticed a very consistent pattern over the years: any time someone mentions some device, or dietary choice, or habit, etc, that has had a large positive impact in their behavior, it's almost always a recent change. A few months, maybe half a year or a little more. It's been a pattern in my life too. I do hope it's a lifelong positive change for you but I've just gotta discount any glowing reports that come from a recent change like this heavily.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  It seems some people react positively for a long time to external motivation like apps or games. Others get excited but drop the habit after a while. Personally I lose interest pretty quickly but it really seems it's good for some people.
samatman 6y ago
I remain grumpy that Google and Apple's petty little spat means that a cellular Watch won't work on Fi.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

save_ferris 6y ago

I've never owned a smartwatch, but I can't think of another device that completely distracts users and breaks focus away from in-person conversations quite like these do. Maybe I just notice it more than folks that just use phones, but every time I'm talking to someone who checks their watch while we're talking reinforces my decision not to purchase one. Sometimes I feel like I've teleported from another decade or something when complaining about the lack of digital etiquette in our society, but there's just no way I can justify buying another notification factory.

macintux 6y ago
I’ve found just the opposite. By tuning my Apple Watch notifications, I now only get the most important interruptions on it, and I can almost always tell what it is by the haptics. So my phone can buzz and beep all it wants, I can ignore it. My watch can buzz and depending on what’s going on around me, I can sneak a peek or disregard it. Furthermore, the watch is incapable of subsuming my attention like the phone. On a phone I have all of my usual distractions. My watch is too small to take me away from the people I’m with (as if that’s anything to worry about this year, sadly). The watch has liberated me from distractions when I’m among people. If the people you’re interacting with are being distracted, that’s their failing, not the watch’s.
- thewebcount 6y ago
  Yeah, this was my experience as well. My phone was pretty distracting, but I was really able to cut down on the notifications I got on the watch and they were only the important ones, so now I'm more engaged than I was previously.
shard 6y ago
Just wait until smart glasses finally take off! At least people can ignore their smart watches, it'll be hard to ignore a flashing icon in your field of view.
- save_ferris 6y ago
  That's very true. Philosophically, it's kinda hard to envision material gains in quality-of-life without major consequences with these kinds of technologies. They largely exist to take us out of our physical, in-person interactions because there's something more important to look at/respond to/whatever on the screen. Stuff like the Apple Watch and smart glasses definitely give me Black Mirror vibes a whole lot quicker than mobile technology ever did, but then again, Black Mirror came out after mobile had already largely taken off.
- canada_dry 6y ago
  A whole new subset of body language indicators - eye movement watching - will be part of dealing with AR users.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    Maybe I'm a bit autistic but I already watch people's eyes quite a lot The only useful thing I ever learnt from my art teacher was when he taught us how to pretend to make eye contact with people.
  - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
    Haha you must be a man if you don't already pay attention to eye movement
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tootie 6y ago
In-person conversations suffer a marginal decrease in attention. Remote communication improves by several orders of magnitude.
samatman 6y ago
Hmm. I'm a little older, it was engrained in me that looking at your watch when you're talking to someone is a clear and pretty rude signal that they're boring you, wasting your time, and that in general you'd like the conversation to be done. Like if I so much as glanced at my watch while talking to someone, I'd immediately say sorry and explain why I have to keep track of time. Having a smart watch has changed this in one way, which is if someone starts blowing up my notifications I'll say "sorry let me fix that" and turn it to silent. I don't have a good fix for conveying this etiquette to people who never got the message, but I'm with you: that's rude, people need to stop doing it. No need to blame the device though. I'm with everyone else who says that the notifications are way less distracting than they would be on a phone.
- elahieh 6y ago
  looking at your watch when you're talking to someone is a clear and pretty rude signal that they're boring you Yes, some people take that very seriously :-O https://youtu.be/8Aq5BUiruPg?t=2112 https://youtu.be/8Aq5BUiruPg?t=2112

tzs 6y ago

> The multitude of sensors are great, sure, but the real magic is how the watch motivates you. Closing rings is like crack. I second that. I have had my Series 4 for 514 days. I currently have a 514 day Move streak and 72 perfect weeks (All Activity). My one major complaint would be exercise minutes during outdoor walks. I will sometimes do, say, a 40 minute walk and only get 32 minutes of exercise credit. It will be giving me one minute per minute of walking for say 25 minutes, then go 8 minutes with no credit, then give me one for one for the remaining 7 minutes of the walk. I'm frequently checking heart rate and pace during all this, and the 8 minutes of no credit portion matches the rest of the walk on both of those. Checking the map of the walk afterwards, where it color codes sections where your pace was above or below average shows no slowdowns during where it drops minutes. Checking the detailed heart rate data afterwards in case there were slowdowns that I just didn't notice during the walk shows that there were none. I wish they would add an "explain exercise minutes" option that would look at a workout and tell you why you didn't get credit for some minutes.

obviyus 6y ago
Yeah this literally just happened to me this morning hence the usually reliable comment on the software. Took a bit of Googling to figure out what the Watch considers as exercise: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8287317 https://discussions.apple.com/thread/8287317
lukeschlather 6y ago
I have been really happy with the Garmin Fenix. It has an "exercise load" feature which I've found a lot more useful than "exercise minutes" (which Garmin also collects.) Exercise load uses some sort of a dynamic scale that weights time based on how long you spend in the heavier heart rate zones. Walking on level ground pretty much never counts for "exercise load" since my HR stays under 130, but hills/running/biking can get up to 140+ where I get exercise load points. A slightly clunky thing with the Fenix is that you have to explicitly tell it you're doing an activity to get some metrics - but the heart rate/step count/calorie data is always being gathered. And the Fenix has at a minimum twice the battery life of an Apple Watch, and keeping it in no-GPS mode lets it extend to weeks of battery life while still gathering most of the key metrics.

furyofantares 6y ago

I've noticed a very consistent pattern over the years: any time someone mentions some device, or dietary choice, or habit, etc, that has had a large positive impact in their behavior, it's almost always a recent change. A few months, maybe half a year or a little more. It's been a pattern in my life too. I do hope it's a lifelong positive change for you but I've just gotta discount any glowing reports that come from a recent change like this heavily.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
It seems some people react positively for a long time to external motivation like apps or games. Others get excited but drop the habit after a while. Personally I lose interest pretty quickly but it really seems it's good for some people.

samatman 6y ago

I remain grumpy that Google and Apple's petty little spat means that a cellular Watch won't work on Fi.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]