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My guess is around notifications and handoff to iPhone apps. I tried Garmin watches, and they're certainly better as "exercise tracking devices" than anything

My guess is around notifications and handoff to iPhone apps. I tried Garmin watches, and they're certainly better as "exercise tracking devices" than anything Apple offers, but they weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to wear them all the time. An Apple Watch Ultra - on the other hand - is a poorer exercise tracking device, but gives me enough "integrated with my iPhone" benefit to become the first watch I've worn consistently in 30+ years. I assumed this was the result of design and development choices by Garmin, but it'll be interesting to see if their are meaningful ways that Apple restricts smartwatch developers from including similar levels of integration.

0xffff2 3y ago
Can you expand on what "integrated with my iPhone" means in concrete terms? I don't really understand what you mean.
- S_A_P 3y ago
  Not the original poster but for me it means not having to look at my phone for many tasks. I can see who texted or messaged me and the message without opening my phone. I can take or ignore a call. Basically anything that hits your message alerts can be displayed on the watch in most cases. Maybe the Apple Watch is not the best fitness tracker watch but it’s plenty good for me and it’s health integration is pretty good especially with the ultra.
  - atourgates 3y ago
    Yep. That's exactly right. When a phone call comes in, or I get a notification (text, calendar, app notification etc) - my Apple Watch does a really good job of (quite often) giving me enough info from my wrist that I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket. Garmin watches have some of this integration (IIRC you can definitely get texts, I don't remember what else) - but certainly not all of it. I haven't tried smartwatches from other manufacturers.
  - mousetree 3y ago
    Does a Garmin watch not do that? I often see people looking at notifications on their non-Apple watch.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - shagie 3y ago
    When setting up my Windows machine I was given the opportunity to pair it with my iPhone via Phone Link. In doing so, my Windows machine was able to get all of the notifications that I saw on the Lock Screen of my iPhone, and call history (make and receive calls too). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... and https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... I assume that this functionality is available to other devices too.
    - afavour 3y ago
      It’s a poor subset of the functionality available to the Apple Watch. One obvious example is that you can reply to a message on an Apple Watch, not so over the API Windows uses.
      - shagie 3y ago
        Here's a description of the functionality on Windows which includes replying to a message. https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... > Read and reply to messages with ease, make and receive calls, and manage your device’s notifications right on your PC (1) (2) > 1 Messaging feature is limited by iOS. Image/video sharing and group messaging is not supported. Messages are session based and will only come through when phone is connected to PC. > 2 Phone Link for iOS requires iPhone with iOS 14 or higher, Windows 11 device, Bluetooth connection and the latest version of the Phone Link app. Not available for iPad (iPadOS) or MacOS. Device compatibility may vary. Regional restrictions may apply. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
  - 0xffff2 3y ago
    I can do all of that with my Garmin watch though?
- InsomniacL 3y ago
  I don't use smart watches but I have an example on the trackers. Tile created trackers and every so often I get an annoying popup > ~"Tile has been using your location, do you want to stop this?" Apple then created a competitor product, 'AirTags', but their product does not have these popups. This is anti-competitive because Apple bypass the restrictions they made on their platform for their product that their competitive have to follow.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    I would bet most people already know using an Apple product and agreeing to the Find My and other terms in intial setup means Apple is always tracking you. So a pop up from Apple saying that Apple is tracking you makes no sense, it is already known, and accepted by the device user. Someone other than Apple tracking you, however, is notable, and so people (at least I) would always want to know if someone other than Apple is tracking me via software operating on the device.
    - Draiken 3y ago
      Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. This is clearly Apple apps being treated differently.
      - lotsofpulp 3y ago
        >Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. The whole point of the notification is to notify you when an entity is tracking you. If you already know Apple is tracking you, then it does not make a difference if Apple's App A or App B or App C is tracking you, it is all Apple.
        Draiken 3y ago
        I must be missing something because that's simply not true in Android. I can individually grant/revoke tracking permissions for each app. I assumed the same would be true for iPhone. For me it makes no sense to make it only about the entity. It's like saying "the US government is tracking you", instead of saying "the US government is tracking you through this app right now"
- bitcurious 3y ago
  A Garmin watch can’t track heart rate during an Apple Fitness Plus workout, an example.
  - SllX 3y ago
    Yeah but that’s a separate paid service tied to specific hardware, not so much an iPhone feature as an Apple TV and Watch feature. Garmin can integrate into HealthKit as well as any other fitness tracker.
    - 8note 3y ago
      That is to say, they communicate directly with each other and not through the iPhone?
      - SllX 3y ago
        So IIRC, you need the Apple TV to actually participate in the Fitness+ workouts, this is used to display them and as far as I know this hasn’t changed, but if it has, someone else can chime in and correct me. The Apple Watch itself has WiFi and optionally LTE. It does like to boost off an iPhone’s Bluetooth and let the iPhone do the heavy lifting, but it isn’t required to connect to the Internet and honestly works better when it does (at the cost of battery life). So yeah, more or less, but you still need the Watch paired to an iPhone (because it is an iPhone accessory at its core), and the data is going to be logged to the Health app, and the relevant data (heart rate, workout time, whatever else gets logged for the workout) can be made available to an ecosystem of independent hardware and services. The weight my scale logs for example gets tracked by the vendor service, the Health app, and my food tracker via the Health app. Either way, Fitness+ is a premium service, not a feature of the iPhone. That it requires specific hardware doesn’t make it particularly special in this regard either.
    - bitcurious 3y ago
      Apple's main fitness competitor Peloton supports non-peloton fitness bands, cadence meters, etc.
- shrew 3y ago
  Not the parent, but just a few things I’d guess would be Apple Watch specific: - I’ve had employers that require a confirmation step from an app as a form of 2FA. If my phone isn’t awake, the notification comes to my watch and I can approve my login from my wrist - If some action requires typing on my watch, I get a prompt on my iPhone to do the typing there instead of on the tiny watch keyboard. The characters I type via the phone appear in real time on the watch as if I were typing directly - Dismissing and snoozing notifications syncs so I don’t have to dismiss and snooze notifications on multiple devices - Similarly, if I set an alarm on my phone, the alarm will ring on my phone and, if I’m wearing it, vibrate my watch without further setup. Again, actions I perform to that alarm can all be performed on the watch or phone. I’d guess these are all tiny, tiny quality of life features, but I’d be very surprised if other non-Apple watches have the ability to implement them.
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  It's been years, but IIRC the main disparity was with responding to notifications. On Android you could pick a pre-written reply to texts or even dictate a response. On iOS you couldn't do anything but close the notification.
- GnarfGnarf 3y ago
  For example, the Apple Health App automatically talks to my dieting app, so when I walk, I get credit for the calories.
fennecbutt 3y ago
>weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to To buy them in the first place, for many consumers. Which is exactly what apple had hoped to achieve.

0xffff2 3y ago

Can you expand on what "integrated with my iPhone" means in concrete terms? I don't really understand what you mean.

S_A_P 3y ago
Not the original poster but for me it means not having to look at my phone for many tasks. I can see who texted or messaged me and the message without opening my phone. I can take or ignore a call. Basically anything that hits your message alerts can be displayed on the watch in most cases. Maybe the Apple Watch is not the best fitness tracker watch but it’s plenty good for me and it’s health integration is pretty good especially with the ultra.
- atourgates 3y ago
  Yep. That's exactly right. When a phone call comes in, or I get a notification (text, calendar, app notification etc) - my Apple Watch does a really good job of (quite often) giving me enough info from my wrist that I don't need to pull my phone out of my pocket. Garmin watches have some of this integration (IIRC you can definitely get texts, I don't remember what else) - but certainly not all of it. I haven't tried smartwatches from other manufacturers.
- mousetree 3y ago
  Does a Garmin watch not do that? I often see people looking at notifications on their non-Apple watch.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- shagie 3y ago
  When setting up my Windows machine I was given the opportunity to pair it with my iPhone via Phone Link. In doing so, my Windows machine was able to get all of the notifications that I saw on the Lock Screen of my iPhone, and call history (make and receive calls too). https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... and https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... I assume that this functionality is available to other devices too.
  - afavour 3y ago
    It’s a poor subset of the functionality available to the Apple Watch. One obvious example is that you can reply to a message on an Apple Watch, not so over the API Windows uses.
    - shagie 3y ago
      Here's a description of the functionality on Windows which includes replying to a message. https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://youtu.be/M4ihxL7B2ug?t=157&si=AaA6wvzbTuIL3eOC https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone-link-for-ios-is-now-rolling-out-to-all-windows-11-customers/ https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2023/04/26/phone... https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-devices https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/sync-across-your-dev... > Read and reply to messages with ease, make and receive calls, and manage your device’s notifications right on your PC (1) (2) > 1 Messaging feature is limited by iOS. Image/video sharing and group messaging is not supported. Messages are session based and will only come through when phone is connected to PC. > 2 Phone Link for iOS requires iPhone with iOS 14 or higher, Windows 11 device, Bluetooth connection and the latest version of the Phone Link app. Not available for iPad (iPadOS) or MacOS. Device compatibility may vary. Regional restrictions may apply. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
- 0xffff2 3y ago
  I can do all of that with my Garmin watch though?
InsomniacL 3y ago
I don't use smart watches but I have an example on the trackers. Tile created trackers and every so often I get an annoying popup > ~"Tile has been using your location, do you want to stop this?" Apple then created a competitor product, 'AirTags', but their product does not have these popups. This is anti-competitive because Apple bypass the restrictions they made on their platform for their product that their competitive have to follow.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  I would bet most people already know using an Apple product and agreeing to the Find My and other terms in intial setup means Apple is always tracking you. So a pop up from Apple saying that Apple is tracking you makes no sense, it is already known, and accepted by the device user. Someone other than Apple tracking you, however, is notable, and so people (at least I) would always want to know if someone other than Apple is tracking me via software operating on the device.
  - Draiken 3y ago
    Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. This is clearly Apple apps being treated differently.
    - lotsofpulp 3y ago
      >Why? Because a user allowed them to track them when using one app, it doesn't mean should extend automatically that to every app they ever develop. The whole point of the notification is to notify you when an entity is tracking you. If you already know Apple is tracking you, then it does not make a difference if Apple's App A or App B or App C is tracking you, it is all Apple.
      - Draiken 3y ago
        I must be missing something because that's simply not true in Android. I can individually grant/revoke tracking permissions for each app. I assumed the same would be true for iPhone. For me it makes no sense to make it only about the entity. It's like saying "the US government is tracking you", instead of saying "the US government is tracking you through this app right now"
bitcurious 3y ago
A Garmin watch can’t track heart rate during an Apple Fitness Plus workout, an example.
- SllX 3y ago
  Yeah but that’s a separate paid service tied to specific hardware, not so much an iPhone feature as an Apple TV and Watch feature. Garmin can integrate into HealthKit as well as any other fitness tracker.
  - 8note 3y ago
    That is to say, they communicate directly with each other and not through the iPhone?
    - SllX 3y ago
      So IIRC, you need the Apple TV to actually participate in the Fitness+ workouts, this is used to display them and as far as I know this hasn’t changed, but if it has, someone else can chime in and correct me. The Apple Watch itself has WiFi and optionally LTE. It does like to boost off an iPhone’s Bluetooth and let the iPhone do the heavy lifting, but it isn’t required to connect to the Internet and honestly works better when it does (at the cost of battery life). So yeah, more or less, but you still need the Watch paired to an iPhone (because it is an iPhone accessory at its core), and the data is going to be logged to the Health app, and the relevant data (heart rate, workout time, whatever else gets logged for the workout) can be made available to an ecosystem of independent hardware and services. The weight my scale logs for example gets tracked by the vendor service, the Health app, and my food tracker via the Health app. Either way, Fitness+ is a premium service, not a feature of the iPhone. That it requires specific hardware doesn’t make it particularly special in this regard either.
  - bitcurious 3y ago
    Apple's main fitness competitor Peloton supports non-peloton fitness bands, cadence meters, etc.
shrew 3y ago
Not the parent, but just a few things I’d guess would be Apple Watch specific: - I’ve had employers that require a confirmation step from an app as a form of 2FA. If my phone isn’t awake, the notification comes to my watch and I can approve my login from my wrist - If some action requires typing on my watch, I get a prompt on my iPhone to do the typing there instead of on the tiny watch keyboard. The characters I type via the phone appear in real time on the watch as if I were typing directly - Dismissing and snoozing notifications syncs so I don’t have to dismiss and snooze notifications on multiple devices - Similarly, if I set an alarm on my phone, the alarm will ring on my phone and, if I’m wearing it, vibrate my watch without further setup. Again, actions I perform to that alarm can all be performed on the watch or phone. I’d guess these are all tiny, tiny quality of life features, but I’d be very surprised if other non-Apple watches have the ability to implement them.
wlesieutre 3y ago
It's been years, but IIRC the main disparity was with responding to notifications. On Android you could pick a pre-written reply to texts or even dictate a response. On iOS you couldn't do anything but close the notification.
GnarfGnarf 3y ago
For example, the Apple Health App automatically talks to my dieting app, so when I walk, I get credit for the calories.

fennecbutt 3y ago

>weren't tightly enough integrated with my iPhone to make it "worth it" to me to To buy them in the first place, for many consumers. Which is exactly what apple had hoped to achieve.