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Comment by S_A_P | Hacker News Reader

I always thought the apple watch was frivolous. Then I got one as a gift and cant imagine not having one. The ability to see whether or not a text/call is important without having to pull my phone out of my pocket is a killer feature for me. I always felt that it was rude to do that and this prevents me from having to. The fitness tracker is also really fun to use, and imo more accurate than the fit bit I had.

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Second this. It seems much less rude to discretely glance at your wrist briefly.

You think that, but it's super noticeable. Muliple times I've been in a situation where I'm in a conversation with someone who is constantly glancing at their watch. Depending on how well I know them, I either say, "You you like to just look at your phone?" or "Is time moving faster on your side of the table, because you seem to be very concerned with your watch."

Or I say nothing and just think about how rude that person is.

Not everyone is in a position to ignore their notifications. Would you rather they pull out their phone?

As someone who was on call for 20 years straight, I'm well aware of that. :)

And yes, I would rather they pull out their phone than stare at their wrist every 10 seconds. I don't have a problem with someone looking at their notifications, I'm just pointing out that people think they're being sneaky with the watch when they really aren't.

I get your point and I am well aware of the rudeness of looking at your clock during a conversation and how rude that is. However, I am not someone who is constantly getting notifications, and my phone is kept in my front pocket and is generally a pain to stand up and pull out of said pocket. Knowing I dont have to do that and can at least see who is contacting me from my wrist is a minor, yet still net benefit to my life. I am a big fan of everyone taking stock of how their phone habits are affecting their social and professional lives. I personally hate the phone pose where everyone is on autopilot while staring at their phone. I think this is a way to kind of back away from that and maybe avoid the temptation to be stimulated 100% of the time.

Agreed. The gesture of glancing at one's watch or wrist during a conversation carries a very particular connotation, probably going back generations.

I agree about the utility of being able to see notifications, but there are many much much cheaper ways of doing this. The Martian Notifier, Pebbles being sold on clearance etc.

How do you know if it is important? I presume you are looking at the caller id? But can't you program your important contacts in your phone to use a different ringtone/vibration pattern?

Having the watch, if you don't mind wearing a watch, might be nice, but I can't justify the extra expense.

I miss the one-minute averages, API, and battery life of the Fitbit but since they have appalling build quality, terrible firmwares, and refuse to integrate with Health, I swapped to a(n?) Watch.

Now my life is dominated by closing those damned circles.

"One-minute averages": I thought Fitbits provide a data point/recording for every second?

The Web API only gives you (when using intraday HR) the option of per-second or per-minute buckets. Since the Charge HR I was using only does 5s samples in normal mode (1s in workout mode), there was no point using the per-second buckets since 80% of it was useless data.

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