I’m Returning My Apple Watch 3 Cellular | Hacker News Reader

I’m Returning My Apple Watch 3 Cellular

hackernoon.com

12 pointsrbanffy23 comments

> Back home, I have to unlock the door, climb like 20 steps — it’s plenty of time to connect to the wifi. Then I have to take off my headphones before my sweaty t-shirt, so it would be great to just switch the current song to the living room airplay system, so that there’d be no interruption. I couldn’t do it, and don’t understand why switching between bluetooth and wifi shouldn’t just work

I'm going to sound like an old fart but this whole post sounds like a parody to me.

Honestly, i didn’t even understand what this post was complaining about..

I’d hate to be on customer support for this kind of guy...

When I worked customer support, I didn't even care how big or small a problem was. It was all about the attitude of the person I was helping. I'd much prefer someone with a complex or difficult issue that had a respectful attitude than someone that had a simple problem but tried to force hell upon me while I tried to help.

> I couldn’t do it, and don’t understand why switching between bluetooth and wifi shouldn’t just work

Expecting Bluetooth to just work? Ahahahahahaha.

Surely it is a parody, right? This can't possibly be a post by an actual serious person. I mean, if you want to hear the same music on your stereo as your headphones, find a radio station you like and leave the stereo on while you go for a run. But really, if you can't stand exercising without your music, maybe you don't actually like exercise and you should stop.

> I mean, if you want to hear the same music on your stereo as your headphones, find a radio station you like and leave the stereo on while you go for a run.

So you agree that there is no point spending $500 here and the watch should be returned?

> maybe you don't actually like exercise and you should stop

What.

> So you agree that there is no point spending $500 here and the watch should be returned?

Why are we talking about a broad parody as if it's factual? The article's mixture of credulity and petulance is surely a send-up of West-Coast tech industry narcissism.

> > maybe you don't actually like exercise and you should stop

> What.

Yup.

None of the complaints in the article are more unreasonable than the act of buying a smart watch. If you are going to pay hundreds of dollars for a watch, it had better do its very simple job without breaking. It doesn't matter if the complaints are minor in the grand scheme of things. The need for a smartwatch is equally minor.

Exercise is important, even if you don't whole-heartedly enjoy it. I remain baffled.

The way I see it, if you can't stand to be alone with your exercise for one minute, it's not a healthful practice, it's mortification of the flesh. Exercise should, if it does not feel good, at least feel right, and if it doesn't you're probably going to hurt yourself.

To me, it's beside the point whether it's reasonable for the cartoon character portrayed in this blog post to return his expensive trinket. Reason went out the window when the thing was purchased in the first place. At any rate, it's not like we're talking about a real person here.

> if you can't stand to be alone with your exercise for one minute

If something breaks for a full minute every time you touch it, that gets really frustrating, even if you have no problem at all with a minute of silence.

But more importantly, the original goalpost was having music at all, during the entire exercise session. Exercise can feel perfectly 'right' while also being plenty boring if you're running in utter silence for an hour.

And I don't know. This might be a real person being jokey about their legitimate issues with the device, or some kind of parody that shows someone overreacting to... legitimate issues with the device.

Fair point. I'll concede it's possible this is a real person, although I hope it isn't!

This has to be the dumbest article I've read in awhile. This guy expected a product that's only been out for three weeks -- an Apple Watch with cellular to have all of the apps he wanted ported? If it were clearly a lack of software issue, does he really not know that developers fall all over themselves to support the new shiny Apple product as fast as possible -- except for Macs.

It's no surprise the software isn't quite there yet, it's a brand new product, and it's a feature Apple said was COMING, not that it was immediately available. In 6 months or a year, I bet it mostly just works, provided you spend all that money.

The author should try a couple more guided breathing exercises. He must be out of breath from all this unchecked rage over whether Spotify works on his new watch while he runs.

Very odd post. Author mentions the software isn't quite there yet and is using a developer version of the software. Apple noted during the announcement the streaming music feature would come later. So it's not even out yet. If that what a pivotal feature he should have waited to purchase, but something tells me, he choose to buy now, so that he would have material for a brief blog post.

This sure is a lot of expense and hassle for simply playing music while running. We've had tiny mp3 players for over a decade now, I still use my little zen stone and it works great! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_Zen#ZEN_Stone).

Does the Zen Stone allow you to track your running speed and heart rate real time? Can you leave your phone at home and still be reached/make calls in the case of an emergency? Can you stop by your local convenience store with nothing but your Zen Stone and pay for a bottled water?

Haha, this is definitely a satire article about the kind of people the author judges customers of 3G watches to be... but it's a bit harsh.

We already did this one yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15436249

As in, exact same article, different web server.

If the author is returning it, will they get reimbursed for the $99 they spent on the Developer Program? I don't see why they would, but why return it if you're not getting all the money back?

that'd be a sunk cost, in economic terms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost

Seriously, what do you expect from the people that brought us such lovely software as iTunes? /s

If the author of this post had spent a few minutes looking into what functionality the Watch had before purchasing it, he could've had a much different experience. This reads like the complaints of someone who didn't quite know what they were buying.

>I bought the Apple Watch yesterday, and yesterday is the keyword. How come I didn’t run yesterday? Thanks for asking, in fact I did run, but yesterday I couldn’t stream music because I had no apps.

The exact feature is described as "Stream 40 million songs with Apple Music right from your wrist". It's also clearly described on Apple's home page as "Coming Soon". Of course there are no streaming music apps like Spotify or Soundcloud yet. Apple's own music platform isn't even ready. I don't agree with Apple's approach of releasing a watch and announcing software or features that aren't readily available at launch, but I'm not going to then say "wait where is music streaming?" if I buy one before the feature is released.

What he could've done, given some patience, was sync a playlist of songs to the watch. It's had that functionality since day one.

>In summary, $432.92 for the Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular, $99 for the Apple Developer Program, $10/mo for Verizon, and $9.99/mo for Apple Music. I feel it’s a bit too much for just streaming music while I run, I’m happy to just go with a non-cellular watch and some music pre-downloaded.

The author is being misleading. The developer program isn't required, this is the price the author paid for being impatient. The rest of the costs are required for music, but cellular functionality != music streaming. It has other uses.

>I have to unlock the door, climb like 20 steps — it’s plenty of time to connect to the wifi. Then I have to take off my headphones before my sweaty t-shirt, so it would be great to just switch the current song to the living room airplay system, so that there’d be no interruption. I couldn’t do it, and don’t understand why switching between bluetooth and wifi shouldn’t just work

Wearable tech is hard. I'm sure a device with a bigger battery and more powerful hardware could do this, but it's a small piece of wearable tech on your wrist. Give it time. (I can see why this wouldn't be a feature right now since AirPlay is direct streaming and it'd likely mean users burn through their battery as they stream music to their speakers from their watch).

>On the bright side, earlier today I went grocery shopping, turned my iPhone in airplane mode, and paid with just the watch. For spending more money, the Apple Watch works great.

Apple Pay is great on the watch. It also doesn't need cellular data, you can use Apple Pay without an iPhone present on any Apple Watch.[1]

I personally have a Series 1 that I use when I go for a run, I leave my iPhone at home. I have a playlist of music synced. I'm happy with my watch and don't have any need for GPS or cellular for the time being. Syncing a playlist of music works fine for me.

[1] https://www.macworld.com/article/2916821/what-can-your-apple...

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