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Comment by ardit33 | Hacker News Reader

I was playing indoor soccer, and I noticed one of the opposing players had an apple watch on. I wanted to complain the ref about it (jewelry and wearables are not allowed during games), but then I realized that at least 1/3rd of the players had some kind of watch (including my teammates).

You didn't see them during games a couple of years ago... so I guess they opened a new market and people are used to them.

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I know this is anecdotal, but the Apple Watch has actually been a great entryway product for the fitness wearables market.

A lot of people wear Apple Watches when running. After they realize that the watch's battery won't survive a marathon or a hike of any significant length, they usually upgrade to a Garmin or Fitbit.

In my experience, Apple Watches will cover most running needs without needing to upgrade.

I ran my first half marathon race with last month with a year old Series 4. I was running the Workout app in "Outdoor Run" mode, and playing (synced) music with the Music app to Bluetooth headphones. I did the run in the morning and made it through the whole day without taking it off. Around 9pm I got a warning I only had 10% power left.

It kind of blew my mind. Here is a device tracking my route with GPS, taking my heartrate, and playing wireless music to me, for just under 3 hours, and it feels about as big as a chunky Casio watch I had when I was a kid in the 80s.

My Garmin can get through a week of daily wear and GPS tracking before I need to charge it.

So, basically 7 days worn for 10-12 hours/day including 40ish miles of running. With heartrate. And that's the 4 year old model. The newer versions have even better battery life.

I ran a trail 100K last fall and my Watch survived the almost 13.5 hours. Granted, I was carrying my iPhone with me and wearing a chest strap HRM, so a lot of the work was offloaded. But still — I was impressed.

I’ve also run a road marathon with the watch without the phone.

The downside is if you’re using the Workouts app, then your data is silo’d. The upsides is that the data is local and encrypted.

You can use an app such as HealthFit (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/healthfit/id1202650514) to export your data. Downside is that you have to pay for what should have been built in functionality but I guess $3 is reasonable. I use it all the time as I record my runs with the Workouts app and sync them to Strava (since Strava doesn't play nice with the health app and locks your data).

I recommend the app HealthFit which can sync Workouts data with pretty much everything else, including Strava. It also allows you automatically export FIT and GPX files to Dropbox if you’d like. It can’t yet automatically sync Runkeeper though.

I started using it a year ago after I got annoyed at the Strava iOS app failing me once a week, and haven’t had any issues since.

I wear it everyday for a workout of ~1 hour and while the battery goes down by around 10% from that it’s not unthinkable for the battery to survive a multiple hour hike if fully charged.

Of course 12 hours with constant heart rate monitoring will be tough, I haven’t tried that.

You have a ref for indoor soccer? And rules on what you can wear? Indoor soccer to me was always just a casual affair, besides the odd tasty tackle and fall out

A lot of educational leagues have refs and rules on attire. For instance, every rec basketball league I've ever been in banned shorts with pockets because of the risk of defenders snagging/dislocating/breaking fingers and had rules on finger nail length to reduce incidental scratches.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futsal

There are professionals, championships and all.

it's called futsol

> I was playing indoor soccer, and I noticed one of the opposing players had an apple watch on. I wanted to complain the ref about it (jewelry and wearables are not allowed during games), but then I realized that at least 1/3rd of the players had some kind of watch (including my teammates).

How terribly entitled. Presumably the rules against jewelry and wearables are meant to ensure safety in case of collisions!

I hide it behind a wristband.

i play rec basketball and i am very tempted to try this little trick next time! i've really been wanting to see how much i run and such in a game, but the rules don't allow any accessories other than hairbands.

fitness monitors have really started to shift this, I think.

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