I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future | Hacker News Reader

I swapped my iPhone for an Apple Watch to live in an audio-first future

franzschrepf.medium.com

53 pointsFranz2384 comments

Voice control has recently improved to Barely Useful, but still certainly Not Usable.

I now listen to audiobooks, podcasts for ~2 hours daily, while walking my dog. If there's a way to control apps, navigate options, perform useful dictation, I haven't found it. I can barely get Siri to reliably start and stop audio playback.

I'm now curious how blind people manage these things. Also, I dimly recall Marvin Minsky or Donald Norman or Alan Kay... writing about early experiments with conversational user interfaces. It really seems to me that we have to go back to the basics, to start over with new assumptions. (I still have the books, I might be able to relocate those notions.)

To wrap up, much as it's clear my Apple Watch (w/ AirPods) has the potential to replace my iPhone, and my clear desire for that to happen, today it's not on the horizon.

Oh, here's my gratuitous geek cred: We were trying to use voice control in early 90s. For stuff like AutoCAD. While some of my users liked it, one even excelled with it, most didn't. So I've been waiting for this for a long time.

> If there's a way to control apps, navigate options, perform useful dictation, I haven't found it. I can barely get Siri to reliably start and stop audio playback.

google assistant is getting close

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GILvyiWB7xY

Is this available on Android yet? I haven't heard much about this since the demo.

Ok. Google Assistant is available for iPhone. I'll try it. Thank you.

Continuing my rant...

I know that Siri is impaired by choices Apple's made wrt to privacy or some such.

But why does local voice recognition fail so often? Like while hiking or I'm in the basement. Surely some hybrid is possible. Does Siri really need network access to process a stop playback command? (I do fuss with the Voice Control features every few months, to see if things have improved.)

Warning, idea incoming:

I want the ¡Tchkung! voice interface. Pops, clicks, buzzes, Looney Tunes sounds effects. Why are we limited to just speech recognition? Why can't I beatbox to control my phone?

In the 80s, there was a comic who'd straight read serious writing, adding sound effects for the punctuation. Hysterical (at the time). Sorry, can't remember name. But I want to make sounds for punctuation, backspace, back one word, newline, etc.

Sounds like Victor Borge.

Counterpoint: I recently switched from Android to iOS. On Android, Google Assistant and the likes were always the first apps I deleted. Google is just not a company that I trust at all with my personal data. On the iPhone, I have Siri enabled because I have the expectation that my personal data does not leave the phone when I use it with Siri. So when you say:

> I know that Siri is impaired by choices Apple's made wrt to privacy or some such.

For me it's the other way around. Without those choices, I would not be willing to use Siri at all.

Hearing you on FM. Just gonna test drive it for a bit, to calibrate my expectations.

I don't think Google assistant on the iPhone will be anywhere close to as good as it on Android for the type of usage your looking for.

Having said that, I wouldn't give up on Siri - she has improved quite a bit from just last year in terms of answering questions. I'd be surprised if they aren't exploring ways to control your phone as well.

> I'm now curious how blind people manage these things.

The key ingredients that make iOS an excellent computing platform for those hard of sight are

* enforcement of UI guidelines that enable the screen-reading to work well

* a collection of accessibility gestures meant for no-screen operation.

NOT Siri.

Siri is bad. Voice control over audio playback with google assistant on my nest hub works perfectly well. Actually it performs better in my native danish than siri does in English...

I'm honestly a bit surprised we still don't have decent voice control for mobile. Is it really such a hard problem? Or is it that there's little incentive to help users look at their screens less? Audio advertising is much more disrupting than on-screen ads alongside the desired content...

Article complains about distractions, and is littered with animated GIFs everywhere. You can hardly read any portion of the text without having nervous pixels jumping around somewhere.

No kidding, it's hard to focus on the text because there's so many irrelevant animations firing all the time.

I'm curious if this is an age thing? I'm in my early 40s, and I cant stand animated gifs, I find that I have to close my eyes if they are in a presentation, or move them off the page in a website like the OP.

But I see younger people making presentations at work that are littered with animations. To me it looks extremely unprofessional (both from the distraction and the usual childish nature of the images themselves), but its common enough that it's clearly within mainstream norms.

No, it’s not just your young age. Old people like me can’t stand them, either.

High schooler here. In a presentation is fine because you're mainly listening to the speaker, but it's very distracting in a written article.

In my late 20s, I can do one or two in a presentation or at the top or bottom of an article, but within an article they're truly an eyesore and really mess with my ability to actually concentrate on text.

I'm glad that this was a relatively serious article: the author had a problem, tried audio (actually: tried to mostly eliminate the phone), and described how effective it was. Great.

I also use my watch in ways the author does (though not to as extreme degree!) and do find it handy. But for me it's a convenience feature when my hands are full or I'm literally on the run. I was impressed by the level of effort described.

That being said: the idea of an audio-first future horrifies me. Audio and video are quite linear while a text article (like this post) are much easier to skim, read closely, and hop back to reread something. It can also be read in much less time than voice would take.

> The future will be audio-first. We’ll trade our tiny screens for always-in Airpods [...]

No.

It comes with a lot of drawbacks:

- Speed. A lot of people can read a lot faster than your usual conversation speed (and in their own pace), while audio is at a rather constant speed, which you might not even be able to control. Additionally, you can easily re-read something when you missed it or did not understand it - doing so with audio is not that easy.

- Privacy. When you're using a voice assistant, you're broadcasting your inputs to your surroundings and maybe even the output. Yes, people can already look on your screen, but the field is limited and the behaviour is discouraged. You're basically becoming that annoying person on the phone overheard by everyone, all the time.

- Scalability. Somewhat related, but a full bus with people on their phone is not a problem (in non-pandemic circumstances). Now, imagine 40 people talking to their phone in that bus.

- Clarity: Human-to-human understanding is quite imperfect already, especially in noisy environments or with distance. Text does not have any problems with this [0].

- Information density. "A picture can say more than a thousand words". Try reading a scientific paper with graphics via audio only, it'll be fun.

That's not to say that voice is useless. When you're driving or your hands are full while you're in your home, it is ideal. It also opens up accessibility to people which might not handle screens that well (for example very old persons).

But given these limitations, I can not imagine voice replacing screens as the main input method any time soon, or at all. For the edge cases above, sure. But in the general case? No.

[0] There are still understanding problems with text, but voice has those, too.

I agree with the input thing. Audio just doesn't satisfy the requirements of a complex user interface for use in public spaces.

I'm planning on eventually getting an Apple Watch so I can leave my phone at home, and want to try using a Tap keyboard with it. The Tap has mixed reviews, but I'd like to try out being able to input text using a mobile keyboard into the watch. I don't know if it would result in a satisfactory experience, but that's why I want to try it.

It's hard to browse Twitter when your battery is 296 mAh and the screen is very small. I have found this is good for my mental well being.

The battery on the apple watch is pretty exceptional in my experience. Always on screen and still lasts me about 2 days no matter what I do

I think this is an interesting experiment. However, I don’t buy the premise of an “audio-first” future. Hearing and speaking are great, but so ads seeing and touching things. I believe in a future that is multi-sensoric. Sure, smartphones will most probably be replaced by other visual devices, maybe googles, but as a species we will continue to augment all of our senses with devices.

This is one of those concepts that sounds extreme, but does make you consider your own current defaults and norms.

I've noticed I'm wasting a lot more time checking my phone during the pandemic (trivial things, and, shock horror... even too much HN at times).

Anything with a "feed" can definitely be addictive. It's too easy for me to browse my RSS feeds, HN, and podcast feeds on my phone. And I'm doing it a lot.

Not sure I could go quite to the extreme of Watch-only but it has made me consider whether I could make more use of my Apple Watch instead of my phone to reduce distractions.

I followed the link from the article to the Mudita phone kickstarter[1] and am surprised at how unbelievably big that simple phone is. Greater than 14mm thick.

Contrast this with my favorite phone, the MOTO FONE[2] from 2006 which also had an e-ink display and had dimensions of 47 x 114 x 9.1 mm.

This has been true of many of the "modern dumb phones" - dimensions, particularly thickness, have been surprisingly large.

EDIT: On the other hand, the "Light Phone" linked from the article has dimensions of 95.85 x 55.85 x 8.75mm which is, at least, not silly ...

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mudita/mudita-pure-your...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Fone

There’s simple and free way to experiment with the author’s idea without buying and configuring a watch. Delete all social media from your phone. Delete all bookmarks and hide web browsers in sub folders. Turn off majority of notifications, or don’t show preview. Only interact with your phone via audio. Then you can decide if the audio only paradigm could work for you. At the very least, it will help you be more intentional about your internet use.

Good suggestions. I’ve had email notifications turned off (both work and personal) for a few months now, and that’s made a positive difference.

In fact I’ve been aggressively turning of most notifications across the board.

iOS’ new(ish) “deliver silently” option is helpful here.

Is there a non-wristband "mount" for an Apple Watch ?

Which is to say, if I wanted to carry an apple watch in my pocket, and didn't want the sort of lame, and unifinished, aesthetic of bare/empty band connectors ... is there some pendant or medallion or ... something ... that you can attach the watch to that isn't a wristband ?

OH, AND ALSO ...

The op speaks of the necessary iphone that he leaves in his drawer, at home, like a router ... now that we have apple silicon, etc., can I run my "iphone" on a mac mini, in an emulator ? I mean, if you were developing apps, etc., for Apple Watches, or doing Q&A, you wouldn't have 50 iphones somewhere, right ? RIGHT ?

Was thinking the same, I'd love to carry my apple watch around like a fancy pocket watch on a chain! Will dig into the emulator though, great idea.

Yes, in general this gizmo is called a "fob", and a search for "Apple Watch fob" will turn up as many as you would like.

Not sure it would even work. The apple watch locks itself when you take it off your wrist

My first thought was it's a bit ironic this was a medium post (especially one with obnoxious visuals as someone else pointed out). Why not post an audio file?

And while we're at it write an app to hear the sound of the claps

And also a great web-based player for both desktop and mac for easy sharing and consumption

When everybody started to have mobile phones around me, I shelled out for a PDA (remember those?) instead and wanted to wait for those headsets to actually not need any phone anymore. I hoped the advent of the smartwatch would get us there, but alas. I have a smartphone now, because what else can you do, but I can't wait for the time that I can just voicedail or at least have my watch be the personal computing device. Carrying around a watch is so much beter than carrying around a phone, but Google makes me carry both! Plus headset/in ears!

This wasn't mentioned in the article, but the newer cellular variants of the watch allow you to place and receive calls even without your phone nearby. You can also stream music, stream podcasts, etc. without the phone nearby, listening with a bluetooth headset. I suspect certain android ones do as well, though I don't know which ones.

I like the idea of only carrying around a watch + headset. I'm actually thinking of doing this next month.

Without phone nearby or without phone?

You still need an iphone to set it up / configure some things and update it.

Pity, but expected.

I didn't touch my phone for the whole month of November last year instead using my apple watch. I left it plugged in at home out of sight.

In my country there is no covid so life was practically normal. My office has blanket wifi and I discovered the watch would easily do a day if connected.

The most annoying part was how slowly my airpods connected to the watch when taken out of their case, it made the first 15 seconds or so of incoming phone calls very awkward.

As someone who uses a phone for a tool, I found this article incredibly arrogant. I actually went for the dumbest smartwatch I could get. It doesn't have a speaker or mic, it doesn't have a touch screen (or even colour for that matter), and you can't install apps on it, but it does show the time, date, notifications from my phone, and physical buttons so you don't fat finger and press everything you weren't meaning to touch. It does exactly what I need, lets me see if the call, email, or message my phone received is important at just a quick glance.

My phone I use for geo-recording points for ArcGIS, reading server status and data in realtime, testing network connections, thermal camera, and more. Not everyone lives in the land of sitting in an office all day and going to meetings, some people physically work for a living.

Good for the person in the article loving their tech, but it's not the future for everyone.

Instead of going watch-only, I went tablet-only for a while. That also discouraged doomscrolling as you’d have to dig the tablet from a bag instead of just grabbing a phone from a pocket.

Sadly most tablets are not waterproof, and are quite awkward as cameras. Otherwise I’d probably still go without a phone (I have zero need for telephone calls or SMS)

Watches are waterproof, but the camera is a bit of an issue when you're outdoors. Having an apple watch with a camera would make you feel like James Bond.

I think the original samsung watch had a camera. A little pointless. The apple watch has a remote control for your phone camera which makes more sense

Does anyone understand why Apple Watch only works with some mobile networks? I have an LTE version, but it’s not “supported” by any networks in my country. I’ve owned it for many years and it’s not really useful unless in proximity of the phone. I’d love to be without phone and perform simple productivity tasks, “queries”, etc.

E-sim instead of physical sim I would presume?

Yeah. I don’t think there’s a physical sim option?

Nope, e-sim only and only with select providers

I don’t think it’s the only reason but the Watch doesn’t have a SIM slot. It requires you use Apple’s “eSIM” standard and a lot of networks haven’t adopted it.

Your carrier needs support for eSIM, which may be the holdup.

It has to be more than that because Google Fi doesn’t seem to support them.

Google Fi doesn't seem to support any kind of watches or tablets like other carriers do, they probably don't have the billing infrastructure to support it (why that is, considering it's Google, I don't know).

I’m not sure it’s so straightforward. There are networks that support eSIM for other devices. Maybe this is an Apple partnership issue, rather than a technology one?

As others have pointed out, it’s probably the carrier that does not support the right kind of E-Sim.

But furthermore, an Apple Watch with cellular bought in the US, cannot use cellular data in e.g. the EU. Not sure why, but it must be localized on a software/hardware (?) level. At least that’s what the Apple genius told me on my last visit to the states..

The LTE bands are different.

> I have an LTE version

LTE is not one thing. It's a bunch of different radio frequency bands that are selectively used by different networks in different countries.

Because of that, cross-network phone interoperability is a consumer nightmare of technical minutia. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands

When will we get a watch that can be fully de-coupled from your phone? I’d love to make that trade right now.

There would need to be an incredible breakthrough in battery technology. Cellular radios just take up too much power for it to be a reasonable experience right now, unless you want to change watches mid-day.

There's no breakthrough necessary. The batteries are already good enough to manage standby with an occasional call, which meets the _phone_ needs of most users. The Apple Watch today is at least as good as a phone today as the iPhone was a decade ago. I can't even imagine the complexities of carrier/Apple politics to know what the real reasons are for why Apple hasn't allowed the watch to be standalone, but they aren't technical.

Which Apple Watch are you using? Because I can't make it a full day cellular only. It will die. I've tried. I have the series 6 with latest WatchOS.

SE. How long is a day for you and what are you doing on it? Mine lasts at least 8 hours with light use (mostly standby with an hour of music but no streaming) before I decide to charge it around 50%, which is about what I'd expect of my phone 5 years ago.

Are you using cellular exclusively during those 8 hours? "Apple Watch Series 6 (GPS + Cellular) usage includes a total of 4 hours of LTE connection" according to Apple. (https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/).

My LTE only usage includes about 30 minutes of streaming and the rest just glancing. I can't get through a day like this.

I think this will be the next big gadget. It makes no sense that I need an iphone to couple with the watch if a PC/Mac could do the same. It's just apple trying to sell more iphones.

Also, audio-first apps for watches will be huge, and already a great niche to experiment with (although ability to code apps is still limited)

I'm excited about a audio first future I even bought a expensive watch. I found out we are far off on two fronts.

First privacy, I don't want my audio going to any server unless its used in a Google search. This is about on device ml. Also this requires internet access just to use voice commands, which is silly.

Another issue is all the health apps logging my bodys stats. Again if this was in device it would be okay.

Their was also a ux issue using the device is very slow with all the http , you have to speak, probably repeat because it missed something then wait until it repeats you intent. This is a very long process just to check something simple that would take a few seconds in a phone.

Also you look stupid repeating outloud the same thing in public to your watch.

The battery life is way too low as well

My 2 cents.

Good article about the transition from devices to services. In the near future, we'll engage the services and the devices will be invisible. It's a matter of time to diminish the tech (beige PC → phone → watch → headphones → ?) and solve the UI problems.

Great way to put it, basically preparing for the neuralink now.

Does anyone know if AirPods work with the Apple Watch without an iPhone? As in, if I leave my phone at home, will I be able to stream music and calls from my watch to my AirPods while I go for a run? Or does it have to route through the phone?

I think this works as it was showcased in an ad iirc. At least for the cellular watch.

If you have the cellular version, yes. However, I have found that the handoff from WiFi to Cellular is terrible. It takes a few minutes for the watch to realize it's not going to reconnect to WiFi soon, and in the meantime you're just sort of left waiting for when it decides to switch over to cellular.

This is especially annoying if you're listening to streaming radio (like NPR) and going for a walk. It will just drop. This has been the case since the very first version of the cellular watch, I suspect as a battery-saving feature.

The only way to really get around this is to force cellular mode before you leave. This is what I do, and it's embarrassingly un-Apple in experience:

(1) Put my iPhone in Airplane mode. I think I could accomplish the same thing just turning off BT, but I want to be really sure the phone and watch are cut off from each other.

(2) Turn WiFi off on my Apple Watch. Wait a few minutes(!) before I go for a walk -- make coffee, leash up my dog, etc

(3) Walk outside, and issue my Siri command to trigger music/radio

This usually works fine. But its annoying. If you're not especially dedicated to going phone-free (it drains the battery quickly) I really wouldn't bother.

> If you have the cellular version, yes

No, you can use AirPods on a non-cellular watch just fine, it has bluetooth. Cellular only affects your ability to stream content (eg. Music or podcasts), but you are also able to download/cache those while on WiFi on the non-cellular watch.

The OP's definition of "work" went beyond whether the AirPods connected directly to the Apple Watch:

>As in, if I leave my phone at home, will I be able to stream music and calls from my watch to my AirPods while I go for a run?

For my response, I assumed two things:

(1)"Streaming music" meant listening to music that is not stored on the device.

(2) "Calls from my watch to AirPods" meant that during a run, OP was not in constant range of a remembered, open WiFi network.

I don't have cellular enabled currently on my watch but I remember it connecting to cellular very quickly.

Depends on what you mean by "stream". The non-cellular apple watch can play offline content over bluetooth without a phone (I do this every single day). Only the cellular version can stream online content without a phone or wifi nearby.

Yes, you can connect your Airpods and then listen to Podcasts /music/audiobooks that you downloaded in advance, even if you don't have the cellular version. Takes a bit of preparation but it's awesome for runs, gym, etc.

Yes, not only AirPods but any Bluetooth headphones work. This is exactly what I do: sync my favorite running playlists to my Wifi-only (cellular not available in my country) watch, leave my iPhone home, and go running. No issues at all, works great.

> The future will be audio-first. Fully disagree. Would the author also have made the claim back in 2006 when Twitter was founded, that the future of the internet are short texts with a 140 character limit?

> Fully disagree. Would the author also have made the claim back in 2006 when Twitter was founded, that the future of the internet are short texts with a 140 character limit?

...he posted in 172 characters.

In 2006 predicting that the future of the internet wasn’t going to be in longform text would’ve been pretty bold and pretty prescient.

Look at what’s happened to longer text content since then. The concept of “long reads” is all but dead now. Been replaced by short snarky comments, tweet threads, videos, and social feeds.

Or if you simply must think in terms of replacement, it's been replaced by Clubhouse, the new hotness. Which is, in fact, audio only.

To me, this indicates that accretion, not replacement, is the better model. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks for all the feedback!

As Paul Graham said, "Live in the future and build what's missing!" - Going Apple watch-only might allow us to find a ton of interesting audio-first ideas like clubhouse.

taking up visual info is much faster, than audio info. Plus you have control over the flow and much more flexible UX.

going into audio mode is a completely different attention pattern, and definitely not casual.

Certainly true. However, so much of what I view on my phone is just noise. A few phone calls and messages a day would be perfectly suited for audio-only. For the rest, I’d be better off on my laptop.

Definitely agree that there is a time and place for visual content. But phones just feel so 2010s, carrying black square around with you to watch junk content just won't cut it in the new decade.

Laptops are far better for visual since you can focus on longer-form content and are less distracted.

> audio-first future

Is this a dystopian prediction? How can we ensure that the future doesn't turn out to be so bad?

http://archive.is/hyusJ

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