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Comment by nickbauman | Hacker News Reader

Agree on all counts. It's very hard to put time horizons on anything. But I started wearing a Series 3 watch (3 generations old now) when I started a project my client in 2019 insisted I wear it as I was writing code that utilized HealthKit data from the Apple Watch. Check my past posts I'm NOT an Apple fan boi at all. But compared to the competition, there's nothing coming close to the integration and the UX out there. My partner has a Rage 4 and it's just garbage in comparison. It misses and drops, the display is like from the dollar store. HealthKit is absolutely bulletproof. Every single decision in that API is gold. Every time I think something might be poorly done it's my misunderstanding or they made the best choice you can make. Deep respect.

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Apple Watch might be the best smartwatches but for me the concept or smartwatch is still novel and I'm not sure if I want to switch. I wear ordinary watches and they're good enough for me. The only killer feature that I need is waking me up in a smart way (monitoring sleep phases and boozing on my hand between 08:00 - 09:00, for example) but Apple Watch does not have that feature. Other features are just not interesting for me. And, honestly, for most other people around me. May be I'm in a bubble, but so far I saw Apple Watch only once in my life.

While I agree that the wake-up feature you described is not available from Apple directly, I bet there's a 3rd party app out there that does what you're asking.

I use the Apple alarm now and when if I go to sleep with my watch on, it will gently buzz on my wrist and get more forceful until I turn it off. The sensors to track sleep are all on the device, but Apple doesn't seem to have any interest in building a "sleep cycle" tracker at this time for whatever reason.

A cursory search turns up the "Sleep Cycle" app[0] with a ton of reviews and even an "Editors Choice" award. Maybe Apple is holding their horses until they 100% nail the implementation, but if you can live with 90% in the meantime, it would probably be worth it to you if this is a thing you're really wanting in your morning routine.

[0] - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-sleep-tracker/id32...

The reasons for a cellular Apple Watch.

For myself:

- Running without my phone. I can still track my speed, make phone calls and listen to streaming music and podcasts. I can even leave my wallet at home and stop by a convenience store that accepts Apple Pay.

- During the Before Times when I went to the gym (I have a home gym now), I hated carrying my phone around. With my watch, I didn’t have too.

- Even now when I am working out at home, I keep my phone in another room and just have my watch on to measure my heart rate while I’m working out and even control my AppleTV. If I do get a call, I can answer it.

- I was horrible controlling my “screen time” and would pull my phone out when I was with other people. Now, anytime I am suppose to be socializing, I leave my phone in the car. I can still be contacted. I ignore all phone calls though except from my wife, kids, or parents.

My wife:

- women often wear clothes without pockets or shallow pockets. She will often leave her phone in the car and just walk around with her watch and her AirPods on a key chain.

- she has a working hobby as a fitness instructor. It’s online and outside these days. She has her iPhone connected to her sound system and uses her watch to control the music.

The only real complaint I have is 8GB is not enough storage to update watch os. But there is praise in the complaint: you can update it at all.

On that note, it feels so un-apple like that their official way of resolving the storage issue with updates is to unpair the watch and pair it again.

They have had instances like that with iPhone where the upgrade to iOS was a backup and restore cycle. It’s a long time ago though.

That is horrible. I am glad I bought the 16GB cellular version. I would have bought it just for the extra storage even without cellular.

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