Analysis of Apple Watch running data

I saw the original video the user that reported it created. That guy was a deceptive idiot. It was obvious that he used trial and error to find a strange, finger-spread death grip that duplicated the issue in the most severe way. What is bazaar is someone that was obsessive enough to develop a grip that produced the issue with the most effect, and used it for personal benefit to gain notoriety.

Not being an antenna engineer, I had also noticed the exact same issue on my Motorola v551 years before, but not that it had anything to do with the grip, merely touching the device anywhere on it caused signal degradation. Apparently, this was a known issue that existed for decades, long before cell phones became ordinary, and the issue can be reproduced on every cell phone from every manufacturer, as well as ordinary radios, and anything that uses an antenna. But I didn't remotely think to try to attack Motorola for personal benefit. I just set the phone down when signal was weak and used bluetooth for data or calls, eliminating the issue, which wasn't Apple's fault and is apparently due to the limitations of antennas.

Singling out Apple was ignorant and deceptive, and fundamentally, Steve Jobs was correct about what that guy was doing, intentionally holding it in an unnatural way in order to produce the effect. That entire affair was nothing but a hatchet job that had nothing to do with user satisfaction and everything to do with negative and toxic personalities that irrationally believe they can gain personal satisfaction by causing misery. The most insidious types of mental illness are those where the mentally ill individual themselves do not suffer, instead they are compelled to make others suffer, which is how narcissism is generationally sustained.

So, you admin Apple isn’t the only one. I think you can find examples from any company, especially the publicly traded ones.

Similarly, you’ll never hear a CEO say their new product is decent while the previous one was so-so. The new one always is better, and the old one doesn’t get mentioned, but is implied to be good.

> this is the sort of behavior that will be heavily scrutinized during antitrust hearings.

I doubt it. Even if Apple were exceptional in making this kind of statements, what’s anti-competitive in making them, or in making bad products?

This is widely believed but scientifically unproven. The understanding of the significance of awareness of heart rate to workout performance is ongoing. Basically, tracking heart rate shows what is already known, that improving cardiac performance will improve resting heart rate. The stated purpose of doing so is to increase self-esteem. For the same reasons there are large mirrors installed at most gyms.

> Also, accurately measuring your times, and seeing even few seconds improvement since the last week's training helps keep you motivated.

A $5 stopwatch is accurate to hundredths of seconds.

> There are many reasons to use such accessories, other than "stroking vanity".

This is an appeal to common sense, aka the fallacy of axiomatic thinking, or unsupported assertion. Claims which can be asserted without evidence may also be dismissed without evidence.

I was unfamiliar with the term and incorrectly assumed it was a common type of mechanical stopwatch rather than a ridiculously expensive brand of stopwatch. The fallacy is straw man, because my argument stated mechanical stopwatch implicitly as an inexpensive alternative to an Apple or Garmin watch. You effectively laid a trap for me and I walked right into it. Well done. But whatever your point may be, it is beyond the argument that I have made. I have no idea what the difference is between two expensive products.

> Sure, I can pick up the awesome Casio F-91W today for £10 and it would do much the same job. But for the modern day money equivalent of that gorgeous Omega piece I'm going to be able to afford a high-end GPS watch. There's nothing comparatively exponential about it.

Again, this is a straw man argument you have constructed in order to attack it. Regardless, it is not my argument.

> Accuracy requirements will depend on training context - if you're running 60 second laps on a track and trying to shave 1 second of your mile PR like Bannister was, then you'll be wanting a certified track and decisecond accurate clock. If you're training for the marathon and running 5K repeats on the road, a few 10s of meters or seconds here or there doesn't really matter.

The only running I am aware of that requires accuracy to the hundredths of seconds available on $5 digital stopwatches is sprinting races. Sprinting is not a cardiovascular workout but instead an anaerobic exercise. Regardless, the $5 stopwatch will suffice in tracking either cardiovascular or anaerobic exercise.

> I can understand why some people don't want to run with a smartwatch, measure themselves, broadcast their progress to all on social media, judge themselves against others, and so on. (I also don't generally judge those who do, unless they're truly awful!) I can also understand why some people would rather not run with any measure of time or distance at all. They feel it gets in the way, they'd rather just run free, they'd rather just run for fun, or they'd rather just race others for places in the spirit of pure competition. I just can't get my head around the concept (and this isn't the first time I've heard it), that somehow old-school watches are acceptable but modern watches are bad. It smacks of neo-luddism (or sometimes hipsterism).

Again, this is a straw man, a rephrasing of my argument such that it is no longer recognizable as my argument. My argument was that these extremely complex and expensive accessories become the ends themselves, they distract from the original intent of improving fitness, trading the natural incentives for fitness with the incentive of being entertained by a gizmo, which fundamentally is vanity. Beyond that, I speculate that it is merely the difference that money can make, and in this particular case, the difference is negligible and entirely arbitrary.

Simply be aware that unnecessary reliance on affectations will synthetically make it more difficult to do the same activity if the affectations are removed, for whatever the reason they happen to not be available. Exercise is its own reward, and there is little reason to replace that incentive with the need to be entertained by detailed metrics of past events.

But that said, for the love of serenity, please do whatever makes you happy.