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Comment by wrycoder | Hacker News Reader

I didn’t want to get too extreme LOL, like sawing and splitting wood by hand.

There was a restaurant in Boston, Jake Wirth’s, that dated from 1868. Sawdust on the floor. Old waiters with black suits and white aprons.

They served a lunch consisting of a big slab of boiled bacon and some boiled potatoes, along with a mug of beer or two.

Who eats like that, these days?

Well, back in the day you went out after that and dug a half mile of ditch. By hand.

These days, assuming you don’t hire it out like most upscale people, you ride a zero turn lawn mower around for an hour. And then go to the gym for your appointment with your trainer.

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You could have picked better examples. I understood the point nonetheless. GP nitpicked imperfect examples and that's fine. I do want to make the point that hard, manual labour does still exist and by extension yours that apple watches don't consider it is an entirely valid observation. The inferences that can and can't be drawn is the basis for a reasonable discussion but probably more fun with higher bandwidth.

Apple Watch “doesn’t consider it” because nobody who actually does that work would care about or use the feature if it existed. Craftsmen care about craftsmanship not steps or reps or heart rates. They want to track who makes concrete and who makes soup. Who hits the nail every time and who is marking the finish work because they have bad technique.

All that stuff apple say in their ads about health is just garbage? Or nobody who does manual labour cares about their health? Or both?

Not seeing another interpretation here but maybe I'm missing it? It's valid but I'm not going to agree with it at all.

Your response has nothing to do with what I wrote, did you intend to respond to someone else?

I don't think you've considered that someone performing manual labor may wish to measure their heart rate and blood pressure for health reasons while performing said labor - the way the apple adverts claim has health benefits. If you do the thing might become clearer?

Ah, I see the problem, you appear to never have used a smartwatch. Let me explain. It does that all the time regardless of what you’re doing. Activity specific tracking is it keeping track of additional things (precise gps, reps, running cadence, etc) during a tracked activity.

As I said previously, this additional tracking is for training that needs additional sports-specific data. Everyone gets the same always on steps, sit/stand, and heartbeat tracking.

>tracking is for training that needs additional sports-specific data

Because in the view of apple, manual labour doesn't count for anything "specific" even if it is a bigger, longer and more intense workout than something you would likely get at a gym. Which is right back where we started. If the watch can do it all automagically there isn't any need for 'sports specific' tracking, right? Imagine being a furniture removalist and how you can set your watch to get whatever you get from setting it for your gym session?

And yes, you're probably aware and it also kinda beside the point, game-ifying manual labour is a thing many people do but also, seemingly, not using an apple watch to do it.

What specifically do you think this hypothetical furniture removalist would want to know from their watch? I gave several examples of how people use fitness tracking.

There’s a thriving app marketplace, if you’re so convinced that there’s a market for your working man’s tracker, please feel free to go make tons of money.

Oh ok this is no longer productive. "Go take on apple starting with nothing if you think a minority interest is worth even mentioning w.r.t. their policies."

It is exercise to move furniture. It is exercise to go for a run. If there is something worth tracking on the latter its highly likely for there also to be something equivalent for the former. Apple knows its market isn't manual laborers and ignores whatever interest they may have. There's no money in it.

Best of luck to you.

You really can’t admit you’re wrong, can you. Impressive, I guess?

Killer argument. I'm out of sensible replies seeing that having tried to explain as well as I can prior. How can I possibly make a case from evidence in response to that?

This place is supposed to be better but all places like this degrade over time despite @dang's tireless efforts.

Best.

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