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Comment by ykl | Hacker News Reader

I unapologetically love this thing. It's of course very silly, and I'm sure commenters here are going to talk about all the ways that it isn't practical or that it's a niche idea, but I love whimsical silly niche hardware ideas that make it into actual hardware. I love that they put in all of the effort to figure out a mechanical linkage between the clickwheel and the digital crown!

I don't think all hardware needs to be take-over-the-world hundred-million-unit ideas; I think sometimes it's fine for hardware to be whimsical niche things like this Apple Watch case or Andrew McCalip's doomscroller doo-dad [1]!

[1] https://doomscroller.xyz

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Funnily enough the inspiration may have come from Apple themselves, before the Watch was announced they covertly tested it in cases made to resemble an iPod knock-off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmgFk5hT6d8

Adds a layer of authenticity and nostalgia to the product

> It's of course very silly, and I'm sure commenters here are going to talk about all the ways that it isn't practical or that it's a niche idea, but I love whimsical silly niche hardware ideas that make it into actual hardware

It's crazy how I miss my 2nd gen iPod Nano, even though I wouldn't really have any use for it today. It was really a stupendously satisfying specialised device whose use is completely obviated today by general purpose smartphones.

But then again I wear watches...

I don't think this is silly in the slightest. There are lots of folks like me who deliberately want to break our phone addictions, which is why things like www.thelightphone.com exist.

My problem with the Light Phone (owner of version II) is that it's too limited. I don't want to be distracted by notifications or social media or doom scrolling on the browser, but I do need things that are essentially task-oriented tools: Uber/Lyft, Weather apps, Maps, Authenticator Code apps (and, now, using my phone as a passkey), etc.

I'm not an iOS user, but this makes be almost wish I were, because it's exactly what I'd want. It's too small to make me want to scroll YouTube randomly, but has all the tools that I don't want to forego. I think this is a fantastic product if it works as advertised.

They recently announced a v3 of the light phone that might actually be useful - I also have a light phone II sitting in a drawer somewhere.

It ditches e-ink in favor of an OLED + matte glass that looks amazing. Having 60hz refresh rate means we can get nice responsive apps while keeping the minimalist UI. Hopefully they will make it easier to develop and run custom apps on this one.

> but I do need things that are essentially task-oriented tools: Uber/Lyft, Weather apps, Maps, Authenticator Code apps

> because it's exactly what I'd want.

I’m not sure it is.

Most of the things you list aren’t that functional on Watch, in my experience. It’s ok-ish to pull up on Watch after you’ve set it up on your phone, but without a phone, Watch is much more limited, IME.

You can definitely use Watch for a number of things without an iPhone — Weather is one you list that is mostly functional, Timer, and Calculator.

But beyond these basic by-design limited functionality apps, Watch doesn’t do a great job as the main driver of most apps — just more as a companion to the iPhone apps.

But that is a function of apple doing their best to make the watch an extension of the phone rather than its own device.

There is nothing inherent in the hardware limiting you from doing these things, but my understanding is that Apple makes it hard to do.

For better or worse, that is the inherent assumption - that a smartwatch is a companion device to a smartphone. The idea of ditching the phone entirely is, arguably, an unintended consequence of releasing smartwatch variants with built-in LTE connectivity. Giving the app developers the benefit of doubt, it's understandable they don't want to make a standalone app for a fraction off the smartwatch models, where they can do with one simpler extension app for all smartwatches.

Yes, the watch GUI for apps is pretty limited. If you are okay using Siri you’ll find a lot of functionality is actually available.

Great point, and when AI integration makes Siri useful, this might be a game changer for watches.

I’ve seen that a lot of Siri features defer from Watch to the iPhone. Even things like changing the lights.

>Most of the things you list aren’t that functional on Watch, in my experience. It’s ok-ish to pull up on Watch after you’ve set it up on your phone, but without a phone, Watch is much more limited

It's okay to not pretend that Apple trademarked the word "watch".

Calling it "Watch" looks/sounds incredibly awkward.

I've had the issue in the past where Apple's auto-correction would capitalize "Watch" every time I typed it.

It doesn't seem to do it on my iPhone now unless it's directly preceded by "Apple." But I wonder if they're hitting that because I notice a lot of different people are capitalizing the word.

>It’s ok-ish to pull up on Watch after you’ve set it up on your phone, but without a phone, Watch is much more limited, IME.

Don't you normally still have a phone nearby and synced to the watch? I don't think I know anyone that uses a smart watch in lieu of a phone, just as an accessory that keeps them from having to pull out their phone.

This entire point of this product is to use the apple watch inside this case instead of a phone. If you're using this product, no, you won't have a phone nearby and synced to it.

But you can already do this with a smart watch without this case, right?

There are other options in the Android space. Very very few, sadly, but they exist: check out the Qin phones like the F21 Pro: it's Android on a 2007's Nokia form factor!

I feel like once you set third-party apps like Uber, bike rental or banking apps as requirements, the only possible solution is sadly a mostly standard cut-down Android phone. The third parties won't support any bespoke OS, so you're stuck with iOS or Android, and moreover they won't support exotic configurations like a tiny display.

Thankfully on Android it's easy enough to remove/disable any distractions, and there are phones like the ones from Unihertz that are just different enough to be worth trying.

I've long wanted a lanyard for my watch. Maybe they can add an eyelet (loop?) to the bottom of these cases.

So we are going full cycle? Pocket watches?

> pocket watches

Which, when you think of it, (smart or dumb) mobile phones kind of have been for a while already for people that don't wear (smart or dumb) watches.

Tangentially I sort of lament the progressive disappearance of wall and street clocks, presumably caused by the constant availability of time in one's pocket (before that not everyone wore a watch but everyone soon had a mobile phone with time)

I remember from my kid/teenage years that there used to be a lot of clocks in the environment, both analog and digital, both public and private (e.g. digital clock scrolling between ads on a LED billboard over a store). I do also remember you couldn't exactly trust them - often enough, they would be broken, or they would show the wrong time for weeks after switching from/to DST. Analog clocks were the worst, because they rarely had a second hand, so you couldn't easily tell if they're working at all.

Pish posh! How dare you even insuate it.

Meanwhile, I am tired of my internal drives running out of space, and I don't trust the cloud. Flash drives and external drives are too expensive. I have a totally original idea of removable media that is inexpensive, flat for easy travel, uses magnetic high capacity storage, and even had a writable surface to remember what's on it with a simple marker! Brilliant, I know. And I have big plans to use BOTH sides for even more storage, as well as a special notch to distinguish when the contents are read only.

>I unapologetically love this thing.

I'm not really into the apple ecosystem, but I kinda like this as well. Smart watches don't really appeal to me, but something like this does.

I think I love this too! An interesting concept for enhancing the functionality and aesthetic of the Apple Watch

It's art!

Ah, that'll be why it's so (too) expensive

The offline storage is a nice touch

> it's of course very silly

Beg to differ -- this is quite valuable as a new kind of paging device that you want to keep around instead of your higher end iPhone's battery constantly draining, and more importantly, for people who'd like to keep radiation at a distance.

(Yeah, no, I'm not saying you should keep away from radiation, just that some people do prefer to and it's therefore a market segment.)

Doesn’t the watch also emit radiation?

Yes, but this way of ensconcing it reduces the radiation exposure since the device now likely won't be kept constantly in contact with the body.

You don't plan to carry this in a pocket?

I think their point is pocket as opposed to against wrist the whole time.

Or hanging around your neck with a lanyard.

Isn't the biggest danger to your reproductive organs anyway? That would make the pocket the worst location.

You would certainly notice if your genitals were absorbing enough energy via RF emissions to pose any kind of hazard. You would probably notice long before that threshold.

That makes no sense. Phones and watches mostly use 4g and wifi band signals which both go through thin plastic shells and indeed your entire body without interference.

Distance decreases the intensity of exposure. I'm not trying to achieve complete avoidance, just a decrease of risk.

To those who down-voted (actually or even as a psychological reaction) my original comment: consider for a moment that while this might be a fringe opinion, it is not without some evidence.

https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/01/health-risks-of-cell-ph...

If you think rats getting cancer from radiation is not relevant evidence, that's your personal opinion, not the most scientifically validated hypothesis.

From the linked NIH page about the study (via the Wayback Machine):

> “The exposures used in the studies cannot be compared directly to the exposure that humans experience when using a cell phone,” said John Bucher, Ph.D., NTP senior scientist. “In our studies, rats and mice received radio frequency radiation across their whole bodies. By contrast, people are mostly exposed in specific local tissues close to where they hold the phone. In addition, the exposure levels and durations in our studies were greater than what people experience.”

'Beware the man of one study.'

Sure, but is causing a little damage to a tiny part of the body acceptable? Exposure levels and durations -- common sense would suggest those are going up with people using more devices for more time every day.

I was not inclined to believe this whole radiation business for such reasons too -- "it's one study", "if it were so bad this would make front-page of the NYT", "entire labs of scientists and governments cannot be lying about this", "it's non-ionizing radiation, that's why it's safe you idiot!" etc.

What made me look a little deeper was Huberman's AMA on EMF. It's become fashionable to dunk on him now but it gave me a pause in that I began to wonder if there might be some merit to this after all.

Ultimately, this is like assessing the evidence for any other controversial topic -- unless you're working in R&D on radiation yourself, individual retail consumers of research like us can rely on the published evidence only to a certain extent. Beyond that, it's your priors, risk thresholds and heuristics for who to trust that will determine what you believe.

Would that be Andrew Huberman? The podcaster and self-promoter whose former research specialism has nothing remotely to do with RF, or indeed radiation of any variety? You should consider the possibility it has become fashionable to dunk on him because he deserves to be dunked on.

> Sure, but is causing a little damage to a tiny part of the body acceptable?

I'll answer that question once you've shown credibly that it is meaningful in this context.

Huberman is not citing any evidence or meaningful research in his conclusions. He’s fear mongering over a fringe concern without merit. He’s dunked on because he leans on bunk science

Does it at least do anything well? An iPod replacement would be fun, but the best thing about an iPod was the wired headphones.

This would only work with my AirPods, which almost never work without fiddling with something either in the UI or by taking them in and out of their case.

The best thing about an iPod was most certainly not the wired headphones, it was how much music you could store compared to most preceding devices.

The second best thing was the scroll wheel. Interfaces for music devices before it were so janky. I loved my iPod.

Beyond storage some of the other "best things" were the easy to navigate UI with the click wheel, instead of the finicky buttons or multiple repeated swipes that other devices required. Also the iTunes integration. Having a solid music app on the desktop, that made it easy to create playlists, which could that automatically sync with the iPod so everything was there without a bunch of work, was a game changer when it launched. I bought my first Mac to get iTunes, because the software on Windows at the time sucked so bad.

I got my first MP3 player in 1999 or the early 00s. The SAN disk card had 16MB and I had to cut a song in half so I could fit 3/4 songs.

They could theoretically add a headphone port to this and a bluetooth to headphone adapter. I don't think the chips for that take up much space at all.

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