Apple Watch or Don't Bother

The article complains about Garmins closed ecosystem, totally ignoring the fact that developers cannot create watch faces for Apple Watch, but have free reign on Garmin devices.

Does Garmin charge $100 per year to developers?

Many legitimate grievances are described here, but I also have trouble understanding what triggered this post today. I'm loving the Pixel Watch 4. Maybe I am biased because I'm also on Google Fi and have a Pixel phone. Battery life has been great compared to the Pixel Watch 2. Using Google Maps and WhatsApp from the watch is quite convenient. The only pain points have been swapping Gemini for Google Assistant and the fact that Signal does not support WearOS.

I can't argue with someone having a frank blog on their opinion.

However you can't say on the one hand Garmin's a closed ecosystem as a bad thing, then say that its a good thing with Apple, saying Apple developed the "end to end" communication.

Yes I have an iPhone and Airpods and they work incredibly well together, better than anything else I've owned and that is partly due to the closed ecosystem and the control they have. But don't say a product isn't as good because its closed, then speak the merits of the same thing on another brand.

The only competition Apple has IMO is Garmin, not Google, not anything else. I had an Apple watch and it just felt like an extension of my phone, whereas I want my Garmin for fitness metrics and general body fitness/health and it excels in that market better than Apple. Those aspects are important and shouldn't mean that you pidgeon hole that product into a separate category that takes it out of contention.

If you're an athlete doing athletic things, get a Garmin. Apple with all of it's nearly unlimited budget cannot do what Connect does.

If you want an iPhone on your wrist get an iWatch. Garmin trades superfluous animations, apps, high frame rates, UI, and probably most promintantly: fashion... for utility.

but also... having a flashlight and compass on your wrist at all times and a 8 day battery life is also a great reason to have a Garmin.

Where does Pebble fit into all of this? I'm eyeing the Pebble 2 Round myself.

This rant has nothing of value in it. Don't waste your time reading it. It tries to claim the only smartwatch that's any good is the Apple Watch. When the author tries to address the obvious counter of Garmin's smart watch products the only product discussed is a strawman version of the large and expensive Fenix 8, which leads me to believe they are ignorant of the broad smart watch lineup which includes things like the Vivoactive and Venu, which are absolutely smart watches first and fitness devices second (so is the Fenix 8, in reality).

And of course the Apple watch only syncs with Apple devices. So also implied is iPhone or don't bother.

Don't bother with this blog post.

> Until someone builds a platform as cohesive as WatchOS

For me across health and fitness Garmin has the better ecosystem. I have my watch that tracks my fitness metrics and health, I also have my Garmin bike computer which links to my power meter and HR monitor. Both of those devices communicate under the one ecosystem, speak the same language and have been tracking my activity long before Apple watch existed. I can buy an iPhone or a Samsung, Google device and have the same experience. Heck I can even view all of the stats under the one dashboard through a web browser.

Health and fitness wise Garmin has a much better ecosystem, Apple certainly has the Health app but its really not used much in reality outside of a repository.

In the day of so much AI content, that straight-up-rant felt oddly... human.

It felt like sitting on the old college dorm a lifetime ago unwinding at the end of the day over a beer; and listening to the rant of a batchmate who has obsessed over every single alternative available for their specific use-case and not found one that even comes close.

When I gave up on (Apple) smartwatches after ten years and switched to a fancy non-smartwatch, my explanation why paralleled this article’s complaints in most regards. I needed to know what time it was and I wanted health integration, but I never used notifications mirroring and hated that my device had a screen at all. After evaluating how much I cared about the non-clock features versus how thick smartwatches are and that they require charging approximately daily to bi-weekly, I ended up switching to a classic watch instead. The design of it is so Apple-like that when I visited the UFO in Cupertino to pick up a tablet, the worker looked at my watch and then asked me if I’d retired from Apple. The watch hands are nearly invisible unless I’m looking at them. It’s everything I want from a wrist clock and nothing more.

In an ideal world, the smartwatch I want is thin. Thick watches will get smashed into door frames and walls and tables by my clumsy body, and I tire of it so greatly that I gave up on it. I evaluated fitness watches but I don’t rigorously exercise outdoors in the appropriate patterns, so they’re generally a waste of my money and effort to keep charged. I am truly sad that Fitbit got destroyed because their form factor was very appealing. I think this is the one thing that the post doesn’t address: smartwatches don’t have to be chonky. And yet. Sigh.

I do extremely miss how natural it felt having Apple Pay on my wrist, but my phone is not less usable in any meaningful way for that task.

So, yes, this article resonates. I would never voluntarily have a Samsung account for any reason, and I’ve known for decades that Google is fool’s gold — hi from ETcon ‘03, years after they hoovered up and then substiturd for Usenet and Webrings. Pebble is thick. Garmin is inapplicable. Fitbit was a viable option for health-primary, clock-secondary, no-gps no-wifi no-cell no-notifications optimal use case — but they were hoovered by Google for being a reasonable competitor to providing Google marketable data.

Every single day I wore an Apple Watch I resented not being able to design my own watch faces. Everyone who knew me IRL knew how I felt about that. If I could have avoided it I would have not had a watch at all, but at the time I needed certain health features — ones that could have been satisfied without a screen at all! And over the ten years I wore that, no viable competitors emerged in my health-primary, not-exercise space at all.

I empathize with the article’s author. It’s been ten years of disaster watching Google kneecap competitors with the perennial Lucy’s Football (or Vader’s Deal, if you prefer) of Android smartwatch integration. At the end of my decade of Apple Watch, nothing was left as a viable alternative. And that’s how I gave up on smartwatches altogether. My Mac’s $HOME has artifacts left behind by OS X from installing it on day one when it was first released, but at the end of the day, the features just aren’t worth the form factor, the battery life, and the non-Apple ecosystems.

Happily, it turns out I value thinness in my watch much more than I value capabilities, and that’s a need that the non-smart watch is able to satisfy. It tells the time and that’s all. It doesn’t light up, thank god. It doesn’t have a speaker. It doesn’t need an eSIM. It doesn’t have to be taken off for exams. It only has to be charged every two years. It’s cool. One time an Apple employee at the UFO in Cupertino looked at my non-smart watch, paused, and then asked if I’d retired from Apple. My non-smart watch looked to them like an award given for decades of service by a company who’s design principles I adore. But even Apple let me down, with their insistence on touchscreens and ugly shiny black rectangles, next to which my watch looks like an impossible prototype slash status symbol to Apple people.

So, yeah, I agree with the rage underpinning this post: Apple Watch or don’t bother unless you shop at REI more than once a year in which case Garmin. (Too bad about Fitbit!) I respect what the Pebble folks are doing and I religiously study their posts every time they cross my desk, hoping that they’ve decided to differentiate themselves in physical form factor and battery life. My heart broke when I saw the same thick obloid in their first product images. Maybe someday someone will compete in this space, but I already wore the best thick obloid for ten years. I still wish them well, and perhaps someday they’ll be a viable option I can recommend to non-tech people who want a thickscreen charge-often smartwatch! One can dream.

ps. My ideal watch face has one hand that circles once per day. No digits, no inset dials, no “well surely you need to know the exact time” bullshit. There’s more about face design, but as best as I can determine, no one else wants this at all. Fine. I’m sure it’s possible to code an app for competitors to watchOS. I’m also reasonably sure I haven’t run my watch into something in months, and I don’t miss charging it at all. Turns out even I am willing to compromise on design ideals for a watch that doesn’t make me regret owning it, at least so long as I’m not wealthy enough to commission a custom watch.