Apple Watch Series 12
apple.com
apple.com
It's made even worse by the fact that only the newest watches support this, but their external designs are unchanged from past ones, so there's no way to tell who's always listening to everything (I have an Ultra 2, likely my last one).
Is this something most people want?? At the very least I'd appreciate a notification like the unknown airtag thing to tell me I'm being eavesdropped.
Always listening in that the owner could run an application that could be recording them and you on the other hand has been a possibility since pretty much day one.
It’s also much less effective at recording people speaking for long durations than the audio recording feature that every smartphone for the last 20 years has supported.
"Siri Recap" records throughout the day without the user needing to constantly enable it. It provides AI summaries of the recorded conversations including direct quotes.
"Live Rewind" shows an exact transcript of conversation but only of the 15 seconds immediately before the user activated it.
There is no privacy left. And to be honest, people worshipping their phones all day but complaining about privacy is the biggest WTF I have. This doesn't match.
Also I am a Mathematician and know statistics very well. The person, who is not on Facebook, but on WhatsApp, who works at X and lives in Y - we got you my friend.
You moved away? No problem! Someone photographed you casually, you weren't even the main character, we ignored you, and send it in a group chat you know nothing about. Well, we know all the others and can relate to anyway. And then? Well AI can very well predict you aging - easy. We have you already. Sleep well and dream of being unknown. Because... How do you know what you don't know?
I gave up on privacy because there is none anymore. Selling and publication of your data is a whole different story. And that's what Apple means by circumventing the rest.
Just because your voice was recorded doesn’t necessarily mean it can be played back and/or “stolen”.
Your soul won’t be sucked out through Apple Watches.
If someone is following you around within earshot and fiddling with... a notepad and pencil or a watch or a phone or a tape recorder, then yes, you have reason to be upset. I agree.
The ability of the Apple Watch to do what has always been possible doesn't materially change your privacy. [1]
Fundamentally, this is an accessibility feature, and Apple -- and other vendors -- have already shipped several similar ones. Were you equally upset by those too? AirProds already 'record' all audio around them! They can even be used as listening devices! https://support.apple.com/en-au/102479
This reminds me of parents getting hysterical when someone pulls out a DSLR at a kid's soccer game, while standing next to half a dozen parents who are all taking pictures with the phones and immediately uploading them to Meta.
[1] There are valid arguments to be made that this will be normalised and cloned... badly by Chinese and South Korean vendors without the privacy safeguards, at which point it is "too late" to put the genie back in the bottle.
And I don't think we can compare this to weirdos being able to record other people, this is about when my friends come over and I have to wonder if they think it's normal to have running since "it's technically not recording" or "the summary is anonymized. It's normalizing behavior that's just a little weird, like people who use those ai recorders. I fail to see how that's not a violation of my privacy in some way.
Also you don't need to point out stupid gatchas about airpods, don't be an ass.
I respect that you believe that. I do not. It touches up against my basic relationship to reality and existence. To me, there’s a difference between a person and a machine. And between a meeting-of-the-minds-in-the-moment and an archival record.
To me, even the act of processing me through something-other-than-your-human-mind feels violative—essentializing and reductive. For me it’s wrapped up in ideas about attachment, and illusions of permanence, and attention and presence and the extra ineffable elements of human contact that unfold at levels other than the words and an exchange being about much more than the “information content.”
You don’t have to agree with me, but it’s frustrating for my conversation partner to take what I bring to a conversation while demanding to also take more than I’m willing to offer.
You’re free to allow people to record you, or analyze you, or machine-summarize you, or livestream you for the judgment and entertainment of the internet-dwelling masses, or whatever you’d like.
And I’m free to say: do not record me. Ever. Even on a rolling buffer, even “just for note-taking.” Even if it “only lives” some specific digital place. Unless I specifically say it’s OK, ahead of time; and we agree on how specifically the processed-me-byproduct will be used.
I’m not unreasonable! Sometimes the answer is yes! Is it for accessibility? Of course, go for it! Thank you for asking. Do we want to make a statement for the record? Great! But ask.
Funnily enough the “soul sucked out” trope occurred to me too, but it seems like we take different lessons from it. For me, it cues stories about a bunch of economically powerful people inserting themselves into places and situations where other people lived. Using their new camera technology to exploit those people’s images and likenesses, and justifying it by rolling their eyes together at how superstitious and backward and dumb those people were for not liking it. As if it were impossible for somebody to understand the thing and still not want it used on them.
And thus figuring their superiority gave them permission to “educate” the people whose likenesses they sought to exploit. And if the subjects still didn’t like it, it must be their shortcoming (since all right-thinking people obviously agree about matters of the soul and of cameras).
So it was OK to disregard their subjects’ beliefs, and their subjects’ dignity. The camera-pushers were entitled, by dint of their superior certainty, to treat people like specimens.
I agree there’s a parallel, but I think the people who were in the wrong were the people forcing the cameras on people who didn’t want to be involved.
[ETA, for @cindyllm: Your provocations are sublime, and I'm grateful that you continue to confound those of us who walk with the dead. You keep me off balance like nobody else. Is that your LinkedIn, or would I be spamming a random Canadian person?]
By that I mean that I really do understand your position, but I also deeply understand the flawed logic that created that attitude in you. I can't agree with it, because I see the inconsistency, I recognise the motivation, and I know that it is fundamentally about something else entirely.
The angry soccer mom shouting at the dad with the DSLR camera isn't angry about her kid's picture getting taken.
She's scared of the pedophiles and her children's innocence being violated by forces beyond her control. The big camera is a symbol to fight against, something out-of-place and even vulgar in its nature.
That same person won't even notice the half a dozen phones people pull out to take pictures of her kid at the game. Won't bat an eye. No complaints. That's normal, that's fine, that's just for social media!
This watch thing is just an accessibility feature. That's all it is. Nothing more. Trust me: NOBODY will ever use it to spy on you, or snoop on you, or furtively check past conversations they had with you. Ever. It... just won't happen. That's not a thing, will never be a thing, and is in no shape, way, or form harmful to your organic human conversations, or whatever.
You're upset about something else. I don't know what it is specifically, but if I dare guess, it's something like the Flock cameras. The surveillance state. Meta and Google hoovering up everyone's personal data by the exabyte, and weaponising it against them. Our children's innocence ruined by algorithms tuned to addict them. "Smart" televisions taking screenshots and even sending audio recordings to foreign data centres. Car navigation camera images uploaded for AI training, or who knows what else. On and on, and on!
I get it, I do.
We're losing our privacy. We're increasingly monitored and controlled.
We live in a world that George Orwell could not have imagined in his worst nightmares.
We have files on us so detailed that it would make a KGB spook blush.
Unless you live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, you've already bathed in a sea of cameras and microphones, many of which are always on in some sense or another.
Apple Watch isn't the problem here. It already had a microphone, in every edition, going back to the first one. It could already "surreptitiously" record you!
What Apple's engineers have done is add an accessibility feature for the old and hard of hearing in the most secure and privacy-preserving way imaginable.
You're getting worked up about it to a level that makes no logical sense whatsoever because you're not upset about it, you're not upset about the specifics of its privacy, you're upset about... <waves hands>... everything.
I get it.
What people around me? I exist in my own bubble. It's hip and rebranded selfmaxxing or something these days
Get off my lawn !1
Remember, this is all running via local models on-device.
This is how Siri/openclaw can hear you make plans for lunch, then add it to the calendar before you open your phone.
You'd be shocked what the suite of sensors in the smartphone 99% of the population has in their pocket can do.
This is basically just "always on" recording/transcribing that people have to intentionally remember to turn off, that's a pretty big difference.
A short buffer is common with wake word audio processing.
Regardless, you'll be mortified if you search the app store for software or Amazon for hardware devices that do this! You can still pick up voice recorders at Staples, actually (I was surprised to see they still sell them, and they have weeks of recording time now, along with transcription software).
I’m curious if the lack of speaker identification is a privacy thing, or a technical limitation.
It looks like it uses PCC, so it may run into usage limits
“Siri Recap”
> Siri Recap and Live Rewind help jog your memory, not provide a detailed record. Siri Recap doesn't produce a transcript. It generates a brief, high-level summary — comparable to notes you might jot down after a conversation. Live Rewind shows a text snippet of what was just said in the last 15 seconds, so you can catch something you missed.
This featuring is undoubtedly to compete with, and crush, all of those stand-alone AI wearables that do the same thing. All those products failed, because people either didn’t find it that useful, or the creep factor was too high.
I could see some scenarios where it might be useful. Being at a conference, for example, and having a summary of everything I heard in the various presentations. But at the same time, it feels like the people being recorded should have knowledge of, and give consent to, the recording.
At least with the Apple one they talked about how it works and it’s not some random product off Amazon doing god knows what.
My dad is probably the most likely person in my life to use something like this. I could see him sending me the summary of our dinner conversation or something, which would be very weird and off-putting. He has been very concerned about his memory as he ages, so I could see him using something like this to help with age related memory issues.
Like, I could trial Microsoft Teams and decide that chat will never work at my company, even though much better chat apps exist.
It likely stretches the definitions compared to what most people who do not want to be recorded think the laws should prevent, but on the other hand at least it couldn’t be used as legal evidence. It sounds intended as a memory aid, where passing a transcript for gossip purposes will hopefully be met with automatic skepticism as something that isn’t authenticated in any way and could be made up entirely.
They probably spent enormous amounts of time weighing how much legal jeopardy it would create for their customers.
The world’s fastest smartphone typist can do what the mic icon does. In, say, court, “look I typed this” & “look this was dictated” would seem to be just as trustworthy since either can be edited after the fact. And someone could type and say it was transcribed, or transcribe and say it was typed. Whereas the law doesn’t want us voice recording and having the actual (forensically provable? w/the right budget?) record, unless everyone agreed.
The main argument against them being good evidence is if they are not accurate and the public (i.e. the jury) knows that.
Siri Recap records throughout the day without the user needing to constantly enable it. It provides AI summaries of conversations recorded including direct quotes.
Live Rewind shows an exact transcript of conversation but only of the 15 seconds immediately before the user activated it.
>Live Rewind, which can help users recall what was just said in conversation. A double press of the Digital Crown shows the previous 15 seconds of a conversation as a text snippet...Users can ask Siri about the content of the text or save it to the Siri app to revisit later.
I’m not supposed to tell you this, but the vast majority of people that disagree with you online are AI bots or paid shills.
I don't appreciate Apple normalizing the already creepy ai note takers that exist and increasing the odds that someone will use them in casual or intimate conversations.
Running a voice memory all day long is one thing. Pressing a button that automatically summarizes every conversation you'll ever have is a step change.
My father has hearing aids and in some environments, it doesn't work well (directional vs omnidirectional ... but directional requires the person to directly address him while omnidirectional tends to pick up too much background clutter). In doctors offices (for example) he has handed his phone in dictation mode to the receptionist and asked them to speak to it and then he reads the transcription and responds... and this repeats. In a restaurant environment, sometimes another person orders for him.
This sort of thing could be useful in such cases.
Or are they the directional ones you were referring to?
One of the features that the app can control is the "environment". When out and about it's set to omnidirectional so that someone next to him doesn't need to be talking directly to him, however that picks up a lot of background and when in a building that causes.
He's also wired up their house with an audio loop. There's a microphone at my mother's craft desk that goes directly to the hearing loop and he can hear it anywhere in the main rooms of the house.
However, going out to places where he needs to be able to talk to people with less assistive technology available, things like the dictation mode on the phone area used. Also, sometimes he'll miss words (the start of a sentence until he realizes someone is talking to him, turns his head and the directional hearing aid mode gets them in focus). Being able to review the last 15 seconds of what was said on his iWatch would a technology that he would use.
It's built into the meeting software I use and probably in most mainstream ones.
I tried OS transcription but those don't split out who's talking (since it's a single audio stream) so much less useful.
Anyways all that to say that at least in online meetings this problem is solved and addressing this problem in a stack that doesn't have meeting context is going to result in a worse experience.
That’s what the wrist computer is doing.
Interactiving with people is so pre-covid!
Same with the "airpod live translation" thing, they probably spent more time implementing/testing it than the feature has been used in real life
Did you mean to use another word here? I mean, the vast majority of people are still on Earth so many things are geocentric and that's rarely considered a problem.
Hazarding a guess at egocentric considering it's just two characters next to each other swapped, and happens to fit.
So either way, wrong word.
It’s hard for me to imagine not wanting language barriers to disappear.
People love to get worked up over technology that is actually private and secure.
Meanwhile they’ll use Google and Facebook without a second thought.
You’re sounding… hysterical.
Even if you regularly say things that must never be tied back to you, like.. you are in the mafia or you’re an actual spy or whatever, and every single person around you has this on their wrist listening to every word you say all of the time… Nothing changes for you.
The users of the watches still have to take action to use the audio, which they too would have heard anyway, and could have transcribed and texted to someone or written down.
Oh… wait… are you MIB? Are you concerned that your memory eraser wand won’t wipe Apple Watch recordings of the last 15 seconds, allowing the public to finally know about aliens amongst us?
I know that sounds silly, but unless you can erase the memories stored in human brains, then you must realise that everything you say in the presence of meat computers with audio listening devices attached (ears) can be recorded (memorised).
I would hope to not be friends with such a fucking weird person tbh. But I guess if it's automated into a sexy device it's fine.
This isn’t on all the time. It’s on in 15 second increments and clearly chimes when enabled. This is literally just the equivalent of saying “one sec while I get a pen to write this down” and then taking a note.
The difference is extremely obvious, to the point that you even typed out one of the differences!
If you read that quote carefully you'll also notice it's only the audio that's ever mentioned as inaccessible to apple etc but never mentions anything about the actual transcript, wanna bet that goes into their little advertisement venture?
“Audio from the microphone enters the Secure Exclave of Apple Watch, where it is initially processed for speech, sounds, or music, without transcribing or storing the raw audio. This buffer is a continuously overwritten stream that exists only within the protected hardware and never creates an audio recording”
https://www.apple.com/privacy/docs/Audio_Intelligence_Privac...
Transcripts are not saved
I always knew this was coming eventually, with storage and compute getting so cheap, eventually every record can and then will be saved for security / convenience reasons. Every word uttered, every emotion shown on your face, every URL visited, every view you laid your eyes on.
I will miss the days that things could happen and be forgotten.
No doubt this stuff is all very useful, but I'd rather we skip this line of technology.
The degree to which people are going apeshit over this is absolutely absurd. People need to get a grip.
I don't want an always-listening watch. I don't want earbuds with cameras. I don't want people around me to have those things either. I hate it.
> Audio Intelligence features are private by design
> a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it
> Users are in control and [...] can decide exactly where and when Siri Recap takes notes, and can turn Siri Recap on or off at any time
> Siri Recap produces a brief, high-level summary of conversations — not a transcript — and is designed to exclude sensitive information like financial information or government-assigned identifiers
IDK about you but most of the shit I say, I'd be happy for the hearer's assistant to be listening and potentially adding the things we agreed on to their to-do lists or calendars.
I have real respect for Apple's "Private Cloud Compute" architecture [0], I am not a hater, just trying to understand.
Are these the dividends Apple is getting from doing this truly impressive work?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49427928 - https://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
The regulatory workaround is an "un-mutable" audio notification of some sort. This might be a very notable sound in the near future. I am curious what the chosen waveform might be:
https://support.apple.com/en-us/148354#:~:text=Audible,activ...
https://support.apple.com/en-us/148354#:~:text=app%2E-,How,s...
What a pain in the ass. This sort of arbitrary (and no doubt janky) kneecapping/censorship makes these things fundamentally unfit for purpose. A transcription that doesn’t transcribe what was said if it thinks it’s naughty is worse than useless.
I am not a lawyer but I do not believe that is true in any state except Nevada. Two-party consent almost always includes in person conversations. California Code, Penal Code 632:
>A person who, intentionally and without the consent of all parties to a confidential communication, uses an electronic amplifying or recording device to eavesdrop upon or record the confidential communication, whether the communication is carried on among the parties in the presence of one another or by means of a telegraph, telephone, or other device, except a radio, shall be punished by a fine not exceeding two thousand five hundred dollars ($2,500) per violation, or imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year
> For the purposes of this section, “confidential communication” means any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto, but excludes a communication made in a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive, or administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.
One of the parties visibly wearing a watch with a recording function, or holding a phone, or wearing earbuds with microphones in them means the other parties may not reasonably expect the conversation to be free of microphones.
Ted Chiang (author of Arrival) wrote about this
Home stenographer!
Apple details how Apple Watch’s new Audio Intelligence features work in privacy paper https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635185
Apple Doesn’t Want You to Worry About the New Apple Watch’s Listening Features https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49634947
Yeah, I just decided the entire Apple Watch brand is suddenly a creeper device, so I'm not going to wear mine out, nor otherwise around other people.
I don't want to endorse creeper devices by appearing to wear one, and I don't want to be insensitive to people who might wonder whether I'm "note taking" everything we say.
Also, I got an iPhone specifically to use the Apple Watch awhile, so I'm probably switching back to GrapheneOS sooner than expected.
Are you worried about malicious actors snooping on conversations? They have always already been able to do that longer than I have been alive and a transcription app isn't going to change that
Apple Watch Spy
Apple Watch Tattletale
Apple Informer
Watchholes
iSnitches
Miniature cameras on your body, and summaries of every conversation you have which you can store permanently, are concepts from either spy movies or weird sci-fi. I think it's a big mistake to see this as a continuation and not as a very different trend.
We may have to accept that Big Tech people are weird and cannot be trusted with any of this. See the Valley people now feeding all their personal conversations to agents. They are creepy and they are creating products in their own image.
Cameras were invented before big tech. Big tech took cameras and made them better and more ubiquitous. Microphones were invented before big tech. Big tech is taking them and making them better and more ubiquitous.
To be clear, I agree that the leaders of these companies are weird and untrustworthy. I'm arguing that the utility they will offer the world is worth far more to most people than the privacy concerns. Because of this, most people will happily adopt this technology.
This reminds me of microsoft recall story, but under the apple sauce;)
PA has very strict two party consent wiretap laws I'm not sure this feature would clear.
They're still recording everywhere and sending a transcription to iCloud and they're doing it without consent.
This has the same vibes as those Meta glasses. It's something that people will force on others.
You have no expectation of privacy next to another human in public places.
Human memory is well known to be unreliable. There’s a clear difference with “he said, she said” type recollections and what Apple is doing. People forget things and they get things wrong.
There may indeed be no expectation of privacy in public but this still really creepy and slightly threatening.
It’s always listening and allows you to go back without pressing record before hand.
Now you have a potential written record of every off colour remark, joke and personal discussion you over hear.
Maybe you think the world would be better if we all watch what we say in public further, I don’t.
I do agree that social media pile ons won't be helped by this. But these things being text only should hopefully make them less convincing.
Plenty of jurisdictions are single consent.
Moreover, what is the difference with using your phone to record?
The recording doesn’t have to be audio to violate the Federal Wiretap Act.
Just the output of what the AI thinks was in the audio
Also Android has had shazam style always on music recognition for years now with no issues, this isn’t that different
It's entirely different. One is fingerprinting ambient audio against a corpus of known signatures to identify music, another is basically silently monitoring and summarizing every conversation it hears for later review.
I don't feel like my privacy is being invaded by a date's phone telling them what song was playing at the restaurant, but I would be disturbed if their phone produced a summary of our conversation, especially if any vulnerable topics came up.
Otherwise, manufacturers of digital voice recorders, etc., would also be fearful.
It's not a crime if you do it with AI.
But it's not audio recording. It's a text (which is obtained from an audio by a not so accurate system and thus not admissible in court).
With fast charging, battery life hasn't been an issue; I just put it on the charger while in the shower and that does the trick.
Will it? Because they kind of made it a point, like they typically do, to say features are only possible due to the new chip.
I sold my 10 last year and haven’t missed it. You don’t have reasonable access to a charger during a marathon or a long hike, the latter of which needed me to charge my Apple Watch 3 times over the course of 12 hours of hiking.
True mass market means optimizing your product for the fat part of the population bell curve. This is some point or region in a space of { cost, features, use cases, durability }. The Apple Watch works for everyone from a stay at home parent, stocker at the supermarket, executive, and so on. If you work in a machine shop or spend a few hours every day working out it may not be for you.
There’s a marginal but valuable exception: think of prosumer cameras. There are indeed pros, and the feature set is good enough for some of them to shoot with a prosumer camera (any actual pro can shoot better photos with an instamatic than I can with a phone, much less an SLR). But most people buy the high end aspirationally. Why not? That penumbra pulls more people in who really need the plain old features.
And anyway once you really are at the high end your needs can be idiosyncratic.
Isn't this the market they made the Ultra for?
From apple website: Apple Watch Ultra Workout
Up to 18 hours workout tracking Up to 25 hours Extended Workout tracking Up to 45 hours Max Extended Workout tracking
My experience with the none ultra is that the battery life estimates are spot on.
In the end, what I am arguing is that Apple provides a different set of features and provides battery life in the Ultra that covers the needs of most people going outdoors for multiple days. For everyone else, there are plenty of other options available.
I got my first Apple Watch a year and a half ago. After coming to terms with the fact that the form factor has fundamental limitations, it's faded into the background and has been an excellent watch, fitness tracker, and occasional remote control and messaging device. I'm kinda glad that series 11 and 12 haven't given me fomo!
(I do wish they made more good watch faces though...)
Not like Apple will let us do anything fun with their APIs, though.
> I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways.
Oh, I wouldn't count on it. The older hardware is capable, but Apple is running out of ideas how to make people upgrade.
The Apple Watch is just too expensive for something that goes obsolete far faster than a normal watch. The watches I owned before the Apple Watch 6 are still in perfect condition and as good as the day I got them while the AW is bordering on ewaste.
There is no reason to upgrade every year, or even every two. It is around the 3-year mark where there tends to be enough new features or your battery life is getting bad enough that there is reason to check out the new watches. Even then my mom uses a Series 6 and is very happy with it and actually uses it a fair bit.
I think it might be time to upgrade from my series 8.
Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.
I've been using Garmin watches for years, wife always had Apple Watches. This year she got envious enough of the battery life that she also switched to Garmin now. Her watches sometimes barely lasted a day, requiring daily charges. Meanwhile, you get a week of battery easily with most Garmins.
"Apple Watch Series 12 continues to offer up to 24 hours of everyday battery life and now offers up to 10 hours of battery life during an outdoor workout — 25 percent more than the previous model.
Apple Watch Series 12 also offers faster charging: Just 15 minutes now gets up to 12 hours of additional battery life — 50 percent more than the previous model — so users can quickly recharge while getting ready for the day or before bed."
Also, I feel like the sleep is more accurate on the Apple watch than on the Garmin from a couple episodes that happened and in general from the differences in tracking time.
Also, as you already said, I just charge the watch everyday while I shower, so battery life is not really an issue for 80% of the time. For the other 20% it's really annoying... but I think a newer model (and I hope that the new ones will be even better on that side) will have better battery life. When the battery life will be ~48 hours it will be perfect for me.
And obviously you don't get penalised for charging it more often. Just charge it every Sunday if routine is a big issue.
And like the other commenter says, I could just fix my habits. But no, that’s not how my brain works
I can see why others like them (they want WatchOS and Apple-specific capabilities). That stuff is useful, but not often enough for me to care.
Really, the watch was a regular reminder of how functional life was before the watch existed, if that makes sense. It's a genuine marvel, and yet... I got by (and get by) great without it.
It’s the thickest and heaviest, for one thing.
There’s a decent argument for the SE as the best Apple Watch for most people because it’s cheap and it does most of the things that regular people want out of a smartwatch.
For phone, calendar and work integration the apple watch is better (I have it hooked up to take calls from the watch) so I ultimately went with the apple watch even though my triathlon training tracking was better on the Garmin!
People often buy these kinds of discretionary toys with their hearts and do post-hoc rationalization with their minds. You can't figure it out because your heart hasn't brought you there so your brain isn't wasting time creating justifications.
For what it is worth, sometimes these trends die an early death when people realize there is no substance underneath the justification. At least in the Garmin case, most people I know are happy with the purchase, in that it does deliver on certain needs. Since it matches their expectations, they don't have to suffer any cognitive dissonance between the heart-to-brain justification and their lived experience.
I had an Apple Watch series 7, which I had to charge twice a day now. I was on a fence between buying a new AW or switching to another brand, but Apple dropping the software support for my model have made the choice for me. I
I just wish Garmin would get their act together with filtering notifications on iOS. No, I'm sorry, not every app on my phone should be important enough to buzz my wrist. Filtering works fine for Garmin on Android, and apparently for other watch brands on iOS (Coros, Pebble, etc).
The sad thing is all I really need is app-level granularity (slack, you're banned from my wrist!).
If this isn't fixed by the time my 5 year old Fenix fails, I'll move to a different brand that enables filtering.
Whether that filtering is in the app, in the OS, or on the watch is not important to me.
iOS has a lot of power to finely control notifications. For example for Slack I just have app badges, while iMessage buzzes. In Mail, only people I’ve added to a small “VIP” list cause a buzz. Otherwise I just look at the Mail app badge to see how many emails have come in.
It takes time to tune it, but it is a very good investment IMO.
running with a phone in your pocket is hell
It was fine up till the 13 mini. Every iPhone after that is too big and heavy to fit in a running belt without jostling.
I don't fully understand people that carry their phone in hand when running.
I'm really unsatisfied with this device.
It can download and sync playlists and you connect bt headphones to it.
I'll keep buying garmins but I do hate the ux.
I had an Apple Watch for five years. Battery didn't even last a day.
I realized generally I have my phone or laptop with me all the time anyway, I don't need a watch with weather or app widgets.
So in June I bought the fitbit air and it's great. Battery life lasts about 6-7 days. No distracting screen. MUCH more comfortable to sleep with since it has no buttons and a smaller form factor.
If Apple made their own version of the Air but with Apple Pay I would switch back over in a heartbeat.
And they look nice, feel nice. Some of them even have a glass/crystal back, so you can watch the mechanism, relentlessly ticking on.
Get an analog automatic watch. It doesn't need to be second-accurate. Everyone else is keeping track of nanoseconds, you'll be okay not knowing.
My recommendation is: buy the cheapest material one every few years. I only ever had 2 and 5 (upgraded due to always on screen), and am considering to finally upgrade to 12.
Skill issue.
The first thing anyone should do when they get a smart watch is disable all notifications. It's so easy to do and it makes the experience so much better. It's completely backwards that notifications are opt out. Sadly, I've never seen anyone change their defaults.
Still, on a personal level, having my health data over time is something I find interesting to collect.
Things like my sleep, gym heartrate (I mostly pay attention to zones rather than specific numbers), sleep heartrate, occasional ECG reading, steps, with added smart scale and EMR data… It does show interesting trends over time.
Could you share a couple of these studies you are citing? Curious to read more.
One a side note, I tried CGM out of curiosity and seeing how your body (and this is quite individual) reacts on various food, how high glucose spikes you can get from only a handful of blueberries has had a tremendous effect on my diet. Controlling glucose levels has helped sleep better, recover faster, lose some weight and overall have more energy. Wearing CGM for only one month has had more impact on my life than years of wearing various health trackers.
There's literally no new features on the watch. Adding in AI nonsense.
If the watch still works with the current OS on it, what's the issue?
Instead we barely got a new feature over the 4 years since it launched, and now its been killed (from a software support pov) way ahead of schedule of the vast majority of other Apple devices.
For shame.
Looked up apple watch indent reddit and I saw much more serious cases after years of use.
I’ve worn a samsung watch for a year it didn’t leave a mark, casio watches, none. Until apple fixes that weird dome shape never wearing one again. That watch is staying in the box it came in.
Edit: There seems to be people promoting other brands in this thread. Just want to make clear I do not recommend the samsung one either. Don’t want to be labelled as such. Just get a regular watch. Wear it when you go outside and take it off when inside. You were never using the mostly inaccurate health data anyway.
Left wrist in the day, right wrist while I'm sleeping.
I only really care about a few things (besides telling the time):
- notifications
- unlocking a Mac on proximity
- Apple Pay
- alarms
- skipping a song
The battery life isn’t an issue, especially for the kind of light use you describe. Charge it when you sleep.
If it could do the "make my phone beep" feature I'd probably switch to it as my main watch. But of course that's Apple exclusive proprietary :(
I have done so with all my devices since ~15 years ago. It's incredibly refreshing. When I see others reacting monkey-style to any notification or vibration from their phone or watch, I secretly smile inside.
I just wish they made a band without all the hassle. I don't use my Watch for anything other than Stop watch, Alarm Clock and Health Tracking.
I will try the Audio note taking, although my current Boss constantly lie and deny she have said something I am not sure how useful will this feature be.
I can't imagine why google would skip such a critical feature in Health Tracking.
> Participants wore an Apple Watch on one wrist, and a comparative wrist-based device on the other, while using a Polar H10 ECG based chest strap as reference. Wrist assignment was randomized such that Apple Watch was worn on the dominant hand approximately 50% of the time. Wrist-based devices studied included Apple Watch Series 12, Garmin Forerunner 970, Google Pixel Watch 4, Huawei Watch 5, Samsung Galaxy Watch 8, and WHOOP 5. Oura Ring 5 was also worn on an index finger, per the manufacturer's stated best practices3
source, via the footnote: https://www.apple.com/HRAccuracy/
Why? How?
Yeah, sounds amazing /s
This thread is becoming low level ragebait
I’m just not aware of any method that can do this without uploading your data to the cloud.
That must mean they’re very confident about the accuracy. I look forward to reviewers trying to beat their detection model.
except optical HRV at the wrist is garbage
it cannot even measure when there is any movement
you'd think someone would come up with the technology to use the skin contact as a single lead ECG without requiring a second contact point by the other arm (or leg)
guess that's a generation or two away
suunto has the right idea with their tiny movesense ECG and it's even open-source
With health, I really wish Apple would truly lean into health...go nuts and try to become effectively a super primary care provider. Integrate with blood tracking, automated diagnostics, something much cooler.
The problem with these kind of wearables today is this is just not very actionable. You have this data, and nobody ever really looks at it. "You had a bad night sleep, maybe sleep more." Yeah no kidding. I want it to say: "Hey we noticed this trend, it could be indicative of X, we recommend Y test. Would you like us to send it to you within 2 hours so you can get more data?"
I got the ultra 2 from Costco in the window of time where it still had the active o2 sensor.
It told me I probably had sleep apnea and to bring a print out of its chart to my primary care physician. That became a referral to an ENT and that became a referral for a sleep study. Turns out I had sleep apnea.
What was really surprising to me -- I was the first person both my primary doctor and the ENT saw who showed up with "my apple watch said I might have sleep apnea."
I've had a CPAP for about 10 months now and it's dramatically improved my sleep.
We get it, some people don't want to charge a watch even though they have to regularly charge their phone, headphones, laptop and maybe car. Such a weird flex that a watch lasts an extra few days, who cares?! Charge it while you shower and you're good to go
The fact that these are your top 3 reasons to consider Apple Watch as the only brand to own speaks volumes about why monopolists shouldn't be allowed to keep APIs private indefinitely, the way Apple has with every API the Watch uses. I'm pretty sure every API that smartwatches have access to on iOS were introduced before the Apple Watch was a product. In other words, Apple arrested the progress of all other smartwatches for everyone on the iOS platform in 2015 so that they (and their fans) can smugly tout all these exclusives. (I'd add to your list the 'make my phone beep' feature, which is the main reason my whole family owns Apple Watches.)
I can see the appeal of smart-watches for some things, but I'm too attached to my (small) watch collection to ever consider buying one.
Am I liable if my watch starts doing this? Or is Apple if it does this by default without even my consent?
I have no idea if the law cares about the privacy features Apple mentioned (no accessible audio, no speaker ID) if the audio was clearly captured at some point.
I own a Withings Scanwatch 2 (and owned a nokia steel hr before that) and can confidently say it is just enough smart watch for me.
Perhaps you don't take daily showers, but I just put my watch on the charger when I shower and that's all I ever need to charge it 99% of the time.
There’s no chance we get the AI features so those don’t factor in at all
I guess it’s a bit more frequent sensors for the rest of the world? Not very compelling to upgrade.
I’m way too unc for this. I’m out. I’m officially done with “tech”.
That said there are definitely days when I wander out of the house with a watch and no phone. Fewer these days as I use an app on my phone to pay for bus/tram/train fares, but its still nice to be able to do things without the need for a phone.
Pixel watch measures heart rate every second.
Are they really bragging about this pathetic performance? The charge in my Pebble lasts 20 days.
How can you sleep with a charge that lasts that short?
I tried Google”s new Fitbit for a couple days but it only does them at night!!
like wtf could be useful in doing with those puny impotent sensors packed in right now?!
i'm going to miss out on all those amazing new features, like... an improved heart rate variability measurement
Its position as a health device is underrated in tech circles. As we tech savvy generations age there’s a big market there.
(it is, by the way, an FDA approved class 2 medical device…)
Previous Apple Watch can do it if you tell it you have afib, but that hurts battery life.
FWIW I have told it I have afib. I used to have problems with battery life, but I find the Series 11 can finally last all day and overnight with always on display+afib/HRV monitoring; and it charges fast enough I can get close to 100% in the shower, meaning it effectively does not have battery issues.
> Longer Workout Battery Life and Faster Charging
Apple Watch Series 12 continues to offer up to 24 hours of everyday battery life9 and now offers up to 10 hours of battery life during an outdoor workout — 25 percent more than the previous model.10
—
An increase to 10 hours of workout tells me battery life is better, but maybe not “better enough” to give the 24 hour number an increase (or the higher HRV checking frequency is eating the rest of the gains)
On the camera side I see "more post processing"... cool?