It'd make it less useful as a watch though because the time will drift without an NTP server.
We've had bathroom scales for over a century, yet as a society, we are more obese than ever.
More data isn't the answer, and all this talk about "insights" is just re-packaging of that data.
Next generation wearables go beyond harvesting data and showing pretty graphs. They directly affect our biology, physiology, and neurophysiology in real-time to improve our health. That's why we call them Affectables. Wearables that affect.
We're beginning by focusing on enhancing the restorative function of sleep. Not more sleep, not falling asleep faster, but the directly affecting the neurological processes that define the health benefits of sleep.
If you're curious to find out more, check out https://affectablesleep.com
https://www.affectablesleep.com/how-it-works
Bottom of the page.
Don't think of it as "sound", this isn't "gentle tones to help you sleep", and it isn't played during a particular "phase" of sleep.
It is specifically targeting individual slow-waves.
Think of it more like applying an electrical stimulation to a muscle while lifting weights, not just pumping heavy music into the gym.
Closed-loop neurostimulation, not neuromodulation.
However, you are 100% correct that overcoming the snake-oil factor is a significant challenge for us.
https://www.affectablesleep.com/how-it-works
Bottom of the page.
There are about 70 papers listed there, so if there is a specific area of research you're interested in, I can help direct you to the right papers.
I am a lifelong chronic insomniac myself, and started down this path trying to solve my own problem.
Sadly, insomnia is still an unsolved issue.
I think you're making the point for me. The "reality checks" haven't helped people to improve their health.
Data != Action.
And I'm sure some will take that argument. I'm not running a debate club.
Exactly! Couple decades ago they blamed human stupidity on lack of information. Look at us now with all the data available at our fingertips. We are so well informed that we should be better humans but we aren't.
Coming back to the Apple Watch (and alternatives) perhaps what we need along with all these "insights" are a shock collar (yes, like the one for a dog) that serves as a motivation to get off one's ass and get in to better shape. I'll bet that'll sell like hotcakes /s
I read an article in the newspaper recently about how now that we're several decades into the computerization of medical records, it's possible to spot trends that were previously untrackable.
One item was cancers. It's emerging that different generations get different types of cancers more often.
For example, Baby Boomers have a lot of cancer x, while Gen X gets a lot of cancer y, but very little cancer x. And Millennials get cancer z, which is almost never seen in the other two cohorts.
There was one type of cancer that seemed to hit Millennials almost exclusively. Unfortunately, I can't remember which one, as I read the article back toward the beginning of the year.
- Apple Pay (I don't have to take out my phone to pay for things). One really cool feature is that the apple watch maintains your credentials as long as you don't take it off your wrist, so you don't need to unlock anything to pay for something.
- Apple Car/Home Key (I don't have to take out my phone to unlock my front door)
- notifications on my wrist when my washer machine is done
- notifications on my wrist when an unhoused neighbor door checks my car in the middle of the night.
- Apple Health: metrics on my daily workout.
- Screen time: grant kid 15 minutes of Roblox without taking my phone out of my pocket
- Edit: I'm embarrassed to admit that I also use the "find my phone" feature a lot when at home.
I don't really need an ultra for any of that, and I don't see a reason to upgrade my 2-3 year old Apple Watch now.
If you live in a city that supports it like NYC or Toronto, just tap your wrist (no unlock) on transit and you’re in.
When I visit Japan though, Apple watch works fine with SUICA. Unfortunately, in China, AliPay is too complicated to be used on a watch and you have to whip out your phone regardless because of the QR code thing. If China ever upgrades to NFC, it will work fine.
Sounds like an AliPay problem, not necessarily a "China" problem because in the Apple Wallet app, there is a list of nearly 50 Chinese transit cards that can be added.
Perhaps someone in China can provide more information.
I tell myself, eh first world problems. But agreed that it's also a Seattle Process problem.
For a city with so many tech companies, the city itself isn't very technological.
This is a new phrase for me.
I really need to just put in a better fence eventually, but for now I just rely on yelling them off.
Is this ‘ground floor’ in UK, Australia, New Zealand?
Americans count like people: 1, 2, 3…
Europeans count like machines: 0, 1, 2…
Depends where you are at in life but I found as I have gotten older that some of the data points are helpful to track to see how my body is aging and when/what to adjust.
So many people fall in this category, but a lot of them seem to min-max their gear more than anything. I know casual runners with $400 carbon plate performance shoes, I run with them, in my $7 decathlon shoes, unless you're paid to run or aim for a record I really don't see the point, especially since these thing barely last a few month of serious running. Same for hikers with $3k of ultralight gear, they spend more time reading reviews and flexing their 0.1g hacks than actually hiking.
There is a huge overlap between tech nerds and "gear hobbyists", I assume because they have too much money for their own good.
The Whoop is like 90% accurate compared to it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SzUDTBK-i0
It's just trade-offs: if you're using the Whoop, you don't want a screen and you like two weeks battery life.
* Notifications (imessages mainly, but anything that sends a push notification to your phone can also notify you on your watch)
* Quickly responding (thumbs up/down) to messages
* Apple Pay
* HomeKey (I can unlock all the doors in my house with my watch)
* Some apps (like AllTrails) have nice watchOS apps which give you the important info by glancing at your wrist.
Did you actually get 7-8 hours? Did you actually get good quality sleep? Did you actually move some target amount every day?
That said I sleep with AirPods and iPhone next to me so who am I to judge.
The watch will tell you if it thinks you have sleep apnea, heart rate irregularities, drops in fitness, out of baseline sleep, dramatic trends in any health statistics, and high blood pressure.
2x in the shifters
2x in the derailleurs
Radar/rear light
Front light
Computer
When I get in there the usually shiite people carry (phone, EarPods etc). What a time to be alive.
TBH I only use the Apple Watch as a dumb watch. I have disabled all notifications and smart features. Just time and heart-rate when I exercise.
The fact that it remembers my best 5k time and notifies me when I’ve beaten it is very motivating.
Are there better alternatives?
The Apple Watch just notifies you when it thinks you might have high BP and you have to use a cuff to see if it's correct. So, we're still some ways away from passive BP.
As of September 9, 2025, hypertension notifications are currently under FDA review and expected to be cleared this month, with availability on Apple Watch Series 9 and later and Apple Watch Ultra 2 and later.
At least based on their own website they seem to be among the most accurate ones.
So if I am in a critical situation in the mountains, with only 8h battery left, I hope rescue teams will find me in that 8h window.
My Garmin will give me a week at least, and in low power mode two to three weeks?
Or use something intended for the purpose like a Garmin inReach. The satellite SOS features on phones and watches are nice to haves that could absolutely save your life but they're no replacement for being prepared. Really no device is a replacement for being properly prepared in the wilderness, even with your location you still need a way for rescue teams to spot you, for example.
That being said, I do think that these new emergency SOS features will come in handy for people who don't know what they're getting themselves into, or who just run into unexpected bad luck on what was supposed to be a quick day trip.
Please carry a personal locator beacon.
If you got below 10% it would ask if you wanted to switch to this mode. You could also turn it on in the battery settings.
I've read that in this mode you could get a week or two on a full battery.
Sometime around watchOS 9 they replaced this with "Low Power Mode" (LPM). LPM reduced things like notifications, background processing, and update frequency enough to get about 50% more life out of a non-Ultra and 100% more on an Ultra 2.
LPM is gone from watchOS now but the underlying functionality still works and there is still a way to access it. You have to turn the watch off. While it is off if you press the crown it will briefly display the time.
If you wanted to frequently switch between normal operation and this low power time-only mode it would be somewhat of a pain since you'd have to turn the watch off and on to switch modes, and watchOS boots really really slow.
If you don't have to quickly switch between modes though it might be reasonable.
I just want you all to think back just 10 years ago, when your average consumer neither knew what that meant, nor cared about it. How far we've com.
Garmins easily last a week.
Overnight camping, and sleeping in a tent for a few nights is a good example. I'm not "taking a shower" and hence don't really have a great time to charge it. With my garmin I just leave it on, and it keeps working for the entire trip.
Same thing with other "adventure" travel, flying overnight, etc.
Funny as I bought it as they advertised sleep measurement features. I quickly realized I need to actively think about charging time and at some point I just stopped using it.
You have to micromanage the thing. It does not just work. You have to constantly adapt strategies depending on usage pattern and lifestyle change.
I do not use smartwatch features (basically useless or worse an intrusion/interruption in your life for little benefits).
People seem to think Apple Watches are good. As an owner for 6 years or different generations, I beg to disagree.
The only thing it's good for is the quality of the data but competitors have caught up and it's not that important (consistency of measurement is more relevant). What's more when you can't use it because of battery issues it becomes moot; a bit worse data is still better than no data at all in the end.
In my opinion the Apple Watch is the perfect representation of Apple lack of focus and inability to make relevant compromise to create actually great products.
They could make a killer sport watch with low refresh rate on the display, minimum power consumption with a chip that would only run the data collection and forgo all the app bullshit to get something that could potentially last up to a week.
But they would rather sell lifestyle fashion accessories.
I generally put it on the charger every evening around 7 pm or so when I sit on the couch to do the NYT crossword and Sudoku (which come out at 7 pm in my time zone) and watch some TV or read for a while.
It then goes back on my wrist but in theater mode and with notifications silenced until morning.
It generally uses maybe 5-10% while I sleep. In the morning I turn theater mode off and un-silence notifications, and then use it to track 30-35 minutes of exercise.
It is typically still above 30% when it is time to do the next crossword.
Doesn’t seem like all that big a problem tbh.
I'm getting basically exactly what Garmin claims on my 45mm Venu 3-- 14 days. Wild that nobody else is even close.
In any case I agree that it's crazy - particularly for Apple which tends to have pretty good power efficiency in its other devices.
Pebble seems to use e-paper, larger design/battery to get there.
Or does Garmin have all the same apps as the Apple Watch or just a much better battery?
There's not a shot in hell I'm ever switching from Android to iOS. People rarely do this.
Theoretically, I might buy an Apple Watch or Air Pods or Apple TV if they didn't go out of their way to make them either impossible to use without an iPhone or a living nightmare.
Most of the benefits are because the ecosystem is tightly integrated. I expect that there isn't a large enough market and it so happens to lock people into their other products. I haven't tried using my Air Pods on an Android phone, but they work perfectly fine on my Steam Deck (Linux).
Same reason I have a MacBook without an iPhone.
I don’t don’t do it a lot, but it’s the best.
And yeah, it's kinda useful sometimes.
You’ve chosen your ecosystem. Plenty of watches that work with Android. (Is Android watch even a thing? I think it is).
Given your staunch preference for Android, it’s fair to say the Apple Watch is not a product made for you.
>There's not a shot in hell I'm ever switching from Android to iOS. People rarely do this.
Because the reverse situation helps Apple. A lot of iOS users can't switch to Android because the Apple Watch keeps them tied to the iPhone. It's one of their most effective lock-ins in addition to things like iMessage.
Keeping existing Apple customers may be more lucrative than trying to attract potential Android customers like you.
People very rarely switch phone operating systems.
There is virtually nobody with an iPhone AND an Apple Watch that's switching from iOS and Android any time soon.
The idea that Apple needs to defend that population is absurd.
That's their BIGGEST evangelists.
Why doesn't Apple not let you have a MacBook unless you have an iPhone?
Tons of people have MacBooks that have Android phones.
This is true and I'm not claiming that switching is a common occurrence.
That said, the more likely os migration is from iOS-to-Android rather than Android-to-iOS. I know more than a dozen people that have switched from iPhone to Android. I know nobody that switched from Android to iPhone.
Of the people that want to leave iOS for Android but haven't pulled the trigger... what's holding them back is the Apple Watch and the iPad. The Android ecosystem (Samsung) doesn't have competitive hardware in those areas.
My friend really wants to switch to Android for the superior Google AI Assistant but can't because her Apple Watch tracks her medical stats better than Samsung/Garmin watches. She already uses Google-everything-else with Google Sheets/Docs/Calendar/Keep/Gmail/Voice. If Tim Cook made Apple Watch work perfectly with Android phones, he'd lose her as a customer.
>Why doesn't Apple not let you have a MacBook unless you have an iPhone?
PowerBook and MacBook were around as standalone before iPhone existed. The Apple Watch was always created & marketed as an accessory for the iPhone. The AirPods is a hybrid situation where they partially work with Android but it is crippled with missing features. You have to use AirPods with Apple's ecosystem for full functionality.
I love my Ultra, but for big running I had to go back to Garmin. I can leave the house with it half charged and still get a good 12 hours of running out of it before it dies.
OTOH, I’ve also had a Garmin 945TLE, with a cell radio in it. Fire up that cell radio, and goodbye battery life. I’ll be curious to see how that new Fenix does in the real world with its LTE radio blazing away.
This one will have even more battery life, and gets 12 hours of use in 15 minutes, which I suspect will mean for me without the always on display I may well be able to charge it only while I'm actively in the shower (when I'd take it off anyway as I hate wet bands) and be good for the day.
Garmin uses AMOLED (ForeRunner 965) and focuses on the tradeoffs of battery life.
People still revert to "dumb" analogue watches or Casio stuff.
For me personally smart watch is pointless. For everything it does I have a phone. Other than that, it's just another thing that I have to babysit - want to measure sleep? Oh no I forgot to charge it before bed. There goes my measurement etc.
It's a cool gadget, but very much useless still.
For you.
The health stuff is compelling and the marketing videos about lives saved are nice and all, but actual doctors are recommending Apple Watches for health monitoring.
Unfortunately I now know this.
The standalone devices are interesting, but aren’t as good. Continual monitoring is a powerful tool.
You begin with wine and ended there too.
If you want to check if someone is in sinus rhythm, what’s the best device to do it?
Oh, really?
https://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/GUID-EECCAC99-90D6-4...
Looks like they last dramatically less than that if you buy an Garmin with comparable display and actually use the advertised features.
Comparing both watches in activity tracking mode + AOD off, the Garmin (44h) still has 2x the battery life compared to the Apple Watch Ultra (20h).
You also get a huge reduction when you turn on SpO2 (off by default on Garmin, on by default on iWatch). Same for music, always on display, etc etc etc.
The 20h number I mentioned is from the OP: "For continuous outdoor workout tracking, Apple Watch Ultra 3 now gets 20 hours of battery life in Low Power Mode with full GPS and heart rate readings." Low Power mode disables AOD and SpO2 (which is already disabled anyways during workout tracking).
I doubt SpO2 is very battery intensive either, certainly it can't be worse than the heart rate sensor. Both sensors work in the same way fundamentally.
I always have lots of Apple devices, but won’t deal with multiple that need daily charging.
I guess even that saves some money too...
I'm curious what your list of things is. We're way past the point of 'flashy' but quick to implement changes in my opinion. The things people want take much longer to develop and with their annual release cadence each release is going to feel less dramatic. You just need to look back at some of the Apple keynotes from 10-15 years ago. An iPod with a COLOR screen! Bigger screens! Camera that does VIDEO! Camera that isn't a potato! The bar is much higher now.
It’s approaching the size of the (in)famous Diesel ‘Mr Daddy’ watches lol: https://shop.diesel.com/en/man/watches/mr-daddy/
