The audio note taking feature is extremely off-putting to me and can't believe it was so prominently showcased.
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.
The video demo is so strange. A waitress spoke too fast - just act like a normal person and politely ask them to repeat themselves, instead of reading a transcription on your watch. My goodness.
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.
As someone whose hearing has been degrading fast, this sounds like a feature that would be immensely useful. At some point you get tired of asking everyone to repeat themselves and start guessing by context (you've probably seen an old family member do this).
And even if it weren't super weird and creepy, it's 15 seconds, right? So what, that waitress rolledup, read the menu for less than 10 seconds, and then zoomed away, giving you a couple of seconds to get to and run the replay?
That's how you know no one in charge has a real life, they're all so disconnected from the reality of the bottom 90% that they think this is how we live.
Same with the "airpod live translation" thing, they probably spent more time implementing/testing it than the feature has been used in real life
If I learned that someone I've been speaking to for a while was recording the conversation using the audio recorder app on their phone, I'd find that extremely creepy.
It really depends on what you consider a recording. If audio is streamed though a transcription engine and never saved in a way that could be replayed, it's hard to argue that a recording has been made. The live audio was transcribed.
The 2 party state thing is for phone calls. Outside of phone calls, you are generally allowed to record anything you can legally hear, same as you can photograph anything you can legally see.
There's some more details on privacy at the bottom of the page:
> 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
Yeah, even more weird was when they highlighted the privacy aspect of it. Sure, it maintains the wearer's privacy, just not that of anyone around them.
In what way does this violate the privacy of anyone around them? It doesn't even store audio recordings, which is something every smartphone has been able to do for 20 years.
Tell us everything, what happens on tour stays on tour - sure. Just approve that your data is - of course - anonymously used to train AI and regarding intelligence agencies or AI Acts: well, it is not us, it is them. Law is law, you know. We won't tell you anyway.
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.
While I instinctively dislike any "secretly spying" devices, phones could do that for a while now. I wouldn’t have much use for my watch doing it, but my nephew swears by taking notes on an ipad with an app that has a sort of a playback: essentially a play bar that recreates the note as it is written, with audio included. Being able to playback the lecture afterwards that way is a huge benefit over pure notes and I wish I had something like that when I was in school.
Friction makes all the difference. Google used to sweat over 100ms in page loading.
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.
There's a difference between "weird people could choose to do this creepy thing and violate my trust" and "not weird people could forget to turn off this slightly less creepy thing and still violate my trust" Both of these suck, but honestly I don't appreciate that Apple is making me feel uneasy talking around my friends with Apple Watches. Not because I don't trust my friends, but because now it takes extra work for them to not do something kinda creepy.
> It's made even worse by the fact that [...] their external designs are unchanged from past ones, so there's no way to tell who's always listening to everything
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.
I just assume everything in public is audio/video recorded. In most places that's perfectly legal (with some exceptions). I don't think people should expect privacy in public. We faced the same panic about photographs when mobile phones started getting cameras. With some notable problems, everyone accepted it and moved on. The utility we get from cameras in phones is worth far more than the privacy violations which occur. The same thing is going to happen with this technology (and smart glasses).
I don't believe it. Photography was invented by non-Big Tech, and was widely popular and useful before Big Tech adopted it.
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.
It's the first iteration of what will eventually be an on-device Siri/openclaw that not only has full access to your messages/docs/emails/life, but also has live audio access to what's going on around you.
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.
Yeah very creepy, I'm afraid it'll be normalised in a few years, together with the cameras in our glasses.
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.
It will make me as wary as I am around people that wear those little AI notetaker/recorders, so, very. At least with those it's a single use device that you can spot, now any Apple Watch could be listening, fun!
I don't know if this will be the common reaction, but after seeing this I've made a mental note to not discuss anything private with anyone wearing an Apple Watch. Makes me suspicious of iPhones, too, after years of defending them and saying that 'technology is always listening' is a silly conspiracy
You would be aghast to spend any time in tech these days. I would wager more than 20% of the people in this field right now are wearing devices which record everything they say in every conversation and ship it directly to a transcription LLM and into some other tools. Go to SV and I bet this number jumps to nearer to 30-40%
“These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. This is because the S11 chip on Apple Watch Series 12 includes Secure Exclave, a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it.”
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.
I mean it's nonsense, apple can update the "secure exclave" software at any time to exfiltrate the audio if they want or get ordered to.
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?
FTA: “Apple Watch Series 12 now offers the most accurate step tracking of any smartwatch.12 The S11 chip also enables the brand-new Steps complication, so users can track their steps in real time, right from their watch face”
That must mean they’re very confident about the accuracy. I look forward to reviewers trying to beat their detection model.
Apple Watch is hitting diminishing returns feature-wise. I'm happy with my Series 11 but "it has more accurate heart sensors" isn't really revolutionary, and I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways.
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.
Having had an Apple Watch since the Series 0, I think Apple wants people to have a ~3-year upgrade cycle. They essentially update the internals one year, the next they come out with some interesting software features, then the next year they do some external design tweaks. Then they repeat.
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 dunno. Maybe there's a sense in which there's some untapped use cases out there that Apple needs to go figure out. But in a different sense, the idea that I buy a watch that lasts for years and I don't feel like I'm missing out in the meantime...sounds fine?
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...)
> With fast charging, battery life hasn't been an issue
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.
I regularly do long races like marathons and 20 mile trail races and have never had to charge my watch during those events and I am often even streaming music/podcasts from the watch. With an Ultra you should be able to easily do a 12 hour hike.
I'm very close to selling my S10. I barely use it. All the features are sort of nice to have. The only one I really care about is heart rate monitoring during exercise and the AirPods Pro 3 do that.
Meanwhile Coros Pace 4, a 200 dollar watch, has 40 hours of GPS tracking and offline map. I simply can not understand the pricing strategy of Apple. Do they really expect people who are serious about endurance sports and training to get their ridiculously expensive Ultra? Or they are just fine with Garmin taking the biggest chunk of this market?
Did a long bike ride recently and just used my iPhone to track the workout. Probably suboptimal, since it doesn't have all the heart rate stuff, but it gets the big picture (elevation gain, speed, distance).
Mine got slow with the latest update. I stopped wearing it mostly and I don’t think I will get another smart watch. I’m more tempted by those screen less fitness tracker pucks.
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.
And the Ultra series have been marginally incremental, emphasis on marginally. They announced that Ultra series 1 software support is ending this year, but I just cannot justify buying another one of these at $800.
I mean, there's only so much that a watch can do or that can be packed into it. Eventually all gadget categories fall into a lull of slow and steady progress, they can't all be absolute bangers year after year
On what legal footing does this recap feature stand? In fairly certain there are a non-zero amount of laws prohibiting audio recording without consent. And this wrist mounted always listening thing is likely to end up in a lot of places it should not. Probably burried in the end user agreement that it is 100% the users fault.
Instant in-memory transcription likely isn't legally considered the same as storing the actual audio. It probably couldn't be used as proof in a court like audio could (for now...).
IANAL but my guess is that they're leaning heavily into the fact that the feature just generates transcripts and does not persist any audio recordings.
Yes, many states in the U.S. have recording laws that prohibit only one party giving consent to record. Aka: I give consent but the other party may not in which case it could be illegal.
Counterintutively, that didn't work out well for me. When the watch has ample power to make it through one day, but not two, I just put it on my schedule of daily rituals. Usually just throw it on the charger while I take a shower. But when the battery life is measured in weeks, I don't build any sort of habit like that and I end up finding out about it the hard way. My ideal watch never runs out in a single day and charges fast enough that during my shower it will get me through the next day. Based on the stats of the Series 12, it would probably fit the bill.
Just continue to charge your Garmin when you take a shower. I don’t understand why you need to change your habits. Are you worried about making the battery full at longer durations causing degradation? A smartwatch is fundamentally a disposable piece of electronics that last a few years.
The garmin has so much battery life that when it's at 10% and starts complaining that the battery is close to dying I still have about 2 days to remember to charge it.
And obviously you don't get penalised for charging it more often. Just charge it every Sunday if routine is a big issue.
I am currently using both an apple watch SE 2 and a garmin vivoactive 5 simultaneously. Even if the Garmin has better battery life, I don't really like it for 2 reasons:
- the round watch UI is ugly and doesn't work with the other UI elements. Also I don't mind using a squared watch, I like it. My Casio is also square-ish.
- the UX is terrible, the customization is terrible. The default watch faces are all quite ugly, and the Garmin app makes the customization experience even worse.
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.
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.
From what I’ve heard, this is actually a problem with the exposed OS level api’s provided by Apple. Other manufacturers have solved this with on device workarounds. Doesn’t make it better though. I resorted to only the system only notifications (Phone, Texts).
I was on the Ultra for 18 months or so and came away from it feeling like a much less powerful and capable Garmin is much nicer as a daily watch. I found myself wanting to find reasons/excuses to justify the Ultra. Ultimately I couldn't, and it wasn't worth its cost, charging schedule, and lack of battery life.
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.
I think a large percentage of your problem might be that you bought the most expensive model. Was the Ultra really the one to get?
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.
I was recently looking for a new running watch but couldn't for the life of me figure out what Garmin's higher end watches do to justify being over $1000. Like, ok, better battery life... but besides that?
For workout tracking depending on your sport the Garmin is way better- for swimming the lap counter and for hiking the trail maps on Garmin gets more granular and better for tracking. For skiing the altitude tracking and vertical distance is better on the Garmin.
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!
In one social group I am part of, Garmin just became the new trend. Watches have historically been status symbols even more than they are functional. Someone drops a few hundred/thousand/whatever and then brags about the newest new and how they are on it, then others move over to keep up.
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.
> 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.
I had one of the first really cheap Xiaomi Smart Watches for 6 years and by the end a single charge lasted 2 weeks. Switched to an Apple Watch and 1 year in it lasts a single day, stopped wearing smart watches a few weeks ago, mainly due to this and just the fact that none of them look good imo.
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
Been using Suunto Run for a year and have been happy. The thing I mostly miss is Apple Pay and Runna compatibility. I usually have my phone with me for the former, and I'll be snagging the Race 3S when it supposedly launches in Oct.
Assuming you’re using the Garmin for fitness related reasons — are you really carrying your phone around with you for music? I guess it works if you bike?
Moved from my ultra 2, to a simply casio gshock 5601u, could not be happier, I am so sick and tired of all the notifications, stats, blah blah blah following me all over, from my macbook, iphone, that I just don't need it on my watch as well. I just don't care anymore about tracking everything and uploading to strava, or whever, and this comes from someone that, have over 100k km's logged on strava. I know the vast majority of people love it, and I love stats as well, but all the connected devices, is just getting too much, I am activily trying to go more simple, offline, outside of work.
Apple killed support for three generations of Apple Watch hardware with its latest OS update: Series 6, Series 7, Series 8, and the original Apple Watch Ultra.
So much for its commitment to the environment, perfectly capable hardware is being sent to the bin.
There's literally no new features on the watch. Adding in AI nonsense.
Am super salty about them killing support for the original Apple Watch Ultra. I, along with many others, bought it on launch day as both an Apple tragic / early adopter and to support what I thought was going to be an exciting new platform.
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.
I really just want an Apple version of the new Fitbit Air.
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.
Maybe it's just a general fatigue from AI, notifications, microphones, and cameras everywhere, but I'm pretty sure my next watch will be something from Germany or Switzerland containing springs and gears.
My left wrist had formed an indent where I wore my se3. It was not worn tight, I tried different straps. In 6 months it looks like the tissue underneath has mostly moved away. I can feel my bone when I touch it. My right arm by contrast looks full like a regular arm.
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.
This is true of most objects that are constantly worn on your skin - my engineering ring has created a near-permanent indent in my pinky finger. It fades over time when it's not worn. It's an odd thing to hold against a wearable.
The marks will fade but this moves away tissue and I never faced this with any other watch. The dome always pushes in, the strap will further push in when you rotate your wrist especially the sports one.
I don’t hate it but I do believe this should change, I paid a good amount for this and I willingly put it away.
Yes I fell for the collect all data trap. I wore it around 18 hrs at most. Honestly don’t think its worth it. I don’t know what to do with all the data it collects. Doesn’t even have good watch faces to tell the time atleast. Find my phone was useful though.
I think Apple Watch is a great device for wearing to gym, to sleep, and somewhat during the day + occasional quick text reply maybe, and otherwise forgetting all about it, because the true value lies in what's being collected in the Health app. Stop trying to do things on it imo. Maybe there are a couple of useful things you can do, or if you're a runner, maybe you can leave your phone at home. I don't have these use cases, but it's valuable to me even without them.
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.
I ditched the screen and got a band with health metrics on it. Its tiny and comfy, no screens, only a wakeup buzz in the morning when I'm most able to wake apparently. Battery lasts maybe a week? Been great. Best of all no advertisements pinging me every few hours.
I wouldn't mind this (a ring is another option), but 1) you can disable notifications, which I tend to do and 2) the problem is that all independent experiments keep claiming that almost everything is inaccurate out there, and Apple Watch is one of the few surprisingly accurate ones, as compared to real medical equipment.
> Best of all no advertisements pinging me every few hours.
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.
I don't know. Apple marketing has been really effective at this health thing. Whereas, studies of continuous monitoring of eg heart with even better sensors and higher risk populations have shown conclusively no improvement in health outcomes.
Yeah, I only see anecdotal evidence of Apple Watch helping people: individual heavily-promoted stories.
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.
The only thing I've ever wanted is an apple watch that's thinner than the first one, my wrists are big enough I don't need a chonker. I don't care what time it is anyways
I wish they made it stupid thin. I wear my Whoop everyday, even sleep with it on. I could never do the same with an Apple Watch due to it's size but also due to the notification anxiety.
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 have a $20 smart fitness watch from Amazon which I use for sleep tracking, though it's a pretty capable watch. Much smaller than an Apple Watch and the battery lasts like 10 days on a charge. It connects to Apple Health and puts the heart rate / fitness / steps / sleep data in there.
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 think they really need a separate product that can have no screen or a minimal screen and ditches the need for app compatibility. Just selling the Apple Fitness features without the screen for apps would provide a lot of value and let them play with form factors and lower price points.
I am looking forward to 3rd party testing on most accurate heart rate. Because I have both Series 11 and Google Fitbit Air and the Air is so much better in everything, from accuracy, when to track and display of information.
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.
It'd be more accurate to make claims compared to the smartwatches listed in the study, than claiming it's the most accurate on the market.
> 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
I have had many fitbits, but for my mom I purchased an Apple watch because it had sleep apnea notifications. I think that's essential for almost everyone.
I can't imagine why google would skip such a critical feature in Health Tracking.
Switched from apple to garmin to coros, not looking back. Coros blows everyone out of the water from a user experience standpoint, and they offer excellent value.
Value for money, simple software not bloated compared to garmin, heart rate is on par with apple watch. They update their old devices with new features I think one of their models just got a software update for global mapping where you would need to pay extra to get a model with that feature from the competition. Devices could be better in terms of design and fit and finish in time they will get there I hope but overall they are doing pretty good stuff.
It’s a more focused sports experience. I genuinely didn’t use the messaging or reminder or calendar features when I had an Apple Watch, so they are just bloat.
Had Apple not made the transcript/rewind feature a top line feature but put it down in an accessibility feature, I wonder if it would have changed the perception. I'm actually surprised they didn't do this as this is how they tend to test features before wider rollout.
As much as I hate to say it, the most accurate GPS in a watch is the new Pixel Watch from Google, and its accuracy comes from uploading the GPS signal to Google to do building-aware post processing using Google’s database of worldwide buildings to solve the multi-path issue, plus DGNSS. Simply having dual frequency isn’t enough when you run on the streets of New York City. With Google’s solution, it can even detect which side of the sidewalk you are on while running.
I’m just not aware of any method that can do this without uploading your data to the cloud.
There's the Japanese approach of deploying a dense cluster of satellites above one geographical area (QZSS), but of course that only works in the areas those satellites are above.
The main reason I stopped using an Apple Watch is the lackluster battery life; in this series Apple claims 10 hours of battery life for outdoor workouts but without an iPhone. How is that realistic? If I’m going out for a hourlong run perhaps I don’t bring my iPhone, but I’m doing a multihour outdoor workout I would surely bring my phone, and certainly the extra Bluetooth communication would decrease battery life. It’s a silly metric.
I was actually quite impressed with the AI note-taking and other features, and I could see myself using them, so I did like that.
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?"
> The problem with these kind of wearables today is this is just not very actionable.
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.
There are legal prohibitions against one-sided recording in some states (for example, mine).
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.
Funny, because literally every single apple product page gets posted as "news" to HN and every time I see one I think it's just apple marketing astroturfing. Especially since most of the product updates the last few years seem to fall into the, "BUT SHE'S GOT A NEW HAT" territory.
That was my same thought!
Brands I have never heard of that can't make a call, send messages or add a reminder popping up like they invented sliced bread.
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
I think it's 2 different end-consumers. Apple targets "watch on my arm", garmin targets fitness tracker that happens to do a few watch things (notifications, payments, some limited messaging).
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
When I saw the part where the guy records the waitress and then re-reading the transcript. FFS just talk to them like a regular human being. If you did this to me I would just be supremely grossed out.
I’m way too unc for this. I’m out. I’m officially done with “tech”.
Every single AW I’ve owned has this weird problem: when I go for a run it often doesn’t show my HR even after 10 mins, sometimes even longer. Super irritating.
Honestly, the killer smartwatch feature for me is being able to quickly click a button to find my iPhone. Everything else I use it for feels like I'm just trying to justify spending hundreds of dollars on it. I record all my workouts and my sleep patterns etc., but I never use that data for anything. I wish I could buy a $10 digital watch that also had a "find my iPhone" button.
Watches are fashion, for most people, rather than a necessity.
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.
Anyone know how/why this one can take so many more HRV measurements? I mean the other ones can. What makes this one take more often? Guessing they are just setting it to do more. This is one thing that really annoys me is that it will go 4-6 hours without taking any measurements. When I am sitting down working etc.
I tried Google”s new Fitbit for a couple days but it only does them at night!!
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
Idk, if you check the profiles of the people posting, these would be pretty expensive shills. I genuinely think it's just happy customers.
And to pile on, I switched to Garmin a few years ago after a pixel watch and a galaxy watch, and it's night and day. Battery life, and it's built to actually work offline well (global maps, and all of the tracking).
If you are in the market for a multi hundred dollar watch, you must have considered the Garmin and Apple offering for non-time features. Surely some of those people are happy to share their decision.
What features is Garmin missing, though? It seems to have most of the stuff you get with an Apple watch and IMHO the Apple watch is objectively exceptionally ugly compared to almost all smartwatches except the more garish "sports" themed ones.
Apple needs to move the health data storage, at least optionally, to the home pod/apple tv. My phone is my main interface, but it's not the only interface. And many of the devices that interface with the health app are not mobile. My blood pressure monitor, my bathroom scale. Test results from my doctor. And so on. These should be synced/stored on either my home device and exposed through an app on my phone/desktop/laptop.
> 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.
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?
Disappointing. Instead of making battery life better that would benefit all of the Apple Watch users, here are some random AI features that most of you never gonna usa, and some new colors.
Even if they’re just matching battery life while adding frequent HRV readings, they’ve made a big advancement. Frequent HRV is a requirement to be a WHOOP/Garmin competitor.
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.
I have hearth issues too, and the metrics Apple provides still do not help detecting them. Not to mention that there is no improvement of their high blood pressure detection. So despite the marketing that they have the most accurate sensor, there is no real advancement here.
Relying on an Apple Watch instead of a proper medical device if you're having heart issues is, well, uh... There's a reason an Apple Watch isn't a medical device.
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)
No, it’s not. 24 hours is the same as series 11. And you are comparing to series 10, not 11, that already had this improvement.
I do not work out 10 hours a day, so that number is literally meaningless/pointless.
The audio note taking feature is extremely off-putting to me and can't believe it was so prominently showcased.
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.
The video demo is so strange. A waitress spoke too fast - just act like a normal person and politely ask them to repeat themselves, instead of reading a transcription on your watch. My goodness.
https://youtu.be/Pe2ugye7Ya4?si=qhGPselIm7sZkXyP&t=558 (
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.
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As someone whose hearing has been degrading fast, this sounds like a feature that would be immensely useful. At some point you get tired of asking everyone to repeat themselves and start guessing by context (you've probably seen an old family member do this).
And even if it weren't super weird and creepy, it's 15 seconds, right? So what, that waitress rolledup, read the menu for less than 10 seconds, and then zoomed away, giving you a couple of seconds to get to and run the replay?
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That's how you know no one in charge has a real life, they're all so disconnected from the reality of the bottom 90% that they think this is how we live.
Same with the "airpod live translation" thing, they probably spent more time implementing/testing it than the feature has been used in real life
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It feels like a made for TV ad for accessibility.
It's so funny how the HN crowd is so quick to shout down people who are ableist sometimes, and so quick to BE ableist sometimes.
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What is a normal person?
I kept thinking they were revealing glasses the way they gave a feature list before describing the item in question.
oh man, you have not been keeping up with the anti-social joneses.
Interactiving with people is so pre-covid!
Apple Watches have had an audio recorder app for years and no-one cares. Sometimes people are just looking for a reason to be offended.
You'd be shocked what the suite of sensors in the smartphone 99% of the population has in their pocket can do.
If I learned that someone I've been speaking to for a while was recording the conversation using the audio recorder app on their phone, I'd find that extremely creepy.
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People have plenty of conversations where if one party intentionally chose to record it, it would be big violation of trust.
This is basically just "always on" recording/transcribing that people have to intentionally remember to turn off, that's a pretty big difference.
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My first thought was 2-party state violations, 24/7? However, any legally-minded people want to explain how they threaded the needle on this?
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://security.apple.com/blog/private-cloud-compute/
It really depends on what you consider a recording. If audio is streamed though a transcription engine and never saved in a way that could be replayed, it's hard to argue that a recording has been made. The live audio was transcribed.
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This is exactly what I was thinking too. How can this be legal in 2-party states?
The 2 party state thing is for phone calls. Outside of phone calls, you are generally allowed to record anything you can legally hear, same as you can photograph anything you can legally see.
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There's some more details on privacy at the bottom of the page:
> 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
Yeah, even more weird was when they highlighted the privacy aspect of it. Sure, it maintains the wearer's privacy, just not that of anyone around them.
In what way does this violate the privacy of anyone around them? It doesn't even store audio recordings, which is something every smartphone has been able to do for 20 years.
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Tell us everything, what happens on tour stays on tour - sure. Just approve that your data is - of course - anonymously used to train AI and regarding intelligence agencies or AI Acts: well, it is not us, it is them. Law is law, you know. We won't tell you anyway.
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.
It maintains everyone’s privacy.
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.
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While I instinctively dislike any "secretly spying" devices, phones could do that for a while now. I wouldn’t have much use for my watch doing it, but my nephew swears by taking notes on an ipad with an app that has a sort of a playback: essentially a play bar that recreates the note as it is written, with audio included. Being able to playback the lecture afterwards that way is a huge benefit over pure notes and I wish I had something like that when I was in school.
Friction makes all the difference. Google used to sweat over 100ms in page loading.
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.
There's a difference between "weird people could choose to do this creepy thing and violate my trust" and "not weird people could forget to turn off this slightly less creepy thing and still violate my trust" Both of these suck, but honestly I don't appreciate that Apple is making me feel uneasy talking around my friends with Apple Watches. Not because I don't trust my friends, but because now it takes extra work for them to not do something kinda creepy.
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> It's made even worse by the fact that [...] their external designs are unchanged from past ones, so there's no way to tell who's always listening to everything
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.
Same. I hope Apple doesn't kill AirPods for me the same way they just did the Apple Watch. I like those.
I just assume everything in public is audio/video recorded. In most places that's perfectly legal (with some exceptions). I don't think people should expect privacy in public. We faced the same panic about photographs when mobile phones started getting cameras. With some notable problems, everyone accepted it and moved on. The utility we get from cameras in phones is worth far more than the privacy violations which occur. The same thing is going to happen with this technology (and smart glasses).
I don't believe it. Photography was invented by non-Big Tech, and was widely popular and useful before Big Tech adopted it.
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.
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It's the first iteration of what will eventually be an on-device Siri/openclaw that not only has full access to your messages/docs/emails/life, but also has live audio access to what's going on around you.
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.
This is a step down the road to having an AI "presence" or entity that's always digesting sensory data, just like a human.
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More detail/discussion on the passive audio recording and transcription/summarization features:
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 very creepy, I'm afraid it'll be normalised in a few years, together with the cameras in our glasses.
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.
It makes a chime when enabled and only stays on for 15 second increments.
The degree to which people are going apeshit over this is absolutely absurd. People need to get a grip.
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I wonder if this feature will make people wary of Apple watch wearers.
It will make me as wary as I am around people that wear those little AI notetaker/recorders, so, very. At least with those it's a single use device that you can spot, now any Apple Watch could be listening, fun!
I don't know if this will be the common reaction, but after seeing this I've made a mental note to not discuss anything private with anyone wearing an Apple Watch. Makes me suspicious of iPhones, too, after years of defending them and saying that 'technology is always listening' is a silly conspiracy
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You should need to come up with a derogatory name for people wearing apple watches like Glasshole for people with google glass
Apple Watch Spy
Apple Watch Tattletale
Apple Informer
Watchholes
iSnitches
You would be aghast to spend any time in tech these days. I would wager more than 20% of the people in this field right now are wearing devices which record everything they say in every conversation and ship it directly to a transcription LLM and into some other tools. Go to SV and I bet this number jumps to nearer to 30-40%
It will stop arguments between partners "you said this week ago, now you say this" okay honey, let's compare our transcripts.
This is exactly the plot of the Black Mirror episode "The entire history of you"
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2089050/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Truth_of_Fact,_the_Truth_o...
Ted Chiang (author of Arrival) wrote about this
Looking forward to it!
“These features do not create or store audio recordings, and raw audio used for processing is completely inaccessible to the operating systems, apps, the user, or Apple. This is because the S11 chip on Apple Watch Series 12 includes Secure Exclave, a dedicated hardware-isolated compartment that processes audio in complete isolation from the rest of the system, then immediately deletes it.”
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.
So I took issue with the automated note taking of conversations and didn't mention audio recordings. No mention of using Google or Facebook either.
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I mean it's nonsense, apple can update the "secure exclave" software at any time to exfiltrate the audio if they want or get ordered to.
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?
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It’s great for exposing people abusing their authority by making off the record demands that they know are not kosher.
It's so creepy. So their watch is now always recording audio, and the rumors say that their next generation of AirPods Pro will gain cameras.
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.
You can simply not talk if you don't want people to listen?
I think most people want to talk and have only the person they are talking to listen.
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FTA: “Apple Watch Series 12 now offers the most accurate step tracking of any smartwatch.12 The S11 chip also enables the brand-new Steps complication, so users can track their steps in real time, right from their watch face”
That must mean they’re very confident about the accuracy. I look forward to reviewers trying to beat their detection model.
Apple Watch is hitting diminishing returns feature-wise. I'm happy with my Series 11 but "it has more accurate heart sensors" isn't really revolutionary, and I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways.
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.
Having had an Apple Watch since the Series 0, I think Apple wants people to have a ~3-year upgrade cycle. They essentially update the internals one year, the next they come out with some interesting software features, then the next year they do some external design tweaks. Then they repeat.
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 dunno. Maybe there's a sense in which there's some untapped use cases out there that Apple needs to go figure out. But in a different sense, the idea that I buy a watch that lasts for years and I don't feel like I'm missing out in the meantime...sounds fine?
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...)
> With fast charging, battery life hasn't been an issue
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.
I regularly do long races like marathons and 20 mile trail races and have never had to charge my watch during those events and I am often even streaming music/podcasts from the watch. With an Ultra you should be able to easily do a 12 hour hike.
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I'm very close to selling my S10. I barely use it. All the features are sort of nice to have. The only one I really care about is heart rate monitoring during exercise and the AirPods Pro 3 do that.
Meanwhile Coros Pace 4, a 200 dollar watch, has 40 hours of GPS tracking and offline map. I simply can not understand the pricing strategy of Apple. Do they really expect people who are serious about endurance sports and training to get their ridiculously expensive Ultra? Or they are just fine with Garmin taking the biggest chunk of this market?
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>You don’t have reasonable access to a charger during a marathon or a long hike
Isn't this the market they made the Ultra for?
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Did a long bike ride recently and just used my iPhone to track the workout. Probably suboptimal, since it doesn't have all the heart rate stuff, but it gets the big picture (elevation gain, speed, distance).
> ... and I believe some of the Apple Intelligence features will be backported anyways
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'm still on a Series 6. Don't see a reason to buy the new one at all.
Mine got slow with the latest update. I stopped wearing it mostly and I don’t think I will get another smart watch. I’m more tempted by those screen less fitness tracker pucks.
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.
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I was hoping we might get multi-day battery life this iteration. Fast charging is almost as good.
I think it might be time to upgrade from my series 8.
The way faster higher measurement rate is interesting and does open up entirely new use cases.
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.
This. It’s stepping into Whoop’s territory with always on heart rate reading.
And the Ultra series have been marginally incremental, emphasis on marginally. They announced that Ultra series 1 software support is ending this year, but I just cannot justify buying another one of these at $800.
I mean, there's only so much that a watch can do or that can be packed into it. Eventually all gadget categories fall into a lull of slow and steady progress, they can't all be absolute bangers year after year
On what legal footing does this recap feature stand? In fairly certain there are a non-zero amount of laws prohibiting audio recording without consent. And this wrist mounted always listening thing is likely to end up in a lot of places it should not. Probably burried in the end user agreement that it is 100% the users fault.
> On what legal footing does this recap feature stand?
It's not a crime if you do it with AI.
Instant in-memory transcription likely isn't legally considered the same as storing the actual audio. It probably couldn't be used as proof in a court like audio could (for now...).
Probably not, but contemporaneous notes have their own value legally.
It produces "high level summaries" so it's perhaps legally akin to note-taking rather than audio recording?
I wonder how long before we see how well these summaries hold up in court.
[dead]
It isn't recording or storing audio, so laws against audio recording don't apply.
That really bothers me. It might be legal for Apple to do this but it's still creepy as fuck.
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.
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Transcriptions count if you’re using them to intercept and record oral communications between others.
The recording doesn’t have to be audio to violate the Federal Wiretap Act.
I am not sure who and why came up with this looks like a mass surveillance to me.
It’s to compete with all the failed AI wearables with the same features.
I was saying the same to my friend.
PA has very strict two party consent wiretap laws I'm not sure this feature would clear.
I imagine it was ran past their likely large legal department.
You imagine so but it would be difficult to imagine a situation where Apple would be liable, so their level of concern would be much lower.
Otherwise, manufacturers of digital voice recorders, etc., would also be fearful.
IANAL but my guess is that they're leaning heavily into the fact that the feature just generates transcripts and does not persist any audio recordings.
Yes, many states in the U.S. have recording laws that prohibit only one party giving consent to record. Aka: I give consent but the other party may not in which case it could be illegal.
Seems like it’s not recording, you can’t access an audio recording.
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
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Moved to Garmin.
Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.
Counterintutively, that didn't work out well for me. When the watch has ample power to make it through one day, but not two, I just put it on my schedule of daily rituals. Usually just throw it on the charger while I take a shower. But when the battery life is measured in weeks, I don't build any sort of habit like that and I end up finding out about it the hard way. My ideal watch never runs out in a single day and charges fast enough that during my shower it will get me through the next day. Based on the stats of the Series 12, it would probably fit the bill.
Just continue to charge your Garmin when you take a shower. I don’t understand why you need to change your habits. Are you worried about making the battery full at longer durations causing degradation? A smartwatch is fundamentally a disposable piece of electronics that last a few years.
The garmin has so much battery life that when it's at 10% and starts complaining that the battery is close to dying I still have about 2 days to remember to charge it.
And obviously you don't get penalised for charging it more often. Just charge it every Sunday if routine is a big issue.
I had the exact same experience. Charging an Apple Watch is a routine thing, charging a garmin is an infrequent annoyance.
And like the other commenter says, I could just fix my habits. But no, that’s not how my brain works
I am currently using both an apple watch SE 2 and a garmin vivoactive 5 simultaneously. Even if the Garmin has better battery life, I don't really like it for 2 reasons: - the round watch UI is ugly and doesn't work with the other UI elements. Also I don't mind using a squared watch, I like it. My Casio is also square-ish. - the UX is terrible, the customization is terrible. The default watch faces are all quite ugly, and the Garmin app makes the customization experience even worse.
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.
Same.
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.
From what I’ve heard, this is actually a problem with the exposed OS level api’s provided by Apple. Other manufacturers have solved this with on device workarounds. Doesn’t make it better though. I resorted to only the system only notifications (Phone, Texts).
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I was on the Ultra for 18 months or so and came away from it feeling like a much less powerful and capable Garmin is much nicer as a daily watch. I found myself wanting to find reasons/excuses to justify the Ultra. Ultimately I couldn't, and it wasn't worth its cost, charging schedule, and lack of battery life.
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.
I think a large percentage of your problem might be that you bought the most expensive model. Was the Ultra really the one to get?
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.
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I was recently looking for a new running watch but couldn't for the life of me figure out what Garmin's higher end watches do to justify being over $1000. Like, ok, better battery life... but besides that?
For workout tracking depending on your sport the Garmin is way better- for swimming the lap counter and for hiking the trail maps on Garmin gets more granular and better for tracking. For skiing the altitude tracking and vertical distance is better on the Garmin.
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!
In one social group I am part of, Garmin just became the new trend. Watches have historically been status symbols even more than they are functional. Someone drops a few hundred/thousand/whatever and then brags about the newest new and how they are on it, then others move over to keep up.
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.
Better running metrics. Maps. On-device routing. Longer battery life.
> 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.
I had one of the first really cheap Xiaomi Smart Watches for 6 years and by the end a single charge lasted 2 weeks. Switched to an Apple Watch and 1 year in it lasts a single day, stopped wearing smart watches a few weeks ago, mainly due to this and just the fact that none of them look good imo.
Moved to Suunto, and I couldn't be happier.
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
Been using Suunto Run for a year and have been happy. The thing I mostly miss is Apple Pay and Runna compatibility. I usually have my phone with me for the former, and I'll be snagging the Race 3S when it supposedly launches in Oct.
Assuming you’re using the Garmin for fitness related reasons — are you really carrying your phone around with you for music? I guess it works if you bike?
Some clothes have this technology called "pockets".
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A lot of garmin watches let you download YT / Spotify or your own mp3s
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Moved from my ultra 2, to a simply casio gshock 5601u, could not be happier, I am so sick and tired of all the notifications, stats, blah blah blah following me all over, from my macbook, iphone, that I just don't need it on my watch as well. I just don't care anymore about tracking everything and uploading to strava, or whever, and this comes from someone that, have over 100k km's logged on strava. I know the vast majority of people love it, and I love stats as well, but all the connected devices, is just getting too much, I am activily trying to go more simple, offline, outside of work.
Apple killed support for three generations of Apple Watch hardware with its latest OS update: Series 6, Series 7, Series 8, and the original Apple Watch Ultra. So much for its commitment to the environment, perfectly capable hardware is being sent to the bin.
There's literally no new features on the watch. Adding in AI nonsense.
Am super salty about them killing support for the original Apple Watch Ultra. I, along with many others, bought it on launch day as both an Apple tragic / early adopter and to support what I thought was going to be an exciting new platform.
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.
Why sent to the bin? The devices still work. I recently used my series 3 for a couple of weeks and it worked surprisingly well.
I thought it was understood that Apple gives hardware 5 years.
If the watch still works with the current OS on it, what's the issue?
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I really just want an Apple version of the new Fitbit Air.
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.
Maybe it's just a general fatigue from AI, notifications, microphones, and cameras everywhere, but I'm pretty sure my next watch will be something from Germany or Switzerland containing springs and gears.
Don’t forget Japan! There’s some great Japanese mechanical watches. I’m a fan of the Seiko spring drive movement.
Right! I have been looking longingly in the direction of Grand Seiko.
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I went from an EV to my first manual car earlier this year for similar reasons I think
Yes but a Garmin is an upgrade.
Or Japan? Having digital accuracy and 10 year battery life is pretty nice.
My left wrist had formed an indent where I wore my se3. It was not worn tight, I tried different straps. In 6 months it looks like the tissue underneath has mostly moved away. I can feel my bone when I touch it. My right arm by contrast looks full like a regular arm.
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.
This is true of most objects that are constantly worn on your skin - my engineering ring has created a near-permanent indent in my pinky finger. It fades over time when it's not worn. It's an odd thing to hold against a wearable.
The marks will fade but this moves away tissue and I never faced this with any other watch. The dome always pushes in, the strap will further push in when you rotate your wrist especially the sports one. I don’t hate it but I do believe this should change, I paid a good amount for this and I willingly put it away.
Do you wear it to sleep as well?
Yes I fell for the collect all data trap. I wore it around 18 hrs at most. Honestly don’t think its worth it. I don’t know what to do with all the data it collects. Doesn’t even have good watch faces to tell the time atleast. Find my phone was useful though.
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Did it return to normal after you stopped wearing it? How long did it take?
It is only been a week. Already not having the sensor dome on it cleared out the marks.
Still doesn’t feel as full. I can feel the two tiny bones on top much better than my right one. The skin texture is different where I wore it.
I think Apple Watch is a great device for wearing to gym, to sleep, and somewhat during the day + occasional quick text reply maybe, and otherwise forgetting all about it, because the true value lies in what's being collected in the Health app. Stop trying to do things on it imo. Maybe there are a couple of useful things you can do, or if you're a runner, maybe you can leave your phone at home. I don't have these use cases, but it's valuable to me even without them.
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.
I ditched the screen and got a band with health metrics on it. Its tiny and comfy, no screens, only a wakeup buzz in the morning when I'm most able to wake apparently. Battery lasts maybe a week? Been great. Best of all no advertisements pinging me every few hours.
I wouldn't mind this (a ring is another option), but 1) you can disable notifications, which I tend to do and 2) the problem is that all independent experiments keep claiming that almost everything is inaccurate out there, and Apple Watch is one of the few surprisingly accurate ones, as compared to real medical equipment.
> Best of all no advertisements pinging me every few hours.
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.
Agree. Was really hoping for a Fitbit style band this year that just has a Siri button and Apple Pay. An iPod for your wrist perhaps.
I don't know. Apple marketing has been really effective at this health thing. Whereas, studies of continuous monitoring of eg heart with even better sensors and higher risk populations have shown conclusively no improvement in health outcomes.
I would have guessed the opposite.
Could you share a couple of these studies you are citing? Curious to read more.
Yeah, I only see anecdotal evidence of Apple Watch helping people: individual heavily-promoted stories.
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.
The only thing I've ever wanted is an apple watch that's thinner than the first one, my wrists are big enough I don't need a chonker. I don't care what time it is anyways
I wish they made it stupid thin. I wear my Whoop everyday, even sleep with it on. I could never do the same with an Apple Watch due to it's size but also due to the notification anxiety.
You can remove all notifications.
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 have a $20 smart fitness watch from Amazon which I use for sleep tracking, though it's a pretty capable watch. Much smaller than an Apple Watch and the battery lasts like 10 days on a charge. It connects to Apple Health and puts the heart rate / fitness / steps / sleep data in there.
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 think they really need a separate product that can have no screen or a minimal screen and ditches the need for app compatibility. Just selling the Apple Fitness features without the screen for apps would provide a lot of value and let them play with form factors and lower price points.
I am looking forward to 3rd party testing on most accurate heart rate. Because I have both Series 11 and Google Fitbit Air and the Air is so much better in everything, from accuracy, when to track and display of information.
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.
It'd be more accurate to make claims compared to the smartwatches listed in the study, than claiming it's the most accurate on the market.
> 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/
I have had many fitbits, but for my mom I purchased an Apple watch because it had sleep apnea notifications. I think that's essential for almost everyone.
I can't imagine why google would skip such a critical feature in Health Tracking.
Switched from apple to garmin to coros, not looking back. Coros blows everyone out of the water from a user experience standpoint, and they offer excellent value.
> Coros blows everyone out of the water from a user experience standpoint, and they offer excellent value.
Why? How?
Value for money, simple software not bloated compared to garmin, heart rate is on par with apple watch. They update their old devices with new features I think one of their models just got a software update for global mapping where you would need to pay extra to get a model with that feature from the competition. Devices could be better in terms of design and fit and finish in time they will get there I hope but overall they are doing pretty good stuff.
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Coros cannot reply to imessages, cannot add to reminders, cannot add to calendar, cannot place a call from the watch
Yeah, sounds amazing /s
This thread is becoming low level ragebait
It’s a more focused sports experience. I genuinely didn’t use the messaging or reminder or calendar features when I had an Apple Watch, so they are just bloat.
Phone can be used for that. No need for it on a watch
I wish they would make one without all the health crap. Drop the sensors and add more battery.
I only really care about a few things (besides telling the time):
I couldn't care less about all the health sensing stuff, I have to take it out when I work out because it's either in the way or would break.
That’s where you just get the SE on the cheap and don’t use the health stuff.
The battery life isn’t an issue, especially for the kind of light use you describe. Charge it when you sleep.
Had Apple not made the transcript/rewind feature a top line feature but put it down in an accessibility feature, I wonder if it would have changed the perception. I'm actually surprised they didn't do this as this is how they tend to test features before wider rollout.
Looks like Apple Watch Series 12 still doesn't have dual frequency GPS. Makes it a hard sell for someone who wants to use it as a running watch.
As much as I hate to say it, the most accurate GPS in a watch is the new Pixel Watch from Google, and its accuracy comes from uploading the GPS signal to Google to do building-aware post processing using Google’s database of worldwide buildings to solve the multi-path issue, plus DGNSS. Simply having dual frequency isn’t enough when you run on the streets of New York City. With Google’s solution, it can even detect which side of the sidewalk you are on while running.
I’m just not aware of any method that can do this without uploading your data to the cloud.
There's the Japanese approach of deploying a dense cluster of satellites above one geographical area (QZSS), but of course that only works in the areas those satellites are above.
The main reason I stopped using an Apple Watch is the lackluster battery life; in this series Apple claims 10 hours of battery life for outdoor workouts but without an iPhone. How is that realistic? If I’m going out for a hourlong run perhaps I don’t bring my iPhone, but I’m doing a multihour outdoor workout I would surely bring my phone, and certainly the extra Bluetooth communication would decrease battery life. It’s a silly metric.
The watch gets worse battery life without a phone - it offloads a ton of stuff to your phone via low power Bluetooth when the phone is nearby…
Not when you are working out. Instead, the presence of a phone means vibrating for notifications.
Very creepy. I don't like it
I was actually quite impressed with the AI note-taking and other features, and I could see myself using them, so I did like that.
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?"
> The problem with these kind of wearables today is this is just not very actionable.
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.
There are legal prohibitions against one-sided recording in some states (for example, mine).
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.
This thread is just PR people from other watch brands astroturfing.
Funny, because literally every single apple product page gets posted as "news" to HN and every time I see one I think it's just apple marketing astroturfing. Especially since most of the product updates the last few years seem to fall into the, "BUT SHE'S GOT A NEW HAT" territory.
The watches I wear are mechanical, and most of them are older than I am, made by companies that no longer exist!
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.
That was my same thought! Brands I have never heard of that can't make a call, send messages or add a reminder popping up like they invented sliced bread.
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
I think it's 2 different end-consumers. Apple targets "watch on my arm", garmin targets fitness tracker that happens to do a few watch things (notifications, payments, some limited messaging).
Those are Apple-imposed limitations. The EU just forced them to open that part up recently.
"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
I sometime joke we would oneday wear an always-on recorder and be happy about that. Looklike today is that day
I can't imagine not having a Garmin watch! Battery life and ability to forget I have it on constantly is a main feature for me
It seems absolutely ridiculous to have to recharge a watch everyday and I've read sleep tracking on the apple watch is suboptimal.
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.
Do you wear your watch in the shower?
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.
When I saw the part where the guy records the waitress and then re-reading the transcript. FFS just talk to them like a regular human being. If you did this to me I would just be supremely grossed out.
I’m way too unc for this. I’m out. I’m officially done with “tech”.
Wanted to look at the study's data, but the link seems to be broken. https://www.apple.com/HRAccuracy/
It works fine now.
Every single AW I’ve owned has this weird problem: when I go for a run it often doesn’t show my HR even after 10 mins, sometimes even longer. Super irritating.
Series 12 may finally fix that for you. They mention that the new heart rate sensors handle motion better.
I’m in Europe with an Ultra 2
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.
Honestly, the killer smartwatch feature for me is being able to quickly click a button to find my iPhone. Everything else I use it for feels like I'm just trying to justify spending hundreds of dollars on it. I record all my workouts and my sleep patterns etc., but I never use that data for anything. I wish I could buy a $10 digital watch that also had a "find my iPhone" button.
Casio WSB1000 is probably the cheapest with phone pinging ability, but it's about $40.
The best thing I ever did was buy an e-paper display watch (pebble) which lasts weeks not hours.
the best thing I ever did was get rid of my collection of 41 watches and stop wearing one. my phone already has the time. I don't need a watch
Watches are fashion, for most people, rather than a necessity.
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.
Anyone know how/why this one can take so many more HRV measurements? I mean the other ones can. What makes this one take more often? Guessing they are just setting it to do more. This is one thing that really annoys me is that it will go 4-6 hours without taking any measurements. When I am sitting down working etc.
I tried Google”s new Fitbit for a couple days but it only does them at night!!
they keep doubling down on HRV metrics
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
Staying with Garmin just for amazingly long battery life… and instinct series has solar too
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Idk, if you check the profiles of the people posting, these would be pretty expensive shills. I genuinely think it's just happy customers.
And to pile on, I switched to Garmin a few years ago after a pixel watch and a galaxy watch, and it's night and day. Battery life, and it's built to actually work offline well (global maps, and all of the tracking).
No chance those are organic?
If you are in the market for a multi hundred dollar watch, you must have considered the Garmin and Apple offering for non-time features. Surely some of those people are happy to share their decision.
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What features is Garmin missing, though? It seems to have most of the stuff you get with an Apple watch and IMHO the Apple watch is objectively exceptionally ugly compared to almost all smartwatches except the more garish "sports" themed ones.
Apple needs to move the health data storage, at least optionally, to the home pod/apple tv. My phone is my main interface, but it's not the only interface. And many of the devices that interface with the health app are not mobile. My blood pressure monitor, my bathroom scale. Test results from my doctor. And so on. These should be synced/stored on either my home device and exposed through an app on my phone/desktop/laptop.
oh come on, i bought my series 11 last week!
i'm going to miss out on all those amazing new features, like... an improved heart rate variability measurement
> 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.
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?
Disappointing. Instead of making battery life better that would benefit all of the Apple Watch users, here are some random AI features that most of you never gonna usa, and some new colors.
Even if they’re just matching battery life while adding frequent HRV readings, they’ve made a big advancement. Frequent HRV is a requirement to be a WHOOP/Garmin competitor.
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.
As someone that has had heart issues, their continued improvements there will keep me a loyal customer for a very long time to come.
Its position as a health device is underrated in tech circles. As we tech savvy generations age there’s a big market there.
I have hearth issues too, and the metrics Apple provides still do not help detecting them. Not to mention that there is no improvement of their high blood pressure detection. So despite the marketing that they have the most accurate sensor, there is no real advancement here.
Relying on an Apple Watch instead of a proper medical device if you're having heart issues is, well, uh... There's a reason an Apple Watch isn't a medical device.
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It puts the AI on its wrist or it gets the hose again.
Battery life is better.
> 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
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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)
No, it’s not. 24 hours is the same as series 11. And you are comparing to series 10, not 11, that already had this improvement. I do not work out 10 hours a day, so that number is literally meaningless/pointless.
The iPhone 18 Pro and the Airpods are equally dissapointing. Even the folding iPhone is nothing special.