Thanks to a high gift-card balance that grew this year, I recently bought an Apple Watch. (I’m already in the Apple eco-system, so despite preferring the round form of competitors, it made sense to stay with Apple for this.)
Disclaimer: I grew up wearing wristwatches in the 1960s. Was gifted a Timex on my sixth birthday. Bought another Timex with a classic Speidel twist-o-flex band when I was nine — I loved that band more than the watch. (Might buy one for the Apple Watch, as they’re still in business...) Bought a Texas Instruments LED watch in high school — a cheap black plastic case; you had to press a button to see the time, in tiny red numbers. I’ve never spent Big Money on a watch, but I did buy a few geeky Casios in the 1990s — my favorite showed the relative positions of every planet in our solar system, plus Halley’s comet. (You could run the year forward by holding down a button, and watch the planets dance. That watch saved my sanity during some very boring office meetings.)
So you’d think I was a natural to buy a smart watch? But no, I’ve been skeptical. For one, most are expensive compared to what I used to spend on watches. For another, most are sold as extensions of your cell phone, and I’m not a heavy phone user.
One thing I do enjoy about this one, is the activity reminders and tracking. Good to be reminded to get up and walk around. I could’ve had that for less money in a FitBit etc though.
One thing I’ve absolutely grown used to already, is that my Watch auto-unlocks my Macs when I touch the keyboard. Yay, a few seconds saved!
I do like being able to customize the watch faces with different apps — I use Dark Skies for weather predictions and alerts, and I love having a calculator with tip calculations (including splitting a check N-ways) on my wrist now (though it’ll be awhile before I can safely dine out to need the latter, alas).
For those of you with a smart watch, what do you have? Has it met your expectations? Exceeded? In what ways?
Disclaimer: I grew up wearing wristwatches in the 1960s. Was gifted a Timex on my sixth birthday. Bought another Timex with a classic Speidel twist-o-flex band when I was nine — I loved that band more than the watch. (Might buy one for the Apple Watch, as they’re still in business...) Bought a Texas Instruments LED watch in high school — a cheap black plastic case; you had to press a button to see the time, in tiny red numbers. I’ve never spent Big Money on a watch, but I did buy a few geeky Casios in the 1990s — my favorite showed the relative positions of every planet in our solar system, plus Halley’s comet. (You could run the year forward by holding down a button, and watch the planets dance. That watch saved my sanity during some very boring office meetings.)
So you’d think I was a natural to buy a smart watch? But no, I’ve been skeptical. For one, most are expensive compared to what I used to spend on watches. For another, most are sold as extensions of your cell phone, and I’m not a heavy phone user.
One thing I do enjoy about this one, is the activity reminders and tracking. Good to be reminded to get up and walk around. I could’ve had that for less money in a FitBit etc though.
One thing I’ve absolutely grown used to already, is that my Watch auto-unlocks my Macs when I touch the keyboard. Yay, a few seconds saved!
I do like being able to customize the watch faces with different apps — I use Dark Skies for weather predictions and alerts, and I love having a calculator with tip calculations (including splitting a check N-ways) on my wrist now (though it’ll be awhile before I can safely dine out to need the latter, alas).
For those of you with a smart watch, what do you have? Has it met your expectations? Exceeded? In what ways?
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