Living with the Apple Watch
Apple’s sleep tracking features have been pushing in this direction for a while, and the addition of sleep apnea detection last fall really pushed it over the edge. You don’t have to wear your Apple Watch overnight, but Apple really wants you to.
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Surprisingly, having the watch on my wrist while I sleep has not been an issue. I was worried it would be bulky and distracting, but I got used to it almost immediately. And to my surprise and delight, I’ve found that I vastly prefer being tapped on my wrist as an alarm in the morning over being played a noisy chime.
[…] last night I woke up at 3 a.m. and couldn’t get back to sleep for a while, and thank goodness that’s been logged. But I struggle to find anything actionable to do with this data.
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Sleep apnea detection and elevated breathing irregularities were the areas I was most interested in, because I am a snorer with seasonal allergies. The good news: Apple told me I probably didn’t have sleep apnea!
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In the end, I appreciate the Apple Watch platform mostly for relaying messages, tracking my workouts, and playing podcasts to my AirPods when I’m walking or running with my dog (without bringing my iPhone along).
I appreciate Jason’s takes on the Apple Watch, especially trying it out for sleeping.
With an Apple Watch Ultra I’ve found that charging it when I first wake up is usually enough, so that by the time I’m ready to get started for work it’s back up to 80%.
The main reason I switched to sleeping with it was to also find out if I have sleep apnea. It seems I don’t. Though I’m stil suspicious.
Knowing how many hours I slept is interesting, but generally goes one of two ways. Either I feel I didn’t slept well, and am able to confirm my suspicions—in which case the data doesn’t really do me any good—or I find that I didn’t sleep much, even if I feel ok. Again, I don’t know what to do with that.
Vitals are also useless. They’re unclear, and when shown on the Apple Watch face fully inscrutable.
The Apple Watch, for me, is a device for knowing the time, capturing songs on Shazaam, checking the temperature and weather, and knowing what date it is. Beyond that I don’t use it for much else. There’s plenty of other things I’d wish to do with it, but so many things are unavailable or take too long.
Whenever I’m hoping to use the software beyond those basic functions I find it takes me 2-3 taps and a few swipes to do anything. At that point I might as well pull out my phone.
Take skipping a podcast chapter or skipping a song (which is done easily on AirPods). It seems easy enough, but I never quite know which buttons to tap without looking at the screen and really comprehending what I’m doing.
This shouldn’t be so hard.
The Apple Watch is intended—in my view—for quick glances and quick actions The times I am most likely to use it are when the phone—for whatever reason—isn’t readily available. If I’m driving and want to switch the song I can’t afford to take my eyes off the road. But I could glance down at my Watch and double tap an action, or quickly tap a single button, then it would become an invaluable part of my life. Same with washing dishes or carrying in groceries, there’s times I want to do just a single action, but the watch fails me.
Also, I’ve complained about double tap before—it’s an amazing idea of a feature that fails in any practical use.
All my griping would be the perfect use case for a UI based on artificial intelligence (not Apple Intelligence) that change the buttons and interface based on the most obvious action I’m likely to take next.
All that said, I still enjoy wearing my Apple Watch—and for the first time in my life find putting it on each day more valuable than not wearing it (or actually sleeping with it at night, though turned around to the inside). Much of my enjoyment of the device, though, comes from the hardware. The software does some basic things well, but there’s so much more I want from it.
Via Six Colors.