Yet another Hacker News

104 points Lealen 1 hour ago 91 comments

zsoltkacsandi 1 hour ago | parent

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.

recursive 1 hour ago | parent

It puts the AI on its wrist or it gets the hose again.

afavour 1 hour ago | parent

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.

well_ackshually 1 hour ago | parent

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.

afavour 1 hour ago | parent

Consider for a moment that I and my doctor know my medical situation better than you do.

(it is, by the way, an FDA approved class 2 medical device…)

zsoltkacsandi 1 hour ago | parent

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.

nxc18 1 hour ago | parent

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.

t-writescode 1 hour ago | parent

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

—

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)

zsoltkacsandi 1 hour ago | parent

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.

sccxy 1 hour ago | parent

Moved to Garmin.

Maybe less powerful but battery life is the most important feature for me.

embedding-shape 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

rootusrootus 1 hour ago | parent

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.

gekoxyz 58 seconds ago | parent

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.

steve_adams_86 1 hour ago | parent

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.

vrosas 1 hour ago | parent

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?

shantara 1 hour ago | parent

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

thoughtpalette 37 minutes ago | parent

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.

atomflunder3000 1 hour ago | parent

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.

drewg123 51 minutes ago | parent

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.

constantinum 1 hour ago | parent

Staying with Garmin just for amazingly long battery life… and instinct series has solar too

m3kw9 1 hour ago | parent

lots of Garmin paid marketing shills popping up, 80% of the posts are so far "Keeping my Garmin because of battery". Ok i'm keeping my casio and is even longer battery life and it tells the time.

0cf8612b2e1e 1 hour ago | parent

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.

xur17 1 hour ago | parent

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).

qwytw 1 hour ago | parent

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.

minimaxir 1 hour ago | parent

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.

CodingJeebus 1 hour ago | parent

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.

HumblyTossed 1 hour ago | parent

> ... 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.

jsbisviewtiful 1 hour ago | parent

> 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.

toasterlovin 53 minutes ago | parent

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).

Brendinooo 1 hour ago | parent

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...)

throwuxiytayq 54 minutes ago | parent

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.

Gshaheen 1 hour ago | parent

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.

runjake 1 hour ago | parent

> Coros blows everyone out of the water from a user experience standpoint, and they offer excellent value.

Why? How?

vulk 1 hour ago | parent

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.

runjake 39 minutes ago | parent

Is sync pretty seamless?

r0fl 1 hour ago | parent

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

kylestanfield 32 minutes ago | parent

Phone can be used for that. No need for it on a watch

robviren 1 hour ago | parent

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.

jdm2212 1 hour ago | parent

It produces "high level summaries" so it's perhaps legally akin to note-taking rather than audio recording?

CodingJeebus 1 hour ago | parent

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.

doublepg23 1 hour ago | parent

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.

vulk 1 hour ago | parent

I am not sure who and why came up with this looks like a mass surveillance to me.

owldown 1 hour ago | parent

It isn't recording or storing audio, so laws against audio recording don't apply.

corvad 1 hour ago | parent

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.

akmarinov 58 minutes ago | parent

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

tencentshill 58 minutes ago | parent

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...).

cael450 42 minutes ago | parent

Probably not, but contemporaneous notes have their own value legally.

kccqzy 1 hour ago | parent

Things like the readiness score are long available on competitor smartwatches as well as third-party apps on the App Store.

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.

vavooom 1 hour ago | parent

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

vrosas 1 hour ago | parent

This thread is just PR people from other watch brands astroturfing.

jotux 1 hour ago | parent

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.

r0fl 1 hour ago | parent

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

tencentshill 56 minutes ago | parent

Those are Apple-imposed limitations. The EU just forced them to open that part up recently.

hakunin 1 hour ago | parent

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.

the_sleaze_ 1 hour ago | parent

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.

hakunin 1 hour ago | parent

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.

throwuxiytayq 46 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

doctorpangloss 47 minutes ago | parent

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.

corvad 1 hour ago | parent

Wanted to look at the study's data, but the link seems to be broken. https://www.apple.com/HRAccuracy/

adithyassekhar 1 hour ago | parent

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.

aurareturn 1 hour ago | parent

Do you wear it to sleep as well?

adithyassekhar 1 hour ago | parent

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.

throaway743838 1 hour ago | parent

Did it return to normal after you stopped wearing it? How long did it take?

adithyassekhar 50 minutes ago | parent

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.

ProfessorLayton 1 hour ago | parent

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.

jjcob 1 hour ago | parent

I wonder if this feature will make people wary of Apple watch wearers.

arrowleaf 54 minutes ago | parent

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

tpmoney 35 minutes ago | parent

“Always listening” in the way people have been conspiratorially claiming your phone is listening to show you ads is silly.

Always listening in that the owner could run an application that could be recording them and you on the other hand has been a possibility since pretty much day one.

matthewfcarlson 32 minutes ago | parent

That's a good point, anyone with a smart phone could trivial have a voice recorder going all day and run it through whisper

mikeocool 49 minutes ago | parent

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.

generalizations 31 minutes ago | parent

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.

LeoPanthera 31 minutes ago | parent

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.

revolvingthrow 31 minutes ago | parent

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.

tomwphillips 8 minutes ago | parent

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.

parl_match 2 minutes ago | parent

It feels like a made for TV ad for accessibility.

clint 2 minutes ago | parent

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%

tills13 1 hour ago | parent

The best thing I ever did was buy an e-paper display watch (pebble) which lasts weeks not hours.

jjcob 1 hour ago | parent

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.

bstsb 1 hour ago | parent

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

juancn 1 hour ago | parent

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):

    - notifications
    - unlocking a Mac on proximity
    - Apple Pay
    - alarms
    - skipping a song

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.

akmarinov 1 hour ago | parent

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.

nkotov 1 hour ago | parent

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.

stetrain 58 minutes ago | parent

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.

ck2 52 minutes ago | parent

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

mchusma 51 minutes ago | parent

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?"

symkat 18 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

nanook 47 minutes ago | parent

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.

cael450 45 minutes ago | parent

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.

ksec 38 minutes ago | parent

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.

saxenaabhi 24 minutes ago | parent

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.

spike021 25 minutes ago | parent

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.