Apple Watch without iPhone capabilities Ping!
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Posted on 04/20/2015 3:22:57 PM PDT by Swordmaker
he Apple Watch is, first and foremost, an iPhone accessory. It might be even more than that eventually, a truly independent gadget, but a vast majority of its current core functions -- making calls, sending messages, getting information, even playing any third-party games -- require your iPhone to be on, have Internet service, and be paired with the Watch via Bluetooth or a shared Wi-Fi network. If you're thinking about getting one, make sure you know that. It requires an iPhone 5 or later, and it can't even be set up without one.
Still, the Apple Watch can do a few things without your iPhone around -- more than I even realized. I left my iPhone behind and went for a stroll with just the Apple Watch to try it out.
Here's everything the Apple Watch can do when away from your iPhone:
Music
The Apple Watch has 6.2GB of available storage, of which 2GB can be used to store music. You sync music with Apple Watch via your iPhone and the Apple Watch app, no Mac or iTunes required (but, the music must be on your phone in the Music app, or in iTunes in the Cloud). Once your music is synced, you're free to listen as long you have a pair of Bluetooth headphones. I paired a few sets easily via the Apple Watch's Bluetooth settings: the ones I tested in the video above were the Plantronics BackBeat Fit, a highly-rated comfy pair of fitness-targeted wraparound wireless sport earbuds. In the Apple Watch Music app, you need to Force Press and select "Source" as Apple Watch. Once that awkward step is done, music plays just like on an iPod.
Fitness
Apple has two built-in fitness apps called Activity and Workout, and both work away from the iPhone. You can measure heart rate, too. Activity tracks steps, time spent standing, and active exercise. Workout allows timed exercise sessions that measure pace, distance, heart rate, and calorie burn estimates for various activities. The only thing you can't do away from your iPhone is track your walk or run with GPS: that requires your iPhone. Third-party fitness apps can't be used away from your iPhone, either. In fact, all third-party apps -- those not created by Apple -- need an iPhone connection to work.
Apple Pay
Once you set up a credit card for Apple Pay to work on Apple Watch, it keeps working even when your iPhone is not attached. Double-click the flat side button, and you can tap to pay at any Apple Pay-ready store. It's easy to use and addictive. If the watch is taken off your wrist, you'll need to enter a passcode to use it again. Because Apple Pay doesn't use your actual credit card number, you can cancel it from your iPhone and deactivate your Apple Watch's Apple Pay function, even if the watch isn't online at all.
Passbook
You can store boarding passes, tickets and gift cards in Passbook in the form of QR codes, and it's a great alternative to Apple Pay for a lot of stores and services. It's easy to open your cards and tickets, and QR codes even get brighter when you display them, for easy scanning.
Photos
There's a small photo album app on the Apple Watch that stores up to 500 photos from your phone library or iCloud. It's hard to see pics on the small screen, but it's a cute replacement for the itty-bitty wallet photo.
Alarms, timers, world clock, stopwatch...and watch faces
Apple has several timer and clock apps apart from the stylized watch faces, which also work when your iPhone is disconnected and offline. You can use Apple Watch like a full-featured chronograph and watch, or as an alarm clock. And of course, you can use Apple's own beautiful watch faces, too, which will still tell time.
Reading messages, recent calls and even offline voice mails
You can't make phone calls away from your phone, but you can see who's called recently, and read already-sent texts. Shockingly, you can even listen to voice mails! The Apple Watch syncs visual voice mail, and most of them will play back on my watch even with Airplane mode turned on. You won't be able to receive new messages without connecting your phone again, but at least you can browse missed connections.
That's it for now
Hopefully, someday, the Apple Watch will use its Wi-Fi antenna to get data on its own, or to pair with other devices like the Apple TV and Macs (it already has an Apple TV remote mode, but it's somewhat simple in its range of function).
In the meantime, you can experiment with the key features outlined above.
Thursday April 9, 2015 7:14 am PDT by Mitchel Broussard
Apple Watch Sport BlueA collection of major tech blogs yesterday published their in-depth reviews for the Apple Watch, one of which was Yahoo! Tech's David Pogue, whose opinion fell in line with most other sites, describing the Apple Watch as "light-years better" than any other smartwatch, but "you don't need one."
When discussing the Watch's tethering to an iPhone, Pogue reveals a few pieces of information about the Watch that Apple has yet to comment on in any promotional material for the wrist-worn device, mostly regarding some cellular-related functionality sans iPhone.
And here’s a surprising feature that Apple hasn’t said anything about previously: When the watch is in a known Wi-Fi hotspot, the watch can perform the most essential online functions even when your phone is completely dead, turned off, or absent. It can query Siri, for example, send and receive texts, and send/receive drawings and tap patterns to other watch owners. That’s impressive.
According to Pogue's week-long experience with the Apple Watch, even with the iPhone dead or turned off, his Watch could still perform these basic iPhone-reliant functions like sending and receiving texts and drawings. He never mentions actual phone calls, which are undoubtedly still reliant on full use of an iPhone.
Pogue also mentions the Watch's ability to communicate with an iPhone over both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, meaning the two devices can communicate indefinitely as long as they stay under the same Wi-Fi connection even when they're out of Bluetooth range, a previously known but still notable aspect of the Watch.
The Wall Street Journal's Apple Watch review makes a passing reference to Pogue's claim, though providing fewer details than Yahoo! Tech's piece. "The watch does work (a little) away from the phone," The Wall Street Journal's Geoffrey A. Fowler said. "When you’re around a known Wi-Fi network, the watch can tap directly into it."
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Thanks for the heads up
Cab you shower with it Mon?
Can you break a pistachio with it?
Does it have a Big Ben gong sound file?
I seriously doubt Wifey is gonna get one of these..
No matter how many jewels ya stuff on it.
Can =cab
Bow down to the God who is Apple.
bright pastel/powder blue.
holy fag factor five, captain!
Can it tell time?
That’s all I want.
I don't even have a smartphone. Nor I intend to get one. Oh well.
Read the article. Here, I'll quote the pertinent section:
Alarms, timers, world clock, stopwatch...and watch facesApple has several timer and clock apps apart from the stylized watch faces, which also work when your iPhone is disconnected and offline. You can use Apple Watch like a full-featured chronograph and watch, or as an alarm clock. And of course, you can use Apple's own beautiful watch faces, too, which will still tell time.
Reading the article always helps before making comments or asking questions.
Probably pretty limited gui because of the size. Maybe future versions will come with a holographic interface. Will it have the old style phone keypad for text entry? I used to have a watch with a keyboard and calculator.
Looks like they still make them.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=watch+with+a+calculator
Maybe it can be set up to shock your wrist on the hour and half hour. :)
Thanks, still won’t buy one.
Yes, and on Tue, and Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat, and Sun, too.
Can you break a pistachio with it?
Most likely you can, but I probably wouldn't.
Does it have a Big Ben gong sound file?
Give the App writers time and it will, if it doesn't already. Certainly it is possible. It might be a little bit irritating to your work mates, though.
I seriously doubt Wifey is gonna get one of these..
No matter how many jewels ya stuff on it.
That is entirely up to you. . . but Apple isn't blinging it up, going instead for simple elegance in the 18K yellow and rose gold Apple Watch Edition models which sells for $10,000 and up depending on the strap. The one with the solid gold 18K rose gold strap is estimated at $25,000. I wouldn't buy that one either although I could afford it.
Apple Watch: An Overnight Multi-Billion Dollar Business
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3280976/posts
It was just three years in the making
Quick look
Here’s the quick summary for those of you who don’t have time to read the next 3,000 words.
The Apple Watch went on sale for pre-orders on April 10, 2015, and the Apple Store tells us that delivery dates for all orders now stretch into summer and beyond. We know that the initial production run of Apple Watch has sold out; what we don’t know is how many Apple Watches that represents. I’ve built a simple model that predicts that the initial run of watches was more than 3 million units and will yield Apple Watch revenues of over $2 billion for the first two weeks of sales. While this figure is smaller than first weekend sales of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, it dwarfs all other smartwatch sales to date and represents a milestone in wearable sales. The model suggests that while Sport Watch will lead sales in volume, selling 1.8 million units through May 8, Apple Watch will actually lead in revenue during that period, garnering about $900 million versus Sport’s $675 million. I also believe that Apple’s decision to introduce the Edition will be validated by $500 million in sales on only 40,000 units.
The Apple Watch is Already Wiping the Floor with the Entire Smartwatch Market
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3280021/posts
The Apple Watch is on fire: KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo estimates that Apple’s debut smartwatch has sold more than 2.3 million units since preorders opened, MacRumors reports.
Apple hasn’t released any sales data on Apple Watch sales, and it most likely won’t until the company’s quarterly earnings report. But this 2.3 million figure echoes what others have estimated — the research company Slice believes there were about 1 million US preorders on launch day, for example.
Ming-Chi Kuo has a good track record on Apple: He was spot on with his predictions about the iPhone 5S, for example. If Kuo’s figures are correct, Apple has — in a stroke — cornered the entire smartwatch market.
The Apple Watch’s strong sales are bad news for Google and its Android Wear smartwatch operating system OS. According to Canalys, devices using Android Wear sold 720,000 units in 2014. Slice’s figures suggested Apple was able to easily breeze past this figure in a single day. In doing so, Apple took away Google’s one historical advantage, which Business Insider explained in a previous story:
The iPhone has always — with some truth — been considered the “rich man’s phone.” Apple customers tend to be better off than Android users and spend more on apps and in-app purchases. Accordingly, ad rates on iOS, Apple’s operating system, are higher than on Google’s OS.
This strong push is immediately going to make Apple’s Watch OS an extremely attractive platform for developers looking to move into wearables, especially when coupled with the purchasing power of Apple consumers. And as this app ecosystem develops, it will make the Apple Watch even more attractive compared with other smartwatches, consolidating Apple’s position further still.
Bluetooth probably requires less overhead and system resources, too.
Trust you to go for the immoral factor. Somehow you focus on the extreme minority market. Why is that? Have you considered that half of Apple's customers are female and would like a bright pastel/powder blue watch band instead of the 1-2% of the market who are homosexual?
That delusional focus of yours in your every post is delusional.
How to Pretend Apple Watch Is a Failure No Matter What
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3280472/posts
I wrote a piece looking at the mental gymnastics required to be a member of the Church Apple Doom, but this takes the cake. Mr. Kay is setting the bar for Apple Watch success in fantasy land and couching that as reasonable so that no matter how well it does, he will still be able to label it a failure.
The funny thing is that I also have a bet running on Apple Watch with my friend Rocco Pendola. About a year ago I bet him that Apple would sell 40 million Apple Watches in the first full year of availability. I’m going to lose that bet. I was thinking in iPhone terms, not a new product category, and I was thinking about it as a fan of watches. I made a terrible bet, and I’m OK with that.
If Apple sells 2 million units in the first year, it would be a huge success compared to any other piece of wearable computing on the planet. Those kinds of numbers would make the device a blowout hit by any yardstick other than “Apple.” At 5-10 million units, Apple will have a runaway success by any sane standard. Apple Watch sales above that will simply be stunning.
But don’t look to Roger Kay to acknowledge such success.
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