Posted on 07/07/2015 4:38:41 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Sometimes, in order to truly appreciate life with modern day conveniences, we have to be reminded of what life was like before them. As an experiment for the last week, I decided to live without the thoroughly modern convenience of the Apple Watch. I was lucky enough to be included in the first group of folks outside of Apple to get an Apple Watch. I’ve been wearing the watch all day, every day since April 1st. Here, I shared my thoughts after my first week. Since April 1st, I have deeply integrated the Apple Watch into my everyday life. I decided to run an experiment and see what a week would be like without the Watch after 85 days of living with it. This is what I learned.
The first thing I noticed was my heightened awareness of where my iPhone was at all times. One of my observations from my first week with the Apple Watch was how it untethered me from my iPhone in a positive way. Whether it was in my pocket or on the coffee table or near the front door, the Watch allowed me not to worry about my iPhone needing to be with me at all times to remain connected. Life without the Watch reminded me of the habits I developed to make sure my phone was always near me. I would make sure to always put it in my pocket as I moved around the house or carry it with me from room to room.
This behavior is a result of wanting, and sometimes needing, to respond whenever I get a buzz or ding of a notification, whether it is an email alert, text message, or something else. I don’t like the idea of missing something important and this led me to be much more aware of where my iPhone was when I was not wearing the Apple Watch.
One of the ways I integrated the Apple Watch into my life was to heavily filter what notifications I allowed to buzz me on the wrist — voice calls, VIP emails, text messages, and only a handful of apps which push me useful information. However on the iPhone, even though I limit the notifications, all of them are treated equally and my phone was constantly buzzing telling me I had a notification. Of course, I check it to see if it is important and needed an immediate response. I had forgotten how much I had to pick up and check my iPhone prior to the Apple Watch. I’d prefer the luxury of reaching for my phone when necessary. Apple Watch helped me achieve this.
iMessage notifications were the worst of the bunch. The vast majority of my daily conversations are via iMessage. Prior to the Apple Watch, this would not have bothered me, but the first few days without it and I was irritated by how often I’d get a buzz of a message, reply to it, put my phone down or in my pocket, get another buzz a minute or two later, reply, put my phone down, get a response a few minutes later, reply, put my phone back down, ad infinitum. For the first few days, this really bothered me because a text message conversation is not always one that happens in real time. Sometimes it takes the other person time to reply. I’d rather not stare at my iPhone screen continuously waiting for the person to respond as I find it inefficient and a waste of time. So I put the phone down or in my pocket between messages and continue what I’m doing. The constant pick up, reply, put down sequence frustrated me. With Apple Watch, this process is seamless. Notifications come in reply from the Watch with text or Siri voice dictation and I keep doing what I’m doing. Living without the Apple Watch for a week showed me how much I took this one experience for granted before the Apple Watch. This was the most frustrating part of living without the Apple Watch because of how much I use iMessage to have conversations throughout the day.
When I told people about my experiment, many were curious if I used my phone less as a result. For a few weeks prior to this experiment, I had been using an app called Moment, which tracks your iPhone usage each day and how many times you pick the phone up, turn the screen on and look at it. While I didn’t see my iPhone usage in terms of hours per day decline during the week without the Apple Watch, I did see a significant drop in the number of times I looked at it. The average number of times I picked up and looked at my phone my last week with the Apple Watch was 74. This last week without the Apple Watch my average number of daily pickups was 102. I charted it to see the difference.
When I had the Apple Watch on, I averaged 28 fewer times I looked at my iPhone each day. This is a good proxy of how notifications on the watch help minimize the number of times I need to look at my phone to see the nature of each notification.
After reflecting on what looking at my phone fewer times meant in my daily life, I concluded the experience was less disruptive. Don’t get me wrong — I love my iPhone. It is my primary computer. However, having to respond to your phone or pull it out of your pocket or bag for each phone call or text message turns out to be fairly disruptive. As I’ve observed my wife’s behavior as well with her Apple Watch, she articulates similar feelings. As she is out and about, not having to fumble through her purse each time her phone dings is a less disruptive experience in many daily situations. Particularly since not all notifications are important or in need of an immediate response. However, without the use of the Apple Watch, you would not know this without getting your phone out and looking at it. This is an area of immense value that can only be understood once experienced.
Interestingly, the same sentiment is noticed by other Apple Watch wearers. I’m working with a company doing research on existing Apple Watch owners called Wristly (if you have an Apple Watch please consider joining our panel) where 32% of respondents said they spend much less time on their iPhone and 58% indicated they use their iPhone somewhat less.
So what did I conclude? As I pointed to at the beginning of this article, the Apple Watch is a modern day convenience and should be understood as such. It is a convenience in the same way a dishwasher or washer/dryer or a microwave is. None of the items are absolutely necessary, yet so many of their owners can’t imagine life without one. This is what my week without the Apple Watch taught me. Of course I can get by without it but, given the number of conveniences I’ve been able to quantify in the flow of my daily life, I can no longer imagine life without it.
So what do you use? Windows phones or Blackberry or Symbian? No phone? Dumb phone?
I just find it amusing that the Apple drone who wrote the article finds his iPhone to be annoying and lacking ability in its natural state.
The Apple Watch is not intended to be a stand alone device. It is sold as an accessory to an iPhone. It is usable for certain things without an iPhone, but not fully functional, just like almost all other smartwatches that do more than just measure health statistics. Any that do more are merely oversized wrist behemoths that are wrist mounted cellular phones that nobody uses. . . and generally still require tethering to another cellular phone.
I see you hit abuse on my fairly mild rebuke to your bad math. . . good going Marxist. . .
Seriously, People have too much time on their Hands.
I’ve had over a week of my God Given Freedoms being eviscerated by the SCOTUS and I haven’t written and Published a Column about it yet.
The Apple Watch is not intended to be a stand alone device.
...
I know that. Why are you telling me that? Could it be you can’t stand the truth:
I just find it amusing that the Apple drone who wrote the article finds his iPhone to be annoying and lacking ability in its natural state.
I don’t recall hitting the “abuse” link or whatever it’s called. Didn’t even notice it until you mentioned it.
No, you’re not “abusing” anyone. As an octogenarian, I have a very thick skin and really could care less about insults.
“You’re an ***hat for injecting Apple advertising into FR 24x7, a non-techie website for the restoration of the founding freedom of THIS country. Apple represents foreign interests and you abuse the privilege of being here.”
FR gets all kinds of news, as well as a ton of amusing and completely irrelevant stuff. That helps drive a lot of traffic here that otherwise wouldn’t arrive.
The articles are categorized, after all. If you don’t like ‘em, don’t read ‘em.
By the way FR is also supposed to be a kid-friendly site, so I suggest you watch your language, you idiotic, obnoxious waste of oxygen. :-)
Who turns it off. I don’t. You are such an ignoramus on what you are talking about and you are making a fool of your self. The Apple Watch keeps running while charging.
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So either you tether yourself to a 2meter charging cable while the iWatch is charging or you do without it for a while... it doesn’t matter that you can charge it without shutting it down ,, it is a watch ,, you wear it on your wrist ... while it is charging you are immobile? NO , the watch is unusable during charging times as I said... you leave it somewhere and get back to it later when it is again usable. Something that requires daily maintenance is not as good as something that can go years ...
What kind of effing response is that? I’m anti smartphone of any kind, BUT I recognize that society feels otherwise. Buggeroff a-hole. See, what happens when you act like a jerk? The bitch in me comes out. Congrats!
BTTT
Amazing, Obviously you never sleep. I do. I don't wear a watch to bed. My Apple Watch takes a very short time to charge back from 60-70% to 100%. Less than my iPhone takes. The watch is a couple of feet from me on the charging stand and fully functional. It takes ten seconds to put it back on my wrist. Where's yours?
“What kind of effing response is that? I’m anti smartphone of any kind, BUT I recognize that society feels otherwise. Buggeroff a-hole. See, what happens when you act like a jerk? The bitch in me comes out. Congrats!”
Wow. What a tough little girl. You really have me shaking in my boots. I know as a millennial you think bad words are really, really harsh and sooooooo mean, but, seriously, grow up. No one cares what you think. You’re no one’s hero.
You really need to get a life... nobody can be that in love with all of a companies products... The truth is that I DON’T CARE , I truly don’t... I use things I don’t let things rule over me ,, I find your compulsion to defend AAPL against all insults real or imagined to be very amusing and incredibly easy to provoke , I like yanking your chain, maybe the name Neidermeyer fits me a bit too well in this instance... but if you look at my postings I always go after real identifiable issues and keep it clean. You must be the life of the party with all your AAPL talk.
There is a real world out there ,, a world with people and trees , old cars and friendly dogs ... a world that doesn’t just exist in a 1.25” square high def screen and within your head... maybe learn to do something you would never have considered ,, build an ultralight , go to a restaurant that isn’t a national chain , explore an abandoned building in your town... go fishing and leave the phone in the car... your sanity will thank you.
YOU are the one repeatedly posting on a thread in which you claim you have no interest. Now you post an entire reply filled with an ad hominem to me Claiming I am so bereft of interests it is all I can do is post stuff to the Internet to promote Apple.
Neddermeyer, I have a very good life with a great family and a young granddaughter, a business, a beautiful girlfriend, I'm a novelist working on two books, and own rental properties, I've accomplished much in my life, founded charities, and run them, helping more people than you can count, as a musician, I've performed in Carnegie Hall. . . and I have a host of other interests.
YOU are the one who gets on here and ignorantly posts drivel on something you don't use, don't have a clue about how it works, and tries to tell those of us who do use one, how terrible it works. When we correct your misinformation you jump to some other falsehood about it. . . from your store of ignorance. You do this repeatedly in multiple Apple threads. You are a thread troll.
"I like yanking your chain, maybe the name Neidermeyer fits me a bit too well in this instance..." Why? WHO doesn't have a life??? Get another, better hobby than "yanking my chain", Neidermeyer. As you said, there's a real world out there beyond posting idiocy on FreeRepublic. . . because posting lies makes you look like an idiot.
You've been told, repeatedly, why I post on Freerepublic and it has to do with the request of over 700 of your fellow Freepers, not YOU. They want ACCURATE information, not posts on repeated DRIVEL. They appreciate me shooting down the lies. They are tired of you Apple haters posting the same old falsehoods time-after-time, over and over again.
If you don't like Apple threads, move on to something you do like.
Hear, Hear, Swordmaker...and THANK YOU for posting the threads and comments you do despite the abuse heaped on you by the haters.
Buddy, it’s time you take your own advice and get laid.
I do appreciate the Apple threads he either puts up himself or pings those of others. It is certainly a passion with him and there's nothing wrong with that.
For many, many years, I was solely a Windows PC user. During those days, I would also make potshots at Apple as during most of the 1990s, it appeared they were pretty close to going bankrupt and their computers at the time were way too confusing to me.
It was the iPod that first exposed me to things Apple. I think the iPod was a revolutionary product that completely changed the way that I (and others) listened to music.
From there, it was a relatively easy leap to the iPhone and then to the MacBook Pro - which I still use to this day and which I am typing this reply with.
Interesting story about my MacBook Pro, which I purchased in early 2011. A couple months ago, after four years of flawless performance, the video started crapping out on me. I would have to keep rebooting to get my display back and finally it just didn't even boot up anymore. I thought for sure that the machine was dead and that I needed to buy another laptop.
So I made an appointment at the Apple Store to have them look at it and if they told me the repair would exceed $1,000, I was prepared to buy a replacement.
Upon arriving, they ran some diagnostics and determined that the video card was defective. They then informed me that there was an FOC (free of charge) repair program if I was interested. So they took my computer for a couple days and returned it to me in excellent working order.
Now Apple didn't have to do that. I did not purchase Apple Care or any extended warranty. I would have happily have purchased an entire new unit at some $2,500. But they offered to fix my four-year old laptop for free and make it like new again.
This is why certain people have such a passion for Apple and their products. Superior customer service and excellent value for what you buy. I have several iPods here at home that I only upgraded because they kept getting better. However, all the other iPods work perfectly fine, including the original one I bought in 2003. I also have an iPad which I use to browse the Internet out in the backyard, control my stereo and my TV, and many other great functions.
Now as a conservative, I do cringe when I see the CEO of the company act foolishly with regard to promoting homosexuality and other nonsense. But you will find that same kind of foolishness with competitors of Apple as well. So I need to put that aside and choose the computing products that gives me the most value for my money and Apple wins that hands down.
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