Traditionally this is banged out on the device itself, but that just isn’t possible, because this time the device in question is in fact an Apple Watch Sport, 42mm, black on black. While the Pebble was fine for notifications, there were plenty of things it couldn’t do – Siri searches, reply to notifications, the expandability of things like Apple Pay or having two-factor authentication on the arm – and it had an annoying tendency to lose the connection to the iPhone at random.
But the deciding factor for me was the health tracking. Because the cholesterol is bad again, and the heart rate is up, and I need to be pushed to get in some kind of condition. And all the Pebble can do for me is track steps – which the phone was already doing. Having regular heart rate being monitored from the arm will at least help me figure out whether I have an elevated pulse problem, and being constantly prompted to stand and move about will get me to do that much, at a minimum.
So far, the calendar is less workable than I’d like; seeing events in the next month doesn’t seem to work. While notifications all seem to come in, I don’t always notice them. There’s a bit of a lag using apps on the phone, though this is apparently changing in watchOS 2. Having things like the temperature, the next event and the health meter on the same watch face as time, day and date is helpful. And I’m still working out Transit and Citymapper to see which, if not both, can be of use in transit planning ahead of iOS 9 updating.
So that’s it. I ate the paste. I couldn’t wear a FitBit and a Pebble on the same arm, but circumstances collaborate to make this practical, somehow. We’ll see what it amounts to in days to come.