{"id":2222,"date":"2015-08-04T09:47:14","date_gmt":"2015-08-04T17:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2222"},"modified":"2015-08-04T09:47:14","modified_gmt":"2015-08-04T17:47:14","slug":"second-impressions-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/iwasmisinformed.com\/?p=2222","title":{"rendered":"Second Impressions"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the first time I can remember, Apple has overbuilt the hell out of a battery. This Apple Watch has never dropped below 29% before it gets to the charger, and that was a circumstance where I put it on my arm fully charged at 10 PM, slept in it, wore it all day, attached a Bluetooth headset to it around 7:30 PM the following day and played music, from the watch<\/em>, for two hours. \u00a0My theory (and my brother-in-law\u2019s) is that the battery was spec\u2019d out at a time when there were going to be more powerful (and more busy) sensors in the watch, not to mention native apps running directly on the watch. So that battery may drop non-trivially when watchOS 2 hits in the autumn.<\/p>\n

Having the fitness tracking on my arm has been extremely effective. \u00a0I look at the circles, I make sure they get filled, I stand up when I\u2019m told, I take the stairs instead of the elevator, I walk out to a computer rather than relying on remote support. And in the course of doing this, I rely on coffee (largely unsweetened except for the occasional drip-drop of stevia) and sparking water from the office SodaStream (rarely adultered with so much as ice). I haven\u2019t bought anything out of a vending machine in a week and a half. Lunch is almost always salad and unsweet tea and doesn\u2019t come with a big Rice Krispie Treat tossed in the bag. \u00a0I can\u2019t remember when I last bought a Coke Zero. \u00a0Sure, Sunday got a little wacky because I was at a soccer game and a pub after, but that was one day and it let off a lot of steam to let me be good on the other days.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s to the point that I\u2019m wondering how I\u2019ll wear this abroad if my iPhone is locked. \u00a0The Moto X is still the designated travel phone because it\u2019s free to use any old nano-SIM, but there\u2019s no using it with the Apple Watch (and I can\u2019t go back to the Pebble, let\u2019s be honest – nothing it can do is of any particular use to me when going abroad, which is why it stayed behind on the Japan trip). I\u2019m not going to be amused if this all boils down to me having to splash out on an unlocked iPhone next time out, but then, it\u2019s not like I wasn\u2019t already indentured to the Apple ecosystem. Then again, the X may or may not be that viable by the time we next go abroad – it\u2019s not like the camera\u2019s worth a damn compared to an iPhone, and while the battery life seems much improved, it\u2019s not going to play my iTunes collection…<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a little paradox-of-choice going on here, the same issue that leads to me having way too many Nerf guns that are 80% of what I\u2019m looking for instead of the perfect one. \u00a0Through happenstance I wound up with an iPhone from work, a Moto X on my own, and an iPad mini on my own, and left to my own devices (see what I did there) I could probably lose the work iPhone and carry on just fine for the foreseeable future. But now I have the Apple Watch and that means iPhone. Which is fine, given that there hasn\u2019t been an Android that compelled me since the coming of the original Moto X. \u00a0But if I did have to go out and buy a new phone on my own, it would be tough not to just take the iPhone 5C in white, cut my audio loadout by 75% and get by as long as I could, because after getting so much phone for $350, the thought of laying down double that is a bit tough to take. Then again, if I could get the T-Mobile $30 plan still\u2026but that\u2019s a problem for another time.<\/p>\n

Other than that, the only real issue I have with the watch is that I haven\u2019t yet sorted out that force-press is different from just long-press. I have screens dipping out under my finger ever so slightly as if they don\u2019t know whether to go away or not, and I haven\u2019t gotten use to just giving the on-screen button a thump – or force-pressing to see other controls and options (like, say, switching the watch from getting its music off the phone to its own local storage). But the much-debated \u201clearning curve\u201d isn\u2019t that big a deal – this is for notification and quick action and not pulling the phone out of your pocket. And it\u2019s a lifesaver in that regard – the two-factor authentication app for work runs on the watch and it\u2019s so<\/em> much more convenient to use 2FA now.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad I bought it. \u00a0It seems to have stifled the television glee and the car glee and several other glees, so I guess that alone is worthwhile.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the first time I can remember, Apple has overbuilt the hell out of a battery. This Apple Watch has never dropped below 29% before it gets to the charger, and that was a circumstance where I put it on my arm fully charged at 10 PM, slept in it, wore it all day, attached … <\/p>\n

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