sevenfeet

Wcitizen said:

Apple may call it Ultra but it’s by no mean a Pro watch. There’s still a world of difference between what the Apple Watch is able to do to support more extreme sports and activities and a true Pro watch such as a Garmin Fénix 7 or even an Amazfit T-Rex 2. And I’m saying this as a very, very long and passionate Apple user that already owned two Apple watches. The “Ultra” industrial design is only slightly better than the original design in dealing with impacts but it’s still far from the robustness that you need with a Pro watch. Sturdiness is not only about the materials used but also about the form. Battery life is another detail that is so far from what you can currently get on a Garmin or Amazfit top of the line watches (which can last for at least two weeks).

I realize that there are still extreme applications that the Apple Watch Ultra might not be applicable for. The T-Rex 2 is a far more cost effective solution ($299) and since it's not really a proper smart watch, it can last a lot longer. A more apt comparison would be the Garmin watch. That costs $699 and has a host of extreme sports features, some that the Apple Watch Ultra can do, some of which are still exclusive to that device. And the Garmin can do limited recharge via solar cells in the design, a useful feature.

But for me, the biggest "Holy Crap" moment was that they went ahead and built a proper dive computer watch. As someone who has been scuba diving for 25 years and my wife and teenage daughter also dive, this is a game changer. I've been looking to buy a new dive computer to replace one I've been carrying for two decades. I think I finally have the one I want. But there are some questions I have. Will it account for Nitrox or Tri-ox diving? Can you attach a radio control to determine the amount of air in your tanks (some of the better dive computers have this)? And I'm sure some more frequent dive masters and instructors will have more questions. I just got a Series 7 a year ago, so my watch isn't old. But one with a dive computer may be too good to pass up, especially since that's the amount of money I was looking to spend anyway.

Sadly, this news is not a surprise. I began my path with Drobo buying a 4-bay Gen 2 over a decade ago. My most recent purchase was a Drobo 5D3 about 4+ years ago. I recently took the 5D3 out of production when I invested in a QNAP NAS and a Mac + OWC Thunderbay 8 as the main backup for the QNAP. The handwriting has been on the wall for years as Drobo didn't keep up with competition after the 5D3 and 8C shipped.

Drobo had a nice little niche of mainly DAS drives with Thunderbolt connectivity (and before that Firewire 800 & USB) that appealed to photographers and videographers. The in-place upgradeability was a godsend to prosumers like myself who needed to spread out the cost of buying larger hard drives over time.

But NAS competitors ate away at their business on the top end and things like the Thunderbay series with SoftRAID from long time Mac supplier OWC proved to be too much. Honestly, I was surprised to see a software update for M1 Macs released last year even though it still runs in Rosetta. And macOS complains about the driver type so I suspect it will be deprecated from macOS compatibility in the future if nothing is done and I'm not getting my hopes up on seeing an update. And since you haven't been able to buy new Drobo hardware in nearly 2 years, I was wondering why Chapter 11 hadn't happened sooner. You can't live in existing support contracts forever.

The 5D3 was also an early Thunderbolt 3 device and as a result, it's a little weird in compatibility and I've found that hooking it into a Thunderbolt hub helps. I had planned on using it as part of my backup strategy and I still might. But I'm thinking it can't hold any data that is mission critical for me.

One of the nicer features of OS X Server back in the day was the UI for management of DNS. It wasn't for extremely complex situations but it was very handy for small to medium sized networks and it was a lot easier than hand editing text files.

I think Elon Musk realized that being a board officer would put him under even more constraints on the use of Twitter than he currently has. Musk's problems right now come from the fact that he can't say anything he wants about a public company about Tesla without running afoul of SEC rules. Joining Twitter's board wouldn't change that....in fact, he'd be under even more communication constraints since he'd be a fiduciary officer who is supposed to be looking out for the company's best interests. It's not that he cannot publicly disagree with the rest of the board, but there would be limits as an officer as to when and how that is done. It's better for him to remain on the outside.

jwdawso said:

Who buys this watch? Did you ever consider that it’s mostly parents for their kids, and that the features and the size are well suited for them?

We bought a Series 3 for our teenage daughter a couple of years ago when her Series 1 failed. And it is very slow. It's easily the hardest Apple device to upgrade when Apple drops a software update. And it used to be worse....often because of the limited memory and storage, I would often have to install the watch as a clean install, update the OS and then restore settings from iCloud. This took forever....at least the latest revisions allow updates without the long extra steps that frankly most users wouldn't know how to do.

Fun fact: The Apple Watch Series 3 is the LAST 32-bit device Apple sells. iOS, iPadOS, MacOS, and tvOS have all been 64 bit only for many years. Only WatchOS has had to deal with this one build for 32 bit compatibility.