brucemc

wreighven said:

eightzero said:

"it isn't perfect" is a bit of an understatement. I'd pronounce it "adequate." Running the workout app eats battery. Perhaps this has been addressed by Apple, but any day I run that app for a 30 minute walk costs me about 3 hours of battery. My wife has the 38mm version. She is quite active, and gets maybe 12 hours out of her original AW. If you want "all day" battery...well...get a fitbit.

The badge things are quite spotty. Sometimes they simply delete themselves. I "earned" on last month (saw it show up as complete) and then it simply disappeared. 

I like my AW, and didn't buy it for the fitness stuff. I like the idea of "closing rings" and it is sort of entertaining on its own. But it isn't really for a serious athlete, or anyone that is using it consistently for fitness. And perhaps the intent - it was intended to get people to stand up once an hour. It does that fairly well.

My opinion, YYMV. 

I agree with all of your points, if they're applied to the original Apple Watch.  I upgraded to the Series 3 (gray ceramic Edition with cellular) last month, and have found it to be a night and day difference in terms of quality of heart beat readings, battery life, etc.  I'd wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone who is interested in a "fitness tracker", and it can do so much more.  I workout 1.5 hours per day (one hour HIIT and 2ish miles of running), and frequently get two full days of battery life.

I do a lot of camping too, and not having to take my Watch charger on a weekend campout (Friday evening to Sunday morning) is a nice bonus.

If you have the means, I'd highly recommend upgrading.  It's a completely different device!

I echo this.  I had the original AW (purchased June 2015), and I noticed that the battery life was getting shorter with watchOS 4 as well as some degradation over 2.5 years.  Where I used to be able to do 30-60 min workouts and still have a good 20-30% battery at the end of the day, I was not always making it to end of day sometimes.

Received the non-cellular Series 3 AW for Christmas (company mobile plan doesn't allow the add on, so no point to get the cellular version), and was a significant improvement.  Beyond the new (from original) features of GPS, water proof, brighter screen - the battery life improvement over original AW was significant.  More than double.  As noted, I can easily go 2 days, with workouts, and never using batter saving mode.  Also, while not a big deal, I do quite like the Siri "talk back" feature with Series 3.

rogifan_new said:

How do they know this when nobody is providing sales figures? 

Apple has provided a number of clues (the Other category + statements) which some analysts use (along with their broader revenue models) to estimate what the sales are.  They have been tracking them since launch in this manner.  Check out www.aboveavalon.com for one.

Not 100% accurate by any means, but provides the broader story.  So was Q1 2018 (Apple FY) AW shipments 8M, 7.5, 8.5, or even 9?  That is difficult to say.  Was it 5M or 8M - the models are much more accurate than that.

Now, the Canalys info in this story seems off - they say 8M units, but that shipments were up 33%, which does not align with Apple's statement of "more than 50% growth".

zone said:

Interesting as all the negative people who said this wouldn't work. Just like the Apple Home Pod speaker right now. When will people learn that its Apple slow march to perfection that makes their products so good? Never enough credit for their accomplishments...

Indeed, the Apple Watch must have been the most derided Apple product (for probably 2 years) in decades - unquestionably called a failure / flop by the tech-blog-o-sphere echo chamber.  Yet here in its 3rd year of availability it is showing massive growth (50% yoy growth for many quarters), hitting some strong absolute numbers (estimated of course!), and with increasing engagement and usefulness.  Some estimates put AW unit sales at more than Amazon Echo products over the last 3 years, at many times the ASP.

While not as universally panned, AirPods had its fair share of negative stories in the first few months (truly wireless done by another company first, expensive for wireless buds, only one size, too small - I could lose them, only works with all features in the Apple ecosystem, etc)

HomePod is the current child.  While I don't expect that product to have the same sales trajectory as AW and AirPods, I am sure in 3 years the units (estimated:) sold will be much higher than the negative Nancies proclaimed would be the case.

red oak said:

I wish AI would keep a running side by side of what he (and other key analysts) predict and what actually happens.   Kuo seems right only about 50% of the time 

From what I have read from a few Apple watchers, it is believed that MCK either has own sources inside Foxconn, or purchases information sold by insiders.  So he is most accurate regarding future products & h/w features which are assembled by Foxconn.  Outside of that, he is as accurate as any other analyst.

zroger73 said:

dedgecko said:
Agreed, but I’m still hesitant to purchase them considering how much I sweat when working out. I’ve burned through three LG Tones, my Jlab Epic 1 didn’t last three months, and it’s replacment, Jlab Epic 2 has issues immediately outside of the one year warranty. That’s $250 in wireless headsets over a couple years. I’m hoping version two of the AirPods ships with the Qi-compliant charging case in the near future. I've been wearing my AirPods while washing my vehicles where they get exposed to plenty of sweat and water spray. No problems.

My brother wears his while he's mowing his yard on hot, Summer days in 90°F+ temperatures and they're doing just fine after being drenched in sweat. He impulsively bought his AirPods after seeing mine and intended to use them in addition to his expensive Bose wireless headphones that he loved. It didn't take him long after using the AirPods to chunk his Bose headphones in the bottom of the closet. They'll probably end up in his next garage sale.
(Sorry about the malformed quote - I hate this board's quote system. I've never been able to figure it out.)

I sweat heavily when working out, and have been using my AirPods exclusively for the last 10 months.  No sign of an issue so far.