Sweaty fitness bands fall behind as Apple Watch outpaces sales

Re: Quick question

Perhaps if you were less cynical and less negative and less judgemental, you might make and keep friends who were modern and truly cool who could help you to get with the zeitgeist and understand the new fitness paradigm.

Re: Quick question

I wear this crap.

I run about 20 - 25 miles a week and have had various Garmin devices. All of which failed within their warranty period - and I'm not careless. After four failures, I decided to jump ship. I had charging problems, failing screens and one water-resistant device which obviously wasn't. With four years of data on Garmin's Connect portal, I didn't really want to jump....

However, I now use Strava on my second-generation Apple Watch - and it does "just work". Sorry if that doesn't fit in with your sweeping generalisation.... but I will admit to being a convert. It's done pretty well.

Re: Quick question

I have a Moto 360 Smartwatch, given to me as a present a couple of years ago. Not the latest thing by any means.

Is it vital? No

Is it useful? Yeah sometimes.

Is it essential? No

Would I replace it when it breaks.....not sure yet.

It's main handy things:

When a text or email comes in, I can see who it is and the first few lines. I can then decide if I want to pull out my phone to read the full thing. Useful at work, especially in meetings.

The watch vibrates and shows me when a calendar event is coming up. I wouldn't always get these reminders as sometimes don't carry my phone (or if I laid it down).

Controlling music playback when the phone is in my pocket or rucksack.

Re: Quick question

I used to have a a fitness band until I lost it and they are really good, providing you with detailed information about your fitness, heart rate & other information, as well and I now have a Apple Watch & now i'm starting to try loose weight again, it's going to be really useful.

I can use it with Apple Pay (which is the main reason I got it), turn my lights on and off, as I have Phillps Hue, Start my washing machine, as I have Samsung's WW9000 washing machine & Samsung Smartthings, control my central heating, as I'm going to be getting the nest thermostat or one of the others that is compatible with Amazon Alexa & I can even lock & open my front door from anywhere in the world, as I have a smartlock that works with Samsung Smartthing & I can check my bank account on it.

There's so many useful apps for the Apple Watch, but I also have Samsung's Gear S3 Frontier Smartwatch, which would wipe the floor with the Apple Watch. You can use both the Gear S3 & Apple Watch as a phone, but the phone on the S3 is 1,000 times better & you can use the S3 as a stand a lone phone, as the S3 is GSM enabled, were as the Apple Watch isn't, it as to be permanently connected to the iPhone for the phone feature to work and the S3 can be connected to iPhone & I believe other android phones for it to be set up and put apps on it ect, were as Apple Watch will only work with iPhone. The only thing Apple Watch as over S3 is the App Store eco system is 1,000,000,00 times bigger. Fitness bands & Smartwatches are extremely useful, in fact it was in the news yesterday that the health app on the Apple Watch can detect the first signs of a heart condition that can lead to a stroke!!!!.

So my friend, until you own a smart watch/fitbit band, or have used one in depth, you should really hush your mouth, as you really don't know what your talking about! :-D

Re: Quick question

Alistair Dabbs - not sure if someone writing for TheRegister is normal though ;)

I know several people who wear Fitness bands or Smart Watches, none of them seem to worry about whether it is "cool" which probably makes them fairly normal. I wear a smart watch, just as way of easily tracking exercise and while it isn't a watch I would pick for its looks I doubt anyone really notices it

Re: Quick question

Actually, quite a few sports people do... the Fitbit is just not accurate enough, whereas the Apple Watch (and my preferred options, Suunto and Garmin) tends to be a lot more useful.

Hardly anyone (well, other than the geeks in our office) uses the damn Apple Watch as the ultimate controller + message reader + this and that and the other... They use it to track their sports progress.

Apple don't release Watch numbers

Lots of Analists do in their race to make out that the watch a failure.

I've not seen anyone wearing one so I guess it is a failure.

Niche Market

However Apple is a fashion and marketing juggernaut so is bound to do better than the others and eat them up eventually because it's a niche.

Well, let me say "not so" in my case. The battery is fine on my first gen iWatch after a year in daily service. I don't need to wear it 24/7, and with a Casio atomic-setting watch I just can't wear it sleeping and get a reliable time update. They are touchy that way, if you are far from the time signal. So, like the Casios, the iWatch sits in a "special place" during the night to do what it needs to do. Really, the charging aspect is moot. I only saw one person trying to use it 24/7 for sleep tracking, and they had to charge it at their desk during the day. Not a typical use case. I was not planning on ever using the fitness features, but have since did a 180 on that. The various trackings seem appropriate, and I get that this is nowhere near a medical grade device. So long as I use this one to do the tracking, all the data is normalized to me and it. Good enough. Plus, unlike my teen, I never have to pull out my phone to see; who is calling, the weather, hey time is on there, bonus, plus it can even be a remote for my Kodi players. And, this is the sport model, not any of the high-grade case units. It just works fine, and it looks and acts like a wristwatch does, and keeps the partner device hidden away. Teens walk around with smartphones in their hands. I don't.

Also, the accessories are dirt cheap on Amazon. You can get extra bands for US$10-$20. Nice ones too. No way I'm going to spend US$500 on a 1st party metal band, not unless it is real gold. Even the real gold iWatch is quite overpriced. That is Rolex country, not smartwatchland. Anyway, the base unit is good for the price, and it is not terribly expensive to update when you go 3rd party.

"The second generation of the Apple Watch is water resistant"

So is the first gen, just not to the same degree. I wear it for running, sweated all over the stupid thing, and it keeps going. Some "Apple PR," eh? Seriously, no one get an iWatch. You probably don't need it, if you need the money more. And any watch you can do exercise with. It's YOU who has to provide the motivation to get away from the keyboard and loose the spare tire. The fitness tracking is only going to show you how awfully slow your start is.

Optional

It is, according to these figures, selling a bit better than it did before.

Whether that makes it a success or a failure is sort of entirely up to your criteria, really, isn't it? I mean, presumably only Apple knows if they've, fr'instance, made back their R&D spend on it yet. But they may have other criteria for deciding whether it's a success.

I don't want one, and I've seen maybe two people wearing one. But then, I don't want a moped and I don't know anyone who rides one, but there are, I'm sure, moped manufacturers who consider themselves successful.

So, I dunno, just have a pint and relax? It doesn't seem terribly important.

Re: Apple LEADS the way again

Catchy tagline.

Apple: Our tat isn't crap.

Re: Not surprised fitbit is having problems

I have no problem syncing my Charge HR with either of my windows machines. Since I use a BB phone, it does not sync with that. I did use my ex-work Iphone to sync as well and as a result, I got message notifications on it. I have since realized that I do not miss getting notifications on my fitbit. If my phone notifies me that I have received a message I may or may not look at it. If it rings, I will probably answer it even if I am working out. The battery usually lasts about 5 days. I am quite happy with it.