Apple Watch: My Experience

November 12, 2017
5 min read

When Apple Watch first came out, there was not a lot of reasons to buy one in Latvia – we don’t have Apple Pay, there were not a lot of apps for the Watch – we don’t have Uber, most of our homes are not smart and we still go to the stores to buy groceries instead of them being delivered to our houses. That’s probably why local retailers still don’t sell Apple Watches here (even official Apple resellers). The one I’ve found a month ago was the carrier selling 38mm Apple Watch Series 0 for about 460$ (yes, in 2017).

So when we were travelling to New York City this September, as per tradition – we’ve gone to the Apple Store (this time to the Grand Central), I’ve walked around and came right to the table with all the watches and here it was – 42mm Apple Watch Series 3, a couple of question to the employee, tap of the credit card, typing my e-mail and 10 minutes later I was out of the store with my first smartwatch. I’ve got GPS only version, as again, cellular doesn’t make much sense in Latvia, as carriers don’t support those and I’m not sure they will in pretty long time.

Activity tracking
Some time ago I was reading a couple of articles saying how Apple Watch helped them be more active and even lose some weight, for example, Jim Dalrymple and his weight loss story, I was very skeptical. I’ve had Fitbit before counting my steps and it wasn’t motivating me a bit, I’ve just tracked steps without really going out of my way to reach the goal. In a couple of months, I’ve lost my Fitbit and never got a replacement.
But with Apple Watch it was very different, right from the first day I was closing all three rings and it somehow mattered. First, it was easy, as I was in New York City for the first time, so 2 out of 3 rings were usually closed at about lunchtime, but at home, it got a bit harder, I’ve had to make a bit of an effort to close those rings. Now, I try to finish my lunch early, to have time for a walk and on some days with my wife we «walk the Watch».
Through the day, the Watch keeps reminding me to stand and I’ve got a habit to go and have a glass of water, which helps again.
So far I’ve lost 4kg in about one and a half week (change in a diet also helped) and had my first perfect month in October.

Notifications
I’ve long had a thought that Apple was destroying Notifications Centre when they’ve removed the grouping by an app, it became impossible to use the Notifications Centre for me and I’ve mostly relied on the icon badges all over the home screen, which, as you can imagine, is not very good solution. Just after getting the Apple Watch notifications became a bit more useful. They all appear on my wrist first and I can manage them from the watch, leaving some of them to see on the phone and replying to others using dictation, which became pretty good, even in Russian. Having my watch buzz every time I receive a notification, also helped find the ones I don’t need and turn them off.

This is just one of the examples how Apple rewards you for being all in in the ecosystem. Like how Apple Watch can unlock your Mac, for example, which at first was hard to get used to, because I have developed a habit of opening the lid and starting typing first character of the password right away which canceled unlocking with the Watch, but after a couple of days I’ve got used to the automatic unlock.
The second cool thing was when my phone was charging in the bedroom and I was in the other room, I’ve put my Airpods in the ears, opened Overcast watch app, chose an episode and started playing the podcast from my phone. It felt really nice.

Time
This is a bit silly and a bit surprising, but probably the worst thing about Apple Watch is how bad it is at telling time. I’m not saying it tells the wrong time, far from it, as far as I’ve read it is one of the most precise time peaces, but having to raise the wrist to see time is pretty bad. I’m one of the rare people who was wearing a watch before getting smart one and was very used to just glancing at my wrist to see the time, now I can’t do that. I have to flick the wrist every time I want to see what time it is, which, while working, is not a good experience.
Taking into the consideration that on a normal day, I have about 65% battery power left and Apple Watch having an OLED display, I think it is possible for it to have always on time. It could be a feature off by default, but I would love to have it as an option.

After having a watch for a little more than a month, I can definitely tell that I like it very much and will continue to wear it daily. I’m still closing all three rings every single day and trying to raise my Move goal in the beginning of every weak even if by just a bit. It is a solid product with the bright future ahead of it. I’m not seeing a lot of them in Latvia, but that’s probably because you have to go out of your way to find one, but when we were in NYC I was shocked to see so many of them on people wrists and now I can see why.

Samsung Galaxy S8

March 29, 2017
1 min read

I was never a fan of Samsung phones, but after quick glance at some first looks of the new phones, there are a couple of positive thoughts about the device. 

1. I think even John Gruber will agree – FINALLY there is no space on the front of the device to put the stupid SAMSUNG logo, I hope most remember without constant reminders what phone they use. 

2. There was one shot in the Casey Neistat’s video for which I’ve paused, took screenshot and looked at it for about a minute.

Here, an iPhone looks dated. This edge to edge screen next to the iPhone looks like the first iPhone looked next to the smartphones with buttons. This is clearly the way forward. 

Very much looking forward to see what Apple will show at it’s September event. iOS and the edge-to-edge display would be instabuy!

iOS 10

September 19, 2016
2 min read

Probably the biggest change in the iOS 10 for me is lock screen and all that’s changed about the locked phone. Only after updating did I notice, that I had a few habits that are hard to change. One of them is putting my finger on the Sleep/Awake button while getting the phone out of the pocket and pressing the button to see the lock screen as I look at the phone. What happens now, is I get the phone out of the pocket, it automatically turns on, because of the Rise to wake feature and I turn the display off, by pressing the Sleep button, so then I need to wake the phone, by pressing Home or Sleep button. I have mostly changed the habit in less than a week of using the iOS 10, but there are those little things you don’t notice while using the phone.

Also, the big change — sounds. I’ve always been in love with Windows Phone keyboard sounds. When I’ve had Android phone, I was looking for a keyboard, that made sounds similar to WP. Now on iOS it comes pretty close. I love those new sounds. Actually, I’ve had my phones muted for about two years and now more and more I keep turning the sounds on, just to listen to the keyboard sounds. 

This year Apple made a very solid update to the operating system. It totally feels like a new phone after installing iOS 10. Love all the changes introduced. 

Hockey and Today Widgets

May 24, 2016
2 min read

IIHF World Championship is over and I’ve already deleted the official app, but there is one thing that stays and that’s the habit of using Today widgets. It was so easy to look up scores in Notifications center and not by opening an app that it got me thinking – maybe other widgets can be useful too. 

Right now I’m trying to better understand which widgets I would like to use, so I add/remove one every couple of days and see which ones stick with me. Excluding IIHF Today there are currently three other widgets – MyFitnessPal to quickly glance at my remaining calories (I’ll post about my diet and logging food later), CoinKeeper – for quickly adding expenses and I’m experimenting with using different Weather app instead of default one, so the last widget is WU Weather. 

I couldn’t find much use for widgets for half a year I use iPhone, until I found one use case which was appealing enough for habit to stick. When I’ve used Android I’ve used widgets a lot, but those were on the home screen and it was easier, because they were always there, on iOS, you have to remember to go to Notification Center and then scroll to the side. I still think that widgets as they are implemented on Android make more sense, but iOS widgets are not as useless, as I thought before.

LG G3

September 17, 2014
4 min read

Last year, I had to make a choice between 4” iPhone 5S and HTC One. This time it was much harder choice – iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus or LG G3. I looked at LG at a store and so I was ready for a bigger phone and watching Apples presentation I was leaning more towards 6 Plus. But considering my use of a previous phone and iPhone 6 Plus prices and the fact that LG G3 was free, I made my choice in favor of the Android device.

iPhone 6/6+ sale date for Latvia wasn’t announced, but here are the prices on the grey market:

First of all, LG G3 is smaller than the iPhone 6 Plus, because there is no Touch ID in the front, so the bezel is smaller, it’s actually not that bigger than my HTC One m7 with 4.7” screen, so it was comfortable in my hand from the start. The only different thing – all the buttons are on the back of the phone, but after about an hour I was very comfortable with that and considering how you hold phone this big it makes a lot of sense. And I use knock to unlock a lot, it’s just easier to knock on the screen two times and the phone comes out of sleep. It is also lighter than the iPhone 6 Plus, but that’s because it is plastic instead of aluminum. It doesn’t feel as premium as some aluminum phones do, but you can use it without case (which is not the case with iPhone, you really should use a case, just to not have this camera sticking out, which Apple photoshops out of every picture).

I’m surprised how many people are comparing 5.5” phones to iPad Mini. Maybe some uses are similar, but the phone this size is much smaller even than the iPad Mini.

 

Regarding the phone itself. The screen is gorgeous, it’s QuadHD, maybe even too much, I can’t even imagine what the battery life would be with 1080p screen. Similarly to TVs there are two 4K videos loaded on the phone, which look outstanding, but you probably won’t have access to more such high resolution content, so it’s nice to brag about, but maybe not that useful.

I didn’t have time to test the camera, but a couple of shots I’ve made looked good and the focus is instant. It’s laser focusing system and it seems to work very well. As soon as you tap the screen, the phone focuses and takes the picture. Much faster than HTC One m7 and pictures look a lot better. I also think HTC made a mistake sticking to 4 mega-pixel camera with additional camera for focusing later. There is a mode in LG, where you take a photo and after that pick a point to focus and it works great.

Battery life is a great improvement over my HTC One, I had to charge it two-three times a day and then leave it charging all night. This one lasts me all day from 6:30 to midnight with some 20-30% remaining. Also, you can change the battery on the go, I’ll probably buy another battery and won’t have to worry about the charging for a long time.

LG’s software on top of Android isn’t that bad, but I still changed the launcher to Nova, because of all the gestures I can do, otherwise sticking with default launcher is a good choice.

Kudos to LG Electronics Latvia for giving me a gold phone and it’s gold with black, unlike iPhone, which is gold with white front. Gold with black looks so much better.

One more thing

September 15, 2014
4 min read

It has been almost two weeks since Apple announcement and I still have not written about the Apple Watch. After rewatching the Watch part of the presentation, reading a crapload of articles, listening to a lot of podcasts and most importantly thinking about the product, I’m ready to give my opinion on the product. (As if anybody cares).

Before the announcement, I actually was convinced Apple would show a wearable, but not a watch, something else, something different. This time, I think, Apple made Samsung’s product.

The Next Chapter in Apple’s History

It is hard not to notice how excited Tim Cook was presenting this product, he chocked a bit a couple of times and they’ve received standing ovation after the first video introduction. Straps looked great in that video, I didn’t know historic value of some of them, but you can read about that in a great piece by Benjamin Clymer. I was worried about magnetic strap, but it seems it’s pretty solid.

Tim Cook talked about Digital Crown, how you cannot just use touch screen for most things, because your fingers would be in the way of content, so you zoom in and out or scroll through the list using this crown. However, later Kevin Lynch used the Digital Crown only handful of times and actually scrolled a lot on the screen (probably, not even that, but the Demo was scrolling on the screen).

They’ve also showed 11 minute video, which, if you believe Tim Cook was made this morning and Jony Ive narrated it (that part was true, I guess). There were a lot of functions showed and that’s not a good thing, in my opinion. Sending someone a heartbeat, so he feels it on his wrist, why would you do that?! In addition, in the video, Ive said the phrase “using GPS and Wi-fi from your iPhone” – I can see how the watch uses the GPS from the phone to save battery life, but why Wi-fi? There was a moment with hundreds of photos on the screen of the watch, why would you do that? I’m rarely nostalgic enough to want to see photos right away on my watch and if I’m showing someone, I’ll pull out a phone. Another thing is Stocks widget. Maybe I don’t get something, but who needs to look at the stock price on his wrist? Tim Cook after presentation, maybe, but that function is there, just to feel the screen, nothing more.

They have mentioned Siri couple of times, but used it only one’s. Speech recognition is one of the strong sides of Android Wear, so Apple has very good competition in that space. You can also read your Twitter timeline, on a watch. Again, something that’s done best on a smartphone, and would probably be painful on a 1.5” screen.

The one thing I like about that watch is it’s fitness and health capabilities. I would use it as a fitness tracker, the app looks great and it seems like there are many great ideas in that space. Again, there are different devices for that kind of usage.

Two things unanswered:

  • How much would the model you will actually want would cost. Starting price at $349 sounds a bit pricey, as it is, but it’s even more interesting how much the best one would cost?
  • Battery life. The phrase Tim Cook used was “It’s simple to charge at night”. Everyone seems to think it will last a day, which is okay, compared to Android watches (most of them can last a day), but still, many of us were thinking Apple would do something different.

I’m sure they’ll sell a lot of those, but I can’t see the real use for that watch, especially at such a price. It looks somewhat good, it’s thick, but as often with Apple products, looks good. It doesn’t do much of the interesting stuff, I think Google Now on a watch is more advanced. The only interesting thing I saw was Fitness capabilities. I won’t buy one, because I’ve decided on my next phone, and as you can guess, it won’t be an iPhone. More on that later.

iPhone 6: First Impressions

September 10, 2014
3 min read
Maybe you don’t know, but Apple had an announcement yesterday. I’ve poured myself whiskey, opened Twitter on my laptop and Live Keynote on the iPad. If you were watching the event live, you’ve probably noticed how bad the streaming was. I’ve rewatched the begging of the keynote today before writing my thoughts on the new iPhone.
So, two new phones – 6 and 6 Plus. Naming is better than the iPhone 6 Pro, or whatever adjective they could have used regarding the size, so that’s a plus. 
The rumors were true regarding screen sizes – 4.7’’ and 5.5’’, that is logical change, after using 4.7 inch phone for a year, iPhone 5 feels like a toy in my hand. Interesting choices in resolution – 750p in iPhone 6 and 1080p in iPhone 6 Plus. Apple didn’t get in the race with Android phone manufacturers with latest QuadHD screens and I think it was a right choice. iPhone 5S screen looks great and 6s screen in terms of ppi is the same. Name for the new screens is a bit odd – Retina HD Display – something Samsung could have come up with. Great use of a bigger screen with Plus being more like an iPad with two column view and additional keys on a keyboard (I’m actually not sure about that, my first reaction was – they’ll surely be in the way, but I’ll have to try it out, for sure). Reachability – interesting function, after Hands-on many are saying implementation is not that good, you have to toggle it every time you tap on the screen. I also think Back button (regardless of the controversy around it) is the better option. Also double touching vs double tapping – two very similar gestures, which do very different things. 
The all new A8 – 2 billion transistors, I think Murdoch’s tweet pretty much sums it up, I still don’t get why he would write that:

The camera has the same 8-megapixel sensor with some things improved. The IPhone 5Ss camera is one of the best on the market, so why fix something that isn’t broken. Nice call. Photos shown in the Keynote were beautiful, but those are made by professional photographers, still I’m sure it will produce great pictures for everyone else. A lot of focus (no pun intended) on Video capabilities, I don’t shoot a lot of videos, so not so interesting to me. While Android vendors make shooting 4K videos with the phone a reality, Apple doesn’t do it and in my opinion, that’s the right choice, no need in 4K video recording. OIS in iPhone 6 Plus definitely the thing to consider choosing one of the phones. 
Battery life is the same for iPhone 6 and even better for the iPhone 6 Plus. I’m not sure the same battery life is enough for heavy users, so again, something to consider choosing between two phones.
Otherwise, both are great phones, smarter, faster, better, thinner, larger. Everything got better and they look good (except the camera bump, but you will get used to it, I guess). 
Last observation – Beats music is now on the second screen of every iPhone, at least in all the Hands-on pictures. 

Apple PR and The Verge 2.0

September 3, 2014
3 min read
Great report on Apple PR. A lot of things I’ve heard for the first time, most of them are not surprising, but often you just don’t think about them.
The big problem, in my opinion, is that tech journalists and bloggers try to look objective too much. I think you just can’t. You can try, but still you’ve got some opinions and thoughts on every subject, so I think you have to be true to yourself and your readers, they should understand where are you coming from. If you use Android phones all the time and then you decide to review an iPhone or iOS, I don’t think you could be objective, but that’s ok, you just have to explain to your readers/listeners/watchers where are you coming from and what should they expect out of the review.
Opening Daring Fireball, I expect to see mostly articles and links about Apple and probably somewhat skewed in favor of Apple. And that is neither good, nor bad. You just have to accept it.
Regarding Apple itself and its practices. I, personally, can’t blame them, if “journalist” is ready to suck up and believe whatever the company in question says, it’s his problem entirely.
There is also this practice to advertise your unwillingness to play by Apple’s rules, which is not good, in my opinion. Shitting company, not getting to this company’s events and then writing all over the web about that and how objective you are, isn’t probably a great idea. If you are not on good terms with the company, it doesn’t automatically mean you are objective.
The most interesting thing Apple has done, regarding PR, in my opinion, is its ability to engage non tech people (as some say “normals”). A lot of my friends, who don’t follow tech news and don’t care about new gadgets, apps or services, know that something will happen on 9/9. Many of them think, Apple will start selling iPhone 6, some know it will be only presented, but most are informed. They don’t know and don’t care, that today Samsung will present something (but they will). Samsung tries hard. In social networks, advertising all over the city, but they are mostly known, as this other phone you get when you don’t have money for an iPhone or in some cases “the iPhone from Samsung” (yes, I’ve heard that a lot).
 
In other news, The Verge became responsive. Even as people talk about the App economy and are in love with apps, I don’t think a website should have its own app. I didn’t download The Verge app (or an app from any other blog or magazine for that matter), because I either read their stuff in aggregators (mostly Flipboard), or in Pocket (where links from Twitter and other social networks end up). It’s not intuitive and convenient to open every news site and blog app to keep up with the news. It’s more intuitive to just open browser and go to some site. There is concern about those moments when you don’t have Internet connections, but I think they are rare and you can leave without the Verge for a moment, or just send page you need to Pocket. 

I have won a smartphone!

September 2, 2014
4 min read

Yesterday, after publishing the story, some personal stuff happened and got my mood lower than I thought it could possibly get. I was in a mall, and after that happened, I sat down, got my phone out of the pocket to check Twitter and there was a message from the LG community in Latvia. I had won LG G3.

That’s not the first time I’ve won something, but this is the most expensive thing. About a year ago in a similar contest I’ve won an Acer tablet. It was the most basic one for about 100$, but still, winning something is always a great experience. Before that I have won a printer, magazine subscription and some small things like tickets and CD’s. But winning the flagship phone is in another league.

The most fun thing was the reaction of friends, mostly asking, how do I manage to do that and comments like “enough is enough”. The contest was on Facebook, you had to write, what ould you like to get from the LG G Community. As I understand it’s a service for the LG G phone owners with some deals for products and services. My answer was premium subscription for Endomondo or Runkeeper. But in the end the answer didn’t matter, because it was random, which chose the winner out of 476 participants. Link to the video on Facebook.

The question now is do I keep it? I currently have HTC One (m7), I had it for a year. It’s a great phone. Design wise it’s still one of the best, even considering m8. Putting speakers in front is a genius idea. I started to listen to music and podcasts without the headphones plugged in at home more often. Two things I don’t like about it are camera and battery life. I’ve never had a camera in my life (my parents had, so I used theirs, but not too often), so all the photos I take are with my smartphone. Photos do look good on the smartphone screen, but on a bigger monitor they are quite a bit grainy. Battery life sucks. It lasts half a day at most with my use. Yes, I do use it a lot. Listening to the music or podcasts in the car, at work and at home. Twitter, Instagram – I use those services only on a smartphone. Messaging and so on, but still, half a day is unacceptable by any standard. Comparing LG G3 with my current phone I would most definitely use the LG phone, but there are other things to consider:

  • It’s big, at 5.5 inches it is in a phablet category, so I have to look at it in the store. Most reviewers say it’s ok, the screen goes almost edge to edge, so it’s much more a phone than Samsung Note.
  • This week a lot of phones will come out, including the new iPhone. Last year I had a similar experience. I’ve waited for an iPhone to come out and then decided to buy HTC One, mostly because of the screen size and resolution. This time with bigger screen iPhone and changes in iOS 8 (including most importantly custom keyboards and the ability of apps to talk to each other), buying iPhone makes much more sense. I love the feeling of iOS, but there are some great features of Android that the iPhone doesn’t offer.

I’ll get the new phone in a couple of weeks, so I have some time to think about it.

Comparison videos

April 17, 2014
1 min read

Love comparison videos from thematic blogs. “Let’s see how they will handle Skype calls and the winner is Cortana!” Really? Makes sense, doesn’t it, since Microsoft owns Skype. Author could have tried making FaceTime call on all of the platforms and I think I could guess who the winner would be. 

And when asking for nearby restaurant, Google Now gave a result of one, that is 0.4 miles away, while the closest one from Cortana was 8.9 miles away, I’m not sure you can call it a tie. 

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)