It is very Apple to market a cost cutting move of not including power adapters with their products as an environmental decision. Like it certainly does help the environment, but does anyone actually believe that is the motivating factor?
They've spent a lot of money aggressively pursuing environmental concerns before many of their competitors (like renewable power, carbon neutrality, recycling programs, etc.).
While I can appreciate the reduction in cost likely was a factor, I wouldn't doubt that the environmental aspect was also a genuine concern.
Their ideal customer is somebody who upgrades devices frequently and then participates in the trade-in programs, but the adapters and such are not part of those trade-ins. So if you get a new phone every year for 4 years, you have 4 adapters. It's not a far stretch to imagine that their own employees said "You know, this feels wasteful" and management said "Hmmm not only is it an environmental problem, but we could also reduce costs."
But it's impossible to say for sure from an outside view.
> While I can appreciate the reduction in cost likely was a factor
Another factor is the EU slowly closing down on their loopholes for nonstandard chargers. They are probably trying to minimize costs in preparation for the eventual reckoning (i.e. which production and packaging chains will have to be modified).
Step 1 of reducing your environmental impact is reducing your consumption. If Apple really cared about the environment, then they wouldn't encourage a new phone every year when a phone can last for 4 years.
Do they encourage people to buy a new phone every year?
I don't think most people get a new phone every year, hence the "is this worth the upgrade?" Conventionally speaking, most tech reviewers tend to suggest that the latest model usually isn't worth the upgrade if you have the last model, and only in some cases is it a compelling upgrade from two releases ago.
Release a new phone every year isn't the same thing as encouraging everyone to upgrade every year.
Anecdotally, very few people I know get the newest phone. In fact, most of them tend to get second-hand phones that are at least a generation or two behind. That said, these are generally on the middle- to lower-middle-class individuals.
I'm a geek and I could afford buying the latest phones, but in practice I almost always get a phone at least 2 generations behind.
That said, looking at people in town, there's a significant number who do get the latest model. I always wonder how they can afford it.
If you sell your 1-year-old iPhone as soon as new ones are available, you maximize the secondhand sale price. After that, the value you can get will decrease. (The same is true of the value Apple gives for their trade-in programs.)
So in some sense, if you replace your phone as soon as a new one is available, you pay about 50% of the new phone's cost every year. So it's not quite as expensive as you'd think. (And yes, iPhones sell for a little over 50% of their purchase price after a year.)
Mm that's the point of the trade-in program! They even did a whole video showing LIAM (I think), the robot that disassembles old iPhones so the parts can be reused in new iPhones.
I can't find it these days because their website has gotten more and more full of information, but they used to have a page that specifically said they had a plan to eventually manufacture all iPhones from old iPhone parts.
If you participate in Apple's trade-in programs, consumption isn't an issue. They have a greater capability to successfully recycle the components than anybody else will (e.g., if you send your used phone to some other place to be disassembled).
That's sort of the point I'm making. Reducing consumption comes before reusing and recycling.
"If you participate in Apple's trade-in programs, consumption isn't an issue."
If that's how you feel, then Apple's marketing has done its job of removing environmental concerns from your purchasing decision even though there is still a lot of waste in buying a new phone yearly.
They could give the members of the trade-in program an additional discount for not including the charger. It’s not a reason to make the charger an add-on cost for everyone.
I have a drawer/box full of unused chargers and cables that came with my devices that would argue otherwise. I wish Apple would have stopped bundling them in a long time ago. Make them an optional free add on at time of purchase.
They came up with a new Apple Watch (Series 6) that measures blood oxygen content! If that actually works as advertised, this feels like enough of a reason to upgrade.
My wife has Series 3 and I have Series 5, but I haven't seen a major difference between the two. Series 5 is slightly sleeker and smaller, but the updates didn't feel important enough for her to upgrade.
They've got to fix the battery life. I tried the apple watch earlier this year and returned it a couple of days later. After using a whoop (where I get 5 days of battery) the less than one day charge makes the product pointless.
Huh. I've got a Series 2 that still lasts nearly 2 days on a single charge.
I know sometimes something in the software update can glitch and cause aggressive battery consumption. I wonder if you were affected by something like that (which is something they should address to prevent from happening in the future).
That's assuming a 60-minute workout, using apps throughout the day, and the GPS model (which is slightly more energy-consuming anyway). The workout is really what'll get you; those switch the heartrate and other bio-monitoring from passive to active, which greatly increases battery drain.
If you use your Watch more passively, all-day performance is not out of the question. It all depends on your individual use case.
Besides, 18 hours should be sufficient since you ought to be getting more than 6 hours of sleep a night anyway. Somewhere in that offtime is when you can charge. I do it overnight, but plenty of people charge during their morning routine (shower, etc.) and say it charges more than enough to last all day.
Since I don't sleep with the watch it's not too big of a burden to charge it each night. I just wish there was a better charging mat so I don't need to connect it to a charger.
My expectation is each time the chip will be more efficient, but they can choose to use that on a brighter screen/more features, or better battery life.
Some Garmin watches already have this, Garmin says...
>Accuracy of Wrist-based Pulse Ox
Pulse Oximetry (Pulse Ox) readings are available for certain Garmin wearables. It can provide an estimation of the user’s peripheral blood oxygen saturation (SpO2%) at any given time the feature is accessed. The feature can also be set to track in a continuous manner during a period while the user is asleep. For certain devices, it can also be used to track periodically throughout the day along with a view of the user’s altitude or elevation.
While every effort is made to ensure a high degree of accuracy, there are certain limitations that can cause inaccurate measurements. The user’s physical characteristics, fit of the device, and presence of ambient light may impact the readings. Garmin may release device software over time to improve aspects of the measurements. The Pulse Ox data is not intended to be used for medical purposes, nor is it intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease or condition.
Excessive motion and the position of the device can impact the accuracy of the readings. It is important to keep your arm/sensor still for approximately one minute for best accuracy.
This does work best but the sensor and light source can be on the same side of the skin using light reflected from within. This probably requires more separation between light source and sensor and some clever algorithms to handle different skin tones and ways of wearing the watch.
The real question the lady should have asked about what the watch can do is play songs from Spotify without your iPhone near you, like when you're running.
I have a series 3 and I got a beta from spotify to stream music, it worked with WiFi and the phone turned off. I haven't tried LTE as I haven't enabled that, but I suppose it should work fine.
Ugh. Bad commercial. Apple deviating from their dystopian earnestness rarely works out. Federighi sort of pulls it off, and I suppose the old "I'm a mac" commercials managed.
You are correct, Pandora's app does have offline support in the apple watch, and I just got a beta in spotify where I can stream music from wifi in the watch to a speaker with the phone turned off.
Pretty sure Apple doesn't expose the correct APIs to allow this on the GPS model of the watch - at least that was the case when I last researched this.
I searched a bit - I think you're correct, and also offline support looks to be in beta in the Swedish version of Spotify, so maybe it's actually coming at some point.
I've been thinking about getting an iPad. However, I can't imagine paying extra for a cellular model Apple Watch. Would you be able to get emails, messages, calendar stuff on a Wi-Fi only Apple Watch paired only to an iPad when you don't have your iPad on you?
Would you say that cheaper one is a bad option (series 3?)? I'm not too likely to get one any time soon, but the cheaper they get, the more I'm considering it.
It simply has a smaller screen. The common annoying parts (not being always on, notifications about breathing/recording a walk etc.) are anyway more important than tiny performance differences.
I think the point is that it is 2020. Most people won't have to buy it.
Power adapters that use a USB connector have been commonly included with a large fraction of consumer devices for at least a decade now. Most of us already have several that we aren't using.
USB power adapters have also been by far the most common when people explicitly purchase a power adapter, such as when they want a higher wattage adapter to charge faster than the basic one that came with some device, or they want to replace a single port adapter with one with multiple ports to better utilize their outlets.
Result: probably 95+% of consumers in the US who would buy an Apple device already have plenty of USB charging ports available.
If I remember right, Apple Watch is the most popular smart watch on the market — meaning many people have had one already. Those people don't need a new adapter. It's like the iPhone: if I already have one, I don't need another adapter (lord knows I have enough of them).
It's definitely not great for new customers though, and it absolutely should not be $30, but for people like me it's a positive move forward to reduce waste.
Off the top of my head: always-on display, additional sensors (compass, blood oxygen, ECG, more advanced accelerometer for fall detection), higher resolution display, different speaker system I think, slightly different form factor, uhhh... that's all I've got immediately but I think there's a bit more.
Not to be too cynical, but is this Apple watch "solo loop" coming in a bunch of fixed sizes a means by which they reduce/minimize the ability to buy/sell used Apple Watches?
Or at their scale does it not really make a difference?
EDIT: nvm lol, forgot that you can just swap out the loops still
Basically none of the technology Apple showed off in the original iPhone release was 100% brand new that no one else had, they just put it all together in a way that had never been done before.
Garmin has that, but does it integrate the same way?
Apple rarely introduces breaking tech. They release optimized tech that makes good products. Rarely first to market - they experiment, learn, adapt, and go in when confident.
I think in this case Garmin does watch features quite well, but the target audience is quite different. For the varieties of fitness tracking, granularity of data, resilient packaging, and battery life, garmin takes the cake. But on the flip side, picture quality and apps are much better on Apple's devices.
"Some other company that wanted to differentiate from our market-leading product developed a useful feature before we prioritized it so better never add it to our product because they did it first. No user wants a feature that they could find in another product!"
Because it's a useless comment to make. I'd say the same of Android or Fitbit if they added a feature the other already had.
It's just unnecessary. The people who want or have one or the other won't care that another watch already had it if their chosen watch is adding the feature.
I bought a Garmin for running a couple years ago. It’s not bad, but for 250/300$, the UI and overall user experience is so far behind any Apple product, I will never buy another one.
So yes features are good, but making them easily usable is also important. Being first isn’t the only thing that matters.
At least when you buy an Apple Watch you know your watch isn’t going to stop working because the company you bought it from let themselves get infected by ransomware
Apple Watch Series 6...totally uninspired update. I was hoping we might get a glucose monitor/sensor, instead we get a blood oxygen sensor.
Apple's just coasting at this point. I was considering getting the iPhone 12, but at this point I'm expecting a similar dud launch next month from Apple, so I'd rather give my money to Nvidia for an RTX 3080.
Is there a glucose monitor/sensor that works from the wrist without puncturing the skin?
I've seen patches on the the upper arm that have to be replaced every week or two, sensors that clip on the ear or the skin that stretches between fingers, and things that have to be surgically implanted under the skin, but my understanding is that all of these, even the non-invasive ones, have to be approved by the FDA as medical devices, and come with a pretty substantial legal responsibility.
A blood oxygen sensor helps literally everybody, even the diabetic, while a glucose monitor--assuming it can be made reliable from the wrist--benefits a smaller set. A large set, to be sure, but still a smaller set than "everyone."
I was hoping for the same, but considering the regulatory and health issues for not getting it 100% right, I'll give Apple some credit for what its done rather than ding them for not yet being able to package in what hasn't been invented by anyone yet.
I'm certain they're spending large amounts to make it happen, since they could easily double their sales once they roll out that feature.
More than 100 million Americans have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Numbers are huge and more importantly the feature (glucose monitoring) is much more critical to their health.