[makecheck]

Apple’s lead seems to be more in tangential things that are very hard to replicate: Apple Pay, supporting the highly popular iMessage, etc. These can never work with any other device.

There are definite flaws in the device. I find buttons unnecessarily hard to tap for instance (they should offer more vertical space), and the face is so sensitive that it routinely triggers unwanted actions. It is really annoying to start something I want (like a timer) and notice some time later that I somehow accidentally stopped the timer by hitting my watch on something.

As far as 3rd parties, I have seen a general trend of apps gradually withdrawing their support for watchOS. There just aren’t that many useful things to do on a small surface. For apps suited to this (timers, reminders, etc.) it is fine.

[rubicon33]

To start a timer, raise your watch to your mouth and simply say “start 1 hour timer”.

You don’t even need to say “hey Siri”. It starts listening on the gesture of raising it to your mouth. Genius.

Raise watch to mouth and try things…

“Text Danielle ____” “Open Pandora” “Open wallet”

There are also settings to disable active watch face unless it’s raised. I have that enabled and never have issues accidentally hitting it. Check your settings and let me know if that helps.

[tshaddox]

The raise-and-speak feature is extremely unreliable. It seems to refuse to trigger if you’ve interacted with the watch in the last few seconds, so if you try to speak to it and it doesn’t trigger, it certainly won’t trigger when you immediately try again.

It also triggers all the time accidentally when my watch was nowhere near my mouth. I frequently look at the watch and see a message like “I don’t understand that” with a transcription of something it thinks I said.

“Hey Siri” is also unreliable, mostly because if you hesitate for a few too many milliseconds it thinks you’ve finished your query. I almost exclusively use Siri by holding the power button on my iPhone or Apple Watch.

[rubicon33]

Very interesting. Personally, I don't have any of the issues you've mentioned.

I wonder if we're somehow using it differently? Different model? Not sure what could explain the delta in our experiences.

I never use "Hey Siri" because I've always found my phone just easier to unlock and manually operate. The watch however seems to be a really great application of voice control.

[varispeed]

Do they collect this information somehow? I mean by wearing this device and using e.g. a timer, do Apple employees can find out for example how often did particular person use the timer and for how long?

[nradov]

Apple Pay isn't much of an advantage. Samsung and Garmin have the same thing.

[simonh]

They have competing products, they don’t have competitive products. There’s an important difference.

[samfisher83]

When Samsung had mst they had a pretty big lead on the competition, but seems like they dropped it.

[s3r3nity]

Can't use Garmin pay to pay for train / bus fare, or at least not as widely as Apple Pay.

[dna_polymerase]

Can't speak for U.S. banks, but in Europe more banks seem to support Apple Pay than Garmin.

[smoldesu]

Yep. Apple's game has always been marking up marginal utility, and that's ultimately what you pay for here.