New Apple Watch released today

Snore....

DSkip wrote: »

These are awesome when using your iPhone as a gps. It buzzes your wrist when a direction is coming up. Look at your watch and it tells you what to do. That is probably my favorite feature of my first gen.

Pff, who uses GPS? Navigate like a real man, by driving around aimlessly in circles, while you ignore your wife who's begging you to stop and ask for directions at a gas station.

You guys have already covered the watch so here's my take on the phone upgrades, keep in mind I still do contract work for Apple so take this with whatever size grain of salt you want:

Contrary to popular belief, Apple does not want people upgrading phones every year just for the purpose of upgrading. They keep stats around things like % of people using older phones and % on each version of iOS. Compared to the competition they have a much larger portion of their user base running phones that are several years old with a current build of their mobile OS and that's something they are quite proud of a brag about. They're also trying to get to a product line that involves zero mining and only reusable materials, and people hanging on to their older phones helps them accomplish that. They've stated these things both publicly and within closed doors.

If you're on anything from the 5S forward and are happy with your phone there's no need to upgrade. The 5S dates back to 2013 and is not only going to get the iOS update here in a few days but that update is actually going to make the phone quicker and more responsive. So if you're using an older phone that's feeling kinda sluggish I'd suggest waiting for the iOS 12 upgrade and see if that brings enough of an improvement to satisfy you. Those phones will never be as fast as newer models obviously, but they're still quite usable for many people.

If you're using the iPhone X there's little reason to upgrade to the XS, there are some improvements but none are groundbreaking. If you take a lot of photos the story changes though, the better processing in the newer models allows some functionality that's gong to produce stellar photos, I'm in that boat and so for me the upgrade is worth it but most people taking the occasional photo won't care much. A nice high end DSLR will still be a better overall camera, but the new phones are going to be able to produce photos that just aren't available on any other device.

Gone are the days where the larger screens have more features, the XS and XS Max are identical except for the screen size and battery life. The XR fits in between the two, but is a stripped down phone with an inferior camera and a lower resolution LDC screen and as a result will give you the most battery life.

If you want a dual sim phone these are the way to go, unlike most other phones these use an esim and therefore can seamlessly handle phone calls from both lines without needing to select one in the settings menu, the seamless integration of both lines is super handy especially if you're like me and carry a personal and a business line.

The new watch is the biggest change in that lineup yet, I'm excited about picking one of those up to replace my first gen model.

if you have a first gen watch like me then it’s worth the upgrade, mine is a first generation and as a result is pretty slow and bulky for what it offers and lacks key features like GPS and cellular connectivity. If you have one of the newer models that already has GPS and/or cellular then the upgrade is more feature dependent. You have to ask yourself if the larger and brighter screen and the health features like fall and AFIB detection and ECG are worth the price.

One thing to note is that even though the casing and screens are different sizes the connectors are not, which means you can use bands from any of the previous models on this watch, people like to pounce on Apple when they change things like that so I figured it’s fair to point out when they easily could have but didn’t..

I pre-ordered the Apple watch 4 which will be my first Apple watch. I went for the 44 mm case and Nike version. Went with the sport band instead of loop. I like the heart monitoring features. I exercise frequently so I like the idea of not having to be always have my cell phone with me for work outs. Also, if I keel over due to a heart attack it should be able to dial emergency services. I just wish the battery life could be longer.