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I mean, the iPhone and the Apple Watch have definitely improved a lot over the years, but fundamentally neither of these two devices has evolved from the first version into a new dimension. ↩︎
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I actually mean exactly that - walking around. I can already see the great potential of the Vision Pro when you’re more or less in one place (couch, workplace), but I wonder whether the vision of “everyone wearing one of these devices everywhere and at all times” can actually be realized with this concept. ↩︎
Leaving the Apple Watch Behind
For about two months, I haven’t been using my Apple Watch anymore, at least only sporadically. Previously, I wore one of my Apple Watches daily for almost ten years (9 years, 9 months, and 2 days). My longest streak for closing the activity rings was two years (735 days), and overall, I closed all the rings over 2,750 times in the 3,563 days that I owned an Apple Watch. I could hardly imagine life without an Apple Watch on my wrist. I once bought a new watch because the battery of my old one had lost its performance, and I didn’t want to be without a watch for two or three days during the repair. In the end, I even started wearing it at night for sleep tracking.
My general dissatisfaction, especially with the tech industry and particularly with the ever-declining software quality and Apple’s behavior, led me to the decision to break free from these constraints. It really challenged me mentally. But if I’m honest with myself, closing the rings, the incoming notifications (which I had already significantly minimized), sleep tracking, and all the other functions I used the watch for often stressed me more than they might have helped. Is it really better for my health to put pressure on myself every day to close some rings instead of relaxing and taking it easy in the here and now? I’m really not sure.
The underlying fear of a dead battery, meaning the watch’s battery life, also weighed on me. The first setback came with a COVID infection that occurred over a year ago. At that time, I broke my streak and afterwards simply stopped paying attention to closing my rings. That was a relief. As mentioned earlier, I then decided some time ago to just put the Apple Watch aside and not to wear it anymore.
I initially bought a very simple Casio watch for 30 EUR (Casio A168WEM) and have since supplemented it with a “slightly” better model (GW-5000U), which charges itself using solar energy and automatically sets itself correctly via a radio signal. This watch I can simply wear. If I want to know the time, I look at it; otherwise, I don’t. I certainly won’t become a watch collector (😇), but I enjoy considering whether I want to wear one watch or another, or none at all, on special occasions. I am confident that I will continue to pay attention to my heart health and other things, even if I haven’t closed three rings at the end of the day (🤞).
What do I miss the most? Apple Pay on my wrist. I used it a lot, even though sometimes it’s easier to do it via phone, as you don’t have to contort yourself at the sometimes awkwardly placed terminals. I also genuinely miss setting the timer with voice commands, as it was my most-used function on the watch. But that’s okay too.
In the meantime, I thought about buying a fitness ring to continue collecting vital data. However, maybe I’ll just avoid being informed about atrial fibrillation or other things that hopefully won’t happen to me, and save myself a subscription, avoid uploading my data to American servers, and spare myself the frustration of another piece of technology that looks great in marketing materials and works wonderfully but often disappoints in reality.
Let’s see…
Latest Tech Temptations
In recent days, a lot of new hardware has been introduced, and for all these great new devices and gadgets, I consider myself part of the potential target audience. Apple has presented new iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods. Thanks to Apple’s decision to slowly and gradually roll out the promised AI features and not at all in Germany in the long run, the innovations of the iPhone 16 are limited for me. Therefore, I have decided to use my iPhone 14 Pro for another year, especially since I was recently able to replace the battery thanks to Apple Care. So far, I always had the Pro model, but this year, for the first time, I had the impression that it is actually aimed at professional photographers/videographers, and I no longer belong to the target audience. If I were to order a new device today, I would choose the regular iPhone, and who knows, maybe I’ll get lucky, and next year the iPhone 17 will even have Always On. That would probably be the only feature I would really miss. (120 Hz is guaranteed to be great, but I actually don’t see the difference in daily use; which in my case is an advantage.) It’s similar with my Apple Watch. Although I could justify a new one, since my Series 7 is now almost three years old, I recently got to replace the battery and see no urgent need for an upgrade. I’m already eyeing the Ultra anyway, and this time it hasn’t received any technical improvements. And since I already own AirPods Pro Gen 2, I followed the announcement of the AirPods 4 with interest, but there is no risk of FOMO 🥳.
Apart from Apple, the new Retroid Pocket 5 and Retroid Pocket Mini have been announced. Despite my interest in a dedicated retro handheld with an OLED display, my Steam Deck OLED and the other devices I already own are enough for now. The constant new hardware releases in this area are increasingly annoying me. When ordering, you already know that you’ll be presented with a slightly improved device in a couple of weeks. The manufacturers don’t allow you to have the feeling of truly owning the perfect device for even a minute, and it gives the impression that they are deliberately putting imperfect handhelds on the market 😡.
Speaking of retro and must-have: Analog Pocket has announced a new special edition. This time, there are beautiful GBC colors at the usual prices and not totally overpriced aluminium models. Although it tempts me, I try to curb my collector’s instinct 😅.
The announcement of the PlayStation 5 Pro initially triggered me as well, but I came to the conclusion that my current PS5 in combination with my 4K OLED gaming monitor is completely sufficient. Spending €800 for slightly better graphics is something I actually can’t justify to myself.
It’s different with the Switch 2. I’m curious and will probably buy it, provided Nintendo doesn’t make any major mistakes 🤞.
macOS Sequoia Permission Madness
9TO5Mac reports that Apple is apparently planning to present its Mac operating system users with a copy of Microsoft’s Vista disaster:
With macOS Sequoia this fall, using apps that need access to screen recording permissions will become a little bit more tedious. Apple is rolling out a change that will require you to give explicit permission on a weekly basis to these types of apps, and every time you reboot your Mac.
I really hope this gets sorted out during the beta phase; otherwise, I will try to stay on Sonoma as long as possible. For years now, I’ve been waiting to upgrade until at least the first .1 release because Apple’s software quality hasn’t exactly inspired confidence. Additionally, Sequoia only has one new feature that genuinely interests me: iPhone Mirroring. And this won’t be available for EU users initially anyway. (The integrated AI stuff doesn’t interest me on the Mac at all, so I’m not sad about not having it in my operating system for the foreseeable future. I think it will be several years before it’s useful for anything until then I just use third party app for ChatGPT.)
But I currently use 15 apps that are allowed to record my screen:
The idea of approving these weekly or after every restart is not very appealing to me. Additionally, Apple apparently plans to make running apps installed from outside the App Store more difficult. Thanks a lot for nothing.
Well, let’s wait and see 🤞.
Apple Vision Pro - a glimpse of the future?
After reading and watching selected reports about the Apple Vision Pro, the consensus seems to be that the experience is absolutely unique. Although, it seems to be just the beginning of something really big to come due to its many existing shortcomings (weight, battery life, bulkiness, price etc.). Therefore, the device is more of a vision what Spatial Computing could be like in the future. Wouldn’t it be great if, in a few years, we could wear cheaper and especially much lighter and smaller glasses that discreetly answer all our questions anywhere or project a cinema screen in front of our faces, even though we’re sitting on a bench on the Times Square? Similar to how the iPhone initially had a number of shortcomings (price, EDGE, no copy and paste, no app store, no video recording, poor camera, etc.) that have now been almost completely eliminated, the next few years will also provide a far better Spatial Computing experience.
However, I wonder whether this will really be the case with the Apple Vision Pro, or whether we will only see improved versions of the current hardware in the foreseeable future, but no radical shift or further development that the reviewers / YouTubers are dreaming of.1 Will it really be possible to project non-transparent objects into our eyes without completely shielding them from ambient light? But as long as this is not the case, we will have to continue walking around2 with far too large, bulky, ski goggles tailored exactly to the wearer’s face, and no, this is definitely not the future I want to experience.