A few months ago I was thinking of getting a new iPhone SE and then I read that it would go up in price by at least 50 USD and that it would have an Apple modem and more and I lost interest in upgrading. For me the niche served by a budget phone is that it is affordable. By affordable I mean below 500 CHF to buy new, when it’s current.
A few minutes ago I looked at my Apple Watch and it said that I had not stood for the last two hours so I got up and walked around until it said that I had stood this hour. The irony is not lost on me that a watch would tell me that I am not active enough.
The Apple Watch wants you to stand for a minute an hour for six to 18 hours per day.
Apple push us to get the Apple Watch Series 10, the Ultra 2 or the Apple Watch SE in third place. If you’re a runner, and you don’t feel like spending on the Ultra or the Ten then it makes sense to get the SE instead.
Although the SE is the cheaper option it still provides us with plenty of running metrics. It provides heart rate, pace, power, cadence, vertical oscilation, ground contact time, stride length, workout time, distance, elevation gain, average cadence, average pace, average power, active kilocalories, total kilocalories and more.
The Apple Fitness App now has Training Load data. It looks at the workouts you have done over the last 7 days and compares it to the last 28 days. In theory this is interesting but in practice I find it frustrating.
To be specific about what I find frustrating, the Apple watch has more than 1900 workout days to gather data from. Training Today and Gentler Streak both measure HRV and assess whether I am overdoing it, within the zone or slacking off.
This morning I woke up to people insulting me for not being an Apple fan boy on Threads. Before that I was trolled for several other reasons and the consequence is that I have now deactivated my Threads account.
For me the web is a place where, if you agree, or if you want to offer support, but if you disagree, or don’t respect a view, you say so in a separate thread, without trolling people.
I have a 2016 MacBook Pro that now requires me to swap the battery. The issue is that because this is a machine from 2016 it is seen as obsolete by Apple. This means that Xcode and other apps no longer get updated. Neither does Final Cut Pro X and other apps.
In light of this if I was to swap the battery for a new one it could cost about 250 CHF.
Yesterday I wore the Suunto Peak 5 alongside the Apple Watch SE rather than the Apple Watch SE and Garmin device as I usually would. The reason for this is that I want to continue playing with Suunto devices, and I’d like to wean myself off of the Apple Watch, for at least a week or two.
In the process of doing this I was reminded that although the Apple watch is pivotal within the iOS app ecosystem Garmin is very well connected with other services.
This morning as I woke up I decided to strap on the Apple Watch Series 4 and use it for part of the day. In the process I thought that I would check my EKG reading. That’s when I saw that the EKG app is no longer supported on the Apple Watch Series 4. Now is the time when that watch could be recycled. Apple no longer supports it so within half a year to a year it will be vintage.
People will always ask me why I wear two watches and the answer is now “because one is a smart watch and the other is for sports, and people accept that quite easily. The reasons I used to give are no longer needed. I learned how to keep a short answer convenient, and easy to accept.
I saw an article today that said that people prefer the Series 8 and 9 to the Apple Watch SE and the Ultra.
A few days ago we saw that talks between Apple and Meta had amounted to nothing. There was talk about including Meta’s AI efforts into Apple Intelligence, unti Apple said “Forget it” or somethign to that effect. I skimmed the headlines but don’t remember the details.
This is significant. The reason for this is simple. The EU is being criticised by Apple for the Digital Markets Act and Apple is trying to give the EU a bad name by saying “We won’t make Apple Intelligence available in the EU because we’re not clear about the DMA.