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dalberto | 2 years ago

Some of the features I use on my Apple Watch all the time:

- Turn-by-turn directions with full-featured map apps.

- Stream and control podcasts.

- Ditto Audiobooks.

- As a remote shutter for my phone camera (eg group selfies).

- Dedicated 3rd party fitness apps (Alltrails, strength training apps).

I understand all this functionality is not everyone's cup of tea, but there's clearly a market for it.

discuss

internetter|2 years ago

Touche. Almost all of these I can concede a smartwatch might do better. I do just want to mention that: Garmin has offline maps of your whole region (eg NA) and the ability to provide directions. Obviously not as good as RT traffic data, but also offline has been helpful occasionally. My garmin can control podcasts as well. Remote shutter is unfortunately a limit of phone APIs, I tried making an app for this. My garmin has synced well to 3rd party apps, and I can't think of many reasons I'd want 3rd party fitness apps like AllTrails on it?

More relevant to my original point, however, is none of these things you mentioned require a beefy processor – they could all easily be implemented in a context like Garmin.

dalberto|2 years ago

That's fair, a lot of these features do not require a beefy processor. I think the value lies in the AW being a full-featured platform. Its processor is overkill for the lightest use-cases like remote shutter, but for others it's nice having a smartphone-like experience.

Case in point: Maps are full featured, it's not just about traffic, it's also about points of interest, supporting different modalities (crucially, public transit), and generally feeling like the full maps experience.

Like any other platform, 3rd party apps are nice for niches that the manufacturers do not serve, or do not serve well. For example, lifting apps make it super easy to log sets, reps, rest, etc; useful data the core experience does not offer.

As mentioned earlier, I think there's room for both. I'm actually not opposed to sporting a Garmin for endurance sports, where battery life is king :)