I’ve been putting my new Apple Watch Series 2 through its paces and thought it worth checking in on my initial thoughts.

Apple Watch Believer

I bought the original Apple Watch Sport when it first launched and I’ve worn it every day since. A lot of people lost interest in the Apple Watch in the months following its release but I find it quite useful. Every day I use the ability to see my next appointment on my wrist, the whole world of notifications, and the fitness tracking. I’d used smart watches before (like my original Kickstarter Pebble) and for me, the Apple Watch left them all in the dust. 

What I didn’t like about the original Apple Watch was the performance constraints and, in hindsight, the quirky user interface. After getting excited about the changes with watchOS 3 and seeing that Apple added some new features (and performance horsepower) to the Series 2, I decided to upgrade.

The New Watch

While my original Apple Watch was the space gray aluminum, I upgraded with the new watch to Stainless Steel. This was a luxury but since I’ve already been wearing an Apple Watch for awhile, I know I’m sold and I wanted something nice.

The stainless steel watch is, not surprisingly a bit heavier than the aluminum watch but not uncomfortably so. The watch definitely feels more solid than the aluminum watch and I’m going to enjoy the new band combinations that I can get with the stainless steel. 

One concern with the stainless steel watch is the taptic engine. My friends that purchased the original stainless steel Apple Watch complain that the taptic engine doesn’t work as well as it did on the Apple Watch Sport. What ever problem they had with the original stainless steel watch got fixed with the Series 2 watch. The taps work just fine and don’t feel significantly different than they did on my original Apple Watch Sport.

Another difference I’ve noticed is the spin of their crown. It feels like it is slightly more weighted than with the lighter aluminum sport. I thought this was just in my mind but when I tried the aluminum and stainless steel watches in the Apple Store, I had the same impression.

Another benefit of the stainless steel watch over the aluminum is the material used on the face of the watch. The stainless steel watch uses Sapphire crystal and the aluminum watch uses Ion-X glass. The Sapphire crystal is tougher and comparing it to my year-and-a-half year old aluminum watch, looks noticeably better. I’m hard on watches and I’m hoping this new watch face holds up better.

The fit and finish of the stainless steel is great and while it hurt a little spending the extra money on it, I like the look of it a lot more than my original Apple Watch.

Performance Boon

My biggest gripe with the original Apple Watch was performance. While the original Apple Watch was a great productivity tool with the built-in basic features, I eventually gave up on all but the most rudimentary apps. Between the faster S2 processor and the improvements in watchOS 3, I find that is no longer the case. In attributing performance gains between the hardware and software upgrades I did not run any benchmarks but I can tell you that I ran watchOS 3 on my original Apple Watch for months and apps are snappier on the new hardware.

Apps actually work on this new watch. My OmniFocus database is a big one. Getting it over to my watch and navigating it on my wrist was unbearable with the original Apple Watch and now it can work. I still get occasional lags but they are fractions of a second. Since getting the new watch, I’ve never had an app show me the spinner and, ultimately, just quit on me like used to happen on the original Apple Watch.

The new processor and software now make it possible to use third party apps. Once you wrap your head around that, you’ll need to start rethinking which apps may be worth the trouble. It’s still an incredibly small screen and it takes pretty clever app developer to make it work. However, apps are now on the table and that is going to be interesting.

So Bright

The original Apple Watch has 450 nits of brightness. The new one has 1,000 nits. That’s a lot of nits. In case you were wondering, a “nit” is a unit of luminance equal to one candela per square meter. I’m not going to entirely unpack that but I can tell you the brightness on the new watch is immediately apparent. So much so that I’m looking at the original Apple Watch screen and trying to get over how dim it now looks. 

While performance was the feature knew I wanted most in the new Apple Watch, screen brightness is the feature I did not know I wanted most. It’s easier to read now, indoors and outdoors. If you are on the fence about upgrading your Apple Watch and want to save money, I recommend not comparing screen brightness between the old and new Apple Watches.

Water Resistance

I was pretty cavalier with the original Apple Watch and water. Because it was always on me, it often got pretty wet. I occasionally wore it in the shower, I’d wash it under the sink if it got dirty, and on more than one occasion my hand went into the water while wearing the watch. I feel even more reckless with the new watch. Water just isn’t a consideration for me now. In addition to all the above, I’ll be wearing the new watch in the pool and the ocean. 

GPS

With the GPS radio, you can now go for a run or a hike and leave your phone at home. The watch will track your route and show it to you once you get back to your phone.

The inclusion of a GPS radio on the new watch is great for runners but it also exposes a few flaws. It is still goofy trying to load music files onto the watch. If you regularly listen to temporary media (like podcasts and audio books), you’re going to spend more time than you want getting data on the watch if you want to leave your phone at home on your next run or hike.

Recommendations

Granted it is early days but I really like the improved Apple Watch. If you didn’t get an original Apple Watch but have been thinking about it, now is an excellent time to get on board. The case for upgrading from the original Apple Watch is more difficult. If you are a swimmer or a runner (and want the GPS), you should definitely upgrade. The reason I upgraded is because I really like my Apple Watch and I wanted the latest and the greatest. The increased performance and screen brightness make the watch more useful to me. Now that I can actually use apps, I’m very curious to see how I’m using the Apple Watch in a few months.

Last week while at WWDC, I loaded the iOS 10 beta onto one of my iPads. It’s been a lot more stable than I expected it to be and this experience led me to do something a little crazy. I loaded the iOS beta on my iPhone. Usually (well …maybe always) it’s a bad idea to load the first iteration of a beta operating system on that thing that you use every day to make money and pay your bills. However buoyed by the success on the iPad, I threw caution to the wind and did it anyway. This reckless act wasn’t so much a result of any particular new feature I wanted on the phone so much as my desire to find out if the improvements to the Apple Watch are for real. So I did and they are.

For almost a week now, I’ve had my watch running watch OS 3.0. It’s faster, more responsive, and I suddenly find myself using third-party applications again. I can attest that the improvements are not merely hypothetical but, if you give it a chance, can drastically change the way you use your Apple Watch.

I’ve now set up several watch faces that are task oriented. I have one for work, one for fitness, and one for home. The complications on each face are different and switching between them is a simple matter of swiping left or right on the current watch face. From these three watch faces I can get easy access to just about anything I need.

Likewise the watchOS Dock works swimmingly. I’ve pressed the physical button for the Dock more times in the last week than I did in the prior year when it was the Friends button. The background refresh of Dock-based apps is the killer feature here. I can actually now consider some third party apps that hold time sensitive data without worrying whether or not they’ll be up-to-date.

I’m quite impressed with Apple’s ability to go back to the drawing board and improve the user interface of the Apple Watch. I’m even more impressed, however, that they are squeezing this much better performance out of the exact same pokey hardware I had a week ago. I simply didn’t think it was possible.

I’ve still got the occasional crash to deal with (it is, after all, beta software) but, once the bugs are ironed out and the software ships in the fall, a lot of people are going to be surprised at how perky their Apple Watch becomes.

Mac Rumors is reporting the next Apple Watch may be 20-40% thinner than the existing one. I like my Apple Watch and wear it every day. However, the biggest problem I have with it is that the processor is not fast enough to bring the power it needs for third-party apps. I need it faster, not thinner.

9to5 Mac recently had a nice post with some Apple Watch tips. For me, the winner is nightstand mode. It’s not as well known as it should be but if you put your Apple Watch on its side on your night stand and connect the charging cable, the watch turns into a handy night stand. I’ve never liked bed stand clocks that light up the room at night and the Apple Watch kindly turns itself off. If you need to check the time, just touch the screen and it lights up for you long enough to tell the time and then goes dark again so you can go back to sleep. I also prefer the alarm sounds of the Apple Watch over the iPhone.

In a recent Mac Power Users episode, I recommended the Apple Watch as a year-end gift. This recommendation drew divided responses. Some wrote in agreement while others essentially asked me “is the Apple watch still a thing?”. Then out of the blue my wife asked me if she thought the Apple Watch was going to survive as a product. The question surprised me. My wife is, however, my window into the non-geek world and when she asked about the hypothetical Apple Watch demise, it made me wonder how many other people are thinking the same thing.

I think there is zero chance of Apple walking away from the watch. They view it as a key product moving toward the future and as technology gets better and smaller, the watch is going to improve dramatically.

Nevertheless, I’m generally bullish on my current Apple Watch. I wear it every day and use it to keep up with my fitness goals, set alarms and timers, check my calendar, listen to podcasts, turn on and off the lights, get directions, text my kids, and checkoff tasks. Oh yes … I also use it to tell time. This is the most useful watch I’ve ever owned. I put it on when I wake up in the morning and take it off when I go to bed. (That’s right, I even keep it on while I’m in my pajamas.)

Maybe it’s because there is this connection to the iPhone required to make it work or simply the fact that not many people wear watches and the Apple Watch was never going to be the big seller that the iPhone is, but there appears to be this perception that the product is flawed or not going to survive. I don’t think the product is perfect. The design, user interface, and software interaction can all use improvement. I expect there’s a group of people somewhere in Apple working on that right now.

I understand that some people did not take to their Apple Watch as I did. Maybe they wanted something more traditional or fashionable or maybe they just aren’t watch people. Nevertheless, having used one now since the Apple Watch was first released, I can’t imagine not having it. If something happened to my Apple watch, I would go buy another one.

I was putting on my Apple Watch this morning and thinking about how I’m using it now that I’m three months in. I’ve got several observations:

• I still wear it every day. When I forget to put it on (rarely) I miss it.
• The black rubber band is still just fine with me. I’ve worn it working in the yard and I’ve worn it at court and it doesn’t feel inappropriate in either place. I’ll probably buy an additional band at some point but right now I don’t feel any burning desire.
• I was doing great with the fitness rings and then I got sick. The last three weeks or so I’ve been miserable with kidney stones. My fitness records went all to hell. I’m looking forward to getting those rings filled back up.
• Battery life, shmattery life. I don’t even think about it. The watch always makes it through the day.
• I also don’t think much about apps. Except for OmniFocus and Overcast, I’m not using any third party apps. I suspect that will change when we get watch OS 2.0.
• I made this intricate set of watch faces when I first got the watch. I don’t use any of them except a minimalist version of Utility.
• Notifications on my wrist is golden. I’m often in meetings but have many things going on. Keeping up by glancing at my wrist is unobtrusive and handy.
• I find that I keep my phone in my pocket a lot more now that I’ve got the watch.
• I already wrote about watch directions. All of that is still true.
• Overall, my initial impressions haven’t changed. The Apple Watch, while not being essential, makes life for iPhone users a lot better.

A few weeks ago I guested on The Talk Show and John Gruber and I talked about everyone’s favorite new gadget. John made the comment that he turned on Bold Text in the Brightness and Text Size setting. This is a strange setting and requires you to reboot the watch to take effect. During the show, I went ahead and switched it on and have kept it that way since. I don’t have much to add to what John said during the show except an endorsement. With Bold Text turned on, complications are easier to read and look better and in most other views text is also easier to read but doesn’t usually look better. 

I recently ran into a problem where “Hey Siri” wasn’t working on my Apple Watch. I was sitting there, calling out “Hey Siri” with increasing volume and Siri had no interest in me. In fact, I said “Hey Siri” so loud that I set it off on my phone, which was in the next room charging. MacRumors published an article that shed some light.

In order for “Hey Siri” to work on your Apple Watch, the screen needs to be lit. It won’t activate when the screen is dark. If the screen is lit from you twisting your wrist or tapping the screen to wake it up or pressing the digital crown to wake up the watch, “Hey Siri” works. However, if you are in a glance or in an app, saying “Hey Siri” doesn’t work. The above linked Mac Rumors article explains that if you are at the watch face as a result of pressing the digital crown from another view (like the home screen or an app), “Hey Siri” also doesn’t work. However, in my testing “Hey Siri” worked just fine in that scenario.

Ray Maker is the first person I’ve seen really test the Apple Watch’s water resistence. He swam with it, jumped in off a 10M diving board with it, and simulated 40M depth water pressure with it and the Watch kept on ticking. While all of this is comforting to know, after spending $400 on a watch for the first time in my life, I still take it off before showering. (I do, however, keep it on while washing dishes.)

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