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Interesting. Me, with my AWUltra I could care less about 5 more hours of battery life but understand that a new chip with 60% more transistors is very likely to present noticeably improved operation.
Great, but my impression from the presentation was that the improvements are too minor to brag about.
 
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Unless you are immunocompromised humans are like 97% effective at being aware they have a fever. Why would you need a device to tell you that? If you are tracking temperature for fertility that’s a different and real problem it would be cool for the watch to solve.
Wait, so why do we have thermometers??
 
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In my opinion, the biggest mistake they (Apple) did this year, was to not give us a "black titanium" option.
I currently own the 1st gen Ultra, but if they had offered it in black, I probably couldn't have resisted the temptation to upgrade, as I'm planning on getting the black titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max, and it would've been a perfect match. I also love my tech to be black (or at least graphite / space grey).
I won't be upgrading soon, but when I do, I'm seriously considering the graphite stainless steel series 9 over the Ultra 2. I think a lot of watch bands looks better with black bezels.
But, my wallet thanks you, Apple, for helping it save some money by not upgrading.
 
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Funny — I never checked my AW battery health — I'm also at 82%))

Yea, I was waiting for this update too, but this year's presentation was one of the worst I can remember. At least my phone is a 14PM, so that's def staying, but I was looking forward to upgrading my S6...
I have a 13 Mini, so a 15 Pro is on the cards for me this year. I'm hoping next year being the 10 year anniversary could be the year to pull the trigger on a watch as I hope it would be more of a significant update.
 
I have a 13 Mini, so a 15 Pro is on the cards for me this year. I'm hoping next year being the 10 year anniversary could be the year to pull the trigger on a watch as I hope it would be more of a significant update.
If next year's updates aren't more significant... I don't even know.
 
I think the only meaningful update is to Siri: both for using transformer model on-device for more accurate speech recognition as well as processing _some_ Siri requests on device.

The devil is in the details: What are those "some' requests? Clearly nothing that would need data from outside (like navigation). Probably 'some' will include small tasks like settings timers and pausing the music.

Siri needs a full LLM based overhaul asap. Even if Apple would be able to run a small LLM in iPhone for GPT-3.5 (or even Llama 2) -like performance, that will not run on a watch. This probably will again kill the local on-watch Siri in a year from doing much more than setting a timer.

While Siri is way too often broken for tasks that could be run on watch, upgrading AWU1 to AWU2 just to get them work reliably would not likely be worth it.
Does the watch usually talk to the phone for Siri or straight to Apple servers? If the phone isn’t that getting processed on device? I guess there’s some lag in that scenario but I wonder just how much time we’re talking. My watch is in Bluetooth distance of my phone 99% of the time ya know?
 
Interesting. Me, with my AWUltra I could care less about 5 more hours of battery life but understand that a new chip with 60% more transistors is very likely to present noticeably improved operation.
Agree. 5 or even 10 more hours isn't really that useful for 99.99% of users. The Garmins of the world already have that way surpassed. For me, and I assume a lot of others, it's really for getting over the hump of doing a longer workout, 2-3+ hours with gps and music streaming and then making it through the rest of the day (or for others just the convenience of making it 2-3 days without charging I guess). I don't see apple rushing to make the standard series have a much longer battery life bc it will just undercut ultra sales significantly. I and I assume most other ultra buyers would likely just by the 9 if it had the same battery life.
 
I have a 6 too, and I'm in the exact same boat. I was all primed for the Ultra 2, but now I think I'll just wait it out for another year. Battery is at 82%, I think I can make it last!
I have the S5, while I can wait, I am not sure next year we might get a substantial update. The rumors I heard are not that compelling IMO.
 
The  WATCH compare page is underwhelming compared to the iPhone compare page.


 
how so? by needing 6 different apps to do what one instance of garmin connect can do? be specific please.
by doing 99.99% of what 99.99% people need and use while offering all the other benefits of the watch/apple device environment. very similar to digital camera market. i think it's reasonable that they've chosen to not design the product for the most intense athletes.
 
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out of curiosity, can you go into more detail onthe metrics and training features you feel are missing?
Just off the top of my head:
Training Readiness
Body Battery
Performance
Hill Score
Lactate Threshold Test
Workout Suggestions
Morning Report
Free Coaching plans

For my specific use case I end up having to top the AWU battery up every evening, so the 3 to 4 weeks battery life with GPS tracking on all activities is a nice thing with Garmin too.
 
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how so? by needing 6 different apps to do what one instance of garmin connect can do? be specific please.
By making marathon-level training capable with one watch that does all the things AW Ultra does (you can look them up yourself). The number of runners running ultra marathons is tiny. Folks training at cardio activities that exceed 23.6 miles running probably should use a specialty tool like a Garmin, but for marathoners an AW Ultra works fine.
 
by doing 99.99% of what 99.99% people need and use while offering all the other benefits of the watch/apple device environment. very similar to digital camera market. i think it's reasonable that they've chosen to not design the product for the most intense athletes.
how do you know that? You only say that b/c you think what Apple is telling you is what 99% of people need but if you had access to more info, you'd think 99% of people needed that too.

Fitness and wellness is about doing the best you can for yourself and Apple isn't on that wavelength, they're on the lets capitalize on everything we have without really innovating and letting our fans do the marketing for us wavelength.
 
By making marathon-level training capable with one watch that does all the things AW Ultra does (you can look them up yourself). The number of runners running ultra marathons is tiny. Folks training at cardio activities that exceed 23.6 miles running probably should use a specialty tool like a Garmin, but for marathoners an AW Ultra works fine.
not if you want real stats around your performance and recovery. Good luck sleep tracking to check HRV on a watch that will die in the middle of the night...
 
If next year's updates aren't more significant... I don't even know.
I could tell within 2 minutes of the S9 announcement that it was incremental, and it only got worse when they did the enviro skit. Its been the same design for 9 years now, just wider screens - surely its time. But I don't really know what they can do to make it different, I don't want a round one. I would however like to see the regular watch last more than 18 hours, and the Ultra at least go to 2 days.
 
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Just off the top of my head:
Training Readiness
Body Battery
Performance
Hill Score
Lactate Threshold Test
Workout Suggestions
Morning Report
Free Coaching plans

For my specific use case I end up having to top the AWU battery up every evening, so the 3 to 4 weeks battery life with GPS tracking on all activities is a nice thing with Garmin too.
on the watch itself or in the garmin app? Seems like your problem is maybe with the apple fitness app not the watch. There's lots of apps the aw can connect to to do all this.
 
Does the watch usually talk to the phone for Siri or straight to Apple servers? If the phone isn’t that getting processed on device? I guess there’s some lag in that scenario but I wonder just how much time we’re talking. My watch is in Bluetooth distance of my phone 99% of the time ya know?

I think that if the phone is nearby, watch talks to that and can even process some requests locally (in Phone). If the phone is not nearby, the watch will talk to Apple servers. I guess first trying Wifi and if that is not working LTE. Overall the experience is not great when the iPhone is not in your pocket.
 
I think the only meaningful update is to Siri: both for using transformer model on-device for more accurate speech recognition as well as processing _some_ Siri requests on device.

The devil is in the details: What are those "some' requests? Clearly nothing that would need data from outside (like navigation). Probably 'some' will include small tasks like settings timers and pausing the music.

So I have wondered about the navigation part. Siri processing is dicier than typing into maps to obtain navigation route when driving, some of the time but not all the time. Why is that? I don't know. But this leads me to think that perhaps Siri processing on device would be better even for navigation.
 
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FWIW: I just enabled ✈ mode on my AWU1 and was able to use Siri no problem. what's this about it not being on-device except on the new ones?? Am I missing something?
 
on the watch itself or in the garmin app? Seems like your problem is maybe with the apple fitness app not the watch. There's lots of apps the aw can connect to to do all this.
These are all available on the watch itself w/out even opening the app.. it seems like your problem is judging a wearable market product w/out even really knowing what's available, you're like Apple's favorite kind of consumer.
 
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I could tell within 2 minutes of the S9 announcement that it was incremental, and it only got worse when they did the enviro skit. Its been the same design for 9 years now, just wider screens - surely its time. But I don't really know what they can do to make it different, I don't want a round one. I would however like to see the regular watch last more than 18 hours, and the Ultra at least go to 2 days.
I think they need to stop with the rounded edges — it makes it so much more vulnerable to damage, like 6-11 iPhones. And yes — more autonomy is always welcomed!)
 
Apple really fumbled with this release imo. They could have at least re-wrapped it in a new color scheme, offer a darker color, a product red with red highlights instead of orange, etc. Too iterative to entice Ultra 1 users to upgrade, or even users on the fence deciding if it’s worth the cost over the series 9 for that matter.
 
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