Alex Guyot, writing for MacStories, pulls together a nice overview of the new Apple Watch. My biggest question concerned swimming with the Apple Watch 2. From the post:
The original Apple Watch was rated to be splash proof and mostly water resistant, but submerging it was not recommended. The Apple Watch Series 2 ups the ante, receiving a water resistance rating of up to 50 meters. This means the Apple Watch can now safely be worn for swimming in pools or the ocean, and should generally remove any worry about wearing your Apple Watch into potentially watery situations.
I think swimmers are going to love the new Apple Watch.
Unfortunately, I have yet to identify with the allure of the Apple Watch. However, there seems to be a great deal of resources devoted to making it a great product.
Here’s the thing, though: Real swimmers don’t swim with watches; they just don’t. Go watch your local swim club and count the number of wristwatches. Zero.
Are “real swimmers” equivalent to “real gamers” or “real work”? 😉
Totally – except that we smell like a swimming pool when we sweat. 🙂
Here’s the thing with swimmers: There’s a pace clock on the wall of every pool, and every swimmer has had it beat into them to look at the clock for everything they do; it even helps with counting laps.
The question that I haven’t seen addressed by anyone: When I take a shower with the Apple Watch, it’s registering all sorts of phantom touches from the water hitting it. I have weather, then my song controls, then HR – all popping up because the Watch is sensing the “touch” of the water.
So, when swimming, is the Watch smart enough to disregard all of the “water touches”, and only react to “start/stop/pause” or whatever is in there?
This all goes back to my Day1 (of me owning Watch) filed radar: A “real” workout / fitness watch can’t rely on software controls. Once in workout mode (with the potential for pelting rain, sweat on hands or dripping off face onto watch, etc.), start/lap/pause/stop should be all done with the hardware buttons (the side button):
When stopped, press once starts. Hit it again is lap. Press/hold is pause. From pause mode, press restarts, or press/hold in pause mode stops the workout.
I told them they were welcome for me solving this UI problem for them…haven’t heard thanks yet, though. 😉
In the last 12 months I’ve had conversations with two friends who seemed surprised the Apple watch wasn’t waterproof for swimming seeing as it was promoted as a fitness thing so much.
Both have now preordered a Series 2 already.
Mmm, chlorine.
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There is a swim mode (or something like it). You can see the icon in some of the images.
Interesting. Can AW2 change this? The wall clock is great but it doesn’t store anything for you. Nor does it track your heart rate, etc. None of that is useful?
Finally, let’s not presume Apple has not consulted swimmers about this.
I can’t get the watch to accurately get my heart rate while running (avg. 165bpm on a 80minute run?! I’m about to pass out if my HR gets to the 160 range), so I know it won’t be useful as a HR monitor while swimming.
Given everything I’ve said above, I do plan to try AW2 while swimming; if I can get past the “thing on my wrist” feeling, I would like to be able to track my distance and time spent swimming.
What a weird thing to say. Of course Apple consulted swimmers on the new watch. And surfers, kayakers, divers etc. etc… And the next version will have improvements based on real world use.
I don’t wear a swim watch because up until now, there haven’t been any that are either too bulky, the software and computer sync are laughable, or the bands that are only lap counters or timers. Apple watch fixes every one of those things – I imagine you will be seeing plenty of them in the water from now on. I HATE lap counting. I can’t wait to get one of these and have it just buzz me on my last lap, or after a certain time. It will be fantastic to have specific data on how I’m doing.
And it will be fun to have some info on my surfing. Not sure it’d be much more useful than “ohh, I went 100 yards on that wave”, (or in my case “you fell 400 times and caught one wave by accident”).