David Smith:
From a development perspective the Series 3 is a delight to work with. It is fast, capable and LTE allows a wide variety of new applications.
And:
In daily use the Series 0 is probably “good enough” for many customers, especially with the speed/stability improvements added in watchOS 4, but as a developer I can’t wait until I no longer have to support it.
And:
The Series 3 is being adopted incredibly quickly and just last week became the most popular Apple Watch overall amongst my users with 33% of the overall user-base. The Series 0 is steadily falling, currently at around 24%.
Lots of interesting Apple Watch adoption data in this post. Will Apple drop Series 0 support? I hope Apple continues to offer a path for Series 0 buyers to receive watchOS updates, even if 3rd party apps stop supporting Series 0.
Late next month the Series 0 will be three years old.
Yup. First watches arrived in customers’ hands on 4/24/15 (easy to remember, as it made a hell of a birthday present!)
interesting thought that I expect my phone to be no longer supported at some point but my watch? A watch is forever or?
It’s been more than two years since the FIRST Series 0 shipped (April 2015), but it’s been less than two years since the LAST Series 0 shipped (Sep 2016, when the Series 1 & Series 2 were released.)
i have no desire to upgrade my 0 to another major watchOS version because it simply cant handle what it has now. It’s too slow.
My battery is old enough (day 1) that it needs to be serviced. However I received a series 3 sport as a christmas gift and am using that now…but i do miss my stainless steel case!
Absolutely. My bad. Post edited.
As a proud series 0 owner myself, there’s no way watchOS fits in it forever.
I have a 0 and still use it. I’m not buying a new Watch until I see some compelling reason and I’m not sure I will for a long time.
For notifications, the 0 is fine. For most (not all) health/fitness uses it’s also fine.
Bottom line, I’m not seeing a large enough set of must-have apps to make me spend $300+ so I can run them. So, while I’m sure that it’s easier and a better dev experience to support only newer hardware, as a user… I don’t care. This is all about showing me the apps OR about a base Watch that does enough more than I’ll upgrade for that alone.
Now, will I eventually upgrade? Sure. This Watch will die in some way or a new one will bring, say, 3 day battery life or something. But unlike iPhones, Watches haven’t introduced new features at the same rate. In the same ~3 years from the 0 to the 3 we went from the first iPhone to the 4. That’s a pretty compelling set of upgrades. Watch… hasn’t seen that yet.
My watch is disappointed with me. Again.
I have had my Series 0 since 4/24/2015 and stop doing updates after Watch OS3. Still does everything I need effectively—Apple Pay, texts, directions, email, triage, exercise intensive monitoring, weather, train of thought inquiries while sitting, walking or running, heart rate and sleep monitor, and as my only alarm clock. Primarily only use my phone to take pictures and as display when commuting-when commuting Watch controls music and allows email glances. Charge for 45-60 minutes daily in morning. Wear it the other 23 hours, Hope to keep 0 another two years and no real new compelling capability yet to upgrade. Watch is not ideal for phone calls, phone has GPS and is always in my pocket, so new LTE and GPS features not particularly useful for me and undoubtedly many others.
Watch is my favorite Apple device since it can do so many things and do them so seamlessly