When I saw the watchOS 5 Walkie-Talkie announcement in the WWDC keynote, I got a little excited, had a little nostalgia buzz full of campouts and whispered late night push-to-talk conversations.
The video embedded below is Jeff Benjamin doing what he does best, taking you on a tour through the latest shiny, in this case, a step-by-step on the watchOS 5 Walkie-Talkie app.
Is this purely for fun? Or is there a use case? The performance seemed just a bit laggy, clearly laggier than the real world walkie-talkies which had no A-to-D conversions, were straight real-time radio transmission.
If the answer is, don’t be grumpy, just have fun with it, cool. Just want to be sure I’m not missing the value here.
I need a sound effects layer. Walkie Talkie, Tin Can, Submarine, Outer Space, Ship At Sea, stuff like that.
The value is “Dick Tracy!”, yes.
In the real world, buy an FRS radio or get a technician license and a cheap FM handset.
Most people will never do the latter.
I can see this being useful between couples, parents and kids, etc. Not sure about the rest. But then I have a series 0, so…
Sorry, but these do not have the same use cases. FRS is great for when you’re in an area that does not have cell or WiFi service. However, the Apple Watch Walkie Talkie can connect you to anyone else in the world who has an Apple Watch. I’d love to know how your FRS radio is going to do that.
I think walkie-talkie would be a vast improvement to yelling from one end of the house to the other. Also, telling my wife that she forgot something before she drives off without it. A phone call doesn’t always work in these situations. I can think of lots of other use cases as well. It seems pretty cool to me.