I’ve had an Apple Watch for a little over two years. It’s my first smartwatch, and I’d never used a wrist-worn fitness tracker previously either. When I’d tracked my training, I’d either manually input it into an app, or used good old fashioned pen and paper. I was worried about developing an overreliance, or allowing the watch to distract me, so approached the whole thing with caution.
As a result, my experience has been largely positive, but that doesn’t mean that there haven’t been hiccups. A good example of this came alongside a major software update towards the end of 2023, and I thought I’d use this as a chance to discuss the idea. Let’s start with Apple choosing a metric to monitor which is really awkward…
Apple Watch and “time spent in daylight”
When the latest iOS was added to my Watch, I didn’t notice many differences, but one happened to come to my attention whilst I was on holiday in October. Later versions of Apple Watch now tracks a user’s “time spent in daylight”. When I learned about this one, I was in Portugal and easily notching up between 200 and 300 minutes per day. I was on holiday. A huge part of that involved spending time outdoors in minimal clothing. Can you see the problem here?
Less than a week later, I was back in the UK, at my (indoor) jobs, where the temperature was much lower. Going outdoors in northern Europe between October and April tends to necessitate the use of sleeves, whether on a piece of knitwear or a coat. And I prefer my watch beneath said layers.
Yes, of course, your Watch needs to have the screen in daylight in order to log it. So even if you are outdoors beneath natural light, if your watch isn’t exposed in the same way, it won’t register.
The entire premise and function is heavily flawed. Whilst it may be a number that’s nice to know and track, this really isn’t the way to do it.
Tell me that this was invented by a Tech Bro in a warm country without telling me…
Closed ring streaks
Minds out of the gutter. What I mean here is Apple’s infamous generic activity tracking metrics: calories burned (obviously even more to discuss here); minutes of exercise completed; number of hours spent standing (there is an accessible version of this for those who cannot stand).
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: we need a rest day option here. It would benefit users enormously to be able to freeze their streak, either for a day or two of rest, or to log a period of illness or enforced rest.
But, if this function does nothing else, it proves that rings are for Apple’s benefit, not the users’ – they want us to keep using the device, and what better way to do so than via the dopamine hit attached to a sense of accomplishment upon performing a task? Not that we’re a generation of pleasers or anything…
Missing activities
Way before I had a watch, I tracked my workouts using an app which allowed you to manually enter activities like strength training, or use your phone’s GPS to log live workouts such as runs, cycles, walks… and horse rides. Apple’s native fitness app covered the former three, but not the latter. Guess which activity I was regularly participating in at the time?
Apple now includes equestrian activities, but there are plenty of other forms of high intensity or fun activities that it just doesn’t account for. Things like pole fitness are perfectly valid and yet, according to Apple, you can’t count it in the way you’d like to.
What can we learn from this?
This is a great time to remind ourselves that you know yourself better than a device knows you. After all, it is just a “dumb machine” and cannot account for nuance. Whilst the Watch is a useful device for so many things – alarms, making payments on the go, keeping a gentle eye on things like resting heart rate, and even, radically, telling the time! – it doesn’t know everything about you (much as Apple would have you believe otherwise).
Added to which, there are so many questions about accuracy – the amount of times that my Watch “can’t register” my heart rate, or I’ve been standing up and it doesn’t seem to agree – that you really do have to take the majority of data it collects with a pinch of salt.
If you’re using one, beware of the pitfalls. If you’re designing one, please engage your brain!