Watch this space: Apple offers free repairs for the self-bricking Apple Watch SE and Series 5 wearables Apple Watch Series 5 or Apple Watch SE owners can now send their devices for a free service after multiple units of the fancy wristwear refused to charge once entering Power Reserve mode. Per Apple's own documentation, the issue affects "a small number of customers" (we note it said a similar thing with the Butterfly Keyboard …
Honestly, it gave me an unnerving blast of nostalgia, a real madeleine moment, cos it looks exactly like the kind of watch I used to wear back in the late 80s - you know, back when digital watches were the apogee of street cool (NB it's possible that my sense of style was as dismal then as it is now).
It's a $martwatch these days, I've given them up and returned to my old windup watch, it's still running after 30 years ... these days people feel happy if their $martwatch is still running after three years.
I liked the smartwatch concept when it first appeared and bought a lot of them over the years, but they've all been recycled now.
As a young kid I was given an old carriage clock, it runs fine and you can get them on eBay now for about 3k, you think our kids will be seeing an Apple Watch Series 5 or Apple Watch SE on eBay for that level in 50 years?
"As a young kid I was given an old carriage clock, it runs fine and you can get them on eBay now for about 3k, you think our kids will be seeing an Apple Watch Series 5 or Apple Watch SE on eBay for that level in 50 years?"
No, but they're not the same thing. I bet if I had a time machine, traveled back half a century, and bought a bunch of clocks, few if any would be worth a lot today. Yours happens to be in the nice intersection of A) things people like and B) things rare enough that they have a lot of value, but most people buying clocks don't anticipate that they'll be investments decades on. They usually just want a method of knowing the time. For example, I have a clock that's rather old as well, though only about two decades. It works well. Also, it's a cheap plastic rectangle with little artistry about it and you probably couldn't sell it if you wanted to. Fine with me, because I only needed something to keep the time.
The same distinction applies to a smartwatch versus a normal watch. People buy normal watches to have the time available with a glance. People buy smartwatches to have different information available with the same convenience or to use it as a control device. Thus, you shouldn't expect that they'll be purchased by the same customers. People who just want the time don't need a smartwatch and may opt for a cheap long-life watch which will have no resale value because it's made to be utilitarian. People who want to see messages by looking at their wrist will not be happy with an older watch and may opt for one which needs more powerful hardware to perform the more complex tasks they want, meaning it won't really work later and thus also won't have resale value. There's a group including myself who don't really want any watch. It's all based on what you want the technology near you to do.
"Per Apple's own documentation, the issue affects "a small number of customers" (we note it said a similar thing with the Butterfly Keyboard service programme, so take from that what you will) with devices running watchOS 7.2 and 7.3.'
I recently noticed that my work laptop has the butterfly keyboard.
Never have an issue with them, mind you that *might* be cause I pretty much exclusively use an external keyboard. I should probably put a dust cover over them, but the touch-ID is kinda useful.
Wrist watches are useful, when I am biking or kayaking I can just glance at my watch for a number of functions. My phone is waterproof to the point that ai can take pics down to a metre and a half below the surface with it but why risk it falling out of a mount into the sea or off my bike at 100+ KPH when I can glance at my wrist.
Also handy when half way up a climb on a rock face.
They've got form for this. The old (white plastic) MacBooks would quite happily trash their own batteries if left for a few days with a low charge. Apart from the fix for that was to tell you to fuck off and buy a new battery.
Generally I'm fairly happy with Apple kit, that was an obvious exception.
"while the WearOS-based Oppo Watch runs around 30 hours between charges"
No it doesn't; not even close. Both my App and my AW are what you could consider 'all-day' watches (in that they both realistically need to be charged every night), however only my Apple Watch will consistently continue to work until around lunchtime on day 2; early evening with light usage. The Oppo is invariably dead before breakfast.
Microsoft support for their videogame consoles is pretty good. Ir has to be, 56% of the Xbox 360 consoles ended breaking at least once due to being badly designed and overheating. But due to Microsoft repairing them it did become the most popular console of it's generation after the Wii.
Unfortunately I cannot say the same about their Windows support, they do keep pushing updates that bork things.
Apple is just "encouraging" you into buying a higher margin iThing to replace your existing perfectly adequate iThing. Then there will be the inevetable class action suit, followed by a hasty retreat and a "Free repair" program.
I'm in my third cycle with my 2nd gen iPhone SE, suspiciously near product launches there have been OS updates that have 1) throttled the cpu down to nothing 2) ran the battery flat in 2 hours or less while severely overheating the device and my pants, 3) After the 14 series updates, the TouchID sensor will only work the same day that the fingerprints are registered.
Apple of course insists that the touchid sensor is just broken and will happily bill me to repair it, or sell me a new 12 mini for a grand after all the addons and taxes.
Funny thing is my iPad also has the Gen 2 touchid sensor, and it also automagically stopped working after the iOS 14 updates. Funny thing that. Still, it's great when it's working.
I bought an Apple Watch about a year ago. I only bought the 200 quid one, but for me it more than paid for itself when my watch started ringing when I was putting the bins out with the phone in the house, and I ended chatting to my wrist, (not an euphemism) ! Just seemed silly and very space 1999
Maybe lock-down is getting to me ..
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