Apple Watch Series 12

One of the features that the app can control is the "environment". When out and about it's set to omnidirectional so that someone next to him doesn't need to be talking directly to him, however that picks up a lot of background and when in a building that causes.

He's also wired up their house with an audio loop. There's a microphone at my mother's craft desk that goes directly to the hearing loop and he can hear it anywhere in the main rooms of the house.

However, going out to places where he needs to be able to talk to people with less assistive technology available, things like the dictation mode on the phone area used. Also, sometimes he'll miss words (the start of a sentence until he realizes someone is talking to him, turns his head and the directional hearing aid mode gets them in focus). Being able to review the last 15 seconds of what was said on his iWatch would a technology that he would use.

It's built into the meeting software I use and probably in most mainstream ones.

I tried OS transcription but those don't split out who's talking (since it's a single audio stream) so much less useful.

Anyways all that to say that at least in online meetings this problem is solved and addressing this problem in a stack that doesn't have meeting context is going to result in a worse experience.

That’s what the wrist computer is doing.

Did you mean to use another word here? I mean, the vast majority of people are still on Earth so many things are geocentric and that's rarely considered a problem.

It likely stretches the definitions compared to what most people who do not want to be recorded think the laws should prevent, but on the other hand at least it couldn’t be used as legal evidence. It sounds intended as a memory aid, where passing a transcript for gossip purposes will hopefully be met with automatic skepticism as something that isn’t authenticated in any way and could be made up entirely.

They probably spent enormous amounts of time weighing how much legal jeopardy it would create for their customers.

“Siri Recap”

https://support.apple.com/en-us/148354

> For the purposes of this section, “confidential communication” means any communication carried on in circumstances as may reasonably indicate that any party to the communication desires it to be confined to the parties thereto, but excludes a communication made in a public gathering or in any legislative, judicial, executive, or administrative proceeding open to the public, or in any other circumstance in which the parties to the communication may reasonably expect that the communication may be overheard or recorded.

One of the parties visibly wearing a watch with a recording function, or holding a phone, or wearing earbuds with microphones in them means the other parties may not reasonably expect the conversation to be free of microphones.

What a pain in the ass. This sort of arbitrary (and no doubt janky) kneecapping/censorship makes these things fundamentally unfit for purpose. A transcription that doesn’t transcribe what was said if it thinks it’s naughty is worse than useless.

It’s also much less effective at recording people speaking for long durations than the audio recording feature that every smartphone for the last 20 years has supported.

If someone is following you around within earshot and fiddling with... a notepad and pencil or a watch or a phone or a tape recorder, then yes, you have reason to be upset. I agree.

The ability of the Apple Watch to do what has always been possible doesn't materially change your privacy. [1]

Fundamentally, this is an accessibility feature, and Apple -- and other vendors -- have already shipped several similar ones. Were you equally upset by those too? AirProds already 'record' all audio around them! They can even be used as listening devices! https://support.apple.com/en-au/102479

This reminds me of parents getting hysterical when someone pulls out a DSLR at a kid's soccer game, while standing next to half a dozen parents who are all taking pictures with the phones and immediately uploading them to Meta.

[1] There are valid arguments to be made that this will be normalised and cloned... badly by Chinese and South Korean vendors without the privacy safeguards, at which point it is "too late" to put the genie back in the bottle.

By that I mean that I really do understand your position, but I also deeply understand the flawed logic that created that attitude in you. I can't agree with it, because I see the inconsistency, I recognise the motivation, and I know that it is fundamentally about something else entirely.

The angry soccer mom shouting at the dad with the DSLR camera isn't angry about her kid's picture getting taken.

She's scared of the pedophiles and her children's innocence being violated by forces beyond her control. The big camera is a symbol to fight against, something out-of-place and even vulgar in its nature.

That same person won't even notice the half a dozen phones people pull out to take pictures of her kid at the game. Won't bat an eye. No complaints. That's normal, that's fine, that's just for social media!

This watch thing is just an accessibility feature. That's all it is. Nothing more. Trust me: NOBODY will ever use it to spy on you, or snoop on you, or furtively check past conversations they had with you. Ever. It... just won't happen. That's not a thing, will never be a thing, and is in no shape, way, or form harmful to your organic human conversations, or whatever.

You're upset about something else. I don't know what it is specifically, but if I dare guess, it's something like the Flock cameras. The surveillance state. Meta and Google hoovering up everyone's personal data by the exabyte, and weaponising it against them. Our children's innocence ruined by algorithms tuned to addict them. "Smart" televisions taking screenshots and even sending audio recordings to foreign data centres. Car navigation camera images uploaded for AI training, or who knows what else. On and on, and on!

I get it, I do.

We're losing our privacy. We're increasingly monitored and controlled.

We live in a world that George Orwell could not have imagined in his worst nightmares.

We have files on us so detailed that it would make a KGB spook blush.

Unless you live in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, you've already bathed in a sea of cameras and microphones, many of which are always on in some sense or another.

Apple Watch isn't the problem here. It already had a microphone, in every edition, going back to the first one. It could already "surreptitiously" record you!

What Apple's engineers have done is add an accessibility feature for the old and hard of hearing in the most secure and privacy-preserving way imaginable.

You're getting worked up about it to a level that makes no logical sense whatsoever because you're not upset about it, you're not upset about the specifics of its privacy, you're upset about... <waves hands>... everything.

I get it.

I don't appreciate Apple normalizing the already creepy ai note takers that exist and increasing the odds that someone will use them in casual or intimate conversations.

Are you worried about malicious actors snooping on conversations? They have always already been able to do that longer than I have been alive and a transcription app isn't going to change that

https://youtu.be/tEBYHHiQ4ps

I would hope to not be friends with such a fucking weird person tbh. But I guess if it's automated into a sexy device it's fine.

The difference is extremely obvious, to the point that you even typed out one of the differences!

Human memory is well known to be unreliable. There’s a clear difference with “he said, she said” type recollections and what Apple is doing. People forget things and they get things wrong.

There may indeed be no expectation of privacy in public but this still really creepy and slightly threatening.

It’s always listening and allows you to go back without pressing record before hand.

Now you have a potential written record of every off colour remark, joke and personal discussion you over hear.

Maybe you think the world would be better if we all watch what we say in public further, I don’t.

From apple website: Apple Watch Ultra Workout

Up to 18 hours workout tracking Up to 25 hours Extended Workout tracking Up to 45 hours Max Extended Workout tracking

My experience with the none ultra is that the battery life estimates are spot on.

True mass market means optimizing your product for the fat part of the population bell curve. This is some point or region in a space of { cost, features, use cases, durability }. The Apple Watch works for everyone from a stay at home parent, stocker at the supermarket, executive, and so on. If you work in a machine shop or spend a few hours every day working out it may not be for you.

There’s a marginal but valuable exception: think of prosumer cameras. There are indeed pros, and the feature set is good enough for some of them to shoot with a prosumer camera (any actual pro can shoot better photos with an instamatic than I can with a phone, much less an SLR). But most people buy the high end aspirationally. Why not? That penumbra pulls more people in who really need the plain old features.

And anyway once you really are at the high end your needs can be idiosyncratic.

iOS has a lot of power to finely control notifications. For example for Slack I just have app badges, while iMessage buzzes. In Mail, only people I’ve added to a small “VIP” list cause a buzz. Otherwise I just look at the Mail app badge to see how many emails have come in.

It takes time to tune it, but it is a very good investment IMO.

I'm really unsatisfied with this device.

It was fine up till the 13 mini. Every iPhone after that is too big and heavy to fit in a running belt without jostling.

It can download and sync playlists and you connect bt headphones to it.

I'll keep buying garmins but I do hate the ux.

After five years, Apple Watches are out of support, so even if they work their value goes to $0. The battery is gone by that time, new OSes don't support them, and their only destination is a landfill.

Mechanical watches can last decades, and hold some resell value at any age.