A week with the Apple Watch: Some idiosyncratic thoughts

I've had my Apple Watch for about a week now (42mm space grey Sport model with black band). This isn't meant to be a comprehensive review. Instead, here are some disorganized thoughts from the first few days of wearing/using it. 

• The space grey watch with black band is pretty discrete. Other than my friend who knew I got the watch and a few other friends who noticed me using it, no one has commented or asked about it (which is good). My guess is the bright blue, green, and pink bands catch more attention. The Sport band is very confortable; no complaints here.
• I only have one friend (a work colleague) that also has a watch, so I haven't tried any of the especially personal communication features. But I can't see needing to send a doodle or my heartbeat with any regularity.
• Apple Pay worked the one time I tried it (at an Apple store) however the LevelUp Passbook card did not work on the scanner at my local coffee shop and I had to use my phone like usual. If we were still shopping regularly at Whole Foods or Wegman's, Apple Pay would be fantastic. But the smaller grocery store we've been frequenting recently doesn't seem to take Apple Pay, even though they claim to have NFC on the payment terminals. Once Apple Pay is pervasive, this will be super-convenient.
• The "activate on wrist raise" feature works well (I've read some reviews that complained about it), but it is triggered while playing Dobro and Hawaiian lap steel guitar. Yes, I know this probably impacts all of maybe three people in the whole world, but sliding one's left hand and raising the tone bar makes the display light up. So I have to remember to turn that feature off when playing to save battery and not get distracted.

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"These are a few of my favorite things" #4 - Apple's iMessage app

This is an odd one to have on the list since I don't text very much and because I just upgraded to Mountain Lion a couple of months ago, but this is one of my new favorites. I love how when someone with an iPhone/iPad sends me a message, it pops up on my computer as well (and that I can send "text messages" to iPhones/iPads from my computer). More than half of the people I'd want to text with are on Apple mobile devices, so this is really convenient as a way for me to avoid texting from my phone!

"These are a few of my favorite things" #3 - AirPlay + Apple TV etc.

So this isn't one thing, but instead a system of interconnected gizmos:

At the heart of the system is the Apple TV, which can stream content from Netflix, Hulu, and dowload TV shows and movies from iTunes. But more importantly, it can receive content from your iPhone, iPad, and Mac (assuming that Mac is relatively new, running OS 10.8 "Mountain Lion") via Airplay and play it back on your TV. This means that anything that's on your Apple phone, tablet, or computer can be easily sent to a large display.* Also in the mix is my Denon receiver, which is also Airplay enabled, along with a series of Airport Express units connected to speakers in each room. So music from any of these devices can be piped directly into the stereo or any room in the house. Along with a big music library and Spotify subscription, this means you can listen to whatever you want, wherever you want.

*I can report that AirPlay is awesome for teaching (especially seminar classes) since you can project PDFs to the overhead projector in a classroom...

New iPad + Apple TV

As an early adopter of the original iPad two years ago, I was interested in the announcements of the new iPad (i.e., iPad 3) and updated Apple TV. The Apple TV is interesting to me, not because I stream a lot of movies to our television (although the interface for movies and music looks like an improvement over our Mac Mini running directly to our TV), but because of its ability to take video from an iPad (and Mac, if I'm understanding some third party software) and wirelessly display it on a bigger screen. To me, this is the future of lectures (at college). No more laptops running to the project thru a VGA cable. Instead, being untethered and able to broadcast the lecture wirelessly to the projector. How cool would that be?

The new iPad is attractive because of its improved display, faster data connection, and the growing number of photo editing apps (although I'm disappointed it didn't get more memory...128GB would have been awesome). I've started traveling without a laptop recently (to conferences, and also on our 10-day trip to Hawaii last year), and I'm interested in being able to keep things light while on the go but still being able to process and post photos. I'm thinking that the iPad, along with a Hyperdrive, will be a good system for my upcoming trip to Europe.

Back!

In my last post I apologized for not being around much, so I won't go into that again. I will say that ScienceOfRelationships has been seeing some really good growth; it's fun to see a site take off. We've got some really interesting articles posted there, so check it out.

I haven't shot much since I got back from Vermont, but for those of you interested in cycling, yesterday was the Philadelphia International Championship, and Jen and I spend the day in Manayunk watching the race. I have some good pictures I'll be posting soon, with the hopes of reviving the Photo of the Week. If you want a sneak peak, see the album here.

Nikon D90 + 70-300mm VR lensI took two telephoto lenses to the race along with my beloved Tokina 11-16mm, a 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 VR and a 135mm f/2 DC (both Nikon), not knowing which would work the best. Last year I used the 85mm f/1.4, which didn't give quite the reach I wanted. I started with the 70-300mm and found that I couldn't get my shutter speed fast enough to really freeze the action (i.e., too much blur), at least at a low ISO. So I switched over to 135mm, which is really more of a portrait lens. Although I got a few good shots with the 135mm, it doesn't focus fast enough for action sports, so I went back to the 70-300mm but kicked the ISO up. This worked pretty well, and I got some good images this way. But now I see why the 70-200mm f/2.8 is so valuable; it would have been perfect for yesterday. I've got a year to save up for one before the 2012 race!

In addition to going to the bike race in Philadelphia yesterday, we also spent some time in the city looking at condos. Living in the city would be an interesting change of pace, but I don't know whether there's enough to do in Philadelphia to make it worth it. Philly seems to have all of the hassles of a city (traffic, parking, noise, grime) without any of the charms or things to do compared to cities I've spent time in (Chicago, San Francisco, Portland, the Twin Cities). I'd still like to move to Madison, but of course I've only spent time there in the summer.

Other stuff going on: I'm looking forward to today's WWDC announcements to see what new tricks Apple as up it's sleeve. I'm especially interesting in hearing about iTunes/iCloud, but I'm not confident it will be a solution for someone like me with a massive music library (~60k songs) that were not purchased from iTunes. But I'm keeping my fingers crossed. I've been playing with the Google Music beta over the last few days, but it seems like it has limited utility for me because (a) it doesn't support lossless file formats, which make up 2/3rds of my library, and (b) there's no iOS playback; just Android.

I'm also very curious to see if rumors about a robust network file sharing/sync solution pan out. I love dropbox.com, and I'm interested to see if Apple could best this great service.

We just got tickets to see the Jayhawks at the Keswick Theatre in Glenside this fall. It's great that one of my favorite bands is back together and touring, and they are supposed to have a new studio album coming as well. That, in addition to a new album from Gillian Welch, will make for a good summer of music.