Bournemouth — Nov 17th 2015
After an introductory video, Oli ran through the main features, highlighting how Notifications makes it easy to read and respond to messages etc. either by selecting from pre-defined responses or by dictation. The watch also uses Siri who can be addressed by pressing the Digital Crown (a button resembling a winder on a traditional watch) or by simply raising the wrist to your eye-line.
Other useful apps on the Watch include Apple Pay (for contactless payments), Wallet (for loyalty cards etc.) and extensive health & fitness facilities. The watch tracks calories expended (but not consumed!), periods of exercise and standing and provides helpful (?) and encouraging (?) prompts to meet your targets. Health Apps are expected to be a major growth area for the watch.
The user can choose from a variety of watch faces, and can customise them further with background photos as well as choosing what other information besides the time should be displayed on the watch face (so-called "complications").
As well as serving as a home button, the digital crown also enables zoom and scroll functions. The touch sensitive face features Apple's Force Touch technology and in return provides haptic feedback, alerting the user with a variety of vibrations. Digital Touch allows you to do the same to your message recipient too - hopefully this can be turned off at the receiving end!
Other apps include Maps, which can provide turn by turn navigation by haptic prompts and iTranslate - effectively an interpreter on the wrist.
The watch itself comes in a wide variety of case materials, two different sizes and an extensive choice of straps (known as bands in Apple speak). Prices range from UKP299 for sport version all the way through to 'if you need to ask, you can't afford it'. And, just in case you were about to persuade a wealthy relative to buy you one, do note that just AppleCare cover will set you back around UKP1500 for the expensive (Edition) version.
Oli reported that amongst the Solutions staff, the watch was well liked. The key seemed to be to get used to treating it as an enhanced watch, not as an iPhone substitute.
Questions focussed on the likely development path of the Watch which is expected to include more stand-alone apps that don't depend on the iPhone and further developments in health monitoring.
Oli closed his presentation with two more brief videos on the new Apple TV and the iPad Pro. The latter will be featured in more detail at the December Bournemouth meeting.
After a coffee break, Tony handed out WAMUG flyers for members to use in swelling our numbers and there then followed a typical selection of queries ranging from strange messages from Epson printer software, repeated Google Earth update requests, limitations on thumbnail displays in Photos, and transferring files between users on an iMac - the latter resulting in a real time group exploration of permissions management on Tony's MacBook.
Tony closed the meeting by asking members for their contribution to a 'New Tricks' session at the next meeting which is to feature members' ideas on using Mac or iPad more effectively.
Comments
Page 1
Page 1