Tuesday, 22 November 2016
Saturday, 3 September 2016
The iWatch… Apple Watch… Watch Edition…
...you know, those really geeky Apple devices on people's wrists that are totally the rave right now
by Paul Ekwere
___________________________
I've been away for quite a while. It's literally been a year since my first post and about seven months since my
last.
To be fair, I have spent a lot of that time
playing with the Apple Watch. I blame the Apple Watch for my irregular blogging
schedule.
That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!
Jokes aside, it is a pretty good device.
It’s a very convenient device to have on you at the right time but to be fair, I do think it
has its fair share of niggles.
The Apple Watch comes in a couple of sizes, 38mm for people
with relatively smaller wrists and who do not like large watches, and the 42mm
variant.
I got a 42mm Gold version (it’s really just gold-plated Aluminium). I
won’t say for how much but it did cost a pretty penny! (Note-to-self: blog more
often to get free review units!)
There is also a limited edition apple watch
which for the life of me I can’t tell why anyone would buy. Apple refers to it
as the ‘Watch
Edition’. Not sure why.
And for an £8,000 to £13,500 price tag, even
with an 18 carat gold case, no thank you. Don’t care! (unless it’s a free
review unit, thank you very much!)
The Watch Edition looks, smells and feels
like a standard 38mm or 42mm Apple Watch!
Without further ado,
let’s get right into it shall we!
Out the box, the apple watch comes shipped
with all the standard accoutrements you’d expect to see. Magnetic inductive
charger with an extra-long cable, portable charger head and an extra strap to
allow for adjusting for wrist size.
Synchronisation and setup is also a fairly straightforward affair. It really is as simple as following the instructions. (Too bad for the many of us who do not ever read instructions!)
The
good
The User Experience: The user interface is
very beautifully designed it's very simple to use and the crown button on the
side, though initially a source of contention among many technophiles, works
perfectly! The apps tend to work quite well particularly with apps like Spotify
and GoPro that are designed to work as a remote control.
Accessories - The straps: The Apple Watch
comes with a fair number of accessories that can be used for different
scenarios. Primarily, the straps are interchangeable for easy customization. I
find this particularly useful as though I have the Sport version, there are
times when I’d rather be wearing a more comfortable leather strap on my wrist.
I’ve currently amassed as many as four straps for my Apple Watch. (I just can’t
help myself!)
Fair play to Apple, allowing for such customization
only makes the Apple Watch a more appealing device as it is less boring to wear
a watch that always looks the same.
One thing I’ll give apple for their design
is that the straps fit very comfortably. In fact, I dare say, better than any
other watch I’ve worn. I should know… I do like my watches!
Accessories – Customisation: In addition to
the straps, Apple has designed quite a few watch faces for the Apple Watch and
quite a few of them as well you can customise even further to look very simple
or give it a touch of class. From the old school skeuomorphism-inspired
chronograph look, to the more fitting digital look, my personal favourite is Mickey tapping his foot in
sync with the passing seconds. Gotta love ol' Mickey!
If you’re one of the pedantic few worried about
scratches on your Apple Watch, you can also purchase wrap-around protective
cases to protect the watch face.
Battery life: The apple watch battery usually
lasts a full day of regular use. I use it for all of my major activities
including on average an hour to two of active sports. Regardless, I don't have
to worry about charging until I get home and I put it back on my deskside
charging stand.
A lot of early entrants to the smart watch market seemed to
have a significant problem with battery life.
Fitness tracking: The Apple Watch is
arguably one of the best fitness trackers there is it right now. Yes, there are
a
few arguably comparable smart watches and pretty
good fitness trackers out there that could attempt to rival the Apple Watch,
but putting all other things together, and considering the full package of what
the Apple Watch has to offer, it definitely beats the competition hands down!
Heart rate monitor: The apple watch comes
equipped with a very capable heart rate monitor which to be fair is not a first
for fitness tracking devices. It is a very useful add-on for fitness tracking
and although may not work perfectly under all conditions, credit to Apple, it
has reportedly been proven to be a literal life-saving feature.
Siri, Notifications and quick replies: Siri
is nothing new, and using Siri on the Apple Watch isn’t a much different
experience than using it on the iPhone.
A short press-and-hold of the ‘crown’ button on the side of the iWatch
and Siri is at your beck and call.
Not having to take your phone out of your pocket
for every single notification has easily proven to be a personal time-saver for
me. It has personally kept me a lot more organized over the last couple of
months. Be it for messages, news apps, navigation or phone calls, having an
Apple Watch has definitely helped improve the level of interaction I have with
my phone, particularly enabling me to quickly weed out the unnecessary.
I can very easily view notifications from
my phone without having to remove my watch from my pocket. This is very
convenient in very many instances. One of the really cool things I also
discovered is that even though you don't have a physical keyboard you can use
voice dictation which is actually exactly how I am writing this blog post.
Apple
Pay: Apple Pay is Apples answer to Google’s Google pay. (I know, they even
sound similar). It is Apple’s proprietary payment platform that enables you
make contactless payments using your Apple Watch or your iPhone.
This is very convenient and has personally
made all of my (numerous) London Underground trips a lot less of a hassle.
Apple Pay of course only works if you have pre-registered your card details on
the device.
It is worth noting also that not all banks
support Apple Pay, so before you get all excited and purchase the iWatch solely
for this feature, check that your bank actually supports Apple Pay first.
The
bad
The User Experience – specifically, speed &
random errors: The Apple Watch can be unusually slow sometimes. This has a lot
to do with the operating system currently installed on it. The Apple Watch OS
3 release in June 2016 came with considerable speed improvements for the Apple
Watch.
There are however, further improvements
that could be made.
Synchronisation speed: iWatch apps are not
stored directly on the watch. The watch merely acts as a conduit or smart
controller of sorts. This is accomplished via a Bluetooth link between the
iWatch and your iPhone. The Apple Watch Bluetooth connection to the iPhone
tends to lead to a significant degree of latency when attempting to launch
applications directly on the apple watch. In general, it frankly gets slow!
& the majority of your time is spent watching this….
Errors: In my personal experience, every now
and then when attempting to launch an application from the Apple Watch it simply
falters and tends to return some truly confounding error messages. The Instagram
app is a recurring culprit. It simply does not ever do what it should!
Battery life: The Apple Watch batteries are
only really good for a day and when I say for a day as earlier mentioned I
actually do mean for a day of regular use. For a very active person who does a
lot of fitness tracking (say 4 hours and above per day), the heart rate monitor
tracks continuously when using the ‘Workout’ app. This usually leads to
significant battery drain.
Fitness tracking: Other than the obvious
battery drain that I mentioned above when the heart rate monitor is continuously monitoring your heart rate, there is also an additional issue where the heart
rate monitor does not work very well in cold weather. The detail on what causes
this problem is
GPS (or the absence thereof): Yup! The Apple Watch does not
have GPS! That really sucks! I'm into fitness I like running and I don't like
having to take my phone with me all the time. To be able to track the pace of
your run properly, you currently need to have the iPhone your Apple Watch is
paired to on you while you run.
Notifications and quick replies: The Apple
Watch is great for notifications. Quick replies though are somewhat limited in
range. The tend to be the standard messages you see on your iPhone when you
attempt to ignore a call. Messages like “Can’t talk right now”, “In a meeting”,
“Busy, will call you back”. Voice dictation and quick replies are good but not
perfect and once you tap on one of them, there's no way to cancel. That message is pretty much sent. If you’re going to use either, expect hilarious results!
It's arguably the best approach not to attempt to use either in a professional setting.
Watch faces: we need more watch faces
choice selection is very limited. Enough said!
Cell connectivity: The Apple Watch connects
to your phone via Bluetooth and as such answering phone calls via the speaker
on the Apple Watch is just the same as using a Bluetooth headset. As such one
cannot wear the Apple Watch independently with say just an android phone on
them and be able to receive calls on it. There are days when I want to put my
work phone (the iPhone) down and go about my business with just my One Plus 2 and my Apple Watch. Unfortunately,
that is currently not possible.
Apple
Watch 2 - What’s new? (what to expect & what not to expect)
Cell connectivity: With the Apple Watch 2,
don't hold your breath about cell connectivity. It is very likely that the Apple
Watch 2 will still be dependent on the iPhone. This is unlikely to change any
time soon given Apple’s design philosophy of working with an ecosystem design
model which obviously keeps, you the consumer, tied-in and buying co-dependent
Apple products. It has however been recently reported by the Wall Street
Journal that Apple plans to include cell connectivity in the new Apple Watch
design. A
claim that other trusted reviewers in the know have very quickly refuted!
GPS: It's rumoured that next week's release
of the Apple Watch 2 will give us the much needed GPS upgrade required to make
the Apple Watch a decent standalone fitness device. Nike
seems to have inadvertently leaked a hint towards this with their most recent
Nike+ Run Club app update. It’s left for us to wait with baited breath and
hope that they actually did include GPS in the Apple Watch 2.
New accessories: As with most new Apple
device releases it is much expected that Apple will release new accessories for
the Apple Watch some of them would be expected to be the standard watch straps
which are interchangeable in new different designs and exciting colours. The
really good thing about this is that now you will have more options for your
existing Apple Watch as for those who do not upgrade the straps should still be
able to fit either the Apple Watch one on the Apple Watch 2
Improved battery: Yes, there are rumours
about a much improved Apple
Watch battery in a certain leaked takedown seen this week that Apple
has made the Apple Watch 2 screen considerably thinner to accommodate the
bigger battery. This adds fuel to the fire with the rumour that the Apple Watch
2 will indeed have GPS. If the rumours are true, this would be a massive improvement, especially with
regard to the battery drain when doing fitness tracking as well.
For now, I guess we can
only wait and keep our ears peeled for next week's
announcement from Apple!
I'm
really excited for the Apple Watch 2. Primarily for one thing, that long overdue addition of GPS!
What are your thoughts on the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch 2? Let us know your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below!
What are your thoughts on the Apple Watch and the Apple Watch 2? Let us know your thoughts, feel free to leave a comment below!
If
you found this #TechforTheTechie review useful and want to learn more on general techie stuff and general gadgety wizardry, you can also find me on:
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Saturday, 20 February 2016
The Showdown: Siri | Google | Cortana
#TechforTheTechie: Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing
by Paul Ekwere
_________________________
Being a general tech geek and a fan of all things data and
analytics, I woke up this morning and in my spare time started learning
something on sentiment analytics.
Sentiment Analysis in
the words of a certain Mr Seth Grimes, is a set of methods, typically (but
not always) implemented in computer software, that detect, measure, report, and
exploit attitudes, opinions, and emotions in online, social, and enterprise
information sources. (As an aside, what makes it “analysis” is that you’re
doing it systematically, with some goal in mind.)
The reason why I’m all over this right now is because I have
a little pet project I'm working on which has to do with analysing my Twitter
data but that's beside the point of why I decided to post this actually.
So here's the thing, being a massive Arsenal fan as well
(& given my generally short attention span), while deeply embroiled in my
research on the logic of deep learning, Twitter APIs and php coding, a random
thought popped into my head "I wonder what time the Arsenal game is on
today?"
So I decided in the spirit of the moment, what with my
mind... well, half my mind still on machine learning, natural language
processing and all I decided to run a little (absolutely non-scientific) test to see who does natural language
processing better.
Siri (Apple), Google or Microsoft’s very own Cortana.
Very handy for me that I had an iPhone, an android
...scratch that the android phone of the year the OnePlus 2, and a Microsoft
Surface on hand.
So here's what happened.
Click on the link
to hear what actually transpired (I actually recorded this). The results are
quite interesting.
Spoiler alert, not at all what you'd expect! There's a bit of a surprise at the end as well.
There’s another
recording here, just because I'm a massive fan of Cortana (& I know
you are too). A word of warning: spoilers! You need to have listened to the
first recording before this!
And in case that hyperlink doesn’t work, here’s the link to
the second recording.
Okay, my work here is done…. Off to watch that Arsenal game
now!
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