Apple Watch Follies

In my last post, I mentioned that I have a new Apple Watch. There is a long story about that. Apparently I had at some point idly commented that I’d like to have an Apple Watch. This was probably a result of being dissatisfied with my Garmin sport watch, which sometimes takes half a mile or more (or my two-mile walk) to find a satellite and start recording the distance, making it more or less useless for tracking anything but my usual route (the length of which is well known). I hadn’t really expected to get the watch, but a few days before my birthday, my husband said that, although he would have liked it to be a surprise, when presented with all the watch and band options, he had decided he should probably let me choose.

He recommended the Apple Watch SE (second generation) as the one that seemed to have all the features I might want, at the best price. I agreed. I opted for the smaller size (40mm) and the silver aluminum case and, after some deliberation, the Silver Milanese Loop band. If he had ordered it right away, it would have come on my birthday, but we’d spent quite a lot of time poring over the Apple websites and then made a pretty much pointless trip to Best Buy (some 45 minutes away) to look at what they had in stock—which was essentially nothing, all nailed down so well you couldn’t tell much about them—and by the time we got home Barney was so tired that he dozed off and didn’t get the order in.

This proved to be providential because one of the things he had found online was the aforementioned 365-page manual. When I started reading it, I learned that the watch has to be paired with an iPhone running iOS 16. My iPhone 7 (which I loved) was stuck at 15.7.8. Well, it was a nice idea while it lasted.

I had a pretty sleepless night, popping up to check on whether it might be possible to get some older version of the watch that would pair with my phone. The answer seemed to be “Not really.” I slept in the next morning, and when I got up, I gave Barney the further bad news. But he had been up a lot earlier and had hit on an alternative plan: he would give me a new iPhone for my birthday, and then he would have Christmas covered because he could give me the watch then!

This was getting pretty far out of hand, but he seemed committed and had already established that both the IPhone SE and the iPhone 13 mini were about the size of my iPhone 7 (I didn’t want anything bigger). We ended up deciding on the iPhone 13 mini as having perhaps more staying power than the SE. (Ironically, it was discontinued just a week after my birthday!)

Thanks to Labor Day, there was no way I’d get the phone on my birthday, but I came home from Rotary the next day looking forward to it. When I came in, there was a parcel on the dining room table—no surprise, but what was a surprise was that the box was long and thin, which seemed like an odd shape for a phone. Sure enough, when I opened it, it was the watch and band.

What could have gone wrong? Barney confirmed that he had definitely ordered the phone, leading me to believe there had been some mix-up, but later, as I was eating lunch, he brought out another box—the phone! You can see why I say the watch was an insanely extravagant gift.

Using it has been a learning experience with comical adventures. I mentioned in my last post its inability to shut up when I’m sleeping. But other behaviors have been equally annoying and mystifying.

Soon after getting the watch, I ran into the library to pick up a hold book, leaving my purse in the car. On my way out, I stopped to chat with a friend, and my watch popped up a notification. I didn’t have my glasses with me, so I had no idea what it was on about, but I borrowed the friend’s readers and saw that it was telling me that my “device” had been left behind. Sure enough, my phone was in the car. This is a reasonably handy feature, and I became inured to dismissing the notification when I went out for a walk and left the phone at home. (The watch, to its credit, always starts tracking mileage immediately, so the Garmin has been deprecated.) What I couldn’t understand, however, was the “Device Left Behind” notifications I got every time I left home, even though my phone was just inches away.

This situation went on for a couple of weeks until one day I picked up the phone and saw that it had the same notification. I investigated further and ascertained that apparently the “device” the watch was pining for was my old iPhone 7, at home, without a SIM but still working on Wi-Fi. This possibility had occurred to me, but I had dismissed it because, if the old iPhone couldn’t pair with the watch, it didn’t make sense for this feature to be working, but apparently it can. Since the old phone is probably never going to leave the house again, I turned off “Find My Phone” on it, and I haven’t had the problem since.

I mentioned in my last post that the watch is useless for tracking “Flights Climbed” when you climb stairs for exercise. At some point, I found that there are many more types of “workout” than those I’d originally found, and one of them is “Stairs,” but I found this was no more accurate than “Stair Climber” for tracking flights. For my fitness classes, I’d had to choose the type of workout that seemed closest to their description, “Pilates” for one and “Functional Strength Training” for my weightlifting class. When I discovered there was another workout called “Traditional Strength Training,” with an icon of a person lifting a barbell, this seemed more appropriate, so I switched to that for my “Just Pump” class yesterday.

Big mistake, I guess. Some of our exercises are done lying flat on a bench, and apparently the watch thought I was slacking off: it asked me whether I wanted to end the workout! That was bad enough, but its next trick took the cake. We were in a long routine of curls, presses, and deadlifts, and the watch started making a funny sound and tapping my wrist repeatedly. Nothing I did would make it stop, and again I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see what it was telling me. I persevered as long as I could, but finally I couldn’t stand it any longer, so I put the barbell down, put on my glasses, and looked at the watch, to see this:

This is not exactly what the screen looked like. It actually offered several options, including “I fell, but I’m OK” and “I didn’t fall.” Naturally, I chose the latter. According to the Apple Watch manual:

With Fall Detection enabled, if Apple Watch detects a hard fall, it can help connect you to emergency services and send a message to your emergency contacts. If Apple Watch detects a hard fall and that you have been immobile for about a minute, it will tap your wrist, sound an alarm, and then attempt to call emergency services.

To call emergency services, your Apple Watch or nearby iPhone needs a cellular connection, or needs to have Wi-Fi calling turned on and Wi-Fi coverage available.

If cellular and Wi-Fi coverage are not available, and your iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Pro or later is near your Apple Watch, Fall Detection will use your iPhone to send the notification using Emergency SOS via satellite, where Emergency SOS via satellite is available.

I have no idea whom or what it would have tried to call or why it thought I had been immobile for a minute, but at least if it happens again, I’ll know what to do. After class, I shared my amusement with the other class members, who, as usual had had equally bizarre experiences with their FitBits and other similar devices. Perhaps these smart watches aren’t as smart as they think they are!