Apple Watches and Planned obsolescence

Yesterday I came across something interesting and frustrating. Apple watches don't need to be obsolete, themselves, to be unusable. If you try to pair an iphone 8 plus with an Apple Watch it will refuse because the OS is two generations too old. I tried to sync with the Iphone SE from 2020 and I am also having issues. The OS is 18.x so it should work fine.

It's not just the watch that has to be kept up to date. The phone has to be up to date with the latest OS as well. If it isn't then if you reset the watch for any reason, it becomes a brick. It seems absurd to me that a device that costs from 200-1200 CHF could become obsolete so easily, that its usability could be so fragile.

Others are More Flexible

Can you imagine if Garmin, Xiaomi, Suunto or some other brand decided to make their devices obsolete so fast? These devices would soon lose their user base. My Suunto Spartan Wrist HR Baro still syncs and plays nicely, despite the battery being a little old after several hundred workouts.

Neither the Apple Watch SE or the iPhone SE are cheap devices. They're expensive, and when you consider that you need to buy new iphones to work with current Apple Watches it soon becomes very expensive.

For 300 CHF you can get a Fairphone 4, and for 19 CHF recently you could get a Xiaomi Smart Band 9. For 40 CHF you can get the Smart Band 10, and for 59 CHF or so you can get the Smart Band 9 Pro. Now you may think, "but why the duck (intentional spelling) would I want to pay for a cheap Chinese version" and the answer is simple. Apple has planned for its phones to be obsolete after four or so years, and for it's watches to be obsolete almost as fast.

Expensive Ecosystem

With the new iPhone 'e' version costing 700 CHF and new Apple Watches costing 380 CHF or more their planned obsolecence bites more deeply. The Fairphone 4 was designed to have an 8 year life span with most parts being easy to replace. The Fairphone that just came out doesn't have a number, because they do not want planned obsolescence to be their business model.

Years of Use

With Garmin, Suunto, Xiaomi and other brands devices can last for years and it doesn't matter whether you use android, iOS or some other OSes. If your current mobile phone gets old and you switch to another, it doesn't matter whether you use Apple or some other brand.

Four Years of Use

With Apple if your phone is obsolete, your watch is obsolete, and that is absurd. I expected to reset and within a few minutes to have re-paired the device and forgotten about it. With Suunto, Xiaomi and others it's easy. With Garmin if you're paired on two devices then whichever was connected first gets priority so it doesn't matter if you slide from one OS to another like I do.

The Apple Watch Ecosystem

There is one reason for using Apple Watches and that is the App ecosystem. Plenty of people use Strava but GoGentler, Pedometer, and plenty of other apps work on the phone so we have some choice for which app we prefer to use. Some of these apps are paying, so if and when you pay, you commit to using that app, and the Apple watch for another year, in theory.

And Finally

At one time I loved getting a new iPhone every two or three years, and selling the old device to someone else. For several iterations I have kept my phones until they become vintage before replacing them. Usually I replace them because the battery begins to die.

With my iPhone SE the battery now dies without warning and the screen has two hotspots. I suspect that it is about to die. I already replaced it with a fairphone 4 and I prefer the user experience for one simple reason. I usually replace phones because of battery performance. With the Fairphone 4 I don't need to worry about that problem. Once the battery gets below a certain health percentage I can swap the battery within seconds.

If I slide between iOS and Android the only wearable that gets left behind is the Apple Watch. Apple should allow Android devices to pair with the Apple Watch.Buying a recent iphone to pair a watch is absurd.