My husband is a technophile, and has had an Apple Watch for years, but I’ve been resistant to the idea.
This is due to a combination of things: a fear of anything new; a reluctance to spend money; a resistance to increasing complications in my life; and sadness for the consignment of my extensive watch collection to redundancy. I had a number of watches stolen a few years ago, but I’ve been gradually building their numbers back up. Oddly, loss of privacy and data security are not concerns of mine. That horse bolted years ago. A patient I looked after the other day said that she’d googled me before coming to the hospital, and discovered I wrote a blog. She didn’t appear too horrified by the idea, which is lucky. (And if you’re reading this, patient X, I hope you’re recovering well).
However, Simon recently upgraded his Apple Watch, and I thought maybe it’s time I gave it a go. They seem reasonably ubiquitous amongst my (admittedly privileged) circle of friends. My change of heart was partly from financial considerations, since his old one was now going begging. In addition, though, was my intense frustration the other day when I lost my phone somewhere and had to spend half an hour repeatedly retracing my steps before discovering it had slipped under the car seat. So, the ‘find my iPhone’ feature could be extremely useful, once I figure out how to use it. Also, my heart rhythm has had the odd kick in its gallop in recent months, which I’ve been much more attuned to since having COVID, and the watch has a real-time ECG feature which will be interesting to use if I get palpitations anytime. Sadly, there’s no CPR capability, so if I go into some terminal rhythm it’s not going to help me much. I’ll be like that famous doctor in Victorian times, who was feeling his pulse as he went into asystole “and now, nothing…” were his final words before keeling over dead. I’m hoping I fit more into the category of the ‘worried well’.
As well as that, there are some pretty watch faces which you can customize your watch with. Currently I’ve got mine on a scene of the Eiffel Tower, which changes appearance appropriate to my time of day, and also has a little time lapse view of local activity that shows each time you look at it – tourist boats sailing along the Seine, for example. Super nifty.
The main downside I’ve noticed so far is the constant nagging to stand up, move around, get active and do my steps. I suspect that feature will have to go.