New Apple Watch Setup Tips (watchOS 10)

If you are setting up an Apple Watch for the first time, here are some tips for getting the most out of your watch

Navigation

The Apple Watch has two buttons, the Digital Crown and the Side Button. It also supports other swiping and long press gestures.

  • Digital Crown
    • Pressing the Digital Crown will show the App View.
    • Turning the Digital Crown while you are looking at the time will show you some action tiles and eventually show the list of apps.
  • Side Button
    • Pressing the Side Button will show Control Center.
    • Double clicking on the Side Button will show Apple Pay.
  • Swiping down from the top of the screen will show Notification Center
  • Watch Face Edit View is launched by long pressing on the watch face
    • Scroll the digital crown to switch to a different watch face
    • Click Edit to make changes to a watch face

Recommended Changes

Out of the box a lot of the settings Apple has chosen are great, but there are a few adjustments I make for a better experience.

  1. Turn on Silent Mode so it won’t make sounds via Control Center
  2. Try out the Find my Phone functionality also in control center, the icon is a phone with sound waves coming out of it
  3. The Watch app on the iPhone makes it really easy to configure the settings on your watch and also to manage your watch faces
  4. Set up Apple Pay on your watch because it is way easier than having to take your phone out
  5. Enable Bold Text in Settings > Display & Brightness for better readability of text
  6. Turn on Prominent Haptics in Settings > Sounds & Haptics, this will give you a bigger vibration when prior to the normal vibration
  7. Update the Siri settings, I like to have “Hey Siri” and Raise to Speak disabled, but leave it on for pressing the Digital Crown
  8. Change the App view to List View, by pressing the digital crown and scrolling to the bottom of the view and pressing List View OR via Settings > App View
  9. Disable reminders for the Mindfulness app so it won’t ask how you are doing twice a day
  10. Disable reminders for the Handwashing app so you won’t get notified every time you wash your hands for less than 20 seconds
  11. Disable “Start Workout Reminder” in Workout app settings, this means you won’t be prompted if you are just walking around and I think it might also save a little battery life too.

Intro to Smart Home Stuff

Last month I spent a few days at my dad’s house in Florida and was surprised by how much home automation he had in place. The front door would automatically lock after a couple minutes, the lights were on timers and the garage lights had motion sensors. I immediately felt like I was falling behind in the technology race with my own father. The good news for me was that most of his devices were programmable, but they couldn’t be controlled from another device like a phone or one of the “ladies in a cannister”. I knew once I got home it was time to start planning my first foray into the world of the “smart” home.

Since I am an Apple devotee I started by researching Apple HomeKit. It seems that support for HomeKit from various vendors has been very slow due to the hoops they have to jump through in order to get approved by Apple. On the surface this seems problematic, but I like to think the adoption is a bit slower because they have placed higher standards on the vendors to ensure a more secure smart home experience.

I also looked into Alexa because I knew it supported many more devices, but my impression was that there wasn’t a consistent platform for connecting devices. In some cases you have to use the Echo skills functionality for the specific device, and in other cases you have to leverage IFTTT to trigger devices. Apple on the other hand has created an additional layer on top of the individual device apps that helps give a consistent way of controlling all the different devices. Siri support helps provide a little more flexibility than you get with Alexa, as is outlined in this great article from CNET, Google Home vs Amazon Echo. It also seemed a safe bet was to get stuff that supported Apple HomeKit, because they would also support all the other platforms too.

Once I settled on HomeKit it was time to find a device to try out in my home. I started thinking about my daily routine and what parts of it would be made easier and bedtime stood out in my mind. After sitting in the living room each evening I usually shut a bunch of lights off downstairs, upstairs I switch on the light to the room so I can turn on my bedside light and then go back out to switch the bedroom light off. I focused on this scenario and started researching online.

I went to the Apple Store page and searched through the HomeKit accessories to get an idea about what products were available. My bedside table lamp is from IKEA so it has the small E14 bulbs, so I had to find a “smart” outlet for that part of my plan. I settled on the iHome iSP5 because it was on sale from Amazon and was shaped so you could still plug other stuff in above or below it. For the downstairs lights I went with a Hue Starter Kit because they were the most well known brand available right now. I went with this particular starter kit, because it included a remote switch so you didn’t need a device to turn on the lights.

The Hue Starter kit was the first thing I received so I quickly unboxed them and replaced the two “dumb” bulbs in the recessed light over the fireplace with the new bulbs. I plugged the Hue Hub into my router and downloaded the Hue app. The setup in the app was pretty easy and was happy to see that signing up for a Hue account was optional. Next I went to the app store to download the Home app because I had removed it from my iPhone. The home app set up was easy, I created a room and was able to group the two lights together so they would be controlled as a single accessory. Controlling the lights from the control center was great and the ability to dim them by using a 3D touch was a neat feature. The Home app was able to dim the bulbs, but unlike the Hue app I wasn’t able to change the shade of white for the bulbs. I am not sure if the API just doesn’t support this yet or if Philips just hasn’t implemented it. Sounds like a software thing so it can easily be corrected.

The last thing to set up was Family Sharing, which started out pretty well. I quickly added my wife and kids to our home and they received the notifications. At some point I received a notification that I needed to set up either an iPad or Apple TV in order to access HomeKit from outside of our home network. I followed the directions for setting it up on the Apple TV, but wasn’t able to see the correct setting show up. On my iPhone I looked for the Home setting that appears on the iPad and couldn’t find it so I tried logging out of iCloud and then logging back in, which caused meant my Photo library had to get reconciled. In the end there isn’t a Home setting on the iPhone and eventually my Home setup propagated to the Apple TV.

I am stilling waiting on the iHome plug, but in the meantime I have been able to play around with Scenes and set it up so I can say “Good Night” to Siri and the lights would turn off. It is taking a bit of getting used to, but so far I haven’t received any complaints from my family about not being able to use the regular switch.

To be continued…

Hue has three different types of standard “shaped” bulbs: Hue White, Hue White Ambiance, and Hue White and Color Ambience. Hue White, the cheapest of the bunch, costs about $15 each, and only supports a single shade of white. The Hue White Ambiance costs about $30 each and supports over 50 thousands shades of white. The Hue White and Color Ambience, costs about $50 each and supports 16 million colors.

Apple Product Naming Over the Last 10 Years

Over the last ten years Apple has released four new product categories: iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Apple TV. In each of these categories they have had various naming conventions for the products. The name of the initial offering for each category was usually straightforward, well with the exception of the Apple Watch and its various editions. As the products started to branch out the names got slightly more inconsistent.

iPhone

The original iPhone was followed by the iPhone 3G, because of support for 3G cellular networks, which interestingly also has caused some people to refer to the original iPhone as the iPhone 2G. After that was the iPhone 3GS, followed by the fourth release, the iPhone 4. It was the third form factor, but fourth phone model. Since then the pattern of incrementing the number for each new form factor and adding an S for the intermediate years. In 2013, the newest phone was named iPhone 5S, but another new C designation was added for the new colorful iPhone 5C, which had all of the internals of the iPhone 5, but had a polycarbonate case. It isn’t clear why the new phone was released, perhaps to differentiate it more from the S model or maybe to try and add more demand for the year old model by making it seem “new”. In 2014, a new form factor was introduced with the expected increment in the number, however a new larger screen became available adding the new + identifier, for the iPhone 6+. Most recently in 2015 the introduction of the iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S+ continued the tradition of using the S identifier for the second year of the same form factor. However, unlike last time a new C model was not introduced along side the S model and instead the iPhone 6 remained available.
GenerationMarketing NameAlt. Names
1iPhoneiPhone 2G
2iPhone 3G
3iPhone 3G S
4iPhone 4
5iPhone 4 S
6iPhone 5
7iPhone 5 S
8iPhone 6
9iPhone 6 S

iPad

The original iPad was followed by the iPad 2 in March 2011. So far so good, right? The following year a new iPad was announced with the same form factor, but a new retina display. Apple referred to this model as “new iPad”, however most people refer to it as the iPad 3 or 3rd generation using the old iPod naming convention. A short seven months later Apple announced the next iteration of the iPad, which was marketed as “iPad with Retina Display”. The form factor remained the same as its predecessor, this version was also referred to as iPad 4 or 4th generation. At the same event Apple also announced a new smaller iPad called the iPad Mini, similar to the branding used on the first smaller iPod Mini. In 2013, a new thinner form factor with a smaller bezel was introduced with a new name, the iPad Air. The Air name had been used for the ultra portable line of MacBooks first introduced in 2008, which were much smaller than the existing MacBook and MacBook Pro models. The overall size of the device was noticeably smaller compared to the previous models, which may be the reason for the new naming convention. At the same event in 2013 the new “iPad Mini with Retina Display” was announced as the successor to the iPad Mini. The following year the iPad Air 2 and iPad Mini 3 were announced, while the form factors were the same as the previous generation the internals were upgraded. At this time the previous generation iPad Mini with Retina Display”” was given a new designation of iPad Mini 2. In September 2014, Apple announced the highly anticipated iPad Pro with a new 12” screen. At this point Apple seems to have settled on using Mini, Air and Pro as the names for the different screen sizes, they then just stick a number on the end based on which generation of the current name.
GenerationMarketing NameAlt. Names
1iPad
2iPad 2
3new iPadiPad 3, 3rd Generation
4iPad with Retina DisplayiPad 4, 4th Generation
5iPad Air
6iPad Air 2

MacBook

I could go over the many various names for Apple laptops over the years, PowerBooks, iBooks and MacBooks, but this will focus on the MacBook. The first MacBook was the MacBook Pro announced in January of 2006. The polycarbonate MacBook was announced the following May. These two were updated once or twice a year until January 2008 when the new thinner MacBook Air was announced. 

Going forward the three different lines have been maintained with the MacBook Air being the smallest model, the MacBook Pro being larget more performing model and the MacBook being the same size as the MacBook Pro, but cheaper and less powerful. In 2012, things changed a little with the introduction of the Retina Display on the MacBook Pro, as these were rolled out there was a choice between the MacBook Pro and the MacBook Pro with Retina Display. At some point the MacBook disappeared and the MacBook Pro 13” was added. Most recently in 2015, the new MacBook with Retina Display, was released, which is actually smaller than the MacBook Air. Unlike iPhones and iPads the various MacBooks of the same line are differentiated using the date they were initially released.

The Apple Devices

The other devices I will mention are the Apple TV and Apple Watch. Both of these start with Apple, well technically there name starts with the Apple logo. The Apple TV was originally introduced as iTV, but was changed before it shipped. It has had a few different iterations, but generally it is just referred to using an understood “generation” nomenclature. The Apple Watch is still on the first generation, so whether it gets the numbered system like the iPhone and iPad or if it just gets the generally accepted “generation” nomenclature hasn’t been determined yet.

In Conclusion

It is often confusing and not logical the way these various products have been named, but I think it is bound to happen in an industry where it is difficult to foresee how a product category may change. It is also hard to judge some of these names without knowing what products are to come. I think some of the naming has to do with the target consumer and market. The phones are much more mainstream and they need a clear naming convention so the average consumer can figure out the difference between the various models.

As for the use of Apple in the front of Apple Watch, I think this is the new direction and if they could go back in time I think the iPhone would have been named Apple Phone. The i naming thing seems so dated and has also opened up a pandora’s box for third party companies naming their stuff with the i prefix. Using the Apple prefix also prevents any trademark issues like they experienced with the iPhone.

Finally, I am really interested to see when they decide to drop the numbering scheme from the iPhone and iPad names. It will sound completely ridiculous when they release the iPhone 11 or iPad Mini 14. I wonder if by then the products will be so mature that it will be released in a similar to manner as the MacBook, with random releases every year having only minor performance improvements with major form factor changes every 4-5 years.

UPDATE: After more consideration I wonder if the numbering scheme is also a result of how the specs of the mobile devices are somewhat obfuscated from consumers.  If you try to buy a MacBook Pro they don’t break them down into different numbers even when there are a couple generations available, instead we can rely on the old processor speed, storage, memory and display quality properties to pick the device that is right for you. Perhaps it is just another side effect of the simplification of computing devices, if the operating system is going to be easier to use than it only makes sense that buying one should be less confusing too.