which should have been expected. after 10 years the market is saturated, and it's a mature product that has had no killer feature to upgrade early for.
this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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I had the Series 4 awhile back, and it died after a very shallow dip in the water. Took the opportunity to upgrade to the Ultra 1, and I see absolutely no reason to upgrade past it. It isn't fundamentally different than... well, the other Apple Watches, beyond having a button you can't set to do anything particularly useful and having an ever so slightly larger screen (which is the main reason I got it).
So your apple watch broke doing something you should be able to do with it and you "upgrade" to the same watch? Wow.
Well, to be fair, my old Series 4 was a refurb, so the waterproofing likely wasn’t factory fresh.
I have the first gen Apple Watch SE from half a decade ago and I haven’t been given a reason to upgrade to the SE 2, much less whatever flagship we’re up to now.
I’ve had an Apple Watch 5 since it came out and I see no reason to upgrade. The only thing I really dislike is the battery life but to fix that you’d need to get a Garmin or similar. So can’t think of a reason I would upgrade.
casio 4 life
They should try to make it cordless, so you don't have to have the charger plugged in all the time 🤪
It's a disposable watch. If shipment could just stop that would be great.
Everyone who actually owns one says they're keeping theirs for years and see no need to upgrade, but go on.
You have a valid point if you say this for all smart watches though. None will last half a century like a proper watch.
It's also likely driven down by non stop paywalling of features. Consumers like myself are just exhausted. I am only looking for non paywalls devices going forward and if those go away, then I'm going to be done with smart devices. I can't keep paying hundreds to a thousand dollars for a device only to not be able to get the features of that device unless I keep throwing money at a company. I know they have costs to maintain software and add features but I can't have perpetual costs on everything I buy.
I’m trying to think of what Apple Watch features are paywalled and other than buying apps that aren’t necessary or a part of the core device, I’m not thinking of anything. Are there particular features you’re thinking of?
Comparing to Garmin where I get daily workout recommendations based on your sleep and recovery. From what I've seen the workouts are behind the paywall.
Ah, so there is a subscription for guided workout sessions through Apple Fitness. I have that as a part of my subscription and it doesn’t have any kind of recommendation feature though; it’s just a subscription to watch guided workout sessions if you want to go seek them out.
The watch still has all of the health and workout tracking features available without it. Garmin is slated as more of a fitness-based watch so it doesn’t surprise me they might have different features than the Apple Watch does.
that's more like an added perk from garmin. I'd hardly consider workout plans a core feature of a watch.
That is absolutely a core feature of Garmin not just a perk. The fact that Apple didn't include it while doing explicit commercials for biking, running, and swimming was definitely to make it seem like it's direct competition.
i mean as a core feature of a watch/smartwatch in general. garmin is going above and beyond compared to the competition in that area, and that's great. But that doesn't mean every other smartwatch manufacturer arbitrarily locking traditional watch features behind paywalls.
and yeah apple does fitness themed commercials for apple watch because it does help with fitness a ton out of the box. just not specifically guided workouts.
costs to maintain software and add features...
...and shareholders to please...
Arguably the bigger cost sink.
Most definitely.