I had attempted to read it and The Odyssey when I was much younger, in middle school, maybe too young, and failed miserably. But as it is always with cultural touchstones, references to it are inescapable, and a few years ago, in my mid 50s I overcame the reluctance accumulated in the intervening time and set out to read the Samuel Butler prose translation of 1898. Most of the translations I'd previously approached were in verse, which is in some ways its own hill to climb when one is customarily a prose reader, so this seemed perfect.

And so it was, and I was bowled over. It was a mind bending experience for me the likes of which I experience much to infrequently as age and experience take their toll on the novelties of youth. I can't say the last work I read I experienced as electrically. For all the stiltedness of epic story telling, the personalities of Agamemnon, Achilles, Zeus, et al are both vivid and convincing; the violence of battle is horrible, electric, and wierdly beautiful in a way that will resonate recognizably with fans Sam Peckinpaugh or Hong Kong action movies. Though the characterizations are far more stereotyped, as befits the age in which it was produced, than modern readers are accustomed to, they still evince a polish that rises above conventional story telling into true literature. Worth every ounce of effort you expend to summit this one.

https://www.capstan.be/british-scholar-emily-wilsons-fresh-a...

"Complicated" seems trite, almost meaningless. Though I'm willing to read beyond the first line of their translation.

From reading her notes (and her twitter account) I've definitely gained an appreciation of how much an art in itself translation is.

Anime tends to share with Japanese theater a much more lingering emphasis on the atmosphere of the setting and the emotional states and thoughts of the characters compared to fast-paced, exposition-heavy Western media.

Of course there are plenty of exceptions, and some anime is even explicitly styled after Western media.

[1] https://www.mahabharataonline.com/translation/

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achilles_and_Patroclus

I'd tried to watch it a few times, but only a few months ago actually got past the first two episodes. I think it helped that I quite quickly saw it as a morally ambiguous discussion of the institutional ineptitude of conservative western cultures in mitigating the effects of crime, rather than a typical 'good vs bad' cop show.

With that mindset, the possibly-underwhelming finale of S1 is much more effective, and the sudden pace-change in S2 is more meaningful.

Season four broke my heart with the adolescent kids. I can’t believe how good they all were in their roles, phenomenal performances.

The one minor scene that always wrecks me is where Bodie is talking to McNulty near the end of the series and says, “I feel old...”

The character is supposed to be a late teenager in that scene, and is already feeling worn out of life he has almost no chance of escaping.

That to me was the big takeaway. Too many things are stuck where they are: people, systems, etc.

As Marlo says, “You want it to be one way, but it’s the other way.”

Okay I’m done fan-boying. Yes, I’m this annoying when I tell my irl friends about the show as well.

I suspect a lot of it flies under the radar because The Wire purposefully used a style that wasn't overly pretty, was closer to verite than visually stunning. But there's some great ideas there. The utter commitment to diagetic sound (barring one scene in the first season). The use of complex camera movements and an Altman-esque zoom to provide a documentary or even voyeuristic perspective.

You could make an argument that The Wire is more innovative in filmmaking than a lot of the typical prestige TV, who simply mimicked Hollywood big budget artistry.

Yes! Was that the one where Avon, String, and Stinkum arrive with the cash bonuses? I am rewatching a third time right now and couldn't figure out why it stood out as somewhat clumsy. It even popped into my head while I was driving yesterday. You've just reminded me, so thank you.

There's also the end of season montages, but I'm a lot more forgiving towards non-diegetic music for montages

Some of the background they give is that the cast and crew didn't think there would be a Season 2, that David Simon wrote Season 5 without Dennis Lehane or George Pelecanos, etc.

https://www.theringer.com/way-down-in-the-hole Now that The Ringer has been bought by Spotify you might have to be a subscriber to listen to it.

Keep going beyond the second season, it gets better, when the lines between the gangs and the government blur

Oh, what a downer that season was. On the other hand, Homeland Season 1 was one of the best bits of television I’ve seen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn0ylNZhOJI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2-NkZ8lGsA

And it's still consistent with the "institutional ineptitude of conservative western cultures" (as @ddek puts it above) theme.

It's disappointing, because the season's focus on journalism and public optics was really interesting and educational and in many ways well-executed. But the serial murder stuff just made it kind of goofy.

Seasons 1 - 4 are so good that it's not a big deal, but it seems so rare that multi-season shows stick a graceful landing.

I did the same thing, and I'm not sure why. The first couple episodes are fine in retrospect, but at the time... I just couldn't get into them and couldn't keep the characters straight. When I finally did get over that hump though, it turned out to be one of my all-time favorite series.

That's a mouthful.

Basically you're saying that the cops operated questionably due to or because of the conservative government's inability to effectively fight crime?

> morally ambiguous

No character (save some in S5) is totally black or white. Take Omar, for example. When Omar responds to Levy in the S2 courtroom scene, we sympathise with Omar. When Bunk applies almost exactly the same criticism in S3, we don’t.

> institutional ineptitude

The show covers more institutions than just the BPD. S2 covers traditional economics, S3 has politics, S4 education, and S5 media.

> conservative western cultures

I kinda wanted to say ‘America’ here, but that wouldn’t entirely be true. I’m from Glasgow, a city which has been directly compared to the Wire’s version of Baltimore. Look up the ice cream wars.

These problems aren’t uniquely America’s, but are inherent to all (small c) conservative western cultures. Parts of Europe (Scandinavia, Netherlands) have made huge progress through progressive policy. This isn’t an issue of which government is in power - the US had 8 years of Obama, the UK had 13 of Blair/Brown, and made no progress.

> mitigating the effects of crime

The true victims of the drug trade are the bystanders. However, the war on drugs is fought through virtuous motivation - drugs are bad, impure, and destroy people and society. This motivation omits those most affected by the drug trade, the bystanders. Between street dealing, turf wars, and aggressive policing; the drug trade devastates communities.

The first time I watched it the first few episodes felt a little weak (like a network tv cop show), almost gave up on it but glad I didn't.

Season 2 was good, but I didn't understand why they kept the drug dealers plot on ice. It seemed like filler.

By season 3 it turned into every other TV show where characters are just tools used to express a story rather real people.

I stopped watching a few episodes into season 4 because I couldn't be bothered to care.

I would understand the heaps of praise The Wire gets if it were limited to season 1 (maybe 2 as well), but the reset doesn't seem that good.

But maybe instead I can give you an example of a thing that I hadn’t noticed, but once pointed out, became my favorite thing about the show: the first scene of the first episode of each season is an encapsulation of that whole season’s theme.

(Spoiler) in the first scene of the whole series, McNulty is asking a street kid about another kid, “Snot Boogie,” who had gotten gunned down. The kid explains that their friends had an ongoing dice game, and sometimes Snot would try to steal the money that was on the table. They would chase him down and beat him and go back to the game, and the next night Snot would just do it again. McNulty is incredulous, “if he always tries to steal, why do you let him play? If you keep beating him up, why does he come back?” “You’ve got to let him play. This is America.”

It’s easy to draw the parallel between Snot and the various players of the drug trade, who all play the game, some working their way higher up the ranks than others, but inevitably being beaten down, but they keep playing because it’s the only game in town. But that’s also the cops. Half of the are crooked and the there’s no “exit” and they’re fighting a war that can’t be won. Everyone in this game is Snot Boogie.

The set-up for the second season is even better, and the scene with Snoop and that nailgun... god

I’m going to give the series another watch alongside this podcast that goes through the episodes one at a time. Haven’t listened yet so I can’t vouch, but I’m intrigued. https://overcast.fm/+Zg-euhrSU

Actual video from the game doesn't qualify as hype! And the code is rock solid and wicked efficient.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR01YdFtWFI&ab_channel=Facto...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVvXv1Z6EY8&ab_channel=Facto...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqaAjgpsoW8&ab_channel=Facto...

It’s almost a perfect game for a software developer. Unlike software which is difficult to visualize, factorio is all about the visualization. It makes it really easy to see your “hacks”, your “scaling”, and your “async”. It also makes it really easy to see your bugs as well. It’s like working on a program that is always running, in a debugger, but with the ability to dynamically add and change the running code in real time.

Another observation: it’s kind of like Excel. The sheet is always live and the sheet acts as a debugger (you see the data and not the code, you see the outputs not the transforms).

Can’t recommend it enough.

[1] https://twitter.com/sriramk/status/1339257751873064961?s=21

Which is actually pretty true of actual real world environments like SmallTalk.

The multiplayer gameplay also reveals a lot of fundamental truths about collaborative engineering as the player must debate architecture, prioritize and balance between the short term and the long term, join individual efforts into a group product, discover Schelling points, and so on.

You factory isn’t big enough if the game is still very performant ;) The factory must grow.

[0] The overwhelming majority of what you make gets thrown into a blender and turned into Science Juice.

One of my recent side projects has been building out a modded multiplayer server that allows me to sell plots of land to players. My idea is to create a city of player-owned museums and shops, all with the backdrop of a custom story narrative in a high-end designed mall of sorts. My inspiration for doing so has been from watching first person videos of people walking in Japan, wanting to experience that but being unable due to the lock-downs. My favorite aspect has been creating an in-game 'paid' train line that lead the player out of the dense concrete shopping district and into one of the beautiful blue and green tree parks, the visual switch-up makes the experience fantastically enjoyable. I'm not really sure I'll end up making any real income from it but the process has been a complete blast. Playing the game in this fashion feels the same as Minecraft did, just with more automation and potential for world building.

Although not strictly Factorio related, something else I've pursued within the game has been setting up a semi-interactive self in my room. I have a few small monitors all linked up playing, and I just set my character to hang out in various places online. One game sits in a train-world just cruising along, another sits in a beautifully animated forest, another still hangs out on a pristine beach that I found. Sitting inside a small room day after day due to the pandemic has been brutal but this setup has greatly improved my sense of connection to the outside. Apart from getting to look over and see something that is visually appealing (and green now that bleakness of winter is here), I'll occasionally see random people join a server and become friends trying to build something together, it's awesome! My shelf has become an interactive, aquarium, IRC, hybrid, all thanks to this game.

I am looking forward to its complexity :)

Designing big factories in Satisfactory feels awkward - it’s very hard to refactor and redesign because the buildings are so big and you need to build them one by one. The engineer in me is always vaguely dissatisfied with what I make in satisfactory. Satisfactory’s world is beautiful to explore - but that makes it a different sort of game.

And shapez was ok, but it lacks factorio’s loop. In factorio you build things out of what you mine and construct. Shapez needs its artificial level structure to motivate you to do anything - and I find that much less satisfying because it saps my intrinsic motivation. Factorio feels grounded in the world, whereas shapez feels like a puzzle game with almost no constraints.

The factorio modding scene is also incredible. Their are so many alternate ways to play factorio - complete with way deeper tech trees, or a base that teleports between planets every 10 minutes, Seaworld - where you start on a tiny island with nothing but ocean in every direction. And as others have mentioned, the game is rock solid. Multiplayer is an absolute blast.

I have to imagine that if you tried to take a Factorio mega-factory (like a 1 rocket per minute factory) and load up the equivalent in Satisfactory, with its 3d graphics and off-the-shelf rigid body dynamics, it would crash to desktop immediately.

Don’t get me wrong, Satisfactory looks like a fun game! But nothing can match Factorio’s depth.

It doesn't matter anyway. A good copy can be better than the original.

If you want want an economy simulation MMO then checkout prosperous universe.

http://www.zachtronics.com/infinifactory/

Also, a lot of the stuff that's kind of tedious and awkward, like laying out complex belt systems, gets a lot easier when you get construction bots and can start building from blueprints. It's like a different game from that point.

A theme of the game seems to be to make the player do things that are hard or laborious but which can be accomplished in an easier way by using the the tools at hand more effectively, or eventually the problems can be worked around with new technology. It's not quite like a puzzle game where you have to solve each problem in front of you correctly before you can advance; rather you can keep advancing until the point where you're overwhelmed by technical debt (e.g. you end up spending most of your time running around fixing train deadlocks).

Not everything that's awkward or hard is a deliberate game mechanic, though. In the 1.1 release they've said they're planning to change some things that have been pain points for users.

I would say to enjoy the game you really have to play it to the point where you build robots. Factorio is a game that is amazing for many reasons, but to me the main one is exponential growth.

At a certain inflection point you can basically tear down everything you've ever built by hand, and have robots recreate it all in a minute or two.

The combination of blueprints and robots turn the game from some tedium to a game purely of mind and very little tedium.

It turns out the UI is fairly configurable and after I made it so right click cancels I sort of adapted.

But yes, when I first played it the UI was horrible. It needs some sane defaults like more common RTS games.

...and after a few minutes, a new goal comes to mind: Launch one rocket every minute. And that’s when the deep game begins. You’ll need massive power production and manufacturing infrastructure, you’ll start using the online calculators to figure out ratios of this to that, and when you get to 1 rocket per minute, you’ll want to see if you can design a system that does that while running completely untouched for 24 hours.

I experienced exactly what you meant on my first run. Launched a rocket after a lot of slog, and lost interest after that. But I never got to actually use eg the nuclear tech very much, which itself makes me want to go back and try it again.

Personally, I wish there were more combat/enemy dynamics involved rather than “just” insectoids swarming the base. And that’s just one angle: other compelling reasons to build more efficient factories would have made me want to go back too.

I try every now and then to start from scratch, but just the idea of starting from the basics seems so daunting and not motivating enough so I kinda just give up after the first day.

Before that, it was amazing.

"Do I fumble my way forward with my current way of doing things or try this new thing? (struggle struggle) Oh wow!"

Factorio is fantastic if you love automation and building complex production pipelines. The game gives you incredible control over building and controlling the manufacturing of stuff. The main motivation is to optimize that, and there are many avenues to do so. You care very little about your “person” (the being that you control) except to keep it alive.

Rimworld is much more rich in what you can choose to do, since it’s primarily a story generation game. You have a lot less control over your manufacturing pipeline. You also have to deal with the humanity of your pawns, who need to eat, sleep and enjoy recreation. You have to keep them alive through natural disasters and raids. Your pawns may die but the story doesn’t end there.

They’re really different games. When I get upset with stupidity of pawns and want more precise automation, I switch to factorio. When I get bored with the dreariness of an automated factory churning out trinkets, I switch to rimworld.

Rimworld is all about character management and anecdote creation in my view. The challenge and interest is about managing randomness and character driven conflict in a game designed to produce conflict.

They play very differently in my experience.

Rimworld is much more of a social/survival game, with hunting, gathering, cooking, diseases, invaders, exploration, character emotions, etc.

Factorio has basically none of that; it's much more about plumbing together inputs and outputs into increasingly complex and useful items. The survival aspect of Factorio is just that you are surrounded by bugs that will attack you if you pollute too much or antagonize them.

One park that I visited on a whim was Capitol Reef, in Utah. My plans for several days backcountry camping in Zion fell through because of snow fall late in season. I had to improvise. Hikers are some of the most friendly people and love sharing knowledge on the trail. One suggested I check out Capitol Reef. What a gem! It was far less crowded than Zion and absolutely gorgeous.

See the parks! Camp there! You'll need to plan 6 months in advance for permits to the most popular destinations.

I can’t tell you how many times I had seen pictures of The Grand Canyon only to be completely overwhelmed when we walked through the parking lot and bam! there it is in all its glory.

I live in Seattle and thus near-ish to Mount Rainer National Park. I love seeing “the mountain out” on sunny days in the city, but being right next to it in the park is unbelievable.

Here’s hoping I have the opportunity to see many others.

I went to Yosemite once mid-summer and it was crowded. Slightly off-season (after school starts for example) and it's a much different experience.

Then, boom. Over night AMD leapfrogged Intel, and now on the third generation has a firm lead in mid range desk top all the way up to high end server silicon. Obviously, Intel has major partnerships with most OEMs, so despite their shortcomings they're still doing strong.

Of course, if ARM or RISCV really is the future this is just a blip. Honestly, I don't see x64 going anywhere for at least 15 years - though hope I can look back at this and roll my eyes someday...

To improve yields they used a number of 8-core "chiplets" manufactured in 7nm tied together with a 14nm I/O die. This meant that while a certain blue competitor was still trying to get 28+ core monolithic dies, AMD could scale to huge core counts without reducing yields by tying together more chiplets.

Their 64-core 128-thread Threadripper workstation parts should have yields almost exactly as good as their low-end CPUs. The Xeon W 28-core monolithic monster? Not so much.

AMD did a lot of things right this time. Intel's got some catching up to do.

(Yes, I'm aware of Samsung.)

GloFo isn't really interested in building anything super competitive moving forward either - they announced they weren't going to pursue 7nm.

I think Intel's still pretty dead set of getting back into the foundry game, doing so is kind of necessary for defense contracts right?

Maybe we'll see On Semi get in the game. They did pick up IBM's Fab 10 from GloFo last year.

ARM generates less than $2B in revenue. Apple posts $275B in revenue. Are ARM's fees just a rounding error to anyone with scale? And ARM knows that it needs to remain competitive on its licensing fees to make sure that people don't move to RISC-V.

I'd guess that a lot of ARM's revenue actually comes from the processor design, not the ISA. ARM will license you cores. RISC-V won't license you cores since they're not designing them.

It's possible that RISC-V will see great things, but I'm kinda thinking that ARM's license fees probably aren't much. Apple especially wouldn't be paying much since they're not licensing cores. Anyone that is licensing cores would need to replace that R&D with their own - which might be more expensive than it's worth. Qualcomm seems to still lean on ARM's designs.

And I think there's certainly a big head start in optimizing things for ARM that will be tough to overcome.

I just think it seems unlikely that current customers will drop ARM to save 0.1% of their revenue - especially if they need to start taking on the costs of designing the chips themselves, contributing to compilers, etc.

The exception I can see is China. China might want a free-and-clear route to their own processors without worrying about other nations denying them access to IP.

ISAs change, and there was a recent article written about this particular situation too: https://codasip.com/2020/12/22/does-isa-ownership-matter-a-t...

I don't really, I was just keeping the comment short and avoiding the ire of any RISC-V fans. It could be either, but it's important to remember that instruction sets don't usually win solely based on merit.

For example, if you read most compiler books - because they were written in the early 2000s or late 90s, they spend almost all of their time discussing various RISC architectures (particularly the Alpha). The (then) 386 is usually mentioned in passing, ARM isn't even mentioned at all.

(You probably can guess what I'm getting towards) They're all dead, somehow ARM lives. It's also not really a question of money, Itanium wasn't that bad and Intel couldn't save it.

If I were God, the only CPU that I really really want to see make it to Silicon (even just to see if they're right) is the Mill. Even if they can't walk the walk it's a really nice concept (I think the belt will see use after their patent expires)

I'm not sure Risc-V will win out over ARM, but if it does, I think the acquisition by nvidia will play a big part of it. It really depends on how open and cooperative Nvidia is with ARM IP now that they have it.

- Typed from my Laptop running Linux

Personally, I don't particularly care whether my computer runs RISC-V or not (for the reason above, it's only open source at the edges) - I'm more concerned with the openness of the rest of the machine

Maybe via Stadia :).

There's this weird obsession with blaming AMD shortcomings on Intel...

AMD can't produce enough chips for OEMs so they get left out in places. End of story.

It's fun to joke about "14nm++++++" but it just so happens actually being able to stock your chips is a pretty big competitive advantage.

Take for example the 'Ultrabook' branding. It's an Intel trademark, and for a few years that word was _everywhere_. However, to get the shiny badge on your system you had to give a lot of control to Intel over the design and characteristics [1]. That's not to say AMD doesn't do the same thing to a degree - They own the term "APU" and will never let Intel refer to an i7 with 'Iris Xe Graphics' as an APU, Never.

The point is that Intel for a long time had leverage over most of the PC industry and used it to get exclusivity over certain parts of the market.

---

[1] https://www.eweek.com/mobile/intel-ultrabook-partners-look-f...

I mean take things like the Ultrabook... you realize your article is literally a decade old?

I remember those days Intel was literally inventing a term and paying developers to come up with "ultrabook app ideas" and stuff. Now the usage of the term is pretty much toothless: https://store.hp.com/us/en/dlp/amd-ultrabook

And that was a bizarre example to choose anyways if you're willing to dig into ancient history, there was a point OEMs were afraid to work with AMD because of Intel...

-

Now a days their iron grip has waned, but AMD literally cannot produce. It's that simple.

And regarding AMD's production capabilities, that seems to be old news. According to a report [1] from August, there don't seem to be any major logistical issues anymore. They've massively scaled up output from TSMC, at some points this year making up about 20% of their production output [2]. Whether this is on the same level as Intel, it's hard to say - If you have information comparing them I'd love to see it.

---

[1] https://wccftech.com/exclusive-the-state-of-amds-supply-chai...

[2] https://hothardware.com/news/amd-7nm-production-at-tsmc-set-...

I dislike when I'm talking about something and start to get the impression the person rebutting is just googling random stuff to throw out and see what sticks.

Because then it falls on me to apply context to everything they say (since JIT googling doesn't give you that)

For example, anyone claiming that their mobile production issues are "old news" as HP is literally cancelling Ryzen based laptop orders and pitching Intel replacements a couple of months after that article https://phonemantra.com/amd-ryzen-mobile-shortage-confirmed-..., is obviously not up to date on the situation.

And I mean you're bringing up TSMC numbers but ignoring the fact consoles are a large chunk of that output and the fact the 20 percent number means literally nothing in a vacuum.

AMD is a public company, it's in their best interest to always say things will be better on the horizon.

-

The fact is OEMs are supply constrained on Ryzen laptops and not on Intel laptops. To the point they're retconning Ryzen skus.

This damages AMDs relationship with OEMs and is not Intel's fault.

I'm going to leave it at that.

But both delivered on that hype. They've both done extremely well in terms of reviews (97% review score average on Metacritic) and sales (best selling games in their respective series), and delivered absolutely magical experiences that made the Nintendo Switch extraordinarily successful in its first year on the market.

And then I played it and holy hot damn was I wrong, I think it will go down as one of my favorites of all time. So so so well executed, the world never once felt empty and pointless, as was one of my main issue with other attempts at open world. Just an amazing title.

Mario: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYJx5xt2cB0 Zelda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T15-xfUr8z4

I think that eariler titles in both series had better balance between quantity and quality of content and what I like best about both titles is the mechanics while the content it acts upon feels sort of thin.

Really funny how that works out.

Extremely high levels of popularity + no competition + unambitious creators that are out of touch with their audience/userbase can equal a mediocre product or series that just ticks along without any attempt to live up to its own promise.

I later discovered that there was a third cabinet battle, which was cut from the final script. You can hear a demo of it on the Hamilton Mixtape album. It features the main cast discussing a letter from Ben Franklin asking for slavery to be abolished. On the one hand, I can see why it was cut - 3 might be too many cabinet meetings - but it adds so much to the thematic tragedy to have Hamilton quietly give up his morals for practicality. He starts act 2 with his youth, his career, his family, and his idealism; by the end, he loses the first three, and the foreshadowing was there for him to lose the fourth, but it doesn't have the payoff.

It both treats it's subject matter incredibly intelligently, yet never tries to show off with braininess and focuses on memorable stage characters and top notch songs.

It's so good on so many layers.

The show that WAS over-hyped and did NOT live up to it for me was Lion King. I saw it back in 2002-ish and was very disappointed. Sure the costumes were cool but the rest of the production was minimal and boring.

it was more than worth it -- it was absolutely beautiful (although tiresome -- it's three hours of music with just a small intermission).

i watched the disney+ version and it's great. but it's not the same due to the angles they chose -- it feels more like a movie, than a broadway play.

Something about Rent aged poorly, especially if you saw it around 2009 during the recession. It was just hard to relate to characters who had no interest in work struggling to pay rent in a gentrifying slum while in the present day, people were struggling to pay rent and find a job.

I don't like the pacing of Wicked, but the staging and performance of Defying Gravity is amazing. I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was morality lesson that felt shoehorned in. Maybe Doctor Dillamond was an allegory on racism? I enjoy Wicked, but I felt like it need more work.

Phantom of the Opera is ok, but I wouldn't go out of my way to see it. I'm also not really an Andrew Lloyd Webber fan.

1) is health data, in a way a computer or phone just can't do. It tracks things like heartrate that a phone + heartrate strap is too convoluted for, for non-athletes. Plus it's all-day and quite accurate. My phone counts my steps in my pocket for example, but not when I'm at home or in the office. My watch can differentiate when I'm cycling to work with my phone in my jacket and detect exercise, whereas my phone may think I'm in a tram or on a motorised scooter.

2) is gamification of exercise. Closing rings, notifications, nudges, vibrations, competitions. It all demands attention and lets you 'jump in' from the wrist much easier, than an app on a phone. It's been a great extrinsic motivational tool to jump-start a change in behaviour for a few months, that can then turn into a long-term intrinsic habit.

3) freedom from the phone. You can open digital locks with the watch, pay with the watch, listen to music or podcasts, get directions on maps, make calls, send (dictated) messages, keep an eye on your mail and calendar etc. I can reliable leave my phone at home, or just leave it in my jacket when I'm visiting friends. Notifications can be set to only allow priority ones in certain settings. It's the first time in 10 years that I'm moving away from having a phone available and in-vision all the time. The Watch doesn't induce mindless scrolling and consumption in a way a phone does, and can be configured to only demand your attention for things you want it to (e.g. certain notifications).

It's definitely not quite where I'd like it to be. Things like battery life, looks, software etc, there's much to gain still. But as a form factor I'm pretty convinced I will be using this for many years to come, and getting upgrades when they become available.

First time series 6 user by the way.

It just collects dust now.

- The health tracking and gamification of exercise was somewhere between meh and useless for me. I don’t have exercise issues.

- The freedom from the phone has potential, but the ostensible ease of use just isn’t worth the hassle of wearing a watch. I’m ok just pulling out my phone.

- The deep breathing option was probably the app i liked most. Now I just do deep breathing exercises at regular times during the day for, what I assume, are similar effects.

I can certainly imagine that it can improve the quality of life for some (many?) people, but I don’t find myself to be one of these people.

That said, I really wish I did have a profound experience with it. I’m always down for good quality of life improvements.

If anyone has ideas for using the Apple Watch that some people seem to miss, please let me know. I’m willing to give it another go.

Well that's what I told my brother, don't get one because you do sports 3-4 times a week anyway. For me it was a motivational thing, seeing my trends in activity, getting nudges, doing competitions with friends, seeing my Vo2max go up over-time, are all great, but unnecessary for my brother.

> the ostensible ease of use just isn’t worth the hassle of wearing a watch. I’m ok just pulling out my phone.

I'd say there's a mix-up here. The watch isn't easy to use versus the phone, which is the primary reason that it allows freedom from a digital device that demands constant attention. Secondly, if you're okay pulling out your phone, then you're really saying you don't have any wish to be free from your phone, so there's an audience mismatch here.

The freedom from the phone first requires you to actually agree that you need it, for many of us that's the case. If you do, the second part is being able to leave your phone at home when you go for a walk, go to the gym, go see friends, go clubbing etc. But for many that's a step too far, without any alternative offering functionality like payments, music, maps, messages, calls. The watch offers that, but in a way that's not super easy to use, but will get the job done. This is why the watch will never be a place where you scroll through social media for hours, or refresh your 5 news apps for the news junkies among us, but the easy-to-use phone, will be.

Contactless payments are fairly nice as you can double tap the button, and hold the watchface over a reader, no need to get out your wallet and find the card you want to pay with.

Back when going out with others was a thing, it’s calculator has features for tips and splitting checks.

Being able to listen to podcasts and audio-books on my watch while going for walks and running errands has been great. With Apple Pay I don't even need to take my wallet with me and can just tap with my watch.

Also the reminder to "close my rings" and being able to enter "competitions" with friends has been a great motivator for me to exercise.

As a fitness tracker I'd say it's superior to the apple watch.

But to me, while a fitness-focused watch does signal sportiness etc, which are great qualities, so does a heartrate strap or sweat band. You wouldn't wear it in the office, at a dinner, or at a party. Of course those are some extreme examples that aren't 1:1 comparable with a garmin. But the general principle to me is the same, to me a garmin 945 looks great on people doing sports, and out-of-place on people not wearing sports clothes.

I think this looks really classy for example, and could easily be worn on something casual (that's not sport clothes) or formal, without looking out of place: https://media.karousell.com/media/photos/products/2019/04/15...

The way that the watch is mostly screen and that screen can show a style compatible with any situation, with swappable bands, is a lot more stylish and versatile than something bulky, with a very large bezel, limited watch face choices, a dim low-resolution screen, often not always-on etc. (not sure 'bout the 945 on all of these btw, just my general impression).

But it's just that in Norway, sports wear is so in fashion that it bleeds over to everyday- and even formal clothing. Instead of a wool sweater, one wears a sporty wool baselayer like "kari traa". Instead of sun glasses it's sports glasses. Instead of a winter coat it's a ski jacket etc.

The Apple Watch is much more versatile and general purpose. Having access to Siri on my wrist has been pretty helpful, paired with AirPods and I can navigate most of life without my phone.

We’re quite habituated to charging our phones every night. Doing the same with your watch (especially if you purchase a stand for it), is a very low friction habit to follow.

What is BT?

These things are not life changing, but they have their fun use cases. If you can accept that it’s not going to 10x your productivity and just want something technically neat maybe you’ll find a use for it again.

Or not, and you can just sell it for a quick buck :p

At least for me it is. And thus I get around 2 days battery life with a 4 year old series 2 watch.

Their official test includes "45 minutes of app use, and a 60-minute workout with music playback from Apple Watch via Bluetooth"[0] - so unless you plan on doing that you can easily expect double the battery time.

[0] - https://www.apple.com/watch/battery/

It doesn’t take long to get a reasonable charge on it. I usually keep it around 80% at most anyway. It gets me through the day at 80% and through the night since I use it for sleep tracking and alarm.

My colleague gets 24 hours battery life on her series 6. Still uncomfortable compared to the usual week+ battery life Garmins.

On the cheaper side, another colleague has an Amazfit Blip Lite which lasts 30 days on a 2 hour charge and can withstand up to 30 meters underwater.

I think the difference is the Series 6 screen never fully turns off. I imagine disabling "always on" mode would likely push battery life much higher, but that's just a guess

This plus the first few Google search results tell me it's not going to work without an iPhone.

This is why I do not buy into the Apple ecosystem, even if individual elements are superior to competitors. I do not want to be completely constricted to one ecosystem. My world involves Microsoft, Google, Steam, Epic, Blizzard, Logitech, Fossil, Asus, HP, Lenovo, etc. and I will continue to swap in and out components as desired.

But I am sad that WearOS options are generally so terrible (at least in performance and features, though some of the physical designs are much better than anything else). And a little jealous of the happy M1-based Macbook users with their battery life!

Ah to dream of having your cake and eating it, too. But we each must choose our own collection of compromises!

If I just wear it without running anything, then yes, it can last days. But if all I want is to track heart rate, sleep, and such, I can get that with a much cheaper watch.

It’s great! I silence the hell out of my phone (on top of having almost all notifications off) so the watch vibrations are useful to me for not missing messages I care about.

Super easy to read 2FA codes through SMS without digging up the phone. The LastPass Authenticator has a watch integration but it’s never worked for me. I’m sure there are other authenticator apps that work for the watch though.

Logging workouts is easy, it’s fun to compare rings with my partner but we’re not serious about it and don’t really need the watch to get motivated about being active.

Hands down my favorite feature is surprisingly the maps integration. If you just ignore the baseless memes about “Apple Maps bad” (works fine for me these days, but I saw how bad it was at its inception back in the day too) and just use it, you get the watch integration for free too. The vibrations for left/right turn are a very nice feature that don’t require averting attention at all, but you have the option of viewing the watch for a quick preview of the maps route (distance to next event and a visual, i.e. right three lanes to exit right).

Just some feedback from a guy without strong opinions for or against the thing.

I thought I might only wear it when I was training, but it turns out having information on my heart rate all day long is super interesting, and I'm really happy I have it.

Also I have turned off most of the notifications, but having the ones I want on my wrist without taking out my phone is actually super nice.

* I can answer calls while driving and not have to fumble around for my phone while driving my truck (The wife's SUV has fancy bluetooth integration)

* I can open and close my garage from my watch.

* I can voice message my family through Messages.

I only wish that the battery life were much longer than it is and that Apple could settle on one method of charging their devices, especially in vehicles with limited room.

They don't allow your phone to show Fitness+ on the TV through HDMI, nor through airplay. The phone screen is just way too small.

So what's left are iPads, which can be a really great experience, particularly on the 12 inch pro, but it's a shame they don't allow Macbooks... I'm okay with the buy-in to some extent but man... A watch, phone and an apple tv is necessary, all from the same company, plus a subscription just to do a video-assisted workout that shows your heartrate on the screen? That's a pretty insane proposition. Would've been great if they allowed more options or third-party stuff. Just casting from my iPhone would've been a good start, or casting on my macbook... Honestly it's pretty ridiculous.

Happy Macbook, iPhone, Apple Watch and Airpod Pro user, otherwise.

https://www.macrumors.com/2020/12/14/apple-fitness-plus-no-a...

Not sure I'd have gotten it otherwise. But at the same time, it's pretty easy to rationalise any cost when looking at it as a monthly payment haha. A 3-year usage and a 20% resale value on the SE ($280) will get you a $6 a month price. If that improves your daily activity by just 5 or 10%, that's probably the cheapest medical intervention in your life, ever. That's probably why the insurance companies offer cashbacks, it's a cool model. They can give me a watch for free every few years and get in return a person who, on average, spends >1x the apple watch less on healthcare costs, every year.

- You can go to a friend's apartment with a Chromecast and just start playing games YOU own like CyberPunk & Assasins Creed within seconds on their TV (assuming they have a controller or you brought your own)

- You can go to Stadia.com on Chrome and just start playing these games from the browser using the Keyboard/Mouse

- The other day I was parked at a Target and I was able to play Cyberpunk on my phone using my phone's internet connection

- You don't have to keep worrying about constantly updating hardware, downloading game patches, deleting stored games etc.

- Time to load the game between saved checkpoints and missions is also much faster since the games run on a superior hardware.

For example, the Neo Geo AES launched at a cost of $650 (~$1300 in today's dollars), with games costing $200 or more back then. Some versions of afterburner climax have a servo equipped chair which can tilt on multiple axes as well as vibrate, police 911 has body position sensors, and many of the music games have hardware that's completely impractical for home.

From that perspective, the games as a service makes more sense. Stadia doesn't really offer any of that, the games are the same as any other platform.

Except YOU don’t own them, google does, which exactly why I would never get stadia.