"Charging" into the future

HALLIE EPHRON: I bought myself an Apple Watch. And it’s constantly making helpful suggestions like time to get up off the couch. The other day it asked me if I was starting my workout. Turned out I was not. I was putting on a pair of pants.

For months I’d been noticing people in my approximate age bracket wearing Apple watches. Like the man waiting for his Macchiato at the Starbucks at SFO airport.

“Is that an Apple watch, “ I ask.

He lights up in the affirmative.

Do you like it, I ask.

He LOVES it! Especially the way it monitors heart rate and, should he fall down and can’t get up, he’s got peace of mind because he’s WEARING his emergency call button.

I can relate. So I order one. Red because I love red. I AM a RED. And because I lose black things.

It arrives exquisitely packaged – Apple is a complete genius when it comes to packaging. With minimal instructions that show me how to attach the band and fasten it on my wrist. Genius. Like the packaging.

Then I pressed (what I think is) the on button and… nothing happened.

Hours later I am online with Apple’s usually helpful HELP.

Turns out that the watch needs to be charged before any of it works. I know, this should be self evident, but to me it was not. Plus this is bit of information is not in the HELP agent’s script. I have to ask a friend who has an Apple watch.

The power adapter (charging plug), which is different from any of my other charging plugs (cell phone, mac, ipad…), is not included.

Why don’t electronics come with compatible power adapters and instructions that begin STEP 1: CHARGE YOUR NEW TOY.

And why is STEP 0 not: ORDER A COMPATIBLE PLUG.

A month in, I am very happy with my Apple Watch. The plug was not expensive and it works. The watch charges on my bedside table overnight… where at midnight on July 4 it alerted me that my heart was going bananas. I was asleep so I’m thinking maybe it was triggered by fireworks? I wonder what it does in an earthquake.

The most useful thing it can do, it turns out, is call my (as usual) misplaced cellphone.

Are you experiencing the latest in technology or sticking your fingers in your ears and humming?

On Sleep and Devices Run Amok

 LUCY BURDETTE: I should preface this by reminding/telling you that I am a terrible sleeper. Anything wakes me up and I have a devil of a time returning to sleep. A couple of weeks ago, John’s watch erupted in the night. OMG, what awful emergency had happened? The watch reported: “Your activity ring is almost closed. A ten-minute brisk walk would finish the job.”

This is 2 am people! I don’t know about you, but getting a message about taking a brisk walk at 2 AM does not seem like a worthy emergency to me. We had a few words to make sure he had turned the alerts off and I struggled back to sleep. 

Not long after, the watch piped up again. “Now would be a good time to unwind. Sit in a comfortable position that’s relaxing. Close your eyes if that’s comfortable. Find something close to you. Notice the little details.”

There was something close to him all right—me—but noticing the details of my outrage wasn’t going to help him unwind!

I think we’ve sorted that out and he’s made sure that nighttime conversation with his watch is off-limits. Do you have a watch or other device that you rely on, that sometimes runs amok? How are you sleeping?

HALLIE EPHRON: That’s crazy–and the device doesn’t  even have a sense of humor. 

Lucy, I feel for you. Sleep is so crucial. Sometimes I have a terrible time getting back to sleep, watching the minutes tick by from 2 … to 3… to 4. And I canNOT ignore a phone ping. After having had my credit card number stolen several times, I have my bank account set to alert me whenever the card is charged, and if I forget to turn off the ringer overnight, then those pings wake me up. Why, oh why, does the Washington Post need to charge my credit card at three in the morning??

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, poor you, Lucy. I have trouble getting to sleep, but once out I'm not all that prone to waking up again. HOWEVER, Rick gets text messages, usually from the weather service, and sometimes from friends who don't seem to realize that texts are not emails… But since I'm deaf in one ear, I try to sleep on the GOOD ear and that gives me my own personal noise-canceling device.

JENN McKINLAY: I don’t own a watch and we keep our cell phones out of the bedroom. And, honestly, I’m a champion sleeper. Once I shut my eyes I’m out for 6-7 hours and can sleep through anything. When the Hooligans were teenagers, they threw late night pool parties. I had NO IDEA until a neighbor mentioned it. Ha! Those scamps. If I do get woken up, I can shut my eyes and go right back to sleep. I don’t dream, either. I’m a weirdo, I know.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN; Oh my golly, I remember when I first got my new phone, before the pandemic, I was in a hotel room, one of those times where plane is at 6 AM, which means you have to get up at 4 AM, and the whole thing is terrible, so I went to sleep really early, like 830. I t was ridiculous, and I must’ve gotten ten million billion texts. And they all pinged. Everything pinged. Once or twice I can handle, but ping, ping, ping ping ping ping ping--argh,you can’t believe it.

I almost threw the phone across the room.  Problem was, I had not learned how to silence all the notifications without silencing the alarm. Is there even a way to do that?  But I’ve got to tell you, tossing the phone out the window would’ve happened had there been a window that opened. I was awake, anyway, and zombied to the airport.

When Jonathan takes his hearing aids out, he can’t hear his own phone ping during the night, but I certainly do. I guess the good news is I can always instantly go back to sleep after I wake up for that sort of thing. It’s annoying, but isn’t life-changing.  (I guess my brain says, oh, that’s okay, and goes back to sleep.)

Also, my husband always forgets to take his pills, so I have alarms set everywhere to remind him.  I also set an alarm to remind him after he ignored the first reminder. The alarm is at 9 PM .

We usually have dinner around nine, too. So every night at nine, the microwave beeps, the sous vide beeps, the oven timer beeps, the Alexa beeps with the reminder, and then Alexa beeps again with the reminder about the reminder. 

Plus, the Alexa  does not listen to me. Does not respond to my voice when I say “Alexa stop!”  So, in addition to all the pings and alarms,  there’s also me yelling. It’s quite the moment. 

RHYS BOWEN:  I’m a really light sleeper. This comes after four kids woke as babies, then had bad dreams, then came in late as teenagers. John can creep across the room and I’m awake. And find it hard to get back to sleep. I’ve started turning off my phone because every political candidate in the world texts me at night. So annoying.

If I fall asleep at the perfect time I sleep well. If I watch a movie until eleven my brain is wide awake again. If I wake in the middle of the night my brain immediately kicks into full creative mode: that scene you just wrote … how about if the dialog went like this….. and I dream all the time. Vivid, interesting dreams. Rarely nightmares these days…

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Lucy, I had the same thing happen when I first got my Fitbit - evidently it was refurbished in Hawai'i because it kept giving me messages based on "my time" of GMT -10! When I finally figured out the app and fixed it, I was so releived. I thought I was doomed to 3am exercise notices forever.

I put my phone on sleep mode, with exceptions for my kids, so a call from one of them will break through. I'm actually sleeping better thanks to an electronic device: the Alexa Dot in my bedroom plays ambient noise all night long. It's sooo soothing to fall asleep to Train or Spacedeck or Wind in Trees - and it masks the sound of commuters zipping past my house starting at 5:30am each morning.

How are you sleeping in your homes Red friends? Any devices causing problems?

Do I need an Apple Watch?

 

RHYS BOWEN: We are not exactly in the forefront of technology in our house. John had a flip phone until I finally put my foot down when, for the zillionth time I landed at the airport, called to be picked up only to hear his recording because he hadn’t turned it on! So I bought him an IPhone and guess what—he forgets to charge it for weeks. So I land at the airport and …. Get his recording. 

I’ve never been one for gadgets. Strangely enough that is John. We have the bread maker and the bacon slicer and the onion cooker and the food sealer and the air fryer and the juicer and even the battery powered shoe polisher. 

But I like to be organized. I have always loved agendas. I used to love my Dayrunner. But then something happened: The Dayrunner begat the Compac electronic diary. Which begat the Palm Pilot, Which begat the Blackberry which begat the iPod, which begat the iPad, then the iPhone and the Mac. So now I’m thinking of getting an Apple Watch. I didn’t consider it before because it’s big and I’ve always gone for small watches. 

But events have propelled me toward making the decision: I know nobody needs a watch these days with their phone nearby but I like to glance at my wrist to see when I have to leave. Remember the Jack In the Box commercial when the intern calls Jack’s wristwatch “Your little wrist clock” as if she’s never seen one before. 

 I’ve been a Swatch girl for ages. I love Swatches with their fun patterns and the fact that I can swim without taking them off. But they have silicone bands that have started to irritate my wrist. So I’ve been walking around with a bare wrist for a few weeks, glancing down every now and then to see that the time is two hairs past a freckle. 

So I need a different watch. I have Seikos: four to date. But I don’t like them. The metal bands are uncomfortable and I have to take them off to swim and shower. So I’m seriously looking at Apple Watches. I can see the benefits: I wouldn’t have to carry my phone around with me all the time. I could leave it in a sensible place where I could find it instantly. (yeah, right! I have to call it from my house phone hundreds of times a day because I’ve left it somewhere). And I’d get my texts, and record my steps and laps And it would warn me if my heart started mis-behaving. It hasn’t yet, but who knows?  But it is super-big and clunky and I think it has a silicone strap that would also irritate my wrist. So I'm in a quandry.

Who has an Apple Watch? Who loves it? Hates it?