Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Welcome to Under the Radar, a show about independent iOS app development. I'm Marco Arment. And I'm David Smith. Under the Radar is usually not longer than 30 minutes, so let's get started. So you've been traveling. Yes.
And I feel like you've had just an ultra fun time. I can't figure out a better way to work that in. I have had an ultra fun time. It is absolutely true. So you've been testing the Apple Watch Ultra. Yeah. And I look forward to this, you know, in the same way like, you know, like there are certain reviewers for certain products where I really want to hear their take because the
Either I trust their opinion way more than other people on a certain type of thing, and or I know they're going to test it in ways that other reviewers might not. And this was especially why I'm so happy to hear what you think of the Apple Watch Ultra, because...
In part, this is like a million percent in your wheelhouse. The only way it would be even better is if it somehow ran widgets, which it sort of does with complications. But it's something that – it's the Apple Watch, which you have written more watch software than anybody, including I think everybody inside Apple. And you use the watch and know the watch better than almost anyone I know or than anyone I know.
And also, you are a huge outdoorist. You do a lot of these long hikes, and you spend a lot of time out in nature. You have spent a lot of time with the Apple Watch's competitors, the Apple Watch Ultra's competitors, I should say, like the sport watches. You know that industry. You use them. You know what they're good at, and you know where the Apple Watch is.
could be pushed far before and where the Ultra might be able to be pushed even further. And so this seems like I want to know everything about what you think about the Apple Watch Ultra because you are one of the only people I know who is even qualified to tell me this. For sure. Well, that is a kind introduction. But yeah, so it was fun. So I got my Ultra last Friday as we're recording this on release day, which was exciting and always a little bit...
It's always a little bit scary with something like this, because I really wanted it day one. That was a much bigger pressure for me for this one than normally, because I wanted to immediately head out on an expedition as a result. Actually, I got my order in, which was... I think I ordered... If you remember, I was in Disney World during the event, and I think I ordered it on the bus back from a park, because that was when they opened pre-orders. So like...
A little bit frantic, but I got a day one order. And thankfully the nice thing with the ultra ultra is there's only one model. So it was very straightforward from an ordering perspective. It's just like the ultra. Yes. That one that I guess I could choose which strap I wanted. And I ended up with the, the orange Alpine strap, which is by far the best strap. Um,
But anyway, yeah, so I got that and I booked a trip to essentially, you know, that evening, I headed on and got onto a sleeper train and took the train up to the Scottish Highlands, which I think, you know, for me is the perfect place to test a device like this, because for me, it's the best place to go hiking. And, you know, I'm sure there are uses for an Ultra.
that are different than, you know, the way that I intend to use it. And, you know, my type of activity, which is, you know, hiking, backpacking, general sort of scrambling and outdoorsy-ness. It's not extreme in the sense of it's like, I'm not, you know, going into the Himalayas and doing like true Alpine work or, you know, going deep sea diving or running across the Sahara or all of the kind of use cases that Apple seemed to be indicating, um,
in some of their advertising. I'm just a slightly more keen than typical hiker-backpacker person where I've done a lot of this over the years. I do a lot of backpacking and I do a lot of hikes that are of substantial length. I'm the kind of person who will often go for a hike that's 15-20 miles long in a stretch where I've run into issues previously with
a traditional Apple Watch where it isn't quite up to that kind of activity. And so I was really excited to see a device that in many ways felt like Apple was targeting directly at me, both in terms of the activities I do and then in terms of my development interest and things that I do on that side. So it was like super exciting, got on a train and off I went.
That's fantastic. I was so hoping you would do this, and of course I was pretty sure that you would. Yeah, and I think what's exciting about that is now I get to combine my two favorite things. So I can work on...
The development side. So like part of this trip was a development trip in terms of I'm working on the lab and working for a long time. But this this certainly sort of raised it to the top of the stack. I've been working on a mapping app, a navigation app for the Apple Watch for a while. And it works perfectly with this, especially combined with live activities like you could run it on your watch or on Mac.
And so...
It's like, I don't know exactly the best way to kind of walk through it here, but I think there is definitely some interesting things that I learned from a development perspective beyond just the kind of like high level, like my experience and thoughts on the ultra, but that's probably a good place to start. It's just like my high level thoughts and thesis about this device.
Yeah, please. Because one thing I would like to know basically as developers – I mean, first of all, I didn't get one because, frankly, I don't need it. And I don't think my watch app really needs any changes as a result of the Ultra's existence besides just making sure it looked good on the screen size. Otherwise, everything else seems to be fairly automatic for most apps.
But I'm curious, like, you know, from a developer's point of view as well as a user's point of view, but from a developer's point of view, I'm curious, like,
Is there anything that we really should be taking advantage of on the Ultra that maybe is not obvious? Like, you know, I think the screen size is obvious. The action button, maybe. Like, is there anything else that we should be really taking advantage of? Or is this mostly a, you know, user benefit, first of all? And then second of all, is it mostly a benefit only for certain types of apps? Yeah, and I think screen size and the action button are the two biggest immediate things. And I think screen size...
There's the straightforward, like, does your app work on the new screen correctly? Are you making any assumptions related to size that you need to address? Or I believe we do need to recompile our apps, otherwise they're letterboxed or pillboxed or something. Oh, really? Oh, crap. I didn't do that. I think it's just if you built with WatchOS 9. Oh, with the GM, right. Yeah, I think it's fine there, but...
Try that. Let me know if my screen looks weird on your watch. I think it looks fine. But I think the bigger thing, honestly, is that it was really interesting using an Apple Watch Ultra intently for three days. The context of my trip was...
Went up to Scotland, spent three days hiking. I did about 61 miles in total of hiking over those three days and tried it in a variety of different sort of contexts. Like I used it with just the Apple app. I used my app. I used it compared to a Coros sport watch. I used it compared to a Series 7 Apple watch. And I did a variety of different things. And it's probably worth saying, like the best way to get a sense of my trip is I did a YouTube video, which I'll have a link to in the show notes for this.
I talked through in great detail kind of all of these things, but I think what was really interesting seeing it is it's like the size of this watch feels like it crosses this boundary where while it's, well, I think, you know, as developers need to take, take use of this space in terms of making sure that it works, but I'm also really intrigued to see if there's extra things that we can do to make use of this space that, um,
It is a seriously big screen, like in a way that feels more different than just the whatever four millimeters larger than it is than the 45 millimeter. Like it's...
It feels like it crossed this cognitive boundary in my mind where suddenly it didn't feel like a watch. It felt a bit more like a computer. It felt a bit more like a really small iPhone. I mean, obviously, I think it has a higher resolution screen than the original iPhone, which is always just slightly comedic to think about. But there is something different about it. And I haven't quite settled yet on exactly what I want to do with that.
But it was really interesting to get this feeling of when you look at your wrist, it is big enough. Like interacting with even like two-finger gestures is maybe a good place to sort of make this more concrete. Like a two-finger gesture typically on an Apple Watch previously would have felt really crowded. And, you know, like in my app, I do some mapping. And so I use the digital crown to zoom in and out on the map, which –
Makes a lot of sense. And it certainly is still something that I will continue to offer. But it was almost like, huh, I wonder if I should explore doing pinch to zoom as well, because it's big enough that like two normal fingers can actually reasonably fit on the screen and, you know, without completely covering it and everything.
So like those types of thoughts are what's starting to come through my mind now that the ultra screen is big enough in a way that is like really interesting. And particularly, I would definitely in the back of my mind, like was thinking, especially because if you make an app that is watch OS nine only, then you can drop support for the series three.
Oh, that's fantastic. I forgot about that. Which is, which obviously it's like dropping people out of, I mean, it's not like I'm just slicing this out of spite, but it's like, that is a really interesting in terms of developing an app. Who's, you know, that can, that, that the smallest screen it will need to fit on is a series four. And the series four screens are much, you know, very different than this, you know, a 38 millimeter series three screen, uh,
It's like the little postage stamp compared to even the 40 millimeter Series 4 and then certainly compared to this. And so there's a lot of interesting things and a lot of going edge to edge in terms of the way that you can kind of fill that, you know, on the Series 3, you could never really fill the display. It would always have, it was always just this rectangle floating in a black box.
um, in a black space. Whereas, you know, once they sort of, once Apple went to the rounded corner screen approach, you get this slightly different look and feel to things. And so it was really intriguing. And I think from a developer perspective, that's the thing that I'm most intrigued about playing with. And I think something that is worth thinking about, like, is there a control? Is there a, uh,
When I think about an overcast, is there an alternative arrangement of buttons or another option you could show or make something clearer or bigger if you do it this way? And so that was just something that I think is my first reaction. It's like, whoa, this is really cool and fun and a proper computer that is now strapped to my wrist.
That's really interesting. And I'm wondering, I mean, you keep better analytics than I do on this kind of stuff. Do you know roughly what percentage of your user base is on an Ultra yet? How easy would it be to target something to that and not be too, too specialized? So, I mean, the Ultra itself is certainly still pretty low. So the Ultra is, in my analytics, 0.66% of people, I think.
I think what's more interesting probably is if you cut out. So like the Series 3 is 18%. And if you add like the Series 1, 2 to that, it's probably about 20%. So about 80% of people are using a watch that has the kind of modern form factor, I would say. And then obviously the Ultra is pretty small as a proportion of those at this point, but it's only been out for four days. So that's pretty fair.
Yeah, because my stats are the Ultra is almost beating the 38mm. Assuming the Ultra is the 205x251 screen, it's the only screen I have unlabeled in my analytics. Yeah, so I have that at 2.6%, and the 38mm at 2.8%. So I have almost as many Ultra users already as 38mm users. I suspect your stats are fairly skewed then. I'm pulling my stats out of Pedometer++, which is a pretty...
I think perhaps a slightly more general purpose audience than you have. Almost certainly. I think you're putting it gently. I think my 38 millimeter stats are at 13%. Yeah. Well, we are brought to you this episode by Rogue Amoeba. I love Rogue Amoeba. And Gadzooks, Rogue Amoeba Software is celebrating their 20th anniversary. That means two full decades making amazing audio apps for the Mac.
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touching on with the Ultra was some of the... So overall, my experience is that I'm in love with this device. I think it is amazing. And I love that it is an Apple Watch, first and foremost. That it is... Apple could have gone down the road of trying to
like outdo Garmin, Coros, uh, Suunto, like those kinds of very sports specific watches. And they could have tried to make the Apple version of one of those. And they didn't. Instead, they took an Apple watch and they made it more appropriate for that context.
And so in doing that, like, you know, they didn't compromise any of the things that made it an Apple Watch. Like you can, you know, you can do Apple Pay on this. You can make FaceTime audio calls. You can do email and text messaging. You can do all the all kind of workout tracking and health tracking. You know, it still has an ECG built into it, like FaceTime.
all kinds of features that are kind of part of being an Apple watch. And they didn't change any of those, which I think is super great from a user perspective because the Apple watch is awesome. And this is now just like an Apple watch that I can take into the wilderness a bit, you know, in a more way. And it's,
So that's exciting. And from a developer perspective, it's great that there's not like this new platform, this new environment that we have to now develop before where it's, you know, previously be like watch OS and now it'd be like sport OS or something. And there'd be this new, you know, new framework or new thing that we have to learn. It's like, nope, it's all just exactly the same. And I think that that is amazing. And I'm so glad that Apple went down that road.
But it wasn't – going through my review, there were only two areas where I think there were issues that stuck out to me as – there's software things that I think and hope that Apple will be able to fix and change. But I think there were maybe some broader lessons that I think were worth talking about. And the first one of those is –
the way that they kind of implemented the action button um initially and so the action button if you're not familiar on a you know traditional apple watch there's two buttons there's what's called the side button which is like the slightly elongated one next to the crown and then there's the crown which is the wheel that you can push into this uh push in as a button as well and previously on all apple watches those are the only two inputs we had um that's your physical inputs and
And then for an ultra, they added a third button, which is the action button, which is an orange button on the opposite side to the side button. And it's interesting because at first I thought when I saw this that the way that they would implement that is that it's just available to apps as...
an extra input that we could subscribe to notifications or however they technically do it. But somehow we'd be informed when the user pushed that button and we can use it inside our app. And that isn't exactly what they did. And as a result, it's kind of a weird situation. And honestly, I had a few situations in the last three days where it was really frustrating to me because what they did instead is they made it so that you
assign different you assign a specific function to the action button in settings and then it will do that action regardless of what's happening on the watch um currently and so as an example you can set it to you know when you push the action button it can start a workout
which is reasonable to some degree. Um, but, and then what happens is inside of that app that has started the workout, if you subsequently press it, you get like subsequent events, but you only get those events as far as I can tell, if you were set up as the app that they were going to start the workout in inside the action button, like otherwise it goes and does its action, um, instead, which is really kind of ended up being really confusing and kind of inconsistent. And, um,
led to something that is just one of those things that as a software developer, I always want to kind of just mention and point out is that the last thing you ever want to do is like lose someone data or even in some ways worse is losing someone something that they might think is special. And this is what happened to me.
So I'd configured my action button so that it would launch my hiking app and start a workout because I was testing that. And so that's how I'd configured it, and it worked fine on my second day. On my third day, I was doing a battery test where I wanted to use Apple's built-in app in low power mode, and I was going to go and hike 26.2 miles.
When I left, I was supposed to hike 24 miles, but as I got close towards the end, it ended up being like 25.6, and I was like, you know what? I think I'm going to try and do a marathon. So I just walked around in circles for half a mile at the end of a very long day. But anyway, I walked for 26.2 miles, which would have been a cool thing to have as a workout in my workout history.
But halfway through my walk, about 17 or 18 miles into it, I bumped the action button. And you know what it did? It ended my workout in the main Apple Workouts app and started a workout in my app. Oh, no. And it's like, yes, that's how I configured it. But no, don't do that. Like, it doesn't make any sense. Oh, man. That's one of those things like.
like i see why they design it that way because they they you know there are certain uses of this where you like this is the same reason why they don't have that option to get rid of the 321 countdown on the workout start where like you want to be able to like hit the button and know like that is the exact start of what i am doing and and so i see why this feature exists but having that be the
The default behavior when you already have a workout running, that's not good. Yeah. And I think, yeah, so I think I definitely will be filing some feedbacks regarding this. And I think it's like in my mind, like when you have an active workout running, pushing the action button should just be the second, you know, sort of the secondary action for that app, period. Yeah.
Like don't kick, don't kick user out. I mean, I guess if you, you can configure the action button to like start opening, turning the flashlight on and off and do these other things. But even there, it's like, if you're in the middle of a workout, like you're in the middle of the workout, like that is the foremost primary action. The user has said like, I am doing something. Don't interrupt that. Like don't. And I think that was the sort of like, as a developer, I just had this moment of like, Oh no, I see exactly why they did this. And I've made mistakes like this myself. Um,
But, you know, you never want to put a user in the situation that I found myself in where I was just gutted that it's like, now I have two workouts. You know, I have a 17-mile workout and then I have a nine-mile workout in my workout history. And it's like, that doesn't really matter. Like, functionally, it's not important. Like, you know, the same amount of distance was tracked. I got all my active calories and move goals and all the things. Like,
But it doesn't quite look as nice in my history when I had, you know, to have this very not like that's the longest hike I think I've ever done that I can remember in my entire life. And now I have it in two segments rather than one. And it's frustrating as a result. And so it's like a little warning as a developer is you always want to keep in the back of your mind. Like, is there something that I need to make sure that I preserve beyond, you know, beyond anything else? And in this case, it's like things like streaks, things like.
you know, this kind of like contiguous data are things that people really start to care about. And that's especially like the bigger and longer they get, you know, fair enough. If you interact, if I started a workout and I'm 30 seconds into it and I pushed the action button and it goes to the other app, like maybe that could make sense. But even still like,
Throw a little confirmation button and say, hey, are you sure? You know, before you do a destructive action, even if especially for something like, you know, the action button is relatively easy to accidentally push, because if you are using the crown or the side button, it's on the opposing side of the device. And so you kind of have to be careful with where you put your other finger to create side pressure. Yeah.
Yeah, and this is also – you said a few minutes ago, like, oh, it doesn't really matter. But no, it does really matter. This kind of stuff, people – saying it doesn't really matter is like, well, there was a bug in watchOS where it made me break my streak of closing my rings every day for the last two years. And now that sucks. Like now I'm falling off the wagon because I'm discouraged and I think this thing is working against me. Those are strong problems. And –
I don't know anybody who uses the Apple Watch workout feature regularly who hasn't at some point accidentally split or stopped a workout that was not complete yet and had this result of having this two-segment workout that they can never join, which also suggests maybe you should be able to merge two workouts that were consecutively happening. But that's obvious Apple feature request. But no, this stuff matters a lot. But anyway...
So as we are nearing the end of our 30 minutes here, I'm curious to – my impression so far of what you have said about the Ultra and I think what most reviewers have said is that –
It's not like the difference between, say, an Apple Watch and an iPhone. That it's more like the difference between a MacBook Air and a MacBook Pro in the sense that it seems like – and correct me if I'm wrong – it seems like the Ultra –
is not massively different from using a regular Apple Watch. It's just a little bigger, a little more capability, a few exclusive features here and there. But for the most part, it's an Apple Watch, but like 30% more of it. Is that roughly what we're looking at here? Yeah, I think that's fairly accurate and appropriate. From my perspective, I think that's really good. It's not this...
transformative, like re-imagining of fitness because they think Apple has gotten to a pretty good place with the Apple watch. And I think the ways, the ways in which they pushed it out are really helpful and like they're meaningful changes, but they're not, they haven't gone in this wildly different direction. You know, I think it's really good and a nice device for me to be able to
really not have to think at all about um sort of babying it from a durability perspective for example like i mean i didn't care at all and just you know live my life in the wilderness and it's been great and i've since subsequently watched several like you know the classic like youtube video where people like try and break things on purpose and it's like always i always feel terrible for the device because it comes out of this pristine box and then people just like whack it with hammers and
I always wonder, who's paying for this? Who is funding? Hopefully they're not going to do some kind of return scam or something. So who's funding? Is it really worth $800 to make that video? Are they going to get that many hits? I don't understand how this works. But the reality is people were hitting the Ultra with a hammer and it didn't break. Yeah.
which is one of those, it's like, I'm super excited that I just don't have to care about it. Like, it's just not even in the, I mean, I didn't particularly baby my Apple watches previously because I have some, like I have a drawer full of them for my development. So if I break one or something, it's not the end, you know, but that's not my situation. It's not, not typical. But as far as I can tell with the ultra, like,
It's functionally indestructible in normal use. If I'm physically hurt, maybe my Apple Watch is physically hurt, like I fell off a cliff. But in normal use, just whacking it into things, it's going to be totally fine. And so they pushed it out there. They didn't push the battery life out.
Not like transformatively, like it just seems like the battery life is better. Like it's not like, you know, 10 times better. It's, I don't even know, like 25, 30, 40% better depending on the context and depending on how you're using it. And so like, that's great. And that's really appreciated. And I think something that is nice, but fundamentally, yeah, it is very similar. And it is like you're saying, it's like an Air versus a Pro in the MacBook line. Like it's that sense of,
It's very familiar. It does a lot of the same things, but it just does them better. And it gives you a sense of confidence about using it that I think is nice. I think of in the early days of the Apple Watch where Craig Hockenberry would swim in the ocean with his, I think, first generation Apple Watch. And I always thought he was just mad.
And he just sort of had the sense of like, well, it's like this device is here to serve my needs and my activities, not the other way around. Like I'm not going to baby it and I have more power to him. But for me, I was always like, oh, it's a $300, $400 thing. I don't want to just like break it.
And I really feel nice that this device, like I really just don't have to. And it's great in this context where you can use it and just have great confidence that it's going to get to the end of a workout. Like, so, you know, related similarly to the battery life story is like this last summer, I went for a really long hike on the Isle of Skye in Scotland with my wife and she
probably before this hike I did a few days ago is one, probably the second or third longest hike I've ever done. And I ran out of battery with like maybe a third of a mile to go and it didn't quite save. Right. And so like that workout just like didn't like, I was able to recreate it because I'm a developer. So I like wrote an app to recreate the workout and save it, even though it didn't actually save correctly, but like,
That was really annoying and frustrating that I ran out of battery. And it's like, I'm pretty confident I'm going to run out of, you know, I'm like me personally, my legs will run out of energy before this thing runs out of energy. If I start, if I start, you know, start it with a full charge at the start of a day, I'd like that, that, that I am the limiting factor, not the device anymore. And that is just cool and exciting and, you know, a fun thing to work, to work with as a result.
That's awesome. Well, I'm so happy to hear all of this, frankly, and I'm so happy that you got to do this amazing trip and that you're now a vlogger, I believe. I guess so. So congratulations on that as well. Thank you, everybody, for listening, and best of luck with your adventures with the Ultra if you have them, and we will talk to you in two weeks. Bye.