New Apple Watch is a dive computer

[Belzelbub]

We forget this is a SCUBA enthusiast board and we are not typical. Most divers rent gear, go on one or two trips a year if that and could care less about AI but love their Apple watch.

Exactly. I don’t see this as a competitor to Shearwater. I do see this as a competitor to the beginner dive computers, and a cost effective option for the occasional vacation/cruise diver that is also an Apple Watch owner.

For $50 more than the closest Series 8, you can get a watch that you can use as a dive computer rather than renting whatever the dive op has, and not knowing how to use it. That’s not even mentioning the fact that the other enhancements over the 8 Stainless seem like they are well worth the $50.

So, maybe this will result in occasional divers that might know how to change settings on their computer, and understand what it’s telling them. That’s a good thing. $10 for a month of dive computer usage versus the rental rate. My preferred LDS rents regulators with or without a computer. The difference in the daily rate is $10.

 

[Joneill]

One of the pluses I can see for this is being able to mark the location of the dive site (albeit on the surface) with GPS to make it easy to find the site again.

Just like Garmin has already been doing - nothing new. I just capture the site GPS Coordinates in Dive Log while on the boat - so not really a big draw for me to have on my DC as I have my phone with me already.

 

[Belzelbub]

Of course not! I have no idea how headphones work. I dig out earwax for a living. But I'm pretty sure that if there is a market for people listening to music with this watch, the least difficult part would be figuring out how to make that work. Like I say, we are already using some form of RF transmission with WAI dive computers. Right now, to listen to music on a dive, our boat captain sticks a speaker in the water and we can rock on at 100 feet. Maybe there is a way of just having the speaker play enough sound energy for you to hear it without electronics? I don't know. But if you told someone in 2007 what a 2022 iPhone could do, they probably would have had a lot of reasons why none of that would work!

Oh, don’t get me wrong. I think the headphones are a great idea. That would definitely help with deco obligations. And I do think this one is technically feasible today. Waterproofing bone conduction headphones is easy enough, and the ability to transmit a signal a few feet through the water is common. Combining the two is where it runs into trouble. Not technically, but financially. Just not enough buyers at the moment. Divers aren’t going to swing that enough. Maybe if swimmers got on board with this, there might be a market.

Why scroll? Right now, If I take my iPhone and take a pic of a plant, it will tell me what plant it is. No intrinsic reason why that wouldn't work underwater with fish. Maybe the next generation will have a camera, but until then there are things like this...

Yeah. I love the plant ID apps. Originally, I thought this might not work without a connection to the internet. I just tried seek with my phone in airplane mode, and Seek correctly identified one of the plants outside. So might be an option in the future.

See, that's the thing about a company like Apple doing the heavy hardware lifting by producing this device. They don't have to come up with all of the other innovation. They just provide the infrastructure. Many of the actual features are provided by thousands of other developers, ranging from one person in a garage to a big software company. That's a lot of distributed brain power...

Oh, I understand that. But it’s also Apple’s (and Oceanic’s) name on the product, so unintended behavior during a dive would be something they’d want to avoid. As they’d be the ones named in the lawsuit, should there be an injury. Allowing unrestricted access to all other apps would be something they’d likely want to avoid. Plenty of other tasks during the dive, so adding more by switching apps could be problematic. Especially since the touch screen is non functional underwater.

See, I would do the reverse. I wouldn't use it as a DC, would rather have a standalone unit for that for the reasons I outlined upthread. But I would like to have a smart device with me on a dive, for much of the same reason why I'm happy to have one with me right now...

Gotcha. Makes more sense to me now. Now we just need to wait for the technology you mentioned to make it to the watch. However, I still don’t see this happening soon, especially given who the target market appears to be.

 

[Belzelbub]

Just like Garmin has already been doing - nothing new. I just capture the site GPS Coordinates in Dive Log while on the boat - so not really a big draw for me to have on my DC as I have my phone with me already.

There are a lot of things I like about the entry and exit locations with the Garmin. Could have helped me recover my anchor a couple of months ago had I been used to it at that point.

Plus, the automatic transfer to the Garmin Dive app is pretty cool. Requires no interaction on my part. As soon as it reconnects to the phone, it begins to sync the data through Connect. Knowing how seamless Apple devices tend to be, I expect it will be at least as easy wit the AW Ultra.

 

[Tournesol2000]

I think this watch is great as it is very disruptive.
My concern is for people who do not upgrade phones and watches often, the app will not work on older phones and the watch will not be supported after 4-5 years.
So I would buy the watch as an all around amazing featured watch… if I had disposable income, but knowing that it will have to be replaced sooner than a dive computer would need to be replaced.
There are a lot of apps that are no longer supported on my iphone6 so I had to upgrade to newer faster technology even though the 6 still functions well (as a phone).

 

[brsnow]

It is interesting that it appears people feel their gear is being attacked or threatened when new technology or a company like Apple starts to put resources towards diving.

 

[Boarderguy]

It is interesting that it appears people feel their gear is being attacked or threatened when new technology or a company like Apple starts to put resources towards diving.

No, we're saying that this is going to force the competition in that price range to improve. This watch is great for those who dive a few times a year and want a decent dive watch. Def not a DC replacement.

 

[brsnow]

No, we're saying that this is going to force the competition in that price range to improve. This watch is great for those who dive a few times a year and want a decent dive watch. Def not a DC replacement.

I agree with that, except not a DC. I dove for years with a GEO, this does everything that did and more. but if you read through this people seem actually mad.

 

[Boarderguy]

I agree with that, except not a DC. I dove for years with a GEO, this does everything that did and more. but if you read through this people seem actually mad.

Some are mad at it being called a DC. A lot just have a general dislike for apple products (me included). Wife and daughter are both apple. My son and I are both android. I hope it drives improvement in the mid range DCs and hourly people will dive safer by using this and knowing how it works as previously stated.

 

[brsnow]

Some are mad at it being called a DC. A lot just have a general dislike for apple products (me included). Wife and daughter are both apple. My son and I are both android. I hope it drives improvement in the mid range DCs and hourly people will dive safer by using this and knowing how it works as previously stated.

Anger management