To me, it all comes down to how good the health data info really is

[datbeme]

First, I should point out my knee-jerk comment the other day about what I wanted to see at the Apple event:

Any of the above. Except for the flippin' watch. Wearables? Maybe something someday will find the magic formula. I'm open to possibilities. But a wristwatch is just a bad, bad, bad idea. This cannot be argued. Maybe after 3 or 4 generations and a miraculous change in consumer tastes and attitudes. But for now, you're just going to be a dork with a first gen device that you're going to feel stupid owning a year from now wrote:

I still feel the same way. It's a product looking to a be a solution to a number of disjointed things. It has the potential to be handy in a lot of different ways, but how handy or necessary will forever be debated.

But the health info has me thinking. This is one of those things that I value. If done well, it's a really big deal. If not, clunk!!! I'm not a watch wearer, but I do have a Garmin Forerunner 405 that I use for running and biking. I've had for a few years, and I have a love/hate relationship with it.

It's a little big but not terribly ugly or clunky for an LCD watch. While you can tell an amazing amount of thought and effort went into the interface, it is one of the most tangled bags of hurt you could ever imagine--especially because some of the interface elements are inconsistently responsive and the darn thing just freezes up for no reason on occasion. AND it was very expensive.

But when I walk in the door, it auto syncs with my computer with an amazing amount of detailed information about my my speed, elevation, calories, and heart rate and all of this is auto uploaded to the Garmin website where it is gloriously presented with map and GPS information and a recorded history that fuels my workouts and keeps me motivated. The value of all that makes me put up with the watch's stupid idiosyncrasies.

I'm not interested in fuel bands and fit bits that track ambiguous units that don't relate to anything, and I've tried a host of different iPhone GPS apps that seem lacking for some reason (probably because of the lack of HR info and most Apps' need to have everything contained within the App itself). I don't want to have to manage all that info from within an app. I just want to capture it easily and reliably behind the scenes so that I have a consistent and reliable record of my activity.

I know Apple is capable of tying all this together to make it happen. The question is, how well have they done that here?

[gabester]

I've found Apple's tie-ins to be spotty for years. Oftentimes buggy on initial introduction; they seem to have hit upon this formula where by the time they get it right they rev the version so they can obsolete out the hardware I was using when the feature/integration was initially introduced and I end up needing to buy a new set of devices to match. Yes, I'm looking at iPhoto / Gallery / Photostream syncing in all its varieties, iTunes access across multiple devices currently embodied in AirPlay, (i)Messages, this Continuity feature in Yosemite/iOS 8. I could go on.

I'm never in a position where I want to go plunk down thousands of dollars on a new Mac/Phone/device at once.

Is there an Armitron robot edition of this Apple Watch?

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datbeme wrote: I know Apple is capable of tying all this together to make it happen. The question is, how well have they done that here?

There's a reason the Apple Watch is coming out months or years after other devices that purport to 'do the same thing'…