I know, its been awhile. Teaching in addition to my day job seems to have robbed me of blogging bandwidth.
First, I want to brag on a pretty nifty use case for the Apple Watch (and iPhone, obviously) MacID. This is an extension of TouchID for authenticating with OS X based systems.
There have been some other tools in this space, but by far this is the most elegant. You can unlock your OS X based system (Yosemite and higher, I believe) either from your iPhone or Apple Watch. Additionally, privilege elevation is handled nicely by the app. That alone is a nice addition vs. normal unlock apps.
My only real complaint about the app is consistent with other unlock apps: bluetooth flakiness. Sometimes the app just decides it isn’t connected to the Mac and requires that I reopen the app on my iphone to get them on speaking terms again. Otherwise, its a great product.
Second, an update on my Apple Watch experience. Overall, I still love it. Its a great extension of my iPhone and works very nicely as a fitness wearable. I have been using Apple Pay on the watch pretty regularly and that has been a really enjoyable experience.
One notable application that I want to call out is MyBivy (short for bivouac, you’ll get why in a moment). This clever kid at HackDC unveiled a wearable app that could potentially help people with PTSD and/or night terrors using haptic feedback in response to certain conditions that the watch could track, like elevated heart rate and sudden movements. To be clear, right now its only available on Pebble, but they are looking to port it to Apple Watch as well. I just think its a brilliant concept and hope it has the success that is so needed for people suffering from PTSD and night terrors. They have a kickstarter project if you’re interested in contributing.
The Watch OS2 release was mostly a success, with one glaring issue. After upgrading, my calendar events wouldn’t show up on the watch. I opened a ticket with Apple and it was resolved within a few days. I suspect it had something to do with the fact that my iPhone is managed by MobileIron, but I don’t know that for certain. I’ve communicated with a few people on twitter about it and some were resolved and some are still outstanding. The calendar is one of my favorite features because it keeps my phone in my pocket and keeps me on track during busier days.
Finally, a minor note on battery life. Most days, the watch performs like a champ, with me dropping it in the charger at 50-60% battery remaining. However, and this only started post OS2, I have had a fair number of days in the past month where the battery life just heads south quickly. Today I was at 1% before 4pm. My unconfirmed suspicion is there is likely a rogue process chewing it up, but I don’t use a ton of apps on the device, so its hard to pin down. Needless to say, I’m buying a charger to keep in my bag for the odd time that this happens. To be clear, in general the watch performs well on battery life. I think I may start tracking this, though, just to see if I can identify a pattern. Perhaps I should build a battery tracking app, hah.
I’ve been jotting a few thoughts down regarding the identity implications of the EU Safe Harbor decision, but not sure if I feel qualified to comment overall. We’ll see if research can help me out on that. Cheers.