WC 1M Post Challenge - You Ready?!

Laura Knotek

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

I am so exhausted. Things are heating up on the employment front to the point where I may find myself in a real pickle soon. Housing has finally sorted itself out. I'll have my official transcript with my degree on it come tomorrow (degree is still in the mail).
Good luck!
 

MSFTisMIA

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

So here's my initial take on Wear 2.0:

"Six of one, half a dozen of the other." This is an old Jamaican phrase I used to a lot to refer to, among other things, more of the same.

I used it today on a test run to an initial interview. Here's the deal for me:

Pros - Seems to run a bit faster, less swiping in some spots, better usage of the screen layout in some areas. You can see Google put some work in to try to tweak the UI. You also get a sense there is a little bit more choice in how to use the UI as well.

Cons - Lost a lot of the information access at a glance/notification/voice driven aspect. I think Google was already pairing back from the voice driven input to some degree.

For all the tweaking in some spots to access some features faster, I still gotta dig for some stuff. For example, if I'm playing music on the phone, Wear 1.5 gives you the option of either pinning a card on the main screen for access or keeping it off screen where you swipe up to be able to pause and then swipe right to access volume, previous and next. Now, on Wear 2.0, because the notifications are now full screen, you have the convenience of having the previous + next + pause on one screen and volume one tap away. But because the system doesn't triage active notifications as priority any more, playing music puts it at the bottom of the pile (so you're scrolling multiple times to get to it).

With Wear 1.5, active notifications are triaged a little better, so if a text or an email comes in, it bumps the active music app down the list, but once you address that, the active music app goes up at the top of the notifications list. This allows a cleaner look where you can use your whole watch face (analog, digital or custom) or you can chop that look slightly just to have faster access to the music app. In Wear 2.0, the music controls if the app is active can be in your always on screen which is convenient, but that limits you to only the digital clock that comes on the top half of the music controls notification.

I hate how they screwed up the DND mode. That on Wear 1.5 triggered a silent mode on both the watch and phone. On Wear 2.0, you've got to put the phone and the watch in DND separately. Now, the drawback with the Wear 1.5 DND mode is I couldn't get audio output (listen music or watch a video and get sound with phone in DND mode), but that DND mode is nice for my line of work... especially with the vibration motor on the Huawei watch bone rattling loud. I'd rather them add that mode back under a different name. I also don't like the idea of the app push where now you've got to update the apps on the watch separately. On WiFi that obviously runs faster, and in Bluetooth it's a pain.

Who was the knucklehead who decided reading threaded text messages at the bottom for new replies was a good idea? Under Wear 1.5, you saw the newest message at the top of the thread first. Now you have to read through all the old messages to get to the new stuff at the bottom. Yeah, really smart on that one. I'm better off pulling out my phone instead of super scrolling on my wrist like an ***.

Meh - switching from white to grey as the dominant design color; adding a keyboard as an input option; adding an app store; Google Assistant on the watch.

TBD: battery life.

My biggest issue is how Google is currently shaping this as an IoT important category. Clearly these changes are pushed to have watches run without using internet via the phone. Both my watches are likely obsolete next year...but the problem is there isn't enough to push OEMs to make new hardware. We'll see how the year ends, but this feels like more of the same.

I just think that without the right mix of hardware and better tweaked software, people won't buy Wear devices. Plus Google's rollout of 2.0 to the older watches was handled "hella horribly".

So I'll keep the Huawei watch on 2.0 and the Moto 360 on 1.5 for now.
 

MSFTisMIA

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

As much as I like the convenience of my Bluetooth headsets, nothing beats using wired headphones.
 

MSFTisMIA

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

Yeah, I know that Wear 2.0 post was a bit of a soliloquy and some of this won't apply to a lot of people, but it comes from the lens of a seasoned smartwatch user with specific needs that Wear was actually addressing in a way I liked. Now, I'm indifferent and unlikely to get a new watch useless it does holographic projections and is voice commands dominant. Lol.
 

MSFTisMIA

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

Man, two accidents I ran into in the space of an hour. Hopefully no one was hurt...cars and public transit bus looked like the got some good hits though...
 

MSFTisMIA

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A "top rated plus" seller on eBay sold me this iPhone 7 with a balance still owed on it. I didn't know this was the case until I decided to sell it on Swappa and Swappa denied the listing for that reason.
eBay is a mine field when it comes to buying phones at times...
 

MSFTisMIA

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The new Moto units also had really minimum bloatware when I played with them earlier this year.
Moto has some a nice job since the X 2013 in triming the bloat. What they need is a better than "above average" camera and for Lenovo to handle updates WAY better than it is currently doing. It's hard though when you fired a ton of the software people after the merger, but that's still not an excuse.
 
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MSFTisMIA

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

Happy birthday Mr. Rue. Hope you're having an awesome time.

Does that mean you're one year less salty and more prayer inclined, or just another year older and more cynical? 😉
 

MSFTisMIA

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

Well, that sucks.

I lost my PayPal case. Now I have to figure out what to do with this iPhone, hopefully I can attempt to Boneyard it. Ugh.

I guess I could keep it but then that means that I can never sell it. Lame.

My hand has been forced by this. I'm done with the phone stuff for a while. It's either trusted people (like people in the MN community), retailers or Swappa for me. I'm done with eBay when it comes to the phone swindle.
That's unfortunate. I hope you can recover as much money as possible.
 

libra89

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

That's unfortunate. I hope you can recover as much money as possible.

Thanks. I'll have to think about what to do. Fortunately, I sold the Pixel the other day. I did note the SIM issue, just waiting for the sale to complete.
 

meattray

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A "top rated plus" seller on eBay sold me this iPhone 7 with a balance still owed on it. I didn't know this was the case until I decided to sell it on Swappa and Swappa denied the listing for that reason.

So does that mean you can't use or unlock or what? Not familiar with how things work down there compared to Canada.
 

libra89

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

So does that mean you can't use or unlock or what? Not familiar with how things work down there compared to Canada.

I can use it since it is unlocked to all carriers aside from the one that the balance is owed to. I wouldn't be able to sell it directly on Swappa because they only allow devices that are totally paid off.

Personally, I prefer to buy phones that would work regardless so I would ideally never run into this issue.
 

N_LaRUE

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Re: WC 150K Post Challenge - You Ready?!

Happy birthday Mr. Rue. Hope you're having an awesome time.

Does that mean you're one year less salty and more prayer inclined, or just another year older and more cynical? ??????

Thanks!

Definitely more cynical. :p I prefer peppery rather than salty. :p
 

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