heck, after growing tired of having one more thing with a rechargeable battery, I went back to an analog watch
I have an Apple Watch Ultra and, honestly, hiking is pretty much the only thing I use it for.
I don’t think Apple cares whether you activate the watch on cellular or not. The product doesn’t really need it.
Apple would much rather sell you both an iPhone and a watch. Untethering them from each other destroys that upsell.
I don’t think Apple ever claimed in “the marketing” that you didn’t need an iPhone to use your watch. Just that you can leave it at home if you’re going out for a run or something like that.
Whether you and I think that’s consumer-friendly is a completely different story. I certainly don’t think it is. But it’s been an extremely good business model for Apple.
But also, think about the kind of customer who believes their cellular bill costs too much and goes with an MVNO instead to save money. For that kind of customer there is no price that will make a smart watch cellular activation worth the money.
I think all the hardware companies know that smartwatch cellular plans are somewhat of a niche product that isn’t really a “killer app” for the smartwatch experience. Almost nobody is willing to leave their phone at home and I think the futuristic idea that the smartwatch could replace the phone is dying or dead. The whole industry seems to know it. Hell, Google gives smartwatch data away for free on their MVNO and that’s because they want to make money selling Pixel Watch hardware. They know that they won’t get anyone to pay $5 or $10 a month for smartwatch connectivity because, why bother, my phone is right there.
Apple really doesn’t really give a hoot about 4 million lower spend GiffGaff customers who use MVNOs instead of big carriers. Someone who is too frugal to spend on a big name carrier plan probably doesn’t want to spend $400+ on a cellular Apple Watch in the first place, they’re going tog get the Apple Watch SE or maybe something WearOS in the $200 range.
It’s important to remember that in capitalism, not all customers have the same value. Apple traditionally hasn’t fought hard for the bottom 50% customers who simply have less disposable money to give to them.
Overall, the Apple watch is less distracting because you can quickly glance and ignore most notifications, or filter notifications based on who it is, time, etc.
But if I had to think harder … another reason I love the Apple Watch is getting stripe sales notifications. Someone halfway around the world buys a thing of yours and you get a tap on the wrist as a reward. I’m not sure I’ll ever turn that off.
I loved my $30 EBay Apple Watch as a cheap running watch with GPS before the battery got so weak it wouldn’t even do my 1.5 hour runs anymore. Apple wasn’t helpful about a battery replacement and encouraged me to buy a new one (starting at $249) and said they couldn’t replace the battery since it was so old, when I met a Genius at the Apple Store. That soured me quite a bit on the whole thing.