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It’s funny how lately any criticism of an Apple product comes back to the iPhone. The iPad was doomed to fail because it was “just a big iPhone.” Likewise, the Apple Watch is doomed to fail because it’s “just an iPhone on your wrist.” What’s amusing about these claims is the Apple Watch has a dependent relationship with the iPhone; it can’t operate without it. Saying an Apple Watch is operating without an iPhone is like saying a car coasting downhill is operating without gasoline.

Apple has said the Apple Watch is “Our most personal device yet” and to a certain degree it’s true. You can get an iPhone in any color you want, as long as it’s Silver, Gray, or Gold. The Apple Watch comes in over 30 watch and band combinations. It’s personal in the amount of data it displays. It’s personal in that it says a lot about your personal style. I got the rubber – I’m sorry – fluoroelastomer band. There are rare occasions I need to put on the monkey suit, but looking at my wrist I can see where if I need to don the formal wear, I might want a different band.

I started this review back in April. While I loved the Watch, it was clear to me that there were shortcomings (notably activity tracker and 3rd-party apps). I decided to wait until watchOS 2 was released before publishing my findings.

THE PRE-ORDER/ORDER EXPERIENCE AND INTERNET REACTIONS
I ordered my Watch at xx:05:10 on April 10. Because I ordered the Space Gray – along with half the Internet – by that time my order had slipped to the 4–6 range, or the May 13–27 range. My first reaction was, “Wow, already? That kinda sucks. Oh well.” The second was, “the MacRumors forums are going to lose their shit.” I promptly spent the next hour reading the forums as they did, in fact, lose their shit.

I was surprised that the Apple Watch slipped shipping ranges so fast. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been. Reading through the iPhone 6/6+ pre-order threads it looks like that device slipped date ranges in 19 minutes or so. Usually, pre-ordering an Apple device in the first 5 minutes means you are getting a device on launch day. That clearly wasn’t the case here. Cue 2 weeks of a lot of forum posters acting like Violet Beauregarde.

It’s hard to tell why it sold so fast. It could be demand was off the charts, or if there were yield issues (the Space Gray Watch and Black and Pink bands seemed to be constrained), or there were large issues with the taptic engine. I am somewhat surprised Apple offered so many bands, especially in the Sport line. It would have been very Apple-like to offer a Silver/White Band and Space Gray/Black band and then soak you $50 if you wanted a different colored band. The yield issues (or at least the demands must have died down because now you can get bands in additional colors.

In any event, instead of having to wait 3–4 weeks, my Apple Watch showed up on the 28th. Two business days after launch. Not too shabby.

THE OUT OF THE BOX EXPERIENCE
I picked up my Watch at the UPS will-call. When I got back to my car I opened the box and started the initial setup. The pairing went very easily and I walked through the handful of prompts. After I told it to auto-install all the apps, it started syncing. This looked like it was going to take a bit so I started to drive off. About 5 minutes down the road it finished syncing. Then my phone started vibrating with a lot of notifications.

NOTIFICATION OVERLOAD
I thought I’d done a good job at eliminating most of the notifications I get on my iPhone. After a few hours with the Watch, I learned I needed to refine them even further.

One of my favorite bits is George Carlin’s “I place for your stuff.”. Watch it; it’s good. I took the same approach with notifications. In the depths of my iPhone is every piece of information that comes my way. All my emails, calendars, texts, Twitters, Facebooks and the like hit my iPhone. I just don’t want to hear about all of it. On my iPhone I get notified if a VIP emails me, upcoming calendar appointments, calendar invites, text messages, my IM+ notifications, and @replies and DMs in Twitter.

Obviously, I don’t want all of these on my wrist. My sole goal with notifications on my Watch was to make sure there was a 90% chance of the alert actually being something I give a shit about.

Here’s an example. A few months ago my band rented a sound stage. All the band members are on my VIP list. When I was setting up my gear I had my iPhone in my jacket on the other side of the room. When I was done, a few members of the band had shown up so we started setting up more gear. During all this one of the members (not there) had emailed with a crucial question. By the time I got my iPhone is was too late. If I had my Watch, I would have received alert and looked down and read the email. Then I could have grabbed my iPhone and replied to it.

I also want to get access to a few pieces of information without dragging my iPhone out of my pocket. Pre-Watch, if I was out to dinner and my mate asked “Have you heard from your mom about (whatever)?” I’ll take my phone out, check that there were no new messages from my mom. I’d then take a quick look at Facebook. While I was at it, might was well read Twitter because that’s where the cool stuff is anyway. Next thing I know, I’m reading an article about the plight of the Kurdistan Muskrat while I’m being shot daggers from across the table. Now, with the Watch, I’ll look down at the Messages app and answer “No.”

So, on my Watch, I get notified on VIP emails, the activity app, Messages, and upcoming calendar appointments. In most cases, this works. The only outlier is my boss is a VIP so I know when he emails me. It’s not always relevant, but I like getting them. During the day when I’m in the office it’s not big concern. When I’m out of the office, I care a little more. I could move him in and out of the VIP list, but that’s too much of a hassle.

One curious thing is how the OSs handle Notifications. It seems as if I’m not actively using my iPhone, the alert will pop up on my Watch. When this happens, the badge icon on my iPhone disappears. This is fine in most cases. Where I ran into a problem is on the way home. When I’m driving I put my iPhone in the car mount and listen to music or podcasts. If I get a text message, I use Siri to listen and respond. One night driving home I noticed the Watch thought I wasn’t using my iPhone and the alert went to my Watch. I couldn’t use Siri to read unread messages. There might be a way to do this with Handoff, but I’m not sure. It’s something I need to look into.

I had bariatric surgery in August. As a result, I need to track a lot of data. Stuff like how much do I weight, have I gotten enough protein in? Is it time to eat again? Did I take my vitamins? Have I had enough I have alerts for most of these on my watch to make sure I don’t accidentally miss a task.

What I also like about the Watch is when you get a notification, it doesn’t light up the screen or do anything do let people know you’ve gotten alert. You just slightly turn and raise your wrist and see the notification. I’ll get into the social contract later.

GLANCES
If it’s not real obvious by now, pretty much the one job Watch has is to forward information from your iPhone to your wrist. There are some exceptions, like the Workflow app, which allow you to do actionable items, but for the most part you’re triaging information. One way this happens is Notifications. The other is Glances. You access Glances by swiping up on your Watch. This is the opposite of Notifications, where you swipe down. Swipe up; swipe down.

The Glances I have on my Watch are Battery, Heart Rate, Activity, Calendar, Dark Sky, MLB At Bat, and OmniFocus. The heart rate I keep for one reason: I had the Workout app screw me out of a workout because the sensors had frozen and required a Watch reboot. Now, before I start a workout I make damn sure the heart rate monitor is actually working.

One thing I advise is to keep your Glances to a minimum. Going back to George Carlin, the stuff I want to see on my Watch is the equivalent to going across the island in Maui – I just want the stuff that’s really important to me.

While you can control your music and podcasts from the Watch, I don’t care to. When I’m walking my iPhone is in my hand and it’s easier to switch songs right from the device.

ACTIVITY/WORKOUT
The primary reason I bought the Watch was for activity tracking. Sure, I could get a Fitbit, but I’d rather get something that integrated fully with the Health App. As a fitness tracker, I’ve found the Watch moderately successful.

The biggest issue I had is identifying what counts as exercise. The Apple Watch considers exercise anything that has a sustained heart rate over a certain amount. This amount is determined by your sex, height, and weight (which are defined in the Settings app). This is lofty goal, but given my general lack of fitness, I’m defining exercise as an activity I’m going out of my way to do.

Here’s an example. The place I work has a large parking lot. From where I park my car to the front door is about a quarter-mile walk. If I pull in and grab the first available spot, I don’t consider that exercise. However, if I park in the back row and walk the extra bit to the door, I do consider it exercise, even though I’m not elevating my heart rate. Likewise, if I take a walk at lunch, I’ll consider that exercise.

Because I’m not having a sustained heart rate over 100 BPM, the Outdoor Walk workout won’t track every minute. A lot of this is a strong desire to not walk back into work all sweaty. So, I use the Other workout to track this. It gives me my Move and calorie goals. One downside I’ve seen is that while there is a setting to discard the data after you’re done with a workout, the data doesn’t really go away. A few times, I’ve left the Workout app running longer than I intended by a few hours. This obviously messed up my goals. When I ended the workout, I chose to discard the data but all the activity still showed in the rings. What I’d like is some intelligence where the Watch would detect “ok, your heart rate is still at resting, and you haven’t moved for a bit Are you really exercising?” and give me the option to purge the data.

A lot of these issues are gone in watchOS 2. An excellent addition is the watch seems a lot smarter about tracking exercising without needing to launch the Workouts app. Over the last few days I’ve noticed that when I take a brisk walk around the building or walk from the end of the parking lot, I’ve had the exercise ring move on its own. What’s even better is the numbers it is generating actually seem to represent how much exercise I’ve gotten.

My only remaining complaint about the Activity tracker is the weekly summary. Every Monday I receive a notification about how often I hit my move goals the previous week. If I don’t hit the goal a lot, the Watch will suggest a lower move goal for the coming week. This is fine, except it just checks to see if I met the goals and not worry about if I exceeded them. Here’s an example: I have a move goal of 240. If I exceed it and hit 330 5 days, but only get to 239 twice, it may suggest a lower move goal. I would rather the algorithm be based on a percentage (either above or below the target) and base its recommendations from that number. The

THIRD PARTY APPS
With watchOS 1 the experience with 3rd party apps was miserable. For instance, by the time MLB at Bat loaded on the Watch, I could have just taken my iPhone out of my pocket and checked the score there. That said, even the watchOS 2 version of the MLB app seems slow. Other apps like OmniFocus seem to work fine with the new OS.

I’ve intentionally kept apps like Twitter off my Watch. Again, this about quick glances: do I need to be somewhere, do something, get a text someone is going to be late? How am I doing on my exercise goals? These are all areas I want to have brought to my attention. Not if I’ve gotten a DM or a reply to Twitter. That stuff can wait. During baseball season, I care about the Red Sox score.

The App screen to me feels very un-Apple like. It’s not clean. Tapping apps is like playing darts blind. I’m often tapping on the wrong app icon. I know I can use Siri for a lot of it, but I feel like Dick Tracey talking into my phone. Instead I use Complications and Glances to see info and launch apps. I use a timer a lot, so I have the “start timer” complication on my Watch Face.

THE SOCIAL CONTRACT
The Watch reminds me of that person whose job is to whisper into the president’s ear. Sometimes it’s to mention who is next in a reception line. Sometimes it’s a more urgent matter. While the Watch is great at helping you determine if a notification is something you need to act upon, looking at your watch in the presence of another person doesn’t convey “I’m curious if my mom has an urgent matter.” It broadcasts “how much fucking longer do I need to listen this person?” This is often not a desirable outcome. As with looking at your iPhone in the company of others, make sure that glancing at your watch is appropriate at that time.

THE WATCH
After all this talk about what the Watch does, I almost forgot to talk about the device itself. John Gruber said in his review: There are two types of people in the world: those who wear a watch, and those who don’t. I am not a watch wearer. I used to wear a watch, but after I got a cell phone (even my small Ericsson mini phone) I stopped wearing one. Having the Apple Watch on my wrist has forced me to remember that I kinda miss having a watch. It’s easier to tap (or flick) my wrist to see the time. I’ve noticed that when I’m out with Trish she will tap my wrist to see what time it is as well.

Since I’m not a watch wearer, I can’t really comment on the feel of it compared to a mechanical watch. The last watch I wore was almost 15 years ago. I do find the Watch to be very comfortable for extended periods. It’s a lot thicker than some mechanical watches, but it doesn’t feel like it throws off the balance of my wrist.

I only own a Sport Watch with two Sport Bands: the black and the midnight blue. A few weeks ago I switched to the midnight blue band and I love it. The original blue band was too cartoony. The midnight blue band is much more subtle. It’s a dark blue that’s almost a black. The midnight blue also goes well with most of my dress shirts, and is a tad more formal than the black. David Chartier posted about a $45 Milanese loop that might work better for some formal occasions.

BATTERY LIFE
I’m calling this out in its own section because it’s a frequently-asked question. In the 5 months I’ve had the device, I’ve never wanted for more battery. After the first week I’ve pretty much stopped looking at the Glance other than idle curiosity. I charge it at night (and use it for my alarm clock), and it would go well into the following morning without a charge. In average, daily use, I could get between 18-20 hours of use. I haven’t done an all-day type of activity — like a long run or bike ride — so I don’t know it will affect that. The closest comparison I have is a few all-day walks in Boston and I still had tons of juice when I got home that night.

FINAL THOUGHTS
I’ve had the Apple Watch for almost five months now. This has easily been the most challenging review I’ve ever done. I love the Watch. I wear it every day and will go home and get it if I leave home without it. I’m constantly monitoring how much I’ve moved, where I need to be, what tasks I have and if the text message I just received is informational or if I need to act on it.

The Time Travel feature (added in watchOS 2) still feels a little gimmicky. Basically, you can spin the digital crown to move the time forwards or backwards and the Complications will change depending on the data it has for that time. It’s great if you want to see what the weather is like tonight, or when your meetings are. That said, I think it’s easier to just launch Dark Sky or the Calendar app to see the data instead.

However, when people have asked if they should get one, I’ve had a hard time answering. For fitness tracking you can just use a Fitbit. If you don’t maintain your schedule and to do items electronically the Watch is of little value to you. However, if, like me, you use digital tools to manage your entire life, the Watch can be a very handy tool.

As much as I love Apple tech, I was originally not planning on buying a Watch. Some of this was related to the loss of Gigaom; the loss of that income also meant the loss of my general tech splurge fund. I also wasn’t sure what use the Watch would have in my life. Sure, the notifications are nice, but I’m working on trying to not look at them when I’m being social, so the Watch often seems the same end result with a different means to that end.

Then I read Peter Cohen’s article in this month’s Loop Magazine. Like Peter, I need to eliminate a ton of weight. I read how he will use the watch to track fitness stuff and that struck a chord with me. Sure, I could get a cheaper Fitbit, or just track the information by hand. I like raw data collected from a trusted source. A watch telling me I burned this many calories and walked a specific amount of steps is better than me guessing what it is and eliminates me being overly generous. “Sure,” I’d say. That leisurely stroll to the mailbox was a quarter-mile, high-impact run.”

I also make sure every 30 min or so I get up and make a lap of the building I work at. However, I usually keep my iPhone on my desk and forget to grab it when I take my stroll. My goal with the watch is to keep it on my wrist as often as possible. I want credit for every flight of stairs at home, every step I take (every breath you take), and all that good vital sign data.

Amazon sent me this email last week:

“Thanks for being an Amazon Cloud Drive customer! Amazon Cloud Drive is introducing new unlimited storage plans.

You can now save all your photos in one place with the Unlimited Photos plan for $11.99/year, plus 5 GB for videos and files. Or, if you have more than photos that you need to keep safe, the Unlimited Everything plan is perfect for all your photos, video, files, and documents, for $59.99/year.”

Astute readers will note the free 5 GB plan has been eliminated. I have no sources on why Amazon did this — maybe people weren’t really using under 5 GB, but I wonder if this is due to e-book piracy. I do wonder if most of what people were using the Personal Documents for pirated ebooks and this is Amazon’s way of getting some money from this.

Either way, it sucks. I used to use Personal Documents to store PDFs of manuals. I’ll likely just toss them in iBooks now.

My stage rig only gets used at practices these days. I’m in my home office so often it’s just easier to practice my guitar on my MacBook. This quick post goes into the tools and software I use.

My main guitar for my punk band is a 2009 Silverburst Epiphone Les Paul Custom. I’ve replaced the bridge pickup with a Seymour Duncan Pearly Gates pickup that I love. I also have an after market set of guitar knobs with skulls on them. Because we play a lot of Social Distortion, the guitar is tuned down to Eb and usually has a capo on the 2nd fret. So, essentially it’s a half-step sharp from standard tuning.

When I practice at home my guitar goes into an Apogee Jam and then into IK Multimedia’s Amplitube 3. I’ve found Amplitube the most flexible of amp sims. It has licensed amps from Carvin, Marshall, Orange and lots more. I have a few presets for heavy metal, blues, and punk. They’re pretty much just different amps.

When I practice at home I’m not usually too worried about extra effects like delays and flangers. I’m usually just playing to iTunes and I’m more worried I’m getting the song down correctly than worrying if I have the right amount of delay. Speaking of iTunes, I have a playlist with all the songs my band is working on. Sometime I’ll get unlazy and rearrange in our set list but that’s a chore for another day.

This set up works well and eliminates most excuses to practice. There is usually a guitar within arm’s reach at the house. With this setup I can just plug in and play.

Two weeks ago, I bought a MacBook Air. The better half’s laptop died and we needed to get a replacement. I wanted a smaller laptop, so I gave her my MacBook Pro and bought an Air.

At the time, I seriously considered getting a new iPad Air 2 and going iPad only. Obviously, I didn’t, so I wanted to talk through some of that thought process.

Workflows

Translating my overall workflow experience on iOS 8 still feels a little clunky. I have my creative projects folder on iCloud I use to sluice information into over the course of a day. I’ll either print a page to PDF, save a photo, or file away a document.

Some of this stuff I’ll clip into Evernote for. I’m still on the free account and usually just run up against the 60mb transfer limit. On OS X, the Evernote web clipper works a treat. For some reason though, I can’t get a photo I’m viewing in Safari on iOS to invoke extensions. When I bring up the share extension, none of the extensions are there. I can save the photo to my Photos app and upload it to Evernote from there, but that’s an unnecessary step.

I also wasn’t able to easily publish to Gigaom on the iPad. No blogging app on iOS could break through the front-end Gigaom had built– we had to choose the channel we were posting to before creating a post. I’d usually just copy the HTML in Byword to WordPress in Safari. I could do this in Safari on iOS, but I’ve never been very happy with WordPress on iOS Safari. The joke was on me since Gigaom shut down the week I got the MacBook Air anyway.

Adjusting to life on the small screen

Going from a 15” to an 11” screen hasn’t been as tough as I expected. I thought for sure I’d have some eye strain that hasn’t been the case. While it’s not a Retina screen, it does seem a little bit crisper than my 2011 MacBook Pro.

The 11” screen seems very suited to full-screen. I don’t maximize the Finder, but OneNote, Word and Byword I usually run full screen. I think I remember Jason Snell mentioning that he ran a lot of apps on is 11 full-screen and I find myself leaning that way as well.This is also the first Mac that I have put the Dock on the right-hand side of the screen. A little more vertical real estate is handy.

The post-Air creative life

I expected I’d be slightly more productive with the Air. I wasn’t expecting I would be a lot more productive. During the day, I use my Air at work to take notes in meetings. It’s more comfortable than my work laptop and I don’t have to worry about the battery running down.

At home, though, my desire to work on creative projects has blossomed since I got the Air. The small size really got me going. I have an L-shaped workbench in my office. The Air is small enough that when I’m working on a model, I can bring up a reference photo without the laptop taking over the bench.

I also like having a machine that’s dedicated for writing. When I pretended I was looking into writing on my iPad I was trying to make sure my writing files would also be editable on iOS. Right now, since Byword is still my main writing app that’s not an issue, but I’m leaning towards using Scrivener for my longer-form projects. However, that workflow may end up also end up on iOS since the iOS version of Scrivener is getting closer..

Is the MacBook Air the last laptop I purchase?

Most likely.

Like I said earlier, I bought the MacBook Air because it fit all of my needs right now without any compromises and I couldn’t afford to wait. While I admire Federico Viticci and his ability to make an iPad Air 2 his main computer. I’m not there yet. I think for me, we are still one or two iOS releases away from me going all-in on iOS.

If you told me a new MacBook would inflame the tech sphere more than a $10k Apple Watch I’d have laughed my ass off. Yet that’s pretty much what happened. Apple announced a new MacBook with one port and the Internet lost its shit.

Letting go of the idea of a power user

Peter Cohen called out power users in this excellent NSFW article.. Here’s the funny thing about so-called power-users: they don’t really exist. People just have different computing needs. A co-worker bought the shut-up-and-take-my-money MacBook Pro. If she ever pegs that processor and fan it’s probably because Flash got over-active. She just doesn’t dig into the depths of OS X. However, I bought the 11” MacBook Air – a $1200 difference. I’d say I dig far more into the inner workings of an OS than she does. Which of us is the power user? Even fi I had the money I doubt I have bought that MacBook Pro.

So, back to the MacBook

I absolutely love Apple brought back the MacBook name. Like other writers, my money is solely on the eventual retirement of the MacBook Air line. You’ll have the MacBook, and the MacBook Pro. I’d take a side bet on Apple going with MacBook and MacBook Plus, but I think that’s a stretch.

The MacBook has one port. Rumors of Apple sneaking into people’s houses and ripping the USB ports from their existing laptops seem to be unfounded. This port is a USB-C connector. It can drive a display, other USB devices, and power the device. It also has a 12” Retina screen and roughy the computing power of a 3-year-old MacBook Air. Like the original Air, you’re paying for a super light laptop. This is not the laptop you want to edit a Final Cut Pro movie on. It is the laptop for people who just live in Microsoft Word or iWork and browse the web. You know, most of us.

Here’s the thing: most people don’t care, or need to know what processor, ram, or storage space is on their laptop. People that care about any one of those probably care about all three. That said, if you gave me the new 12” MacBook for a week and forbade me from researching anything about it, I’d probably fall in love with it and want to take it home with me.

But would I actually buy one?

That’s a good question, isn’t it?

Two weeks ago, I bought a new 11” Air. My needs were somewhat immediate: a laptop died and needed to be replaced. Time was a luxury I didn’t have. As of this writing, I’m within the two week return window and will not be returning it.

A lot of that decision is based on the new MacBooks still aren’t available until April 10. If they were, I’d actually seriously think about it. It has double the RAM in my Air and starts at 256 Gb of storage all for just $100 more than my Air.

The decider would be if it’s bigger (I don’t know how it compares to the Air) than the Air. Most of what I do on my Air is writing and web surfing, and the 12” would be good for that.

Gigaom shut down March 9th. With it went my main freelance gig. For a while I’ve thought of just opening my own site, but the reality of freelance writing is not unlike the cobbler’s children: If I was going to write about a topic, I wanted to get paid for it. If it was a topic I wouldn’t get paid for, I wrote a topic I would get paid for.

As a result, my personal site languished. I never wrote there because articles would just end up on Gigaom. Last December I started thinking about a different home for my writing. A Plan B if Gigaom ended. It happened sooner than I thought.

I thought The Casual Techie was a good way of describing what I wrote about. If you look through my author archives on Gigaom, you’ll see that most of the time I wrote about topics that appeal to a broad range users, typically about how to use your devices better, or new products I tested that I think are notable. That trend will continue on this site.

There are a few other topics I will now be able to cover as well. Gigaom pretty much avoided product and app reviews. I will be reviewing products here. See the about page for a link to my email if you’d like me to review your product. I also love creating music, so expect a posts about using technology to make music.

Welcome to my new home. I hope you stick around for the ride.

I started writing for Gigaom in June 2009. Back then it was still The Apple Blog. While we were part of the Gigaom media empire, it didn’t feel completely assimilated. This naturally changed over the years. Eventually, the entire Apple channel went away and was replaced by the Mobile channel. I kept writing and they kept publishing.

When I started almost all of us were freelancers. We’d have a Gigaom employee as our editor but I remember days of 5–6 writers dividing up the content especially around Apple event time. We’d lose freelancers and never really replace them as more Gigaom employees wrote posts. Finally, it was just Geoffrey and I holding the fort on weekend duty.

The gig ended when Gigaom shut down Monday. I’m going to miss it.

Looking back, it’s amazing that it lasted so long. In this day and age, a 6-year freelance gig at a tech place is an amazing run. My editors left us alone. I came up with all my own story ideas. Most of the stories were based on my personal experiences and how I used tech. I’d receive great feedback from readers and it was the rare site where I didn’t mind wading into the comments.

I’d actually expected the gig to end soon, and in a lot of ways I think it went about a year longer than I thought. I wasn’t, however, expecting the site to shut down. I just expected with only two real freelancers (that I knew of, anyway) on the Mobile beat one day I’d get the email they were done with freelancers.

In terms of what I’ll be doing, I don’t know. Gigaom was my only major freelancing client. I’ll start looking for more. I also have an unused domain name thats perfect for my tech writing so I’ll be launching that Real Soon Now(TM).

After the initial pre-order mess where I was promised delivery on the 19th, and then in the October 1-6 range, I picked up my white, 64 GB iPhone Plus on Thursday. Now that I’ve had a few days to play with it, here are some thoughts on it.

Size matters

Typically the first reaction when someone sees the phone is, “Damn, that’s a big phone.” Immediately followed by, “Does it bend?” The bend issue is certainly in the mainstream. I’m a 6’4 man with  decent hand size. While the Plus is large in my hand, it’s not unwieldy. I do have to use it with two hands, but that’s the point. It fits comfortably in my pants. I don’t think I’ll need to worry about needing to take it out and rest it on a table when I’m at a restauraunt. The extra screen real estate is nice. Once more apps support it, I’ll be loving it.

Battery

Originally, I set up the phone and restored from iCloud. Following Myke Hurley’s comments about starting from new and getting the most battery life, I reset it Friday night. I haven’t charged it yet and I’m at 60%. Now, this is the weekend and not normal usage by a long shot. My iPhone 5, however, would have needed a charge by now.

HealthKit

HealthKit is what I hoped it would be. Unfortunately, the reset killed all of the data I had been tracking, but, the step and stairs counter is working out fab. I don’t even have to have the device in my pocket. It it’s in my bag, it’ll still track it.

Other stuff

At some point I am going to get a case. I’m leaning towards the Apple Leather Case, in Red. I want one that gives it a little bit more stick so it doesn’t fly off the table or my car mount. The car mount is something I’m trying to figure out. It fits ok, but I have a claw-style mount with no bottom and it’s a bit slidey in there. I have some shelf paper to help grab it. Once more apps use landscape mode, I might just throw it in there landscape and see how it does.

I’m glad I got it. What I’m hoping to do is use little found moments to either write or do a little reading while I’m away from my iPad. After looking at a coworkers 6 Normal, I knew the smaller device wouldn’t fit my hands.