Apple watches are a necessity

[M5]

My head nearly exploded a couple days ago when my sister called to ask if would be willing to split the cost of an Apple watch with her and my dad as a gift for my mom for Mother's Day in a couple weeks. Her reasoning? My mom "needs" this watch as some sort of motivation to work out more often and because she always leaves her phone inside while doing chores around the house. She even went as far as to tell me an Apple watch is a necessary part of one's life. Oh, and we'd go with the $300 generation whatever instead of the newest model to save money. Needless to say I wasn't convinced. Let's also keep in that my mom has never mentioned interest in a smart watch of any kind and doesn't use her smart phone for anything other than calls or texts - I'm pretty sure she doesn't even know where the app store is!

In addition, just a couple weeks ago my sister was furloughed until at least August. I kindly mentioned that she might want to save that $100 in case it's needed for necessary purchases in the future while she remains unemployed. That thought was also scoffed at with ease.

Anyone else has similar stories that make your head spin?

[RetiredAt63]

This would be a worthy addition to "Relatives who just don't get it"

The last Apple product I used was an Apple IIE with an 8086 chip to run CPM.   ;-)

[PMG]

It is so funny how exercise doesn’t “count” anymore unless it’s tracked by a device.

[geekette]

I find my Apple watch to be far more useful to me than I thought it would be. 

That said, if I leave my phone inside and do stuff in the yard, it loses connection - it's only bluetooth range.  You can pay extra (up front and per month) to have a cellular connection, which I think only a limited number of people would find useful.

Depending on your Mom's age, fall detection might be good to have.  The series 4 and 5 can also detect a-fib, which is common as you age.  The reminders and timers are very helpful to me, but if it's not something she's expressed any interest in, I don't think it's a good idea.

[Chris22]

I find my Apple watch to be far more useful to me than I thought it would be. 

That said, if I leave my phone inside and do stuff in the yard, it loses connection - it's only bluetooth range.  You can pay extra (up front and per month) to have a cellular connection, which I think only a limited number of people would find useful.

Depending on your Mom's age, fall detection might be good to have.  The series 4 and 5 can also detect a-fib, which is common as you age.  The reminders and timers are very helpful to me, but if it's not something she's expressed any interest in, I don't think it's a good idea.

I have a cellular enabled Apple Watch, and the reason I got it with the cellular connection is for exercise; for bike rides and walks and such, you can wear the watch and leave the phone behind, and use it to send/receive texts, track workouts, and my favorite usage, stream music and podcasts (via bluetooth earphones). 

[SwissVee]

My sibling and I bought our mum an Apple Watch for her birthday, so I can feel your pain. Thing is, it seems to have worked. She has started going on longer walks, and loves to share photographs of her watch screen workout reports on our family whatsapp group. Nevertheless, on balance, I'm a strong proponent of fitness trackers but NOT of the Apple Watch variety. I bought a used Garmin fitness tracker with a heartrate monitor, GPS and a crap, low-res screen.

It has been worth its weight in gold.

It tracks my cadence while I'm running (I run with a metronome at 180 bpm to facilitate barefoot running and to be gentle on my knees). It tracks and maps my runs, so I can SEE my progress and that motivates me. And the fact that it has a crap screen means the battery life lasts long. On a recent 10 day hike, I would charge it while I ate dinner, and then the next day it would track everywhere I went. Coming back home, I was able to plot my hike on Google earth, and it is *fantastic* to look back on. You can even buy black and white watches for serious ultrarunning etc, which last even longer.

Apple watch and its ilk seem to be focussed on trying to recreate a "phone for your wrist" thing, which is inefficient in my opinion. I turn off all notifications, calendar, sleep tracking, email and all that crap and just use it as a fitness thing.

[ZsaZsa]

Please by all means, go on believing Apple anythings are necessary! The only Apple I own is the 9 shares of stock I bought as a place to park some fun money...a good case for buy and hold.