michaelAug 26, 2025

I’ve been vaguely dissatisfied with the Apple Watch for a while now, but I felt like some parts of it were too critical. After some reflection, I realized the things I really care about are:

1. Using it as an alarm. I wake up an hour earlier than my wife, so a silent alarm that actually wakes me is critical. Best alarm I’ve ever had.

2. PagerDuty notifications when I’m oncall. I am extremely allergic to the various pagerduty alerts, so having a tap on the wrist is a significant improvement

Show threadmichaelAug 26, 2025
I’ve been tracking my workouts with it forever, but, honestly, I never really look at the data. So over the last week and a half, I’ve only used the watch overnight and when I’m oncall. It took me a couple days to get used to doing workouts without it, but I really prefer not wearing a watch.
Show threadmichaelAug 26, 2025
I’ve been working to trim my reliance on various bits of technology back to what actually improves my life, and to also ensure that my spending aligns with that.
Show threadmichaelSep 12, 2025
A couple of weeks later, and I'm very strongly enjoying my Watch free lifestyle. I do still wear it while I sleep—that alarm works better for me than anything I've ever used—but I gave up wearing it while on call this week. The pagerduty alerts coming up on the watch isn't doing enough to offset the annoyance of wearing it.
Show threadmichael

I do still use the Apple Watch, but only as an alarm clock. The silent vibration alarm clock thing is a delight, and I would kill for a purpose-built device that did that.

There seem to be some cheap crap devices that work as alarm clocks, but I’m not sure I trust them. I suspect I’ll be running this watch as my alarm till it completely dies.

Feb 28 at 5:07pmWeb