Wesley's Tool-Box

As a smart device that's nearly always on your body, it has the potential to extend or replace existing things better than a smartphone, lessening the need to pull out or find the bulkier device to do the same thing. As I've moved to a fairly large smartphone - iPhone 6 Plus - this is something to look forward to.

One of those things I thought up was the flurry of membership cards that once occupied the wallet. Most of them now sit in a barcode form inside my iPhone, making the wallet considerably thinner. But now those could be moved to the Apple Watch, and I could just pull up my wrist to accrue reward points instead of reaching for my phone.

Because the Passbook app only sent QR codes to the watch, I looked around the Apple Watch App Store and found a couple of apps that can put the card number and the barcode on both types of devices. Eventually, I settled with Stocard, as you can see above. The cards stored on the iPhone app are automatically sync'ed to the Apple Watch app, enabling you to display the wanted barcode from either of the devices. Or, at least that was the idea.


As I loaded up the card data, I noticed that the barcodes were fairly small. It was only about 20.5mm (0.81") wide on my 42mm Apple Watch, which is even smaller than the UPC barcodes found on a product. I wondered if this would be scanned at all.

As a field test, I tried out on two of the biggest hypermarket franchises in Korea: Lotte Mart and Emart. To my surprise, the barcode readers at the stores were able to pick up the numbers without a problem as long as the reader was held close to the watch. The high-density 326ppi display may have helped this.

It's not all completely convenient at this point, though. Because the Apple Watch app has to rely on the iPhone to provide the data due to current SDK limitations, loading speed is slow with my 24-card collection. I have to load the app and make sure the barcode is up before going to the cashier. Hopefully, this will be resolved with the SDK updates later this year.

I had a Wii game console for about six years, and I used to use Wii Fit a lot to stay in shape. Then I bought the Wii Fit Plus upgrade a few months ago. One of the exercises I could do on it was indoor running - I could have the controller in my pocket and run in one spot, and it would record the distance and calories burned.

Since Apple Watch's default Workout app also had an indoor running mode, I thought it would be a great idea to get both technologies to record a run and see the differences. Also, I was severely lacking in the yellow exercise ring's progress that day, so I needed the run anyway. I set both to a 30-minute session and started out simultaneously.


A short while later, I discovered that the distance measurement was getting significantly different. By the time Apple Watch recorded 1km around 7-minute mark, Wii Fit Plus was already at about 1.7km. Working out the math, this came to about 14.5km/h, which seemed too fast for me.

One of the key selling points of the Apple Watch is that it acts as a fitness tracker. Indeed, it knows how much you moved around, what your heart rate is throughout the day, and how many active calories were consumed as a result. These data are all collected on the Health app on the paired iPhone.

While the watch is supposed to automatically check your heart rate every ten minutes, you can manually check using the heart rate "Glance" that you pull up from the main watch screen. This manual checking, which generates about four to five data points while the screen is active, is also logged.

I should note that the Apple Watch OS 1.0.1 update seems to have messed up the automatic checking a bit. Sometimes the measurements for a certain period are not sent and lost; at times the watch simply forgets to take measurements for several tens of minutes at a time. The worst case I've seen was having about 4 hours' worth of log missing, although this is rare and usually it's 1 to 2 hours at most. The problem isn't unique to me and it seems that Apple knows of the problem, so I hope it's fixed in the next update.


Apple Watch's way of tracking, notifying, and displaying fitness data is through three rings - Move (red), Exercise (yellow), and Stand (blue). You set your daily goals for each of the rings and the progress is shown by how much complete the rings are. It's simple yet clear.

By default, the watch tells you how you're doing every four hours, or when one of the goals are met. As for the Stand, it'll tell you to get up and walk around for about a minute at the 50th minute of the hour if it sees that you didn't move much at all for the hour. If you decide to closely follow the Apple Watch's motivation and suggestions, getting the ring filled up is relatively easy and probably makes you a bit healthier, too. I'm personally getting to move around and exercise more as a result.

Probably the biggest passive use (relatively) for a smart watch or band would be relaying the notifications from the paired smartphone. The biggest draw-in for me in getting an Oband T2 smart band a few months ago while waiting for the Apple Watch was precisely because it was able to show notifications from an iPhone. But that device did the job barely, and not very consistently, so the $25 investment was less than satisfactory.

Of course, Apple knows its products and the way Apple Watch handles the iPhone notifications is quite smooth. When there's a new notification, Apple Watch gently taps your wrist. When you look at the screen, it displays the information with a nice UI and a very legible font. In my experience, Apple Watch pretty much takes over all the notifying job as long as it's on your wrist and Do Not Disturb is not set. When you're done, you can either press Dismiss("확인" in Korean, as seen in the picture) or pull the notification down and it'll go away.


If the notifications did come to the device, but for some reason you didn't read them, a red dot appears on the top center of the screen by default. If several notifications are waiting, a list of them is shown in an orderly fashion. Tapping one of them reveals the full contents.

Interestingly, when the Do Not Disturb is set, Apple Watch simply does not receive any notifications from the iPhone. It does not silently keep them and remind you later - they remain on the phone. This probably helps with the battery life and thus I think the decision is reasonable. Also, if you're actively using the iPhone, notifications are not passed to the watch either, likely to reduce redundancy.

Apple Watch can do many things, but it is first a wristwatch. Naturally, the watch face is the default screen of the device. It is customizable, but in order to do so you need to know a new touch screen interaction method called Force Touch. Basically, you press on the screen as if to push a stiff button. Once you do that on the watch face, you can browse through ten choices which includes various analog, digital, and celestial faces.

After choosing a watch face, it can be further customized. The complications around the time display can be set to show various information, which includes the day of the month, upcoming schedule, temperature, workout progress, and the phase of the Moon. Some of the elements of the watch can also have their colours changed and the styles of some of the analog faces can be altered.

At the time of the writing, 3rd party custom watch faces cannot be loaded into the watch. But the UI seems to suggest that this may become possible in the future; you can add or subtract the existing choices. Having ten choices with varying levels of tweaking might not leave a massive amount of choices, but at least they are pretty solid ones that can get you by for the time being.


I've talked about the locking of the watch previously. This happens if you set up a passcode and the device is removed from your wrist. As long as it's on your wrist, it assumes that the user is the rightful owner and stays unlocked.

If it does get locked, the time telling functionality is the only thing that remains functional. Attempting any interaction results in prompting for the passcode as you can see here. You can either enter the correct passcode, or unlock the paired iPhone to authenticate your identity and regain normal functionality.

Currently, like the rest of the wristwatches or smart watches, Apple Watch lacks an activation lock that prevents anyone stealing it from resetting it and using it as one's own. However, the passcode and lock should guard your personal information from someone trying to peek through the device.