Upgrading Apples

đź”— | by Chris McLeod

I recently noticed the battery life of my Apple Watch Series 6 had taken a bit of a nosedive. Where once I could comfortably get nearly 2 full days out of a charge, now I’m finding myself having to “top up” regularly - sometimes within the same 24 hour period. Battery Health shows the battery at 86% capacity. This isn’t a problem, yet, but it has made me consider upgrading to a newer model. My particular watch is about 6 months past it’s 3rd birthday, and 3 years was the “minimum” lifespan I’d set myself for the watch when I bought it. My Series 3 lasted about the same length of time, though I don’t remember the battery drop off being as bad. So if it comes to it, do I upgrade to the 9 (or more likely, the upcoming 10)? Honestly, I’m not sure, and I’ll get to why shortly.

I loved my Series 3[1]. It was the first watch (of any sort) I got in the habit of wearing daily, and it did actually help get me more active at the time. It was one of my favourite tech purchases in years. For whatever reason, I never loved my Series 6 the same way. I can’t quite pinpoint any particular thing wrong with it, and the battery life when it was new was certainly a big improvement. maybe it was just that the first impression “wow factor” had been taken up by the 3, and the evolutionary 6 didn’t add anything to reignite that feeling. If I were to buy a Series 9, or an SE, I’d be getting much of the same again, and there’s no guarantee the 10 will be anything new. I can have the battery replaced for a fraction of the cost of a new watch, and the more I think about it as I’ve worked on this post, I will most likely do that instead[2]. Every time I think about upgrading I keep coming back to the saga of my iPad Pro.

As with my first Apple Watch, I loved my first iPad (the iPad 2).I’ve lost the relevant blog posts but for a time, between 2011 and late 2012, it was my primary computing device. From there I moved to the iPad Mini (I forget which model exactly). The Mini wasn’t my primary device, but it was very heavily used for 3-5 years. If anything, I enjoyed the Mini more than the original iPad. I then “upgraded” to the iPad Pro 9.7" - the last one before the form-factor change.

That Pro is the worst Apple device I’ve ever made the decision to purchase. It didn’t “feel” like enough of a jump up in performance to justify the cost, though this was partially offset by the higher base storage. Performance would be the achillies’ heel for this iPad; in my experience you used to get 2-3 major iOS versions before an iPad starts to feel a little sluggish in day-to-day use (but far from unusable). My Pro started to go downhill from the very first update (iOS 10). Even using Safari to browse the web was excruciating, and by the time of iPadOS, basically unusable. My usage of an iPad for basically anything dwindled once I couldn’t reliably use it for web browsing. It was just more pleasant (and usually faster) to use my iPhone than the kneecapped Pro. It had some usage as an ebook device in the following years, but I’d pick it up maybe 2-3 times a year. I’ve still got that Pro, 8 years later or whatever, but I couldn’t tell you where it is in the house, or when I last used it. Probably more importantly for this tale, I haven’t bought an iPad since, nor seriously considered buying one. As much as I’ve been tempted by the latest Minis, I just can’t pull the trigger.

So this is what comes to mind when I consider upgrading my Apple Watch (or any device that isn’t solely utilitarian, really): will it give me that lightning-in-a-bottle feeling of using something brilliant, like the Series 3 or first iPads, will it be my next iPad Pro?

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.
— William Morris

  1. The Series 3 is still in service, by the way - my partner uses it now. It - unsurprisingly - also needs a battery replacement. ↩︎

  2. Blogging is often how I come to a decision on these things. The act of writing it out for others is basically “rubberducking” with myself. ↩︎