About Time: Part Two — A Week Without Apple Watch

Disclosure: I am not just an Apple Fanboy, I am also an Apple Shareholder.

As you may recall, last week I wrote about my decision to try a week without wearing an Apple Watch having worn one every day since my Apple Watch Series 0 arrived at my door in 2015.

I wanted to enjoy once again the pleasure and simplicity of wearing a watch that just told time. I wanted to see what it was like to not be constantly nagged or prodded to stand up or to fill my “rings” and to not be “tapped” on the wrist every time I had a message or a notification that my watch thought I needed to see.

To ensure that there was no possibility for back sliding, I unpaired my Apple Watch Ultra 2 from my phone and set it up for my wife instead.

Well, I made it through the week and here’s what I missed and didn’t miss about my Apple Watch.

First of all, there was some habitual things to get past. I was used to being able to raise my wrist and say things like, “Set a timer for 30 minutes.” or “Turn off the dining room lights.” Now I had to reach for my phone to do those. Sometimes I had to find my phone. With the Apple Watch you can just ping your phone and have it make a noise. Now, finding my phone meant walking from room to room looking for it.

Next were those move, exercise and stand rings. I did find that without them I was a bit less motivated to go for my run or my walk. I still did them anyway but it was a little more of an effort to get out the door. For my run, I worn an old Casio G-Shock that tracked the time but not the distance, pace, heart rate zone, etc. My phone could track the distance but I found I missed the more detailed data.

Finally, there was the sleep tracking. This I found I didn’t miss at all. It was a relief to not get up in the morning and have my watch tell me how well (or badly) I’d slept. Nowadays, I rarely have to be up at a certain time so I sleep as long as I do and I get up when I wake, normally between 6 and 7. I didn’t mind less information about my REM versus deep sleep. However, I did miss being able to check the time when I woke during the night. That however, could be easily fixed with a bedside clock.

This was my grandpa’s quartz watch. Last time I put a battery in it, it still worked but the date doesn’t advance. It’s always Friday.

Back in the day before Apple Watch, I wore a watch only when I was outside the house. When I arrived home I took it off. Since then, I have become used to feeling a watch on my wrist all the time. So I wore my analog watch most of the time and enjoyed that. It was nice to look down to check the time and see my clean field watch face with its cheery red tipped seconds hand making its way around the dial. From time to time I’d take if off and watch the balance wheel oscillating through the exhibition case back. Or I’d press it to my ear and listen to the watch tick.

A mechanical watch is a marvel of art and engineering with a rich history that goes back hundreds of years. People still love them even though a cheap quartz watch or the phone you already have does the job more accurately.

My Seiko Field Mechanical gains about 5 seconds a day. By the end of the week, it is more than half a minute fast. It’s not a big deal. On Sunday, I adjust it back to the time on my phone. And I’d rather it run a little fast than slow. (Fun fact, the Apple Watch has a feature that allows you to set it “fast” and display a time that is a head of the actual time for people who are worried about ever being late.)

In the end, I went a bit over a week. I took off my Apple Watch on Friday before Shabbat and on Saturday night I retrieved my wife’s 5 year old Apple Watch Series 6 and paired it to my phone. I decided that Barbara, who is much more the serious athlete, should have the better watch with the bigger battery and more advanced workout features.

When I went for my Sunday run, I wore her old Apple Watch and it worked just fine for me. That day, I wore it (on my right wrist) until I filled my fitness rings and then took it off. I continue to wear my mechanical watch on my left wrist all the time.

Bedtime use has been sporadic. I turned off the notifications about my sleep quality but I have worn it to bed sometimes because I like to be able to check the time when I wake up during the night. For whatever reason, wearing my mechanical watch to bed feels strange.

My first Apple Watch Series 0, May 2015

So here is where I think I’ve landed.

The Apple Watch is the best workout tracker I have ever used. I will continue to use it for runs, walking, and biking.

However, I am not going to wear it all the time and worry less about whether I fill each ring every day.

My analog watch will be my primary time keeper on my left wrist. Except when exercising my Apple Watch will stay at home or perhaps tucked under my right sleeve as a quiet fitness tracker. The Series 6 is better as a hidden fitness tracker since it is smaller and lighter than the Ultra 2.

Having said that, for people who don’t care about wearing wearing a traditional watch or don’t feel they need their tech to be less intrusive, an Apple Watch is a great tool. It can motivate you to exercise more. It’s handy to pay for stuff with Apple Pay. And it’s got little helpers like timers, weather, reminders that make daily life more convenient. Just as an iPhone is really more of a pocket computer than a phone, an Apple Watch is more wrist computer than watch. If having a computer on your wrist appeals to you, the Apple Watch is the one to get.

My other grandpa’s novelty watch. Transparent, Deco, still keeps great time.

Another way the Apple Watch is clearly better — it is dead simple to change the band. Apple makes dozens of styles and colors and with 3rd party options the choices go into the hundreds. Meaning what the Apple Watch lacks in personality it makes up for with band variety. I sometimes changed mine two or three times a day depending on my activity.  With other watches changing bands can be more of a project.

And, no doubt, the Apple Watch has saved lives.

At its introduction, Tim Cook called the Apple Watch “our most personal device yet” because, he noted, you wear it on your body. I suppose that’s true but I do worry about the next iteration of personal devices that instead of being worn are implanted in our skulls.

I am going to go on record here and say I am never getting one of those no matter how smart it can make me seem. I am satisfied with my analog brain even when it has me wandering from room to room looking for lost items.

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.

About Time (Part One)

Anyone who knows anything about me at all knows that I am an Apple Fan Boy. From my first Macintosh Plus computer in 1987 (purchased with our wedding money) to running an all Mac office in the 90s, when the earth’s axis was tilting seemingly inexorably toward IBM compatibles, to 2010 when I was voted by my colleagues, “Most likely to run into a burning building to save his iPhone.”

But what you may not know is that I am also somewhat of a watch buff. I have worn (or carried) a watch every day of my life since I got my first one for my 8th birthday from the G.E.M. store (like an 1960s version of Costco) on Rt. 40 in Baltimore. And I have owned countless mechanical, quartz, and digital timepieces over the years. I even built a mechanical clock from a kit that, sadly, never ran very well.

A curious piece. This self-winding mechanical watch has one hand that goes around the dial once in 24 hours. The time currently reads approximately 3:36 pm

I am not a serious collector in any way, mind you, but I have a few mechanical pieces that I wore regularly, until one fine May day in 2015. That was the day my first Apple Watch (later called the Series 0) arrived.

I had been working at the Apple Store when the first Apple Watch was introduced, and the store manager allowed us to come in at 3 am to order from behind the store firewall so that we could get it with our employee discount (half off) the moment the thing went on sale.

Even so, it was weeks before it arrived. During that time, I used my access to the floor models to learn all I could about Apple’s latest life changing device. When mine arrived, I put it on and rarely wore my other watches again except on dressy occasions or holidays like Yom Kippur, when an electronic device feels out of keeping with the spirit of the day.

My first watch. Still runs when wound up.

The gamification of filling the three fitness rings (exercise, move, stand) is what hooked me initially, next was the convenience of having certain tools always handy on my wrist. A timer, the outdoor temperature, a second time zone. And Apple Pay, being able to pay for things or enter a subway system without having to take out a wallet or even a phone from a pocket. Tracking a workout like a run or a walk felt like another “must have” with incredible accuracy in record distance, route, and heart rate. The final lock in was the knowledge that the Apple Watch has saved lives for people in crashes, health crises, or lost in the backcountry.

Can’t disappoint Tim. Must fill Apple Watch rings every day.

A few years ago, sleep tracking was introduced to the Apple Watch, and since I started using that, I have barely taken it off except to charge it, which takes about half an hour per day. The Apple Watch had become a nearly inextricable part of my life — as embedded as an artificial hip.

Then in 2025, I became intrigued with the idea of a more minimal tech life. I saw some videos from people who had simplified their tech devices, even swapping their smart phones for flip phones or the so called “dumb phones,” which do only a few basic things like make phone calls, text, and keep a calendar and contact list. I loved the idea but didn’t think it made sense to spend money on a new device that did less than my old one. Besides, I could make my iPhone as simple as I wanted just by removing apps and turning off features.

So I did.

The first thing I did was to remove from my phone anything that was remotely entertaining or engaging. I had already quit Meta (Facebook and Instagram) back in 2020 and deleted my Twitter account the day that the Musk Rat took over, but I still had the Apple News app and YouTube on my phone. Delete. I left only the music app (for driving) and the podcast app (walking) but neither is tempting or distracting.

Home Screen Before…

…and after.

Then I removed all but eight apps from the home screen with four more in the bar at the bottom. I kept utilities such as banking or flight tracking apps on the phone, but I have to go to the app library to use them. I blocked all calls from people who are not in my contact list. (If they really want to talk to me they’ll leave a message.)

Finally, I turned off notifications for almost everything except calendar events (I tend to forget appointments without them) and missed calls or voice mails, and I set ‘Do Not Disturb’ focus to activate automatically from 9:30 pm to 7:30 am.

The few notifications that I did get came through silently on my Apple Watch with a gentle tap on the wrist.

Then, during our last week in Japan, we visited the Seiko Watch and Timekeeping museum, and my love of analog watches beckoned to me like a voice from a bygone era. Thus the idea of a week without Apple Watch was hatched.

So last Friday, I slipped off my Apple Watch Ultra 2 and replaced it with a new Seiko Field Mechanical (because any proper experiment requires the right equipment). In order to ensure against backsliding, I unpaired my Apple Watch from my phone and set it up for Barbara to try.

The house Kintarō Hattori built. Tokyo, Japan.

Barb’s Apple Watch is an older model and showing signs of age (like me). Unlike me, B is a true athlete and can actually use the myriad features of the Apple Watch Ultra. But the Ultra is larger and heavier than other Apple Watches (about 68 grams vs. 38 grams), so it made sense for her to try it out on her petite wrist to make sure that it is comfortable before getting her own.

So that’s the start of my week without an Apple Watch for the first time in more than 10 years. How will it go? Tune for part two next week to find out.

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.

Gravity

And just like that 7 weeks pass and early one morning you find yourself on the Tokyo subway headed to the Haneda Airport. The line for security wraps around the terminal, but because this is Japan it takes less than 30 minutes to go through passport control, check luggage, and go through security, allowing plenty of time for a coffee and a bun in the airport lounge.

A quick nap on the plane and you step out into the arrivals area at Dulles airport, where, because this is the United States, you spend the next two hours creeping toward one of just five border agents serving four plane loads of passengers. Upon reaching him, he languidly inquires if you have any plants or more than $10,000 in negotiable instruments and, upon hearing the negative, waves you through.

After Japan, public transportation in the United State seems decrepit and filthy. The metro is single tracking between West and East Falls Church Stations (because of course it is) and the bus stop at Shady Grove Station is strewn with litter and unsavory characters. Still, we don’t wait long for a bus and a few minutes later we are walking the final 500 meters from the bus stop to home. Arriving, we observe that we have traveled from home to all over Japan and back again having only used public transportation. No Ubers, no cabs, no private vehicles. It feels like a little victory.

It is strange to be home. Adding to the disorientation is the fact that we left Japan at 10:15 on Sunday morning and arrived in Washington at 9:15 Sunday morning, thanks to a transit of the international date line.

Once the water and the cooking gas are turned back on, it soon feels like we never left. There is the mail to retrieve, bills to pay, and the larder to restock — the ordinariness of life comes rushing back.

People ask, “How was your trip? Tell me about it!” But where do you start to talk with a trip of seven weeks? So I usually say, “It was great!” and am rarely pressed for more details. One’s journey is one’s own. No one is really interested, to be honest.

So much of the experience was just the day-to-day living. Going to the grocery store. Riding the trains. Navigating the subway and buses. The quiet of the woods of a mountain hike. An unexpected glimpse of the full moon of Kislev rising over the lake. But there are a few things that stand out and that I will probably remember for longer than say, where I left my keys.

A beautiful fish and veg curry in Nagano.

• We had a simple and beautiful meal at a curry restaurant in Nagano. It was a one man show with the owner and cook preparing and serving our dish while we sat in front of him at the counter at the tiny establishment. The place had seats for perhaps 12 people, and the food was simple and delicious with a fresh baked naan that he made for our order.

• We biked a route called the Shimanami Kaido. An island to island ride that takes one over stunning bridges. We stopped at a 7 Eleven for a snack and I left my iPhone sitting on a bench. When I noticed it was gone and biked back for it, this being Japan, it was still sitting right outside the store where I had left it half an hour earlier. The day culminated with a visit to a colorful ancient temple above which was a massive, modern creation made out of Carrara marble imported from Italy and made by an Italian sculptor.

• We signed up for a bicycle tour of Fukuoka and turned out to be the only participants. Harata, the delightful young man who led the tour, took us to beautiful spots we wouldn’t have seen on our own including a quiet Buddhist temple with a magical courtyard that included an honest to God golden calf. Rub its head for good fortune. The courtyard was empty and silent in this teeming city.

• In the same town, we waited at a bus stop while a Sumo wrestler in his robes and sandals waited with us. The annual tournament was being held in this city and, as we learned, the wrestlers are required by tradition to wear their thin robes at all times, even while waiting for a bus in the cold, winter wind.

• One day in Sapporo we stayed in our hotel room all day while the rain and wind whipped the city streets. We ate breakfast at the hotel buffet and worked on our blogs until evening when we ventured out and found a sushi restaurant where the staff was super friendly and the fish was delicious and fresh. When you spend seven weeks in a place, you can take a day off and just chill.

• On a train platform in Kanazawa, we ran into three couples that we knew from home. Their kids grew up with ours. They were getting off the train and we were getting on. It was surreal.

• A lovely Japanese garden where they pumped in fake fog once an hour so that visitors can take magical photos.

Fake fog for your photographic pleasure.

Everyone, everywhere bows. The man directing traffic. The conductor on the train. The cashier at the grocery store. The hotel clerks. It is as if to say, “I see the image of God in you.” It feels affirming to receive a bow and to bow back, and it happens dozens if not hundreds of times a day.

Before we left home, I wrote a post in which I confessed that I didn’t really like to travel but that I felt it was good for me. Like fish we are oblivious to the water we swim in until we are out of it for a while. Unlike fish, however, we can adapt to other atmospheres. I adapted to life on the road, even enjoyed it and never wanted for anything beyond the 10kg of kit I’d brought with me. Except for, well, maybe another English language book after I finished “Slow Horses.” English books were hard to come by in Japan.

By the time we were heading home, it felt that I at least had a sense of what it might be like to live in Japan. Some of the most notable things were not what we saw but what we rarely or never saw.

You virtually never see:

• Litter

• Someone talking on their cell phone while walking

• People smoking in public

• A dirty car

• Something broken

• Graffiti

• A train running late

• People behaving inconsiderately or rudely

• Dog poop

• Stray cats

• Traffic jams

• People walking and eating

• Homeless people or people asking for money

• Tattoos

• Men with beards

• Benches to sit upon

• A public park, train station, or convenience store without an immaculate toilet that is free to use.

Things are just messier in the United States. And don’t get me wrong, messiness can have its charm, but it is irritating too. Wondering if your bus will show up, trying to find a public toilet before you burst, wondering if your bike will still be there when you get back. Japan removes all these worries and abrasions and replaces them all with a single anxiety: “Am I bothering anyone?”

But in spite of its messiness and other abrasions, my life, my friends, my family are here. Those things exert a force like gravity that holds one in place. One may visit the International Space Station from time to time but as pleasant as it may be to float weightless one must return to earth and stay a while before ones muscles start to atrophy.

Ok, that’s long enough. When’s the next rocket out of here?

The world’s a narrow bridge; fear nothing.