The Unofficial Guide to Using Apple Watch (2 page)

• Set the time.
  
• Play music (you can put up to 2 GB of songs on your watch…to put it another way, that’s about 500 songs).
  
• Track your run / exercise — it will keep a record of things like calories burned, heart rate, and distance / pace, and then sync it to your phone when you have it nearby again.
  
• Track your standing time and steps.
  
• See your photos—75 MB is reserved for photos.
  
• Read, delete and flag email that has come in.
  
• Use the alarm, stopwatch, and timer.
  
• Use passbook to show tickets (like airplane or concert ticket).
  
• Use ApplePay to buy things.
  

And here’s what you can do if you don’t have your phone, but you do have Wi-Fi:

• Send and receive text message, and use digital touch messages (i.e. drawing and tapping patterns to send as a message).
  
• Use Siri.
  

A few other things you might need to know about the watch…

• It takes about two hours to fully charge your Apple Watch.
  
• It takes your iPhone’s battery…kind of; because the watch talks to your phone, your phone’s battery will be used. It’s not significant, but it’s enough that you might notice 30 minutes to an hour of usage gone by the end of the day that used to be there.
  
• There's a feature on the device called "Taptic Engine"--fancy sound, right? But what is it? The taptic engine lets you receive feedback on your wrist that feels like someone is tapping you.
  
• You can use it as a phone…sort of. Yes, it sounds very Dick Tracy-like to get phone calls on your wrist, but don’t get too excited—it’s a little awkward to use; to get the most out of it, you really need to put it up or near your mouth. And the audio that comes out of the speakers is subpar at best.
  
• It tells time! Well yes—you probably knew that. But it also tells time very precisely (within 50 milliseconds), which makes it one of the most accurate watches ever made.
  

Now it’s time to get to the fun stuff: The Watch! I’m going to start with the absolute basics, so if you are comfortable with the easy stuff, then jump ahead.

Because the Apple Watch has no keyboards, setup is a bit unusual compared to other Apple products. Setup for the watch actually begins not with the watch, but with the iPhone.

If you aren’t running iPhone iOS 8.2 and up, then the first thing you need to do is update your phone. You also need at least an iPhone 5—anything less will not be compatible. To see if your phone needs to be updated, go to Settings on the iPhone, then General, and finally Software Update—it will tell you if your phone is up-to-date.

Once everything is ready, put the watch on your wrist, and press and hold the side button until you see the Apple Logo.

While you are waiting for the watch to start, open the Apple Watch app on your iPhone—after 8.2 is installed, Apple Watch will be available.

After the watch loads, you will be prompted to put your iPhone above the watch so that it appears in the camera’s viewfinder on the phone screen. Follow the instructions on your phone: you will be asked to pick your language, watch orientation, and passcode. You’ll be able to change all this later.

When prompted, position your iPhone so that Apple Watch appears in the camera viewfinder on the iPhone screen. Follow the instructions on iPhone and Apple Watch to finish setup. During setup, you’ll choose your language, watch orientation, and passcode. The entire setup will take several minutes—but don’t worry: this is a one-time thing.

If your watch is new, then it should be charged; if you need to charge it, refer to the section in this book on Charging.

There are a lot of settings in the Apple Watch app on your iPhone, and I’ll refer back to them as the book goes on.

It’s also worth going to the Settings app from your Apple Watch and just seeing what’s there and becoming familiar with it.

To turn your watch on, press and hold the side button until the Apple logo appears; to turn it off press and hold the side button until a slider appears telling you to drag it to the right to power off.

Taking your phone off standby is the most seamless thing you’ll do—just lift your wrist! How’s that for easy? Turning standby back on is just as simple—put your wrist down.

If you lift your wrist and standby doesn’t turn off, then it’s possible that you changed a setting. Open the Setting button on the home screen of your watch (it looks just like the one on your phone except it’s round, and then go to General and Orientation—make sure Orientation is set to the wrist that you wear—if you are wearing it on your right hand and Orientation is set to left hand, for example, then change it. The other thing that might have happened is your battery has drained.

When you lift your wrist, the watch will either show your watch face (i.e. time) or the last app opened. By default it shows the watch face, but if you want it to go to your last activity, then go to Settings, then General, and finally Activate on Wrist Raise—once you tap this, pick Resume Previous Activity.

You also have the ability to unlock the watch with your phone using a Passcode. This is a great feature if you take your watch off a lock. It doesn’t mean you need to put in a passcode every time you look at the time—it only needs it when the watch is off your wrist or being worn too loosely. The Passcode can be the same as the phone, but it’s recommended that the code is different. To activate Passcode, go to Settings from your watch’s home screen, and then scroll down until you see Passcode, then tap it. Tap turn on Unlock with iPhone. If you ever want to change it, just follow the same steps, but pick Change Passcode.

If you ever forget your passcode, then unpair it from the iPhone and erase all the settings.

You can also lock the watch manually. To do this, press and hold the side button; when the sliders appear, slide the Lock Device option to the right.

For this section, we will be spending all of our time in the Settings portion of the watch, so head to it by going to your home screen and tapping on the Settings icon.

The Apple Watch is probably smaller than you’re used to when reading messages, emails, news, etc.; if it’s too small then you can make text larger by going to Brightness and Text Size, tap Text Size and then use the Digital Crown knob to increase or decrease it. You can also check or uncheck making the text boldface (Note: Before boldface is in place the watch will need to be reset.).

From this same menu, you can adjust how bright the watch is.

If you don’t like the default sounds on your watch, then go to Sounds & Haptics from the Settings menu.  Use your Digital Crown knob to adjust how loud it gets. You can also mute sounds by switching the Mute button from Off to On (Note: muting does not turn off sound on alarms).

Like many things on the Apple Watch, there are a lot of things that can be done quickly with Gestures; that’s true with sound. To quickly mute sounds, put the palm of your hand over the watch and hold it there for three seconds; you’ll feel a tap when you can uncover. For this to work, however, you must first enable it from your phone by opening the Apple Watch app, going to Sounds & Haptics, and finally cover to mute.

For some notifications, you will get a tap on your wrist, which you may love or hate. If you hate it, then go back to the previous menu.  Next, go to the Haptic button under Ringer. You can use the Digital Crown to adjust the haptic intensity.

Charging your watch is very simple; it might be a little strange at first, because the charger is magnetic and doesn’t plug into the watch—rather it snaps into the back. Make sure you use the charger case that came with your device—using any other might overcharge the device, which will drain the battery quickly. The only other approved chargers are the ones that come with your iPhone or iPad.

It takes about two hours to fully charge the watch.

If you want to know how much time is needed for a full charge, swipe up from the watch face, which brings up Glances, and then swipe to the Battery glance.

When the watch has less than 10% power left, it will automatically go into a Power Reserve mode—in this mode, the watch will show the time, but other apps won’t be available. You can also manually turn Power Reserve on by pressing the side button for three seconds until the Power menu comes up, then swiping Power Reserve.

You can see how much time you have left in your battery reserve at any time by swiping up from the watch face to bring up Glances, then swiping to Power Reserve. You can also use the Apple Watch app on your iPhone to see the last time you charged it.

As you use the watch, there are a couple of indicators that will appear that you should be aware of. They are listed below:

You have an unread notification such as an email.

The Apple Watch is charging.