You have your way that works for you, I do things differently.
Computers only see what they are programmed to see. I was a programmer in a past life.
And the 737 MAX was a sick twisted mess of Capitalism and Ineptitude. Boeing engineers knew what was going on, but the bean counters and the investors demanded more ‘return’ for their investment. The FAA was put into a spot of having to ‘trust’ Boeing to test and document their own products. Most of that was due to ‘sequestration’ as one party sought to punish the other. The problem with regulations and inspections was not limited to the FAA either. The FDA did it as well, and so did many other agencies. It was greed, it was incompetence, it was ineptitude, it was politicians on the take, it was ‘It worked before’, it was Boeing avoiding the necessity to do a complete redesign and recertification of the essentially new 737 Max. They thought they could get away with cut and pasting huge engines on the 737.
Many long time engineers quit or were ‘assisted’ in their departure from Boeing. And Boeing management seems more interested in finding new headquarters than fixing the issues of their derelict previous management. But anyway. They (Boeing) think they are untouchable, and who knows what Wahoo management has in their minds. Ride on!!
2 Likes
I’d still say that e. g. CAD and modern simulation software work really well and are being used deliberately. I remember that when Airbus stress tested the A380’s wing, it failed at 149 %. The design target was 150 %. They reinforced the wing in some places and got it certified.
You see the issue: if you can design a product to have a certain lifetime — assuming it is correctly assembled, etc., then people will do that. If cars are recycled after, say, 12 years on average, designing a car that would last 30 years would be a waste of material — for the company.
Me thinks that a lot of these products we are complaining about here suffer from overly tight margins and bad quality control. IMHO that was one of the reasons why e. g. cars in the past were overbuilt: they had to be, because tolerances were much larger than they can be now.
I don’t think it was ineptitude on the engineering end. I followed the scandal quite closely, and from everything I know it was completely deliberate. Boeing signed contracts that would open them up for giant contractually agreed upon penalties in case pilots needed significant amount of re-training. From then on, it was a deliberate fraud, top-down.
The only ineptitude came from non-engineers who thought it’d be a smart idea to have to re-use an airframe whose design dates back to the 1960s. Who thought short-term rather than long-term: yes, allow Airbus to eat their lunch for a while with the A320 neo series, but come back with a clean-sheet design in a decade. Rather than do the right thing they made promises they shouldn’t have made. I’m appalled that Boeing’s management indemnified themselves against criminal liability (another story with unsavory details).
(Boeing also had quite a few other eff-ups such as them taking a pass on Bombardier’s C-Series — only looking at short-term wins rather than the long-term. Airbus bought it for C$1, got productions lines in the US up and running and is screwing Boeing from the low end as well. There is a good reason why some people jokingly claim that McDonnel Douglas took over Boeing rather than the other way around.)
1 Like
I can charge my phone while I sleep or while I’m driving. I need the watch to be on at those times to measure my stats. Giving up data for an hour once every 7 days is a lot less data lost that giving it up for an hour (or overnight) every single day.
8 Likes
Exactly same here! All good for me!
1 Like
My father was an engineer. Now, this may be a case of rose-tinted spectacles, but he recalls the late 80s as being in many ways the high point of his industry. In the 90s, to use his phrase, ‘the bean counters took over’, and rather than charge what their product cost, they had to start with a selling price and work back from there, and (far) more corners got cut.
However, as consumers we have ourselves to blame: reliability and durability are proven to be weak selling points in most markets these days. The philosophy seems to be: buy cheap, spend minimal time and money maintaining it, and then if/when it breaks, replace it with another cheap item. I think only the realisation of the environmental impact of this has any chance of turning the tide.
5 Likes
2nd Gen products often are as much about “cost reduction” for margin improvement as anything else so not surprising
I’ve driven 2 cars to 175,000 miles, one a VW and the other a Volvo. I did much of my own maintenance so especially in the later years I was spending a fair amount of time on forums getting repair tips so I saw the types of problems these cars had as the miles ticked up. The Volvo was a little more reliable over all but what was really facinating to me was that while each car had a well known list of “this is going to fail at X miles” parts and issues, the lists were totally different. Both were well engineered overall but each had parts that were not, at least not for 100K+ mile longevity. For example, the VWs ate front CV joints. But I don’t remember ever even seeing reference to someone replacing one on the Volvo model I had. Conversely, the VW’s AC was bullet proof but the AC on the Volvo was guaranteed to fail at around 125,000 miles.
Clearly what was going to fail and when was not random.
1 Like
First part: Roads have gotten a lot better. Well, not so much recently, but since those early days, the US highway system bled better roads into towns and cities across the country. Better roads meant the cars didn’t have be built like tanks to survive them.
Part two: Was what you said, and more. I just realized I said most of what you already said. I threw in the part about the FAA under funding, and some other minor details. I should have read your post and didn’t, ‘pushed for time’. I’ll endeavor to do better.
So my rambling: It wasn’t necessarily the engineers as much as it was the ‘bean counters’ who knew that the radical change in the MAX really should mean a complete redesign, and that redesign would cost Boeing potentially billions and stretch the delivery of the MAX out YEARS. They had to compete with Airbus, and they were largely sleeping on their laurels and were caught by surprise, according to their own story. I kept hearing engineer comments that Boeing should have brought back the 757 instead of Frankensteining the 737. The 737 was engineered for an early time in air travel. Grass landing strips (really), smaller airports, air-stairs instead of the hamster tunnels, and smaller people. Boeing bean counters required their engineers (and remember they ‘aren’t an engineering company’ according to an earlier CEO (DOH!!)) to put ridiculously large engines on a plane that was never originally designed for them and that changed the air flow over the wings, and also the weight balance and center of mass. They felt they needed a more advanced ‘fix’ for that hot mess, and then knew if they announced the need for the change they would be under pressure to do that complete redesign and on the hook for the costs. Coupled with the funding hobbled FAA, they were able to approve their own engineering. Like a cat in a litter box… Yes, bean counters nearly directly doomed those two planeloads of people. And I don’t think Boeing management has learned a damn thing from that debacle. Boeing IS an engineering company, and engineering is expensive, as it should be. There was no excuse for taking the quick road and betraying the FAA to support investors who would have a heart attack if the FAA required that complete redesign. Boeing is an example of a company that completely lost its way along their quest for endless profit. And the pampered investor class still hopes to win that mess.
2 Likes
One thing that is often not mentioned about Apple watches is that they charge really fast. My Apple Watch SE will last 2-3 days depending on how much GPS tracking I do. If I charged it for just 20 minutes a day while I took a shower and got ready for bed, it would keep going for weeks.
2 Likes
This is a massive change and I’ve heard from others that they charge much faster and last longer now. I owned an AW just a few years ago that didn’t hold even a 24 hour charge and took an hour to charge. I’m not arguing, I’m saying that a lot of us criticizing AW’s are doing so based on technology from 2-3 years ago.
I will say you’re the first person I’ve heard say it will last a full 2 days, not to mention 3. That’s an incredible advance in just a few years.
1 Like
My first Apple Watch was a series 1 and yes, it was dead by the end of the day.
My new one is the SE (dumbed down v6) and every evening when I put it on the charger I usually see 75-80% charge left. If I had done a run with the Strava app, I might see 60%. I guess if one did 3 hour bike rides with GPS tracking you’d only get a day out of it.
Overall though, battery performance has improved enormously and it charges way faster.
2 Likes
Same here, I have a Series 7 and setting it down on the charger while I shower is more than enough to keep it going. I’ve never run out of battery on my watch, even on days I skip a shower.
With my Forerunner 955, I’ve found that because I charge it less often, I’m more likely to forget to do it, so I’ve run into low battery situations more often than I ever did with the Apple Watch. As a result I’ve gotten into the same habit of charging it every day while I’m in the shower, which has made the 7-10 day battery life less relevant to me.
That said, the only time where battery life matters to me is during an event or a race, and Garmin definitely beats Apple there by a country mile. I’d love to see Apple continue to make progress there. I’d gladly go back to an Apple Watch if and when they add support for power meters and get enough battery life for a full Ironman.
3 Likes
Yeah, I’ve pretty much stopped wearing my v2 Tickr and gone back to my v1 Tickr X (I lost it for a few months while moving, hence the v2). It just goes awry even with a fresh battery.
Probably going to wash it and throw it on the Pay-It-Forward thread at some point.
Kickr Bike is still going strong though. And my v1 Bolt is just as reliable as ever.
2 Likes
Without sufferfest I would not have found yoga - which has had a massive impact on my life, health and fitness. Combining those elements with TR would be awesome.
5 Likes
Not charging often. Is that why so many people have their Di2 die mid-ride? Apple supporting power meters? That would be interesting. They seem to have a shyness about getting too far off their mark, until the Ultra, and it being a ‘dive computer’. Who knows what they are going to do.
BTW: Anyone have an Ultra and care to report on battery life for riding and just using it?
As far as I understand, that’s part of the design spec. Our discussion reminds me of this video I have seen on the topic.
According to @dcrainmaker, the Ultra lasts over 48 hours with sleep tracking enabled about about 3 hours worth of workouts. With constant GPS usage in Low Power mode (Ray was hiking, but I guess it will be similar with other sports that require GPS tracking), it is >16 hours (14 hours = 85 % battery in the test).
Note that this was before the release of Low Power Workout mode, I couldn’t find any numbers on that. The implied battery life is > 15 hours.
My wife’s first-gen SE with a relatively new battery usually lasts a little less than two days if she forgets to charge it. (Which she sometimes does.) She goes to the gym regularly (at least 2, usually 3 times a week for 2–3 hours), and she has never complained that her battery died early with the SE. (She did complain about her Apple Watch 3 towards the end, the battery got old after 3.5+ years of constant use, and didn’t last a day. I reckon she’ll have a much bigger buffer with the SE.)
Can’t comment for riding as I don’t use it for that.
As a running watch and daily activity monitor? It works very well and I’m pleased. It looks stylish too.
The only issue I’ve run into is that it is easy for the crown to have debris cause it to rotate slower. This can be fixed with a brush to it so no big deal.
Battery life is long. I typically get about 1.5 days out of a single charge including using during sleeping and doing a 1-2 hour amount of activity it tracks.
3 Likes
Interesting that you’re getting 1.5 days out of the Ultra when someone above said they get 3 days out of an SE.
I haven’t really fiddled with anything to optimize it tbh. I’ve just put it on and went my way. I’m sure I could squeeze more out of it if I fiddled with the settings but…I really can’t be bothered.
I’m used to the daily charge from my series 5 so its fine. The usb-c charging takes like…15-20 min in my experience so its a bit trivial. Most days, I just throw it on the charger for a bit and its fine. That feels way faster than before.
No problems on activities and the programmable button on the left is useful.
1 Like