I Returned My Apple Watch 3 Cellular

Emanuele Cesena
3 min readOct 9, 2017

(Update at the end, I returned the watch, everybody’s happy — now I'm working on an open source security key called Solo.)

It’s October 2017, and I’ve just completed a run without my phone, streaming music the whole 3.5 miles — minus one minute. The technology is finally here, and I was joking with my friends that now I only need a speedo with a key pocket, so I can run truly free. However I’m returning my Apple Watch Series 3 GPS + Cellular, or at least I’m going to try to. The hardware is great,
the software just isn’t there yet.

I bought the Apple Watch yesterday, and yesterday is the keyword. How come I didn’t run yesterday? Thanks for asking, in fact I did run, but yesterday I couldn’t stream music because I had no apps. I was so pissed that I went to run intentionally leaving the watch home. Then, I ended the day not completing my activity rings so I was 2x pissed — but I breathed 7 times.

The reason I couldn’t stream music yesterday is pretty simple:

  • Spotify doesn’t exist for the watch, nor does Soundcloud
  • Pandora “Play Music and Stream Radio” doesn’t work unless it’s connected with an iPhone — 708k ratings, 4.8 stars
  • Apple Music has a new Radio app for the watch, only available in Watch OS 4.1 Beta = if you’re enrolled…

--

--

Emanuele Cesena

Forging the Everdragons2 NFT. Former security at Pinterest.