Apple Watch is a LOUSY fitness tracker

Just venting:

I am sick and tired of people saying that Apple created the best fitness tracker around. BULLSHIT!

I have been using fitness trackers since well before the Apple watch existed.

• the Basis smartwatch, later acquired by Intel
• Jawbone
• FitBit One, Versa, Charge
• Pebble Classic
• MisFit

Features that the Apple Watches lack include

Autodetection of exercise:

• several of my old trackers reliably detected the difference between me walking and bicycling.
• and they reliably detected what I had started a workout or doing something like walking the dog.
• My Apple Watch 4 usually only detects that I have started a nice hike
• not only is it bogus to have to manually say "starting workout"
• but I also came to enjoy and almost rely on being able to look back at my tracker and see when I had left the house, e.g. see when I had given the dog enough of a walk

Treadmill desk:

• I use a treadmill desk
• my Apple Watch does not detect steps on the treadmill desk
• perhaps that can be excused, because very few fitness trackers did
• however many fitness trackers could be worn on my ankle or in my pocket and count steps on my treadmill

Wish: I wish that the Apple Watch could be combined with a foot pod that recorded steps in my treadmill.

• actually, I used to be able to do so with the Misfit clip fitness tracker
• but Apple Health only ever downloaded the total number steps, not the histogram steps during the day

Manually entering treadmill desk steps, calories, etc.

• I recently started manually entering treadmill desk metrics
• originally straight into Apple Health, now via an iOS shortcut
• but Apple Health only allows me to enter a total number steps at a single point in time. ** whereas most metrics have a start and end time ** so I certainly don't see a histogram of steps over time ** but I don't even see a square wave

Why then do I use in Apple Watch?

• mainly because it is a watch
• it integrates with my calendars - not just notification, but actually can hold my calendar
• and it can take dictation

More and more I am using iOS shortcuts on my watch to enter fitness related things that I want to track. Things that are not handled by Apple Health, like push-ups.