Iterate Weekly - Issue 197
This week we're talking about solar-powered smartwaches, work-life balance, Aptera gets closer to production, Samsung's boring phone launch, and "The Lost Subways of North America"!
Welcome to issue 197 of Iterate Weekly.
Let’s jump into this week’s stories shall we?
Thank you as always for reading!
🖥️ Tech
Can we have a good solar-powered smartwatch?
It seems like most things should be solar-powered these days right?
What about our smartwatches? Recently, Garmin unveiled it’s new Instinct 3 watch which can in fact be charged by the sun!
It’s a novel idea. This is a watch that is meant to be worn on long runs and hikes. It should spend a good portion of its day outside in the sunshine. So why not capture some of those rays to increase its time between charges?
You’ll likely still need to plug it in from time to time, but that extra boost could really make a difference. I know this is an outdoorsy watch, but I’d welcome the ability to get some charge from the sun on a wide range of smartwatches.
It seems like the battery life on my Pixel Watch 3 has really going downhill lately. Even a small increase in efficiency from the sun would be welcome.
I haven’t worn a Garmin Watch in a while, but the battery life and potential for solar charge with the Instinct 3 makes it a watch I’ll definitely consider.
🎓 Education/Productivity/Work
Work-life balance is worth more than pay
Maybe this comes as no surprise but employees are valuing work-life balance more than their actual paycheck.
The latest research comes from a study that states:
The Dutch recruitment company Randstad’s latest annual review of work confirms a trend that many have observed since the pandemic. Surveying 26,000 workers across 35 countries, it found that work-life balance has edged ahead of pay as the main motivator for workers (83% v 82%).
This really isn’t a small sample size. And this data is across 35 countries. That is saying something!
Count me in on those numbers. You really can’t put a price on the flexible nature of remote work. The fact that I can find time to write these words in addition to my full-time job is priceless.
And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see those work-life balance numbers trend up in the coming years.
♻️ Health/Environment/EVs
Aptera gets a bit closer to production
The Aptera is probably the most exciting EV in development these days (if we’re assuming that Nimbus is dead).
It has a unique 3-wheel design. It looks like nothing else on the road. And it promises insane range estimates thanks in part to its solar paneled roof.
Of course, the huge question is will it actually come to fruition?
This week it got one step closer with the announcement of a partnership for the display technology inside the vehicle.
That means that perhaps full-scale production is imminent. I still have some skepticism that they’ll be able to pull through all of the red tape to get this vehicle approved for use on American roadways (especially with the new administration in charge).
But I’m certainly rooting for Aptera and this would be a very compelling option to achieve a bulk of your weekly mileage by way of the sun.
🛍 Grab Bag
Samsung’s boring phone launch
As someone who has been a user of Android phones for quite sometime, you’d think I’d be excited when Samsung announces a new phone.
But no. The announcement of the new line of Galaxy S25 phones was just plain boring, and the folks at the Vergecast podcast agree with me.
The new Samsung devices feel devoid of personality in my opinion. They’re so similar to last year’s models with no major updates to get people excited.
Samsung has such a large marketshare of the Android users in the US, I just wish they threw in some wildcard feature that none of us have seen before. I will give them some credit for offering bright color choices, but the products themselves are a major snooze fest.
💬 Quote of the Week
"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."
-R. Buckminster Fuller
📕Content Review
The Lost Subways of North America
Here’s a book recommendation for all of you history and urban planning nerds out there.
I had trouble putting down Jake Berman’s “The Lost Subways of North America”.
Each chapter dives into the history of a different city’s public transportation journey. Mostly it details how a majority of cities went automobile-crazy and destroyed excellent transit infrastructure around the middle of the last century.
The standout chapters for me were obviously the cities most near and dear to my heart. San Francisco and LA were blanketed with very excellent electric train service that each city would kill to still have in place today. Thankfully, San Francisco did hold on to a fair bit of it. LA, not so much.
And who knew that Cincinnati created a subway system that they never actually used and Rochester shuttered their system that still exists below the city today!
It’s a shame that America ruined so much of it’s amazing past transit history, but books like this can help us learn from the past and move forward with innovative transit solutions.
P.S - The old transit maps alone in this book make it worth checking out!
Thanks for reading, I’ll see you next week!
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