The quantification of life
A few years back I bought my first Jawbone UP. Being pretty active in life, and having some trouble sleeping, combined with my natural interest in anything data, brought me to the decision to start quantifying. The jawbone UP worked well for about 8 months. I also bought my wife one. I started to really love the app that makes sense of all data gathered by this non intrusive device. There was something magic about it. I learned more and more about my sleep cycles, I started to recognise patterns (certain behaviour leads to certain sleep quality and such), and I learned a lot about calorie burning and the effects of my (almost) daily walks. I am an information addict. My whole life evolves around it, including my work. But I digress.
After about 8 months, my jawbone broke. I called the Apple store, and after a little pushing, they replaced it with a new one. Two weeks later, it came. Two weeks after that, the replacement jawbone broke. Apple told me that they could not replace it, as they replaced it the first time out of courtesy, and I should call Jawbone. I did, and Jawbone referred me to the seller. Apple. The hate started. I am a dutch citizen, and dutch law is very clear: the seller is responsible. Apple agreed that Jawbone UPs were replaced a lot and maybe not up to the quality one can expect from Apple. But no dice.
I decided to say "f you" and bought a different device. I went for the Garmin Vivofit. By that time, my wife's jawbone had been replaced several times. The Vivofit worked well, but it did not feed me the information I liked from Jawbone. As an advantage it has a screen that tells you your activity, and more. My wife's Garmin broke after 10 months. By that time, Apple's health app was on our iphones. It wasn't perfect but that worked. Jawbone came out with the UP Move, which isn't a band. I figured that the shape of the UP was the band-killing factor and acquired two Jawbone UP move devices. They were way cheaper than the bands, so there was that.
Three weeks ago my jawbone acted up. I was able to bring it back to life, but two out of three evenings it requires a lot of pressing the one button it has, plus syncing to the app to get in in sleep mode. Apple's health app has improved greatly. I know that my jawbone will soon die. I will throw it out and I will not get another device. My iPhone will measure my movement. I will sleep without knowing how good or bad. I won't die without that information. I will live. Unquantified.