My Christmas present to myself this year was the top-of-the-range Series 8 Apple Watch. It was my first Apple watch and bought to replace a dead smart watch. It has the cellular option, but I don’t go out without my phone, so I won’t be rushing to get an e-SIM for it. I’m happy that I can talk through the watch when my phone is in another room. It has many features that I will discover one by one.
This isn’t a review because you can find plenty of them online. This is the unboxing.
Apple knows how to design packaging as good as its products.Contents of the boxI charged it before going too far, but it came with a healthy charge.Setup was started on my iPhone XRSetting up for myself.Pairing the watch.Choosing the dominant hand.Choosing the hand you will use (Right, in my case)Choosing the size of text.Battery usage is smart.The Apple watch shares settings with other Apple services.Health and fitness settings.Tracking your activity.Workout route tracking.Getting health notifications.Checking your heart medications.Emergency settings, including calling Emergency services.Setting up your phone to access apps and data.Apple Pay setup.Setting up the Action button.Underwater settings.Diving safety tip.Always-on.Phone apps on the watch.Syncing in progress.Setup is complete.Sliding in the strap.The Apple Watch on my wrist.
That’s all, folks! I am happy with my Apple Watch Ultra.
For some years, Apple has disabled sync between Microsoft Windows Outlook’s Calendar, Notes and Contacts and iPhone/iPad etc. It took me a long time to realise this, as I would save new contacts on either platform, amend outdated into and then wonder why the other device had not synced. I would ask in Apple communities, and the advice never made sense to me, and I would forget it for a while. I coped by repeating data entry in both devices, but it was getting ridiculous.
The Issues
For reasons I don’t know or care, Apple and Microsoft products stopped cooperating some years ago; I believe it was after iOS 9. We are presently at iOS16! Whenever I asked for help in the Microsoft Outlook and Apple iPhone forums, the responses were not helpful.
This image illustrates what I wanted:
Outlook to iPhone sync
I do not use Office 365 or the Outlook app on my phone. I don’t use Microsoft Exchange. I just use IMAP and POP3 to fetch and send email from my own hosted domain. No Gmail. I just wanted to use the Apple apps that could once be synced with iTunes. The helpers in the forums could not understand what I thought was a simple question.
Here is the Solution
Forget iTunes. It’s not even useful in Windows to manage the placement of your app icons and certainly irrelevant for syncing your iPhone with Outlook. I found a paid program AkrutoSync, which has a free, 7-day trial. I went for the Basic option of a single PC and unlimited devices for US$39.95, a one-time payment. You can get it from Akruto here: https://www.akruto.com/ (no affiliate link there)
Successful transfer of my desktop data to my iPhone.
Configuring AkrutoSync might seem weird if you are like me and only use POP3 or IMAP to fetch email. It requires you to add a dummy Microsoft Exchange account on your phone if you choose syncing at home via Wi-Fi. Follow the instructions carefully and you’ll be syncing automatically in both directions all the time. It is instant – I added a calendar entry on my desktop and it was already on my phone by the time I looked it up.
