My wife’s Apple Watch showed up on Friday. My own space gray 42mm aluminum watch (ordered just a few minutes after the Apple Watch went on sale) didn’t make the launch day shipment but is now in a truck somewhere between China and my front door and, according to Deliveries, expected to arrive soon.
Feeling sorry for the geek, my wife let me borrow her 38mm aluminum Apple Watch (for science!) and I’ve spent a significant part of the last two days looking at my wrist, tapping out notifications to my fellow nerd friends, and standing up and sitting down because my Apple Watch told me to. I’ve got a few observations:
- All of the points I made after my first 30 minutes remain true. Apple nailed so many details, especially with the the physical construction. Even the “low end” aluminum watch looks and feels great. I still find myself turning the digital crown, smitten at the way it has just enough resistance.
- Likewise, my initial impressions of that feature where you can draw on the screen hasn’t changed. I had a series of scribbles with Katie Floyd and my daughter and none of them were intelligible beyond a basic shape or words with three letters or worse. I’ll be surprised if that feature becomes a “thing”.
- My teenager also agrees with me that the animated 3D animations of a yellow face and hands are “not cool”. If there is any feature of this first Apple Watch OS that we’ll look back on and laugh at, I think it is those 3D faces.
- The 38mm watch didn’t look bad on me. A grown man can certainly use one. That being said, I’m looking forward to the increased size (and readability) of the 42mm watch.
- Siri, on the watch and in the wild, works great. I was sending texts in the middle of a crowd at Disneyland Friday night and it just worked. I do have some UI quibbles with it. Specifically, by default I’ve got to tap the watch to send after dictation. I’d prefer to do this verbally.
- Speaking of Siri, I’ve only accidentally triggered dictation once in two days with some group of words that sounded like “Hey Siri”. I know that equates to several times a week, which is a pain, but I expected it to be worse.
- Hearing early reviews, I was prepared for the notifications to drive me nuts. I was careful setting them up, which took all of five minutes, and now my watch just notifies me when I really have something worth notification. The net effect is my phone stays in my pocket a lot more than it used to. I guess that was the point.
- So far, I’ve bought an iPhone accessory and groceries with the watch. The guy at the Apple Store jumped up and down. (I was his first.) The nice lady at Sprouts just commented that things just keep getting “easier and easier”.
- I aggressively use calendars to keep my act together. I schedule meetings, calls, and even time to work on important projects. Having my next appointment show up on my wrist is super-useful.
- After hearing initial reports, I was ready for the apps to be a hot mess. They definitely are not as snappy as a native application would be but apps, like OmniFocus, that do not need to go to the Internet for information are useful on my wrist. We are in early days with wrist based user interface and I expect things to evolve a lot in the next 6 months. Exciting times.
- Both days I used the watch all day and ended with plenty of battery in the tank. The first day, I got down to 15%. The second day, 30%. My daughter used her watch all day today and had 40% when she took it off.
Those decreasing battery numbers are illustrative of something else. The watch will quickly just fit into your life. It was a lot of fun playing with watch faces and apps the first day but by the second day, the Apple Watch was just part of my routine. I communicated with it. I told time with it. I kept track of my activity with it. When I wasn’t doing one of those things, I wasn’t thinking about it. The iPad and iPhone both turned my life upside down for weeks after I first got them. The watch did not have the same effect. Once I sorted it out, I just started using it. I think that is a good thing.
Do you need an Apple Watch? I’d say that very few people must have an Apple Watch. It’s early in the game and we are all still figuring out where it fits and how to use it. If you’re not inclined, you’ll be just fine sitting this out.
That being said, I’ve now reset my wife’s Apple Watch and paired it with her phone. I was watch-less most of this afternoon. I also gave my Pebble to my younger daughter and found myself frequently looking at my naked wrist this afternoon and expecting it to tell me something.
If you do get an Apple Watch, very quickly you’ll realize that it does make life with iOS easier and more streamlined. Checking a text message by glancing at your wrist rather than digging in your pocket or purse for a phone is nice and a time saver. I think there are several people that make good Apple Watch candidates.
If you think about the number of times a day you check your phone for one reason or another and for you that number is anything significant, you probably should consider an Apple Watch. They are not intrusive and make your life easier.
If you are used to wearing a watch and want to see how much more you can get out of it, an Apple Watch may also be a good fit for you. In my case, just putting my next appointment on my wrist makes the watch worth the investment.
Finally, I’d say if you have any interest in fitness tracking, an Apple Watch can make sense. Granted, you can buy a dedicated fitness tracker for less but if you are an iOS user, the Apple Watch delivers so much more.
It’s not every day Apple releases an entirely new product category. While I don’t think the Apple Watch is going to turn the world upside down the same way the iPhone did, it is a really nice upgrade and addition to my iPhone.
