One week with the Apple Watch
Smartwatches are okay as long as you’re not touching them
I’m a designer and I’ve been designing apps — mostly on iOS — for a couple of years now.
I’ve been very sceptic about the Apple Watch and smartwatches in general. I just couldn’t think of that many great use cases.
You can do a lot of things that you can do on your phone, but on your wrist. Though most of these things aren’t that useful.
However, I decided to buy one anyway. The Watch might be one of those products you have to experience in everyday life before drawing conclusions. I’ve been using a 42mm Sport (Space Gray) for a week, and here are my first impressions.
Hardware. The watch looks and feels just like you’d expect from Apple. Exactly how I imagined it from looking at the website. Maybe even slightly better.
I’ve always worn watches before, and have experienced the Apple Watch as being very comfortable and much lighter than my previous watch.
The Digital Crown feels very responsive, the screen is great, and the taptic engine — the thing that ‘taps’ you on the wrist when you receive a notification — is superb!
Oh, and the battery is great as well: Friday I pulled it from the charger at 08:00AM and at 05:00AM, 21 hours later, I had ~18% left.
Watch OS. Some of the reviews say the OS is confusing. For me, I don’t find it very confusing at all. You just need to get the hang of what happens when you press the Digital Crown or side button.
Apps. I haven’t found a single app that has been useful as of yet. The screen is just too tiny to pleasantly interact with. Not to mention the speed: apps are super slow because they are actually running on your iPhone.
The Apple Watch is best if you just have to look at it.
Apple announced developers will be able to make native Watch apps soon.
Complications and Watchfaces. I like the Watch most when I don’t need to touch it. The complications (the little ‘widgets’ on the watch faces) are great, but most of them aren’t that useful for me. For example: I would love a complication with the current ETA to my work or home.
And Apple, please let developers make watchfaces. I don’t find them customizable enough and I want more of them.
Glances. I haven’t found the glances that useful. They don’t seem that thought-through.
An example: on the weather glance you’ll see the current weather. In the morning I’d rather have today’s forecast. I have absolutely no problem looking out of my window.
Notifications. I find the settings for notifications to be somewhat confusing. There are various options with the stock Apple apps on which notifications you’d like to receive, but with third-party apps you can only disable or mirror the notification settings on the iPhone.
The notifications, together with the haptic feedback, are great.
I disabled most of my app notification sounds on the iPhone. But when doing so, it turns out that when you disable the notification sound on your iPhone, the Watch doesn’t vibrate, which is confusing.
Checking your notifications on your Watch is harder to ignore. When I was around other people I never immediately checked my phone as soon as it vibrated. With a notification on the Apple Watch, I do.
That’s partly because it’s way more accessible, but also because how incoming notifications work right now.
Receiving a notification works like this: you feel the Watch ‘tapping’ on your wrist, and if you turn your wrist to look at the screen, it will light up and show you the notification.
But, if you wait a few minutes and you look at your Watch you have to swipe down to see your notifications.
I didn’t expect this, but I don’t like touching my Apple Watch. It makes me feel like a huge nerd. I feel uncomfortable touching it near other people. I feel like Michael Knight from Knight Rider.
I feel embarrassed using it.
Even swiping from the top of the screen to see my latest notifications makes me feel uncomfortable. It must look so silly seeing someone holding his arm up while using his other hand touching a very small screen.
So I’d rather had an option that, whenever I look at my Apple Watch, it shows me my notifications unless I’ve seen them already.
Activity Tracker & Health. The Watch does a great job at measuring your activity. On a regular day I only reach one third of the daily exercise goal. I probably have to change a lot in my daily life to reach my daily goal.
Because I’m so far from reaching my goals, the Activity Tracker isn’t that motivating for me.
The Watch also tells you when you should stand up for a couple of minutes. I’ve been told to stand up while driving, or when I was trying to get some sleep. So I turned them off.
Personally I don’t find the Activity Tracker very motivating.
Digital Touch. The smileys, sending your heartbeat, or drawing something is creepy or hard on the small screen and gets boring very fast.
You can dictate messages using Siri, which actually works pretty well. But since I’m asking all my friends to download Telegram, and the dictate feature only works with the stock Apple apps, dictating is useless for me.
Moreover, talking to your Watch is even more Michael Knight than touching.
Non-techie friend review. One of my friends who absolutely isn’t into tech bought an Apple Watch four days ago. I asked him about his opinion on the Apple Watch, and it ends up, he isn’t as negative as I am. He gives the Apple Watch an 8/10!
- “I like the notifications!”
- “The Activity Tracker and work-out app are awesome and seem pretty accurate.”
- When I asked him about the Watch’s usability he said: “I think everything is pretty clear. Although, sometimes I have problems with pressing the Digital Crown. It feels too complicated and sometimes it’s confusing.”
- “I feel like they can do more with sending messages to each other, but this feels like the start.”
- “The battery is great!”
- “Shazam is awesome!” He didn’t mention the loading time of apps. When I asked him about that he said: “Well, taking your phone out of your pocket takes time as well, doesn’t it?”
- “Last week someone asked me if I needed to be somewhere because I was staring at my Watch a few times. I think staring at your Watch is almost as rude as checking your phone.”
- He didn’t know about Glances. ☺
Conclusion
I’ve been thinking about whether I would recommend an Apple Watch to someone. I do believe other people that the Apple Watch is one of the better smartwatches out there. The product itself feels good and is comfortable to wear.
I’m just not convinced on smartwatches in general. All I find useful is the notifications. I hoped Apple would sell me on more advantages of having a smartwatch. And without doing that a starting price of $ 350 / € 400 for the cheapest model is a lot of money.
Please press ‘Recommend’ and make my day!👊
