My Thoughts After Visiting My Local Apple Store

I visited the Apple Store recently, and I really should have taken photos while I was there…

Alas, without photos, I leave you with my thoughts in words regarding the experience, after returning home:

I had not scheduled an appointment to try on Apple Watch, but I intended to do so. It was a little off-putting that there weren’t open time slots on the Apple Store App before I had gone, but once I was in store, appointment slots opened up. I’m not sure why that is, but whatever, I’m not too angry.

I really appreciated that the Genius I spoke to was able to book me an appointment for about 10 minutes from the current time, and then took it upon himself to get my appointment going right away. He was attentive to my needs, and he was also knowledgeable and excited about the Watch. He had just gotten his Watch the day before (42mm steel with link bracelet) and he was still very excited about it. I liked that a lot.

I wanted to try on the 38mm and 42mm watches and I wanted to try on the green sport band and black sport band. Unfortunately, the green sport band wasn’t available for try-on (at least at my store) which I think is silly. At least it was available in the Apple Watch product case, so I could see it.

I tried on the 42mm Space Grey Apple Watch Sport and the 38mm Apple Watch Sport with White Sport Band. The Space Grey Sport with black band looks perfectly at home on my wrist. I Love it. I Want it. The 38mm Watch looked just silly small on me. The white sport band is also definitely not for me.

I did think that the sport bands were insanely comfortable and felt premium. The Taptic Engine felt amazing - like a very real, literal tap on the wrist. The screen looked wonderful. I also enjoyed the UI/UX of the Apple Watch. It did take some explaining to my girlfriend, who also went to the store with me, who is most definitely a normal.

I also took a look at the new MacBook (the one announced this year with Retina Display and insane thinness). The Space g=Grey MacBook looks incredible, and feels even better. I’m not sure why this color finish was not available earlier, but it looks incredible now. Gold and Silver also look good.

I forgot to try the keyboard, but my girlfriend had no problem with it. The trackpad was… interesting, honestly. It was initially configured with “tap-to-click” on, which was unexpected and I didn’t like at all. After I messed with it, I got it working pretty well, but it still felt weird. My girlfriend did think that it was an actual clicking button mechanism, so, I mean, that should tell you that it works.

Force Click seems useful, but I didn’t take the time to really get it configured to the force level that worked for me. I kept accidentally triggering Force Click when I meant to just regularly click.

The most incredible thing about the MacBook is that it makes the MacBook Air feel thick and heavy. That’s no small feat. That being said, I am still excited about the 13" MacBook Air 2013. At the cost of buying a used MacBook Air 2013, it seems like a good compromise right now between thin and light of the new MacBook and power of MacBook Pro, all while keeping the cost low enough that I could upgrade next year or two years from now and not have a problem.