On Watch and Nerds
In which I review my month of using the Apple Watch amidst a culture war on Nerds and Geeks.
Assimilation of nerd culture and renewal of anti nerd feelings.
It’s been said that we live in the “Age of the Nerd.” After many years in which the nerd, and its cousin the geek, were put-down in High Schools, Colleges, and Universities all over the world, the rise of the personal computer and the Internet transformed the world’s culture and put the nerd at its center. New companies doing new things, gadgets that sounded impossible a few years ago became so commonplace, so useful, so great that the nerd ascended to a new category of innovator, creator, and rich.
But oppression and emancipation moves like a pendulum and every minority, after gaining some recognition for their plight and an advance on its rights, suffers a setback, which tends to be more subtle and less direct. Normally, what happens is that certain aspects of the minority culture (and every minority has a culture that tends to be well defined at first) gets appropriated by the mainstream, this has been described, better than I can, by others.
What happens is that the assimilated aspects become detached from the minority and the non assimilated aspects of the culture start being put down and criticized as negative aspects. That way, what is considered “good” or “convenient” of the culture gets taken in, while the rest, and the minority itself, gets marginalized.
It would be hard to deny that this is happening with Nerd culture. Everybody around you, with a few exceptions, has adopted the gadget, mostly in the form of a phone, and the Internet as a central part of the way they live. Nevertheless, consumption and use of gadgets, or luxury gadgets, gets rutinely criticized in the mainstream as negative. Excessive use of devices is also deemed rude or negative for society.
This is where the idea that we shouldn’t use our phones in the company of others comes from. If I use my phone to communicate with others while you are with me, it doesn’t imply, necessarily, that I find you boring or less worthy. It’s just a sign that it can be done, and, hence, it gets done. I don’t need help to stop using my phone or the Internet, I am a grown human being, I use my phone and the Internet as much as I want, precisely because I want to.
With the introduction of the Apple Watch we have seen this criticism resurface in two ways. The first, is that the Watch is not needed, as if your phone was. The human being needs little to survive: food and protection from elements and predators should do it. Everything else can be criticized as superfluous, but it shouldn’t be. That everything else is what constitutes civilization, is what define us as human beings. Most of it was crafted by nerds that wanted to make things and share them with others. The Watch will not transform your life, but if you like technology and gadgets, it is a great device to have and play with.
So, those of us who watched Dick Tracy, Batman, Inspector Gadget, James Bond, and lusted over a future where we could do what our heroes did, are now considered worse humans for it. Mostly because we are nerds or geeks.
The second way in which this prejudice-wrapped criticism is presented is through opinions about the Apple Watch Edition, made out of 18 karat gold. Apple, it seems, has no right to make such a watch using that material. Those who buy it, or want to buy it, are just douchebags. This is extremelly surprising specially because that opinion comes mostly from people with a lot of money, that should be familiar with the fact that a lot of watches are made out of gold and that the only special characteristic of the people that buy and wear them is that they have disposable income. Well, we should remember that the quote “We don’t need no education” proves that the speaker needs some education about double negatives.
We shall write this review under the assumption that our esteemed reader believes that geeks and nerds (and others) have a right to lust after technology gadgets, and that rich geeks and nerds (and others) have a right to spend as much as they please in said gadgets, even buying them in expensive materials and that doing so constitutes nothing more than a testament to how much they appreciate the electronic capabilities inside.
This tweet by Benedict Evans presents perfectly the way we are going to divide this review. We believe Apple has created a technological artifact inside a well known form of jewelry: The traditional watch. We further believe that Apple intends to become a watch company and that line of thinking covers a lot of how we opine about the Watch and its launch.
Unless a source is quoted it should be assumed that what we say in speculative form is only our opinion.
The Apple Watch as a Watch
I am not a watch collector or a watch connoisseur. I have been a watch user most of my life. It started with a present of two Timex watches in the late sixties. I learned to appreciate the concept of time, the design, and the technology of watches. This love affair continued with several digital watches in the seventies, culminating with my first automatic watch, a steel Rolex that was a given to me by my brother in law because he had bought a gold one in Switzerland.
A lot of my watches were gifts, I still have an Omega, a Movado, and a Tag Heuer, that were presents from someone. Also a Cartier that my ex-wife and I bought, one for each of us, in lieu of rings for my second marriage. I love the way they are designed, I love looking at them and wearing them. I love finding out how they work and what makes them special. I hate sending them to repair or service, something that has to be done often and at a high cost.
Only one of these watches is a heirloom (the Movado), and I have to laugh about the often made argument, when confronted with the Apple Watch (specially the Edition), that watches are bought because they are timeless pieces (get it?), that will last a long time, and be appreciated for generations. The watch in question, a Movado from the 50s, belonged to a great uncle who died childless. He didn’t think of me, probably didn’t think of anyone, when he bought the watch. He liked it, could afford it, and decided to buy it. And yes, that’s a gold watch. No, watches, even those made out of gold, are not bought with the express intention of making them heirlooms.
The Editon version of the Watch, made out of gold, with a price tag between $10,000 and $17,000, has confused the tech press thoroughly. As a whole the Tech press tends to be very lazy (see below). Really, the reason for the existance of the gold version is a lot more mundane. It is well known that if you give three choices a lot of people automatically classify them in three categories: the cheap, the normal, and the expensive. Apple wanted the aluminium Watch to be the “cheap” (despite of its elevated price) and the steel to be considered normal, in order to stay at the same level of normal watch makers. To do that it needed a third more expensive option, they probably considered several and settled for a very expensive gold option. Using gold was easy, since a lot of watches are, traditionally, made of that material. Slightly more surprising is Apple’s decision not to sell a gold link bracelet model. They seemed to have made it, but they won’t sell it, at least not yet.
Of course, part of the reason for deciding to make a gold Watch was simply that watches are commonly made out of gold. But the common material for expensive watches is high quality stainless steel. Most luxury watches have a sapphire christal and that is what Apple uses in all but the “cheap” aluminium “Sport” model. Apple decided to call the steel version just “Watch.” That’s the normal, weirdly nameless option. The gold version is called “Edition.” Not limited or special, just “Edition.” I believe this name hints that Apple will make this a special edition that is limited in availability both in space and time. Apple has already limited the space, only certain selected Apple Stores and third parties sell the Watch Edition. I think it will also become unavailable before other versions. It may be that Apple will present variations of the Watch Edition throughout its availability (maybe a gold link bracelet?). Making different bands and presentations to go with the Edition name. I think that’s the reason Apple doesn’t sell the Edition bands separately. Only the steel ones. This decision also allows Apple to make the difference between a $10,000 Watch Edition and a $17,000 one to be only a leather band with some gold elements that do not cost anywhere near the (almost) $7,000 difference (accounting for the price of the rubber band with a small gold accent).
To put it succinctly, externally Apple has made an outstading job in making the Watch not only a watch, but a beautiful watch. The three models and the bands have a subtlety of design and an understated look that makes them comparable to luxury watches in similar materials. Even the rubber band, that Apple calls fluoroelastomer, feels elegant and supple.
I think at the level of watch, Apple has failed badly in the design of the Watch faces. They are not pretty enough, nor useful enough. There are too many imperfect options, and still the absence of particular options is perplexing. For a complete review of the current faces read this. One of Apple more curious omission is the Apple logo. It isn’t in any of the faces, something that I would have liked to have very much. I managed to “hack it” by pasting the Apple Logo into the monograph field of the Apple Watch App on my iPhone, but the result is not satisfactory as the logo looks disproportionally small for the face. Also, the monograph can only appear on the “Color” face. Who knows why.
Part of the problem is the use, and limitations, of the complications. These are, in classical watches, any sort of information the watch provides apart from time. Apple has decided to make a square watch, which is the right decision from the gadget perspective, but the wrong decision from the watch perspective, and then has put the complications in the corners with the round faces in the middle, most of the time. The lack of options, both from third parties and otherwise, ends up being baffling. Why can’t I use the field for date for something else? Why aren’t there more digital options for faces? Why isn’t there a single analog square shaped face? At the end, this has convinced me that the best faces are those without complications and as simple as possible, they look better, if a little small. But then you are sacrificing the at a glance info, which is very important for a watch. You can hide the faces you don’t use, and keep only the ones you like. Even several versions of the same face with different colors or complications. That makes it easier to change from a few faces that you really like.
Apple has done a lot of things the way other watch makers do them. For example, they measure the two Watch sizes (38mm and 42mm) by the largest vertical distance when the watch is perpendicular to the floor, as all watches do. Also, Apple does not say the Watch is waterproof, it emphatically says it isn’t. Waterproof has no meaning. For something to be waterproof it should stand being submerged in anything that could be called water, at any depth, for any amount of time and survive unscathed. Nothing can do that. Watch makers that say their watches are “Waterproof” are not serious and are lying. Instead Apple says that the
Apple Watch is splash and water resistant but not waterproof. You can, for example, wear and use Apple Watch during exercise, in the rain, and while washing your hands, but submerging Apple Watch is not recommended. Apple Watch has a water resistance rating of IPX7 under IEC standard 60529. The leather bands are not water resistant.
The rating IPX7 means that the Apple Watch survives being submerged in one meter of pure water for half an hour or less. Nothing more. Even though the Apple Watch has demonstrated to survive a much tougher test that’s not a promise Apple is willing to make. In this case Apple is also acting exactly like other (serious) watch makers, what they promise is a lot less than what the watch can really do.
I believe Apple’s intention is to become a watch company. Watch companies are not very large, neither in number of watches they sell (Swatch, owner of several brands besides its namesake including Omega and Longiness, sells around 30 million watches a year and it’s the top seller by that measure), nor in terms of money they make (Swatch ties with Rolex with yearly revenue of around $5 billion for the top spot). That means that Apple doesn’t need to do much to become the top watch seller in the world by both, or any,measures. Apple will have to do more in order to sell those watches, in particular, the current store experience is deficient, both in terms of models and in terms of looks. Apple Stores look like computer or electronic stores, not watch stores. Having only one model will not fit the different tastes that people have about watches. The limited number of faces and options magnifies this problem, Apple should allow third party faces and options as soon as it is feasible. I believe Apple will not introduce a new model every year, as it does with other gadgets, but will rather introduce several models and variations with similar functionality for years to come. If I am right, an Apple Store will look more like a Swatch store than a electronics store.
The Apple Watch as a gadget
One criticism that has been levied against the Watch is that it is a 1.0 gadget that will be superseded by next year’s faster, better version. This is, of course, a gadget criticism and a gadget view. But, also, one that doesn’t take into account the real history of gadgets. When a new iPhone comes out the previous version does not stop working. It works exactly as before and it last, and it is used, for many years afterwards, sometimes with a different owner. I still have the original iPod, from 2001, it still works, the battery still last long enough to use, even after 14 years. I also have the original Newton from 1992, it still works. Of course, I am no longer using these gadgets daily, I keep them as souvenirs, as collectors items, as proof of my long standing supposed “Apple Cred.” Who says I won’t be able to do the same with the Watch? This is one of the reasons I decided on the steel version (with a Milanese loop plus a green rubber band for exercising), another being having my Apple Watch join my collection of watches. This watch is mine and will not be passed on, even if I ever buy a new one. But I believe Apple will, at least for some years, not force us to buy new watches, but rather give us reasons to do so, using design rather than gadget features. We will see if this prediction, central to my thinking about the Watch, pans out.
The battery was my main worry about the Watch usability. My iPhone 6+ battery lasts a whole day easily, but I still get in trouble through overuse, making a long voice call, for example, or through having a particularly long day. Normally, I have chargers available and I recharge my iPhone when I need to. A watch is not a phone, if the battery doesn’t last and the watch turns off it is not as concerning as not being able to make a call or communicate with others, as when the phone battery peters out. Nevertheless, not being able to use the Watch when I want to would not be great, specially if it happened frequently. The good news is that the battery is outstanding. It has managed to last every single day with battery to spare, even in days when I have overused the Watch on purpose, doing things as oppening and using every single app available in a row. The bad news is that Apple accomplished this feat by being very stingy with screen time. Yes, raising your wrist to glance at the watch will turn on the screen, but sometimes the screen will turn off before you can see the info you wanted. I would love for Apple to allow a configuration on how long the screen stays on, so I can decide to risk my battery in exchange of using the Watch how I want to.
My health and fitness story starts several years ago. When I was a teenager several doctors told me I may suffer from high blood pressure. At some point I became convinced that my high blood pressure was caused by doctors. Taking my pressure away from them would result in a fairly normal reading, except with respect to my heartbeat. My heartbeat rate is slightly higher than normal, probably a sign that I am out of shape. I have used a Basis B1 since it came out, because it could read my heart rate and I can look at it on the website with a really nice graph, and see if it is increasing or not as I keep up with my daily exercises. You can read my review of the Basis B1 here, though that model, and the new ones, are much more advanced now thanks to software updates. I would not buy a smartwatch without a heart rate sensor. The sensor allows the watch not only to measure my heart rate, but also to calculate a calorie count that is more precise than with other gadgets. What Apple has done with health and fitness is one of the successes of the Apple Watch. The heart rate is measured every ten minutes or so and the Health App in your iPhone provides a good graphical reading of a time period, with minimum and maximum rates. All very useful.
When you tell the Watch you are going to do a workout it measures your heart rate more frequently and calculates active calories. Most fitness gadgets will not give you this information. The Apple Watch calculates a resting calorie burn rate from your height, weight, and age and separately calculates your active calories using your heart rate. None of this is terribly precise, but increasing those numbers is normally a good sign, health wise. Workouts are not really measured as the Watch doesn’t know what you are really doing, just assumes you are not lying and tries to calculate calories and other info from there with as much help as it can get (GPS, accelerometer, gyroscpe, etc) from your iPhone. But you can tell it you are going for a run and then get on a Segway or just walk and the Watch will try to cope. This is in contrast with what other gadgets, like the Basis, try to do. The Basis will attempt to detect whether you are on a bike, or running, or walking. On the other hand, the list of activities you can tell the Apple Watch you are doing is much larger than what other devices can possibly detect. Neither the Apple Watch, nor most health and fitness oriented watches and gadgets are able to measure swimming, due to the difficulty of making them water resistant.
The other prominent fitness feature of the Watch is that it will tell you to stand up and move every hour or so. Again, in contrast to the Basis, the Watch actually tells you that you have to stand up once in a while. The Basis will just complain that you have not stood for an hour and that day you would not earn the corresponding achievement. You only get the Basis achievement if you did some activity every hour from 9am to 5pm. I find the way the Apple Watch does this much more effective. If you have not done a minute of activity in the current hour, the Watch will warn you when you have ten minutes left, if you move during those ten minutes for at least a minute it will tell you that you succeeded. Of course, this means you may stay innactive for as much as an hour and 59 minutes. To succeed for the day you have to stand at least 12 hours. No matter which ones. The message the Watch gives is the only confusing point in this process, it tells you you have to stand up, sometimes while you are standing up. In reality, you have to move a little. Even just moving your arm, say while driving or in a movie theater, will be enough to achieve the goal. Apple has badges and achievements and prompts you to modify your goals when it decides they are inadequate, either because you are not challenging yourself enough.
The apps are really the least important aspect of the Watch. They are just views for the phone. Most third party apps are still immature and not very useful, but I expect that to change as developers start using their watches. Some apps are gems (Overcast, Calculator+, Dark Sky) others are an enigma. For example, in the Starbucks app you can do very little that is useful, it has a “pay” option that just informs you that you have to use the Passcode app for that. Having too many applications is really not very useful (I have eliminated most of them after writing this review). It is upsetting that Apple official apps can’t be hidden. My view is that there are already too many apps to make that screen useful, even before adding third party apps. I recommend a vertical or diagonal arrangement of the apps with the most used apps towards the extremes and the exterior of your shape. Do the app arrangement using the iPhone app not the the Watch itself as targets are small. Using the iPhone Watch App you also get to decide which apps appear on the Watch, which ones give you notifications and which ones will provide with “Glances.”
Glances are short views that you can get to by swipping up from the Watch face. As with many aspects of the Watch if you use too many you make it harder to see the one that you need at a given moment. The same applies to notifications. It is better to limit notifications to those that you really need, leave the rest for the iPhone. I wish I could have the option to display only some notifications of a particular app to the Watch, for example, allow my children’s iMessages to ping me on the wrist, but not those from others.
There is no input on the Watch, that is no keyboard, there is a way to set standard answers to iMessages in the iPhone app. You can also send emojis and three customizable animated emojis (face, hand, and heart). If you get an iMessage with options like “Do you want Sushi or Italian for dinner?” the Watch will include the short answers “Sushi” and “Italian” among your options to reply. But the main method for input is through Siri. You can either raise your wrist and say “Hey Siri” while the Watch is on or keep the Digital Crown pressed until Siri appears. It takes a while to understand that you can start speaking almost immediately. For some reason, Siri seems to works much better on the Watch than it does on the iPhone, though it doesn’t speak. I don’t know if the reason the Watch understands you better than in the iPhone is due to a better microphone or just normal server side evolution of the software. It isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, maintaining the typical A.I. errors that always occur. For example, if you ask Siri “When do the Red Sox play at Miami?” Siri will just give you the next few games between the Boston Red Sox and the Miami Marlins, not exclusively the ones at Miami like you asked. I was surprised that Siri understood correctly my dictation of the answer to a message in the Watch. Even more surprised to see that the Watch will let you chose between sending it as audio or as text, a very good idea since punctuation is very hard to get right (Hint: you have to dictate it). I was even more surprised to find out that I could dictate in Spanish sometimes and in English other times, getting garbage if I had tried the language for which the Watch wasn’t ready. It took me a long time to find out that the language corresponds to the keyboard you have selected in your iPhone (I switch between English and Spanish keyboards frequently). Remembering which was the last keyboard I used is very hard, but this solution is better than just choosing one language and ignoring all others. As with the keyboard in my iPhone, I would much prefer that the device understood two or more languages at the same time.
Besides the touch screen, that can be “forced touched,” the Watch has two physical buttons. One is the Digital Crown. This is a very nice and distinctive crown deviated from the center to give room to the other button, called the Side Button. One of the issues with the Watch is that it is hard to know what each of the controls does in any given screen. You have to spend some time discovering what clicking on the screen, force touching (clicking hard) on the screen, clicking the crown, double clicking the crown, or rotating the crown does. Each one of these gesture is context dependent. At times is seems to have no rhyme or reason, prompting people to want to reform it. It isn’t hard to get used to it, but there is room for improvement.
By contrast the Side Button (as maintaining the crown pressed) does what it does regardless of context. If you press the side button you get 12 special contacts, selected from your iPhone favorites through the iPhone Watch app. These are the 12 people that if they happen to have a Apple Watch you can communicate with them in new fangled ways. I thank Zeus I have few friends so I still have space left there. If you have more than 12 friends that are favorites and all with watches you have a tough decision ahead. With these favorites, and only with them, you can exchange new ways to communicate using the Apple Watch. You can send sketches, drawings done on the Watch, or taps that the receiver feels as touches on the wrist, or even share your heartbeat. Call me unromantic, but I think this is stupid beyond measure. I doubt anyone will be using these features after the novelty wears off and I have threatened to remove from my favorites any Watch wearing friend that dares to send me his/her heartbeat. Why Apple decided this function was so important that it needed a dedicated hardware button is beyond me. If it could be configured I would have changed it at once. I would also have preferred that the Side Button didn’t exist and the Digital Crown were properly centered.
If you long press the Side button you get a Shutdown screen where you can Power off, put the Watch in Power Reserve mode, or lock your Watch, so that it requires a Pin to access its functions. Not in any manual is the fact that you can use this screen to “Force Quit” misbehaving apps. If an app seems hanged, long press the Side Button until the Shutdown screen appears, then long press again to go back to the Apps screen, you can try your application again, you may get lucky. In Power Reserve mode the Watch just shows the time and it has to be restarted (by long pressing the Side button) in order to restore the Watch normal functions. You can also put the Watch in Power Reserve mode in the Battery glance screen. This is the mode that your Watch will get in if you run the battery down. It last quite a long time in this mode, I did not managed to run it down to a death watch before losing my patience. I don’t know why you would voluntarily put the Watch in Power Reserve mode, some situtation in which you want to save battery for later? Can’t think of a good example.
Some of the tech press was surprised that the Apple Watch could be stolen and thieves could bypass the 4 digit pin with which the Watch protects your information. I wish I could think of a few snarky comments to make here. I guess they completely forgot that the Watch does not have a very fast CPU, a way to select WiFi access point, a keyboard, or how easy it is to guess a 4 digit pin with enough tries. Apple tries to protect your info by forcing the Watch to ask for a pin when you take it off, and giving you the option to erase the Watch if someone puts the wrong pin more than ten times, but that’s not enough! We, the ignoramuses, demand remote wiping and encryption from this device! Ignorance is a wonderful thing.
One particular thing with the Watch, it is very hard to “demo” it to other people, not only you have to stand awkwardly close, almost hugging them. But also, what do you show them? It is a very personal device. Apple presentations and ads are a much better way for someone to understand how the Watch is supposed to be used.
The luxury watch makers are as confused with the Apple Watch as a gadget as the Tech press is with the Apple Watch as a watch. Will the smartwatch create a crisis for the Swiss industry comparable to the quartz crisis? The Swiss industry survived that crisis by assimilating the quartz movement, mostly through Swatch, but it was reduced to almost a third of its previous size. The reason for that is that the reaction to the threat was slow and not very wise, and that’s the key now also. At that time, there wasn’t a competitor of Apple’s caliber, this time there is. Panicking moves will get you nowhere. Luxury watches should stay luxurious and mechanical and quaint, but some watchmakers have to look at how they will compete with Apple Watch and other smartwatches.
Will Apple succeed with the Watch? It is hard to bet against them with the track record they have, but they may have a special kind of success/failure scenario. Apple may become the largest watch maker by any measure and still be criticized for making the Watch. If critics do as they have done with the iPad (deemed it a failure because it’s not as big a business as the iPhone and furthermore is not a continuously increasing business), they will have a field day with the Watch. It is very difficult to really grow continuously and get to a size comparable to the iPhone’s. Not everybody will buy a Watch and very few people will be willing to get a new one every couple of years. We do that with our phones and probably with nothing else. There is also the possibility that the failure of the Watch is comparable to the failure of the Cube or, even worse, the HiFi, though I doubt this will happen. Even though, Apple is already being accused of having supply constrains and soft demand simultaneously! I think the launch of the Watch demonstrated that there is ample interest. The Apple Watch is probably already the best seller smartwatch in history. I believe as people see it they will see the value of owning one. If Apple sees problems with demand, we may see a drastic price reduction, but that will be a harder hit than when they did it for the iPhone. I believe that with the Watch, Apple will reach a reasonable number of iPhone users at first, and later on, use the Watch as a reason to switch to the iPhone. I, for one, am looking forward to seeing Apple transform itself into the biggest watch company in the world.
