Apple Watch: worth it and here to stay

First, 3 quick thoughts after a month:

1. My 3 most common uses: to check time, to text, fitness tracking. (A close fourth and fifth: checking the weather and date.)
2. Apple’s apps are well-designed, great to use and load quickly.
3. Most third party apps suck — both in design and load time. #ThisWillChange (Three exceptions, which I really like:
   Yelp, New York Times, Uber.)

Second, there are three huge values to the Watch. These make me believe that smartwatches in general have staying power:

1. Subtle notifications. You can get a notification and quickly see if it’s important. In today’s age, we’re all always being notified. We all want to know what that notification was for, but most of us also want to be present.

It’s powerful to quickly learn if a notification is attention-worthy without checking your phone. For example, recently, in the midst of a great conversation with a friend, I got a notification. Normally, I would have interrupted and checked my phone. But I quickly glanced down, saw it was a text from another friend, and knew I didn’t need to reply. I did all this in one second (maybe less.) My friend never noticed and it didn’t interrupt the conversation like it would have if I pulled out my phone.

2. Discrete tasks. When I do anything on my phone, I almost inevitably get drawn in by something else (email… or Facebook… or Instagram… or the web… or a game… a random notification… etc.) On the Watch, if I quickly do one thing, that’s it. I’m not lured in to do something else. The Watch is a “one task and done” device. I do what I need to do and I’m back to reality, and I need to exercise zero self-control to do this.

3. Activity tracking and then some. The fitness tracker is about to be the MP3 Player and e-book reader all over again. MP3 Players were subsumed by smartphones. E-book readers were subsumed by tablets. Fitness trackers will be subsumed by smartwatches. It’s hard to argue with a device that nails it with the original job and adds additional value.

Specifically for the Apple Watch, I love how it tracks activity and how it seems to be quite accurate. The goal of completing the three circles (caloric burn, exercise and standing) has driven me to be more active overall. To wit, I went on a 3 mile walk this morning, which I wouldn’t have done without the Watch’s (then-empty) circles staring at me. Plus, while I’ve been writing, it tapped me to remind me to stand up.

In short, I’m happy. The 42mm Sport version I’m wearing is $399, which equals roughly $1.10 per day — if you assume I’ll just have it for a year (and I plan to have it more.)

Every day, I’ve found it worth more than $1.10 to have a well-designed, connected screen on my wrist and a fitness tracker that looks good.