Time Ain’t on My Side
Wait for (at least) the second generation of Apple Watches before buying.
As a fan of Apple’s products, I was quite excited when the Apple Watch was revealed a few months ago. I was likewise very disappointed to learn that the model that caught my eye, the 42mm stainless steel with link bracelet, would set me back a cool $999. Sadly the functionality isn’t compelling enough yet for me to consider paying even half that much. It’s basically a neat toy, and while I’d love to have one, I prefer paying my mortgage.
But the real question is, assuming the functionality is compelling, is it a good idea to invest in a first-generation Apple product? To me, the answer is definitely no. Apple’s first-gen products (and indeed, first-generation products from virtually every company in the world now), while often revolutionary, are just not a good value proposition for most people. As much as they don’t want to admit it to themselves, first-generation purchasers are increasingly large-scale beta testers. And for me, plopping down $350+ on something that clearly hasn’t been fully baked just doesn’t make sense.
As if to prove my point, Apple experienced supplier problems with the “taptic engine” component (which provides haptic feedback), resulting in shipping delays for many Apple Watches. Apple claims to have found the issue before any were shipped to customers, and remedied the problem by switching to a new supplier. But I’m inclined to agree with John Gruber that there’s a high likelihood that at least some Apple Watches sold to end-users have this problem. That leaves first-gen purchasers using a device possibly containing a broken haptic feedback component, and definitely featuring questionable battery life and apparent scratch issues.
Ben Lovejoy at 9to5Mac recently wrote an interesting piece about whether the improvements in watchOS 2 (the upcoming software update for the Apple Watch) are sufficient to draw “first-generation refuseniks” like me into the fold. I would post a link to the article here just for the wonderful phrase “first-generation refuseniks”, a group of which I am proudly a member. But it was also worth a mention for the last few paragraphs:
[W]hile software enhancements are one thing, hardware improvements [are] another. And nobody outside Apple knows yet what the new hardware may offer. The smart money has to be on an extra sensor or two. Maybe better battery-life…Will there be visible differences? A slimmer model is always a possibility.
My favorite line of the article was at the end: “[b]uying a 1st-gen product is a gamble.” Yup. A gamble that, with first-generation Apple products, just isn’t worth the potential payout. I still remember having been burned by buying a first-gen iPad, with its measly 256MB of RAM, and then seeing it obsoleted quickly after. The iPad 2 (which had 512MB of RAM) is still receiving software updates some four years later. The iPad 1 couldn’t be upgraded past iOS 5.1.1, and went out to pasture less than two years after I bought it.
Lovejoy didn’t mention the high probability that the next version of the Apple Watch will also feature a faster system on a chip (SoC) that will improve performance. The Verge has previously noted that the Apple Watch’s performance sometimes “stutters”, resulting in it becoming “unresponsive”. And although watchOS can always be updated to perform better, the S1 SoC in the first-gen Apple Watch is not upgradeable. The only way to improve it will be to buy an entirely new watch.
Do yourself a favor and wait a year or two. As it always does, Apple will no doubt bump the Watch’s battery life up, refine its software, improve its performance, make it lighter, and probably get its price down a bit too. (Nine hours to cut the links for a single link bracelet? Yikes. No wonder it’s $449.) Your wrist, and your wallet, will thank me later.
