A year with Apple Watch
It’s not what I thought it’d be, but I can’t live without it.
I’ve had Apple Watch for almost a year now.
It’s not the device I thought it’d be. It does far less than I thought it would. But I wear it every day because it is so good at two key tasks that I cannot leave home without it.
It’s not about apps
Forget about replying to email, buying something from Amazon, or browsing headlines on your wrist. Hell, forget apps, period. Apple Watch is way too slow for that.
Here’s a simple example. I’ve tried to use a tip calculator, because it seems like a logical thing to access quickly. But it’s not quick. You’ll wait 5–10 seconds just for the app to load. Taps on the on-screen number pad consistently lag — doubly frustrating when you make a mistake, which you will do on a touchscreen that small.
It’s not just that it would have been quicker to pull out my phone. It’s also that every second feels far longer when you’re holding your arm up. Feel free to call me weak, call me unfit, but holding your arm up at an unnatural angle to use Apple Watch for more than a few seconds at a time does get tiring.
I have no doubt that Apple Watch apps will get better, especially as future version of the watch get faster. But right now, I ignore watch apps.
So why do I still wear Apple Watch? Notifications and fitness.
Notifications
Yeah, this sounds boring. But Apple Watch has made a huge change to how I use my smartphone.
We use lots of apps. Nielsen says people in the U.S. use about 27 smartphone apps a month. And most of those apps push notifications at us.
Just scrolling through my own iPhone, I have these notifications from the last four hours:
- iMessage
- NBA score updates from ESPN
- A friend is online in Star Wars Battlefront
- Tweetbot says I have new likes/RTs
- Someone replied to my post on Reddit
- Someone I follow has a new post on Medium
(Bear in mind that it is 4am, and these all came after midnight. This is, theoretically, a quiet time of day.)
When my iPhone is in my pocket, all of those notifications “feel” the same. I have to pull out my phone to figure out whether it’s an important text from my fiancée or a new follower on Pinterest. And nobody likes being around someone who’s constantly checking their phone.
Apple Watch is an elegant solution to this problem, because it has the ability to “disappear”.
Smartwatches are always accessible, but until you raise your arm they’re invisible. Lower your arm again, and they go away.
Of course, the Pebble smartwatch displays notifications too. Apple Watch’s ability to act on those notifications takes it to a whole new level. Yes, the interactions are relatively simple, for now. But quite a lot of the time, a simple response is all I need — a tap can “like” a tweet I’m mentioned in, or send a yes/no answer to an iMessage question.
Being able to quickly triage my notifications like this is huge. In a way, it almost feels liberating. I’m not constantly clutching my iPhone in my hand anymore. I don’t leave it on the table at dinner. If I’m missing anything, my watch will tell me.
Fitness
I’ve lost 10kg since I started working out with Apple Watch.
Don’t think I’m giving the watch all the credit. I had to actually do the hard work myself. But the watch helped, and the key? These circles right here:
Each circle represents a different type of activity. The outer circle is how many calories you’ve burned through movement; you can set that to whatever goal you’d like. The middle circle is how many minutes you’ve spent working out, up to 30. And the smallest circle is how many hours you’ve stood up and walked around for a couple of minutes, with a full circle being 12 hours.
These circles eat at my OCD. I want to close those circles. I want to keep closing those circles. If I’m close to closing the activity circle, I’ll go for a walk or take a longer route home.
I am not an active person, but the desire to close those circles is making me more active. And my weight loss is proof of that.
It’ll get better, but it’s great right now
At the end of the day, Apple Watch passes the big gadget test: If you stop using it, do you miss it?
There have been the odd few days where, for whatever reason, my Apple Watch hasn’t charged overnight. And on those days where I leave it at home, I miss it. I’ve conditioned myself to check my wrist to figure out why my phone is buzzing!
Yes, Apple Watch can be better. Cellular connectivity so it doesn’t need the iPhone would be great. It can be thinner. And it can definitely be faster. Actually: It MUST get faster.
But I like the current Apple Watch. It works for me. It’s made my life a little bit easier every day I’ve used it for the past year. That’s why I’ll keep using it.
