Week One with Apple Watch
Itâs been a week of Apple Watch - so hereâs my preliminary review.
First things first, my unit is the 42mm Apple Watch Sport in âSpace Greyâ (itâs black) with the Sport Band. Â Itâs $545 taxes in for the watch plus $68 for AppleCare on top. Â You can shave about $50 off that price by going for the 38mm model, but I wanted the most screen real estate I could get.
First things first - the physical device. Â In the marketing and promotion materials, I wasnât too taken with its design. Â Iâm a round watchface kind of guy - all my analog watches are round - and after the wow factor of the Moto 360 smartwatch, I was hoping for something a little more breathtaking in the design department. Â
After wearing it for a week, Iâm appreciating the design of this watch. Â I donât think itâs got that incredible gut-grabbing factor that other Apple products have had in the past - Iâm remembering in particular the design shift from the iPhone 3G to the iPhone 4 - but itâs certainly well-made. Â I was sold on the Sport model after a chat with an Apple Genius about my habits and what would be the lightest and most resilient watch. Â She recommended the Sport model for both.
I moved up to Apple Watch from the Pebble. Â The Pebbleâs also square, but sharper; itâs all plastic, so it weighs next to nothing. Â Going from the Pebble to my titanium Citizen is a hugely noticeable difference. Â Going from the Pebble to the Apple Watch, not so much. Â I barely ever notice itâs there on my wrist; itâs not âweightlessâ like the Pebble is, which I donât feel the weight of even when Iâm thinking about it, but itâs very close. Â I was expecting it to be heavier - and that it is not is a good thing to me.
The screen is a nightmare for fingerprints. Â Thereâs no way around it, and yet while I might not care as much on my iPhone 6, on a device with so much polish thatâs always visible, I get obsessive about it. Â Iâm constantly wiping the screen off on my shirt to get rid of the smudges. Â Often pulling up Glances by accident while doing so. Â But Iâm getting ahead of myself.
The display itself is gorgeous. Â Again, after using the e-ink screen on the Pebble Smartwatch, this incredible color display, at Retina levels - is a daily delight. Â Watching the second hand flow across the screen on my Utility watchface is a whole new world from the pixellated, jarring movements of the Pebbleâs e-ink screen refreshing itself.
The âdigital crownâ is not a revolution in user interface technology.  Itâs a goddamn spinning wheel, just like all my analog watches have had for decades.  I donât find that it makes navigating or using the Apple Watch particularly better - in the sense that it prevents me from obscuring parts of the screen with my sausage fingers, yes - but it does glide quite nicely, Iâll give it that.  You can click the crown once to go out to your apps display, double-click it to go to your last app, or long-hold it to activate Siri.
I donât like the press of the digital crown very much so far. Â That is, unless Iâm pressing it with my index finger with my thumb on the other side of the watch, bracing it, it feels off - if I click it with my index finger only, the force exerted on the watch and the crown is diagonal. Â Iâm sure Iâm just âusing it wrongâ.
Speaking of using it wrong, I was the stupid guy who couldnât figure out the Sport Band. Â Yes, there are instructions that come in the box. Â No, I didnât read any of the instructions before I jumped right into using it. Â Yes, I was trying to push the leading end of the watchstrap into the tuck before pushing holder through. Â Iâve got it now, and the Sport Band really is a pleasure to wear. Â I thought it was going to feel cheap and plasticky, like the bands I used to have on my old Casio watches, but it has a near leather feel to it.
So Iâve mentioned several times in the past that Iâm a watch guy. Â Iâve worn watches my whole life and I find them to be elegant machines. Â I love my analog watches, even though I donât wear them as much anymore unless itâs specifically accessorized. Â I feel naked and vulnerable without a watch on my wrist, even though Iâll forget the time a split second after looking at my wrist. Â So the first thing that Apple Watch had to do to impress me was function well as a watch.
Again, my context here is the Pebble. Â Whatever its shortcomings in design and polish, the Pebble performs admirably and dependably as a watch. Â Its only downfall, I would say, is the constant glitching of the screen that I had through the four units Iâve owned, which made the time unreadable.
The Apple Watch has predetermined watchfaces. Â You can further customize each watchface with different colors, displays, and information to have multiple instances of the same watchface serving completely separate functions. Â Iâve deleted almost all of the watchfaces save one instance of Utility, an analog-looking one (and my picture at the top) and one instance of Modular, a more digital/modern information-packed take. Â I really enjoy Utility, but unless I need to be tracking the second hand (e.g. during workouts), Iâve found myself gravitating toward Modular as my default.
The Watch blanks its display when ânot in useâ.  It, of course, determines when itâs not in use.  After about 10-20 seconds of inactivity, itâll blank itself out - which is not the best thing if youâre tracking time or paying attention to an information display.  You can turn your wrist toward you or raise it to activate the watch - I find this works most of the time, and when it doesnât, it usually takes just a little more of a turn to get it to catch. Â
There is about a half-second to second delay on the screen turning on, and I thought it would drive me insane, but it hasnât.  If anything, itâs âprimedâ me to receive the information - I take more actual notice of the time, instead of glancing away a second later and forgetting what time it is.  Iâm not saying that itâs by design or that itâs a function that should be praised; it just happens to work that way in my case.
Battery life was the other major concern. Â Now, I havenât been driving my Watch particularly hard, but I have been wearing it from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, so from about 6AM to 11-12PM. Â Iâd say that gives it a good 18-hour runtime with my light use. Â Iâve ended some days well in excess of 50% battery remaining. Â You can see in my above picture - it was taken at 7PM and it has 75% battery remaining. Â This has allayed my fears about having a useless device on my wrist from batteries running out in the middle of the day. Â My story might change when I take it into the field or on a camping trip, but so far, itâs exceeding all my expectations.
The resident OS on the watch isnât particularly complicated. Â It comes up by default on the watchface - you can change it to come up as whatever it was on before, but timekeeping is my watchâs primary function, so I keep it there. Â Click the crown once and you go to your screen of apps. Â
This screen of apps is the bane of my existence. Â Itâs on a hexagonal layout, not a grid layout like iOS - presumably to be able to pack more icons into a smaller space. Â You can move around it using the touchscreen and zoom in and out with the crown. Â Reorganizing apps on this hex plot is a nightmare. Â Apps move where you donât want them to and itâs like those puzzles where itâs a jumbled picture with one square missing that you have to endlessly shuffle to get all the pieces to line up right.
The design is also terrible, I find. Â There are four orange circles for four different built-in Watch functions or apps - Timer, Stopwatch, Alarm, and World Clock. Â World Clock is easy to distinguish because itâs a picture of a globe in the orange circle. Â Okay, fine. Â Timer, Stopwatch, and Alarm are all different variations on the image of a clock. Â Is it that hard to figure out if you stop and look and think? Â No. Â Should they all be orange circles with the depiction of a clock on them? Â No.
Also, given such limited real estate, youâd think youâd be able to replace or hide the stock apps. Â If there is such an ability, I havenât found it yet. Â So Iâve got all sorts of clutter in the form of Weather (replaced for Yahoo Weather), Calendar (replaced for Fantastical), Stocks, Remote, Workouts, Mail (unused, since I use Mailbox on my iPhone)... and I have to push these apps around on this hexagonal plot, screwing up my layout and causing additional frustration as I fix it.
First world problems, I get it, itâs not the end of the world. Â But itâs not the elegance and simplicity that I expect from an Apple device.
For the most part, the software seems to work. Â That is to say, I havenât experienced any crashes or hangups on it to date. Â Itâs responsive enough 95% of the time, especially since I mainly only use the built-in apps; using third-party apps does tend to take considerably longer. Â For example, booting up Yahoo Weather cold can take 5-10 seconds only to be greeted by a random set of weather information for another 5-10 seconds before it finally loads and displays the correct data. Â Iâd be an idiot to sit there raging at my watch for 20-30 seconds when I could pull my phone out of my pocket and have the same data in 3 seconds.
Thereâs the Apple Watch app on your iPhone that the Watch pairs with. Â You can set a bunch of customization options and load new apps through it. Â I find the Apple Watch app is incredibly sluggish and frustrating to use - probably because it has to talk back and forth with the watch to pull and push data on the fly - and I prefer to not touch it when I can help it.
Siri seems to be pretty solid. Â I donât use Siri on my phone, so this is my first time really using it, and Iâm pleased so far. Â Being able to hold the crown to bring up Siri and then setting a reminder for tomorrow night by speaking naturally went off without a hitch. Â Thereâs a delay between the commands being spoken and them translating to words on the screen, and thatâs to be expected, but lessening that flash-to-bang lag would make the experience much more seamless.
Glances and Notifications
Swipe up from the bottom of the screen and you get Glances. Â Glances are little cards that you can swipe left and right through to get whatever data view it is you want. Â The leftmost screen is your control widget - you can turn on Airplane Mode, Do Not Disturb, and Mute. Â You can also ping your phone, which I used once by accident and immediately regretted. Â Iâm sure thatâll be handy for someone at some point, but why it takes up a full third of that control widget is beyond me.
My second Glance is Activity.  I discuss Activity in more depth below - but itâs awesome to be able to pull that up right there.  If I want more detailed information, I tap on the Glance and it takes me into the Activity app.  My gripe here is that the Activity glance and the landing screen of the Activity app are pretty much exactly the same.  Iâve swiped down from the Activity app several times trying to âdismiss the Glanceâ only to realize I was in the app.
Next, I have Fantastical. Â It gives me a 24-hours-out projection of any calendar entries I have. Â If I donât have anything 24 hours out, it tells me thereâs nothing scheduled. Â Neat. Â Iâd love to be able to tweak the projection time - maybe to 48 or 72 hours - but I can see why they might limit it for conciseness.
Next is Yahoo Weather. Â This app takes a while to pull its data, way longer than all the other ones. Â So most of the time Iâm stuck at it telling me that itâs -1C (I wish), feels like -7C with 10% humidity and winds at 22.53 kph. Â When it works, though, itâs great. Â Temperature, temperature with windchill/humidity, and windspeed are my critical weather info that I always look for.
Next I have Music.  Normal stuff - it displays the track, artist, gives volume control and playback control.  This is where the Watch is definitely not superior to the Pebble - on the Pebble, I have physical buttons for pause/play, next, and previous.  On the Watch, I have to tap on the screen and hit the target.  Doesnât sound like a big deal at all, but itâs an annoyance not to be able to control my music âblindâ when the phoneâs in my pocket during a workout or when Iâm driving.  Using Music controls on the Pebble was simple, a one-second interaction that didnât even merit thought.  On the Watch, Iâd have to go into the Glances, move to the Music card, and make sure I hit the right button on the screen.  Definitely not something I want to do while driving, and a pain in the ass when youâre on the treadmill.
Anyway, you can set what apps you want on your Glances through the Apple Watch app, and change the order of them as well.  I like them, theyâre a great way to quickly access information, and I can see this being the primary way I interact with the âhigherâ functions of the Apple Watch, not going into individual apps on that infuriating hexagonal screen.  But for them to be useful, theyâll have to get a lot faster and better at drawing data from their respective apps.  Mostly faster.  Iâm looking at you, Yahoo Weather.
Notifications are pretty straightforward.  I like the way theyâve implemented them - when one comes in, your watch dings (if youâve got sound enabled) and gives you a âTapticâ feedback or whatever marketing term theyâre using for it.  Itâs a forceful directional haptic event from the bottom of the watch that feels like a tap on your wrist.  I had to turn Taptic to full and enable an extra option to make it especially forceful for it to be useful.  Itâs better and more discreet than Pebbleâs vibrate alert.
So, on notification, you get the ding and the Taptic if you have them enabled. Â But the screen doesnât display anything, unlike the Pebble, which would throw the notification on the screen right away for x amount of time until it was actioned or timed out. Â For Watch, if you want to view the notification, you raise or turn your wrist. Â You can set an additional privacy feature for it to not show the contents of your notification until you tap on it - so when you receive an iMessage, it would just come up as Message with the logo, and youâd have to tap it to see who it came from and what it was. Â I had that on initially, but have turned it off.
If you donât activate the notification, it disappears.  You can retrieve your missed or unactioned notifications from the notifications tray by swiping down from the top.  You can tap on individual notifications there to bring up the interaction dialog - for Messages, itâd be Reply or Dismiss, for example - or swipe left to dismiss them.  There definitely needs to be a Dismiss All button in there, but so far, it works quite well.  As more apps add more interaction functionality with their respective notification, like Mailboxâs âTrashâ, this will become more and more powerful.
Messages is another place where the Watch really shines. Â I get my texts on my wrist, same as I did with Pebble, but with Watch, I can actually reply. Â There are the canned responses, which Iâve tried to swap out for my own premade messages, but when I go into the Reply screen, it shows my messages as well as a bunch of other ones I didnât ask for, and the orderâs all scrambled. Â I wish that wasnât the case, and it only presented me with my premade messages and any contextual responses the software generates based on the incoming message.
Replying by voice works well, and Iâve got it set to always transcribe to text instead of sending out audio. Â I donât really know why thatâs an option and not the default, but I guess there are people who communicate in actual voice clips. Â I suppose doing that, walkie-talkie style, would eliminate any transcription errors from the software. Â I used to use Voxer this way when I was too lazy to type.
I also get notifications from Mailbox - Messages and Mailbox account for probably 60% of my notifications. Â I like that I can glance at my watch, determine whether the email I received merits attention, and action it - or see that itâs advertising or spam and send it to trash right from my wrist. Â That way, when I actually take out the phone later on and go through my emails, itâs a cleaner inbox with clearer action items.
I tried loading up the Twitter and Instagram apps to check them out. Â Theyâre both useless from a watch interface for me, so they remain untouched since that trial run. Â Fantastical, I like - itâs useful and it gives bite-sized chunks of information. Â The New York Times app is nice, too, basically giving you the leading bylines. Â If there was an app that did this for the major news I cared about on top of the world news/current events that NYT tracks, itâd be cool.
SoundHound was an unexpected one that I think works well for Watch.  For those who donât use it, itâs an app that âlistensâ to the music thatâs playing and identifies the artist and track for you.  For most songs, it has live lyrics as well, which is really cool.  I tested it on a whim in my car with a song that was on the radio, and it picked up fairly quickly.  To my surprise, it then displayed the live lyrics on my watch as the song went on.  Really neat.  I even tried it when the music was pumping from my phone into the car stereo, wondering if the input stream from the Watch would cut the output stream from the phone - it stuttered a few times, but it still worked nonetheless.  Neat.
I havenât tested Passbook from my Watch yet.  One, half the places I go canât even support Passbook from my phone, their scanners donât pick it up and they have to enter whatever it is manually.  Two, it feels right now like saying âScan my watchâ would come across pretty snobbish and idiotic.  Iâll let others field test the Passbook abilities of the Watch and try it out when itâs a little more established as a custom.  That being said, if Apple Pay were up and running in Canada, Iâd be using it on my Watch no questions asked.
The Activity function of this app is a huge chunk of the reason I bought the Apple Watch. Â Iâd been eyeing the Fitbit Charge HR or Surge as a potential buy because of their fitness/heart rate/calorie tracking capabilities. Â But their abilities as smartwatches are fairly limited - compared to Pebble, much less Apple Watch. Â So I waffled, and then Watch was announced, so I waited.
Activity gives you reminders throughout the day to stand up and move about. Â I think it asks for a minute each hour, which is on the low end - and not something I particularly have to worry about on the daily. Â I get plenty of time on my feet and moving about. Â It also tracks Exercise, which I believe it defines as sustained activity at increased heartrate, and Calories.
The nicest thing about it is not the reminders of the functionality - itâs that you can set Activity as a visualization of three concentric rings right on your watchface.  So every time you look at your watch, youâre given not only a reminder to be more active and healthy, youâre given a report on your progress thus far as well as motivation to âcomplete the ringâ.
I canât speak to the particular accuracy of how Watch tracks these metrics, but from what Iâve read from those more experienced and knowledgeable than myself, they work well. Â At least as well as other products that deliver similar functionality. Â Iâm sure the truth lies somewhere between the absolutes, and Activity is likely a 90% solution. Â But itâs a good one, and I wouldnât say that it gamifies health, but it does incentivize it.
All in all, Iâm impressed with Apple Watch. Â Given everything that was swirling around in tech news and media, I was expecting a crippled watch that would have me paranoid about battery life, that wouldnât activate when I wanted to check the time, and would take forever to bring up apps. Â Iâm pleasantly surprised to say that this doesnât feel like a botched or rushed release. Â I think this is a perfectly fully functional and capable watch as it is right now. Â Itâs not without its faults, but no product is - none of them are show-stoppers for me.
Who needs Apple Watch?  Nobody needs it.  Itâs a complete nice-to-have, a tech toy, an early adopter gadget, a wearables evangelistâs daydream, a status symbol, a statement, another tool to add to your technological toolkit that can enable frictionless productivity and connectivity.  Itâs a luxury, and I think that for those who make the jump to having Watch, later being without it will feel like missing a limb or a finger.  I already know that downgrading back to Pebble (which I might do at times, or for long periods away from power sources) will feel crippling compared to what the Watch provides.
I can only imagine how much better Watch will get with software updates, developer experience, the full SDK released, and time to mature. Â Iâm curious what the upgrade cycle will look like for the Watch - itâs about 2 years for iPhones, stretching it at 3; 3-4 years for iPads, stretching it at 5; and my MacBook Proâs been going 5 years strong but looking to retire soon. Â How quickly will they make Watch models obsolete? Â They canât be moving that fast, given buyers who are getting Watch and Watch Edition and putting serious money into the bands as well, Iâm thinking. Â
But maybe thatâs just me being hopeful and not wanting my first generation Watch to be eclipsed by whatever they release next year.
