It is somewhat odd that Apple dropped the two “standard” neutral tones of silver and space gray (their answer to black)
The new colors that are closest are Starlight, a sort of silver/gold mix, and Midnight, which looks black but on close inspection is actually a very dark blue. Neither of these really match the dropped tones.
In the grand scheme of things this is not a huge deal because “eh, close enough” and with enough negative feedback Apple might bring the other two tones back–possibly even before the Series 8 that will no doubt launch a year from now
The discussion on MacRumors has several people complaining about people complaining about the colors. I am now going to complain about the people complaining about the complainers below.
Here’s one quote from early in the discussion:
Meanwhile some hungry people in Brazil are searching for food on cities landfills.
Author of “You are bad and should feel bad”
Yes, good ol’ moral outrage. How dare you complain about something when hungry people in Brazil are searching landfills for food! Only when all of these people are well-fed will it be deemed okay to offer contrary opinions on mundane things in your life (especially if those opinions are shared on the internet). Wait. No, actually, it won’t be okay, because other people are starving around the world, too, not to mention all the other horrible things happening on this planet:
hunger (as mentioned)
poverty
political oppression and violence
war
global warming
let’s throw in cancer, too
So really, it will never be okay to complain about mundane things, because context doesn’t matter, everything is terrible and be happy with your Starlight Apple Watch, you ungrateful, spoiled consumer!
I mean, yes, it is genuinely bad that people are starving, but reading and posting to a discussion on MacRumors is already self-selecting to a very high degree, and doing so specifically to upbraid people for complaining about anything when there are Serious Issues out there basically makes you look like a self-important asshole who probably doesn’t provide more than lip service to the horrible things you use as examples of things actually worthy of complaint.
This kind of self-righteous stuff has always rankled me, and now I’ve ranted about it, so it shall never be discussed again.
(I’d go for the Midnight, it’s close to enough to black for me.)
A few months ago I decided to get an Apple Watch. I’m not always an early adopter but my partner wanted one and so I jumped in, too.
In the time (ho ho) that I’ve used it, I’ve found it’s a convenience I appreciate but one that is also not necessary. I wouldn’t want to forget to wear it but there’s nothing it does that can’t be replicated by other devices and in some cases, these other devices can perform the same functions better, though not always at a lower cost.
And speaking of cost, Apple recently cut the price of the watch, an unusual move for a company that normally never reduces pricing on products until the next version comes out (rumor has it the second version of the Apple Watch will debut before the end of the year). This underscores how the entire smartwatch market is immature, as Apple is apparently trying to boost sales only a year after the watch debuted.
For reference, I have the space grey 38 mm model with the black sports band. This is about as subtle as the watch gets, looks-wise, and it fits decently on my skinny wrists in a way the 42 mm version wouldn’t. The band and watch are both comfortable to wear all day.
The problems with the watch range from minor to downright existential. Ultimately you ask yourself, what is it for? To tell time? A $10 watch can do that. To allow you to see notifications without pulling out your iPhone? That’s a nice feature but is it really worth hundreds of dollars? What else can it do?
If you are looking for a killer app on the watch, you won’t find it. I don’t have an issue with this–a smartwatch is by design made to do multiple things, so I don’t think it needs to have one must-have function. No one buys a smartphone just to take phone calls, after all–a $40 flip phone can do that (and in some cases can do it better). But if the watch can do a lot of things, can it do them well? How many are genuinely useful vs. gimmicky?
Here’s how I use the watch and how I rank the usefulness of each function:
Show the time. It is slightly less convenient that a regular watch for this, as you need to either tap the face or turn your wrist in order for the display to light up. This is to conserve battery life and I suspect it will be an issue for all smartwatches using OLED/LED/LCD displays for some time to come. Nonetheless, the time is always accurate and unlike a regular watch you can choose from a variety of faces. The one I use also shows temperature, calendar events, alarms, the date and my activity. Tapping any of these takes you to the respective app, saving additional steps in navigation. Showing time is obviously a critical function. Sometimes the wrist gesture doesn’t get detected, which is annoying, but I’m not too bothered by it.
Notifications. You can customize these to match your iPhone or set them differently. If you turn everything on you’ll probably have your watch tapping, ringing and dinging constantly for half the day, after which the battery will be dead. I have it set to allow select notifications, some accompanied by a sound or tap, others showing up with the little red dot that says “mysterious notification has arrived.” I quickly got used to notifications on the watch and it is genuinely nice to not have to dig out the phone to check them. This works especially well for less-important notifications because now I just glance at my wrist to see them. They seem less annoying this way.
Playing music. Navigating your iPhone music collection with the watch works about as well as you’d expect on such a small screen and lists scroll fast, making it more tolerable. The best way to place music is via Siri and generally this works well, allowing for a truly hands-free experience. Sometimes Siri misunderstands (it interpreted “Play the album ‘Pyramid'” as “Play the album ‘pure mind'”) and sometimes it just flakes out completely, like when I said, “Hey Siri, play the album ‘Time.'” This exact command has worked perfectly before but this one time (ahem) Siri dutifully showed what it had heard on the watch face (which was exactly what I had said) then proceeded to play “Girl U Want” from Devo’s Greatest Hits.
Tracking activity. The built-in activity app tracks calories, stand time and exercise, allowing you to customize each. Throughout the day it reminds you to stand or shows you how close you are to a goal–these things can also be customized–and awards achievements when you hit your goals. The app works well and you can check more detailed stats on the iPhone version of the app. I feel like there should be a web version, though, for times when you really want to dig in.
Fitness/exercise. I use the fitness app for outdoor walks and runs, both of which will use the built-in heart rate monitor and the phone’s GPS. The results are fairly accurate and as long as you are specific with your commands, launching activities via Siri works well (“Hey Siri, start an 8K outdoor run”). Running offers customization on what you see during the run and taps at set intervals. For me it taps every km and at the end, though I’ve only ever noticed the taps exactly once when on a run, it’s just too subtle to feel when you’re moving faster. After the run, you get a breakdown of time, distance, pace, average BPM, calories burned and splits. The data seems fairly accurate, certainly good enough for me, especially since it is consistent, but I miss having a map of the route. Since the app uses the GPS in the phone, I’m not sure why it doesn’t do this. Still, it’s so convenient to use that my TomTom Runner Cardio has sat neglected for months.
Heart rate monitor. I check this occasionally, more for novelty than anything. It’s an essential part of the fitness app, though.
Text messaging. This works reasonably well, letting you use canned responses, adding customized ones via the phone or using Siri to dictate text that can be sent as audio (which seems silly) or as text. Again, you can often skip pulling out the phone and there seems to be some intelligence driving the options that come up for replies, suggesting that the watch tries to learn what you respond with most often.
Phone. Yes, you too can be Dick Tracy. The phone function works but I only use it by accident. This is one case where you really are better off pulling out the actual phone.
Third party apps. I’ve tried a few like Weather Underground’s app, but they often take several seconds to start up. That doesn’t sound like much but on a smartwatch, where you typically interact with the display in very short bursts, a few seconds feels like a very long time. As a result I’ve mostly abandoned third party apps. If I’m representative of other watch users, it doesn’t bode well for the health of the watch’s app ecosystem.
All of the above, save for the last two, I find useful and would miss if they weren’t available. But none are essential. I can’t tell someone that any of these functions are worth a minimum of $400 Canadian.
But worse than that, the watch feels unfinished, less a 1.0 product and more a 0.5 one. Third party apps perform poorly. This just isn’t acceptable. Sometimes the watch will feel sluggish when running the built-in apps. There is a strong sense that it is under-powered.
There are a bunch of ways to interact withe the watch. You can swipe, you can tap, you can “long press” you can force touch (press hard), you can use the digital crown (in multiple ways, not just by rotating it), you can use the other side button. And where and when to use any of these is never particularly clear or intuitive. I like options but it feels like the UI is an unwieldy amalgamation of iPhone conventions fused with new, watch-specific ones. And despite all these ways of controlling what is happening, I think the watch could use another physical button or at least allow re-mapping of the side button (which is dedicated to contacts, except when Apple decries otherwise, like when you long press it to restart the watch). In all, the interface seems muddled.
It also seems fiddly. I have often tapped a button, seen the button highlight to acknowledge the tap, then do nothing. It almost seems like I need to aim my finger at a particular angle on the face to get the tap recognized. Perhaps this is an artifact of me being left-handed but having the watch on my left wrist and thus using my right hand. On the plus side I am in some tiny way probably becoming slightly more ambidextrous. I’ve already mentioned the wrist gesture to check the face occasionally fails to be recognized.
Battery life has been fine for me. It’s supposed to last a day and I can do all the usual stuff, plus track a 10K walk and another 8K of walks without the watch having to slip into power-save mode. It also charges relatively quickly. Still, I’d like to see a minimum goal of having the watch face be able to stay on all the time and still have the battery last a day. I wouldn’t wear the watch at night regardless, so I’m not bothered by not being able to use it as a sleep tracker, but battery life is really at the minimum of where it should be.
In the end the Apple Watch is nice but uncompelling. Despite limitations, it has effectively replaced my running watch (for now, at least) and has allowed me to keep the phone tucked away while still keeping track of things. In fact, the watch means I am much less likely to miss a notification or phone call. But this is very much an unfinished product in a still ill-defined category. I don’t think smartwatches will go away any more than regular watches will, but we are probably another revision or two from an Apple Watch that lives up to the full potential of the format. If you can afford one, especially at the new lower price, and know what you’re getting, I don’t think you’ll experience buyer’s remorse, but you’re not missing out on a brave new world by waiting a little longer, either.
