When we got the Apple Watch delivered at Nodes, I was very happy and I was hoping that I would get to use it for a while, to see how it is and what it can do. I got to try it for about one week, and my first impression wasn’t very flattering for the company in Cupertino.
Most of the features that are advertised so hard by Apple didn’t really impress me. Yes, I could get all the notifications on my wrist too, not only on the phone. The important question is if I really want that. I’m not sure I want to feel a tap on my wrist every time a work colleague assigns me a Trello ticket, or when another recruiter wants to connect with me on LinkedIn. And yes, I know I can disable some or all of the notifications, but if I do that, what am I left with? An overpriced watch that doesn’t really look that good and that needs to be charged daily. However, towards the end of my week wearing the Apple Watch, I also found some nice features that I really appreciated.
When at home, I usually leave my phone in a room and don’t carry it with me around the house or in the yard. This means that I can’t hear it when it rings. However, with the Apple Watch, this problem is solved, because the watch vibrates when I get a call. This is probably the feature that I appreciated the most.
Another thing I really liked about the watch was the glance in which I could ping the iPhone. It sometimes (more often than I’d like to) happens to me to forget where I left my iPhone. One way to find it would be to ask someone to give me a call, but if the phone is on silent mode, this doesn’t help. I could also log in to iCloud and use Find my iPhone to make it ring. But that’s a bit more hassle than I’d like to. Using the Apple Watch, I can ping my iPhone in just 2 taps.
Another very cool thing is the way it vibrates. The taptic engine gives a much more human touch to it, instead of the artificial vibration we are used to. This somehow reminds me of the power LED on the MacBook Pros, that instead of flashing intermitently and mecanical, at regular intervals, it mimics the breathing frequency of a human being. It’s a nice touch which I really appreciated. As a downside, after not wearing the watch anymore, I thought I felt a couple of ghost taps on my wrist.
My conclusion for the Apple Watch is that it’s a decent device, with some features that I find as nice to have, some that I don’t need and one that I absolutely loved. The downsides are the huge price, the fact that I’m not fond of how it looks and that in order to wear one, I have to give up my current watch, which has sentimental value to me, and it’s not something I’m prepared to let go easily. I’m definitely not going to get an Apple Watch soon. But who knows what future models will bring?