Contributor Review
[rwp-review id=”0″]
As a passionate geek living in the Arab world, I do not have the opportunity to schedule a trial session at an Apple Store, so I acted on my own Apple-user hunch and ordered the stainless steel watch with the 42mm leather black classic buckle.
I’ve been using it for ten days now, so here is a run-down of 8 things I liked about the watch, and 8 things I didn’t.
PROS: Things that make the Apple Watch tick (get it?)
Invisible
During those ten days, the Apple Watch became my left wrist’s second skin. Though the stainless steel is said to be heavier than the aluminum, I barely felt I was wearing anything on my wrist. The only reminder that I was wearing a watch came from the gentle taps.
Prime Quality
Like any Apple product, the design, the attention to details and the materials are all prime quality. Unlike any other Apple product, the Apple Watch is a wearable device and therefore is an extension to your identity; it has to look beautiful without looking geeky in order to be part of one’s daily attire. And it certainly does.
Merges with the non-Tech Crowd
Let’s face it: if one isn’t a geek, one perhaps wouldn’t consider buying the Pebble or an Android Watch (except for the Moto 360 maybe), and including any of them with all their bulk and non-elegance in what they wear every day. The Apple Watch, on the other hand, took Apple’s “invisible technology” policy to another dimension.
The Apple Watch looks and feels like a watch, and unlike other new Apple products, only the very tech-savvy of my friends were able to recognise it (three people to be precise). The majority simply gave compliments on the beautiful watch I was wearing, not noticing anything out of the ordinary about it. In other words, it felt like your everyday watch.
More Work Efficiency
Being a geek – as “cool” as it might sound – is the cause of my most horrible vice: PROCRASTINATION! As I am working on a monthly report, and I get an iMessage, I ask myself whether it is urgent. So I’ll check the notification and go back to that report.
I turn on the iPhone, read the iMessage, and it’s just mum sending me a picture of her dog. But while I’m at it, I check all the other notifications, then Facebook’s newsfeed, Twitter’s timeline, Instagram’s feed, WhatsApp’s muted group messages … I’d even start reading all the articles posted all over, googling about their authenticity and ending with videos, and all the videos’ suggested videos. It’s midnight, and I barely wrote the first paragraph of that report!
PROCRASTINATION I TELL YOU!
With the Apple Watch, I set up only the important notifications to be displayed (mostly iMessages, VIP email and phone calls) and my phone is now 24/7 in silent mode. So when I get a notification, I read it on my watch, reply to iMessages and phone calls from the watch itself, mark the email as unread if I’d need to answer it later on and continue working.
The Apple Watch offers very little means for procrastination!
Even Instagram and Twitter’s Apple Watch apps show limited newsfeed/timeline submissions, so you can’t procrastinate for more than 2 or 3 mins on them. Since I’ve started wearing it, I couldn’t but notice how more work-efficient I was.
Siri Siri on my wrist
“Hey Siri, How much is 2300 USD in British Pounds?”
“Hey Siri, What’s the capital of Namibia?”
“Hey Siri, Remind me to call my wife when I leave here!”
I always wanted to use Siri for quick questions, but most of the time, this required that I get my iPhone out of my pocket, press on the button and ask. Now that Siri is on my watch, I simply lift my wrist and ask, activating Siri and I get the reply. Using Siri is finally convenient enough for frequent use.
Reinventing Remote Controls
iPhone Music, Click! iPhone Camera, with a viewer, Click! iTunes on a Mac, or even PC, Click! Apple TV, Click!
The Apple Watch comes loaded with remote controls for your Apple devices. All you need to do is ask Siri to open the right remote app and control your multimedia content on all your devices from your watch.
Of course, a few other Apple Watch 3rd party apps already exist, providing remote control functionality for their devices. And as Apple says, contrary to rumors, Homekit is still coming in June, and the Apple Watch would be the core element of its success and ease of use since you’ll perhaps one day soon just lift your wrist and say:
“Hey Siri, Good morning, Prepare coffee.”
“Hey Siri, Turn the kitchen’s TV on.”
“Hey Siri, I’m leaving, turn off all the home lights.”
“Hey Siri, I’m on my way home, Turn the Air Conditioner on.”
“Hey Siri, Good night, please turn the bedroom lights off!”
Battery Life
Yes, I know! Nowadays with all this technology sucking the batteries dry, battery life is a critical aspect of devices – particularly if you’re wearing them. Yes, a watch shouldn’t have a one day battery life, but until this is solved, let me tell you that for a promise of a whole day battery life, the Apple Watch delivers!
I use my watch to answer phone calls, play music, read and reply to iMessages and as an activity monitor, yet still manage to get 30 to 20% of battery life still available by end of day by 1 A.M.
Activity and Sensors
Although I heard a lot of negativity surrounding the Activity and the sensors, after trying the Apple Watch as an Activity monitor I couldn’t but be positively surprised. The results displayed are precise and detailed, and they can be shared with other apps through the Health Kit.
This is just amazing!
CONS*: things the Apple Watch’s upcoming OS update(s) need to fix, ASAP
The user interface and experience
It’s not hard to understand and cope with as most reviews are saying. Just think of it as an iOS device with the digital crown being the home button, and all will be fine. The problem is with some odd UI/UX choices.
Here’s one example: I got an iMessage from my sister asking what she should get for her husband on his birthday. I need to reply:
- I tap Reply
- I tap the Microphone button.
- I talk
- I press Done
- I choose Audio or Dictation to send
Five steps! Five LONG steps! Surely Apple can do better than that.
There’s a way to make them 4 steps by choosing to always send dictation or audio, but once one of the two options is chosen, there’s no way to choose the other option at all. Perhaps Force Touch can help here?
Important Native Apps, where art ye?
I know it’s Apple OS 1.0 but the absence of Reminders and Notes apps is strange. I fail to see how Apple Stocks was deemed more important to be in Apple OS 1.0 than Reminders and Notes!
I can use Siri to set Reminders, but can’t see them on my watch. I can’t see my shopping list on my watch, but can see how good or bad Google stocks did today! I can’t read my notes that I most probably need, but I can see my photos, on a tiny screen, with a magnifying glass.
Priorities Apple! Priorities!
Which brings us to the useless Photos app on the Apple Watch: just no! It’s a tiny screen, and the only reason one would want to see photos on it would be to be able to use AirDrop, iMessage or 3rd-party apps to send and receive them.
You can’t do a single thing with photos available on your Apple Watch, except look at and resize them, on that tiny screen. If that’s just for viewing, I would’ve seriously preferred to have my notes as view only, not my photos.
Bluetooth earphones; connectivity and usability with the Apple Watch
So I can’t listen to the music that’s on the Apple Watch, except if I have Bluetooth earphones paired to it. Yet even if I have Bluetooth earphones paired to my Apple Watch, phone calls I make through the Apple Watch will not be diverted to the Bluetooth earphones but to the Apple Watch speakers! I’m sorry Apple, but why are you so keen on keeping the music I listen to as a secret, yet insisting that everyone around me hears what the person I’m talking to over the phone is saying?
FaceTime Audio
Making and receiving FaceTime audio calls on the Apple Watch, I can make and receive normal calls but not FaceTime audio calls. Not cool!
Apple Emojis
UPDATED (20/5/15):
WATCH OS 1.01 fixed this.
Apple Watch now can display the new emojis.
1 OS con dealt with in OS 1.01! 6 to go…
iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs got a set of new emojis that Android users see as the normal old emojis + an alien emoji next to them; that’s fine. But iPhones, iPods, iPads and Macs getting a set of new emojis that the newly released Apple Watch users see as the normal old emoji + an alien emoji next to it! That’s strange.
8.3 was mostly released for the Apple Watch and it had new racially diverse emojis that are being extensively used by Apple users. Users shouldn’t wait that long to be able to see the right emojis, especially that it’s one of the very few means of expressing oneself on the Apple Watch!
The Little Siri Mermaid
Siri! Answer me! You’re too useful, but where did your voice go? You NEED a voice!
I know Siri’s voice would take up to 1GB off the Apple Watch memory, but Apple should’ve considered that before releasing the watches with 8GBs only.
And PS: it sounds very weird to ask siri to sing, and she TYPES the lyrics of that Wizard of Oz song without saying a single word!
Too much Handoff
That Handoff dependency, though understandable in most cases, makes no sense whatsoever in other cases. Siri’s ability to tweet or post Facebook status updates seems strange to require handoff, and so does Siri’s Shazam song recognition: why exactly doesn’t it work without handoff if the Apple Watch’s microphone is better than the iPhone’s?
An Arm and a Leg
Yep, the Apple Watch isn’t cheap: starting at $350 and up to $400 for the sport; $1,100 for the Stainless Steel and $17,000 for the Edition is not cheap at all. But, frankly, for what the Apple Watch does and will be doing as new apps and OS updates are released, like all other Apple products, it’s worth the heavy cost.
*PS: Needless to say, the first 7 con points could be easily solved with the OS updates.
Contributor Review
The views and opinions expressed in this post are those of the contributor(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of AbsoluteGeeks.com. Opinions and scores made in the review are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the contributor(s) – and, since we are only humans, these opinions are always subject to change, revision, and rethinking at any time. Please do not hold us responsible :)
