My Apple Watch Weeks Reviews

Tech just got personal.

TL:DR - it's a keeper, it's seamlessly and almost effortlessly, become my watch, my fitness tracker and an integral part of my connected life. So seamlessly that there's almost nothing to say, it just 'is'. Looks great too.

This is the beginning. The critical mass for the wearables revolution is here. With in-car, in-home and commercial integration of mobile platforms like iOS and Android and their protocols we stand at the beginning of quite an adventure.

A chat over lunch with Paul Shetler prompted this post. I'll paraphrase the conversation: "The watch. Is it any good? Looks nice, but I haven't seen anything being posted about it from the people that I'd expect. Like you." And he's right, it's been very quiet from the usual suspects. We're not known for our restraint about tech that we love or hate, not known for withholding an opinion.

So I won't: I love it, and the future promise it holds.


I ordered this one. 42mm Stainless Steel with a black sport band. The logic went something like this: Never seen it in the flesh, didn't want the aluminium one, didn't want to spend a fortune on it in case I didn't like it and ended up eBaying or returning it.



Apple were canny here, if you want the silver aluminium version with a black strap you'll have to buy the strap separately or step up to the stainless steel one. Once the local Apple Store had the 'demo' units in I went for a look and was happy with my choice. The watch was smaller than I expected and beautifully finished, this was good, the Android Wear watches I had played with were carbuncles when on your wrist, their ability to display information compromised by having a round screen, trying too hard to be a fashionable wrist watch and missing the point. Maybe you like them, I didn't, they felt like second division products*.

The rubber straps were much nicer than I expected, the leather loops weren't, looked like plastic and didn't come in the dark brown colour I wanted. The Milanese Loop was a bit of a non event and the Link Bracelet was lovely but expensive. The space black model was the best looking, it has a Rado vibe, but was only going to work with a couple of the straps. The gold ones? No idea, I just don't get it unless you're a money no object celebrity.

So on 24th March the watch duly arrived. What happened next was the smoothest insinuation of a tech product into my daily life. It replaced my trusty mechanical watch (haven't worn it since, it's a lovely piece of craftsmanship but it's gathering dust) and my Nike Fuelband within a day, besting them both for features and managing to look just as good.

Setup was a doddle, you quickly learn to pare down your alerts to what actually matters. The Apple apps are pretty good, the 3rd party ones not so much but that's starting to change and more apps like Fantastical are starting to appear as developers get their hands on the watch and realise that it's not a miniature iPhone and that your interactions with it are different. Some people talk about a steep learning curve. Well, if you can't pick this up in 10 minutes you need to go back to your old AM radio with the mechanical tuning wheel.

There are limitations however, the main one being dependence on a paired iPhone which either has to be on the same wifi network or within bluetooth range or both for the best results. Without it the watch, alarms, stopwatch, timer, fitness tracking, synced music and photos work as you'd expect but anything else is a no go. That's fine when you're in the gym or a similar situation and don't want to be carrying your phone with you and it's not been a source of annoyance for me yet, but in these situations I'm distracted enough by the task in hand not to miss the connected functions. Don't get me started on people in gyms who are constantly on their phones...

The watch faces are a time-sink, but fun. I ended up not using any of the fancy or novelty ones, what I did do was end up with several different variants of the ones I liked (Simple and Utility) depending on the situation and I still change their configurations on a whim.

It now seems so natural to get my alerts and reminders, to check in, read mail and news, carry out conversations (Siri and voice dictation works well, better I think than on my iPhone), scan my loyalty cards and tickets, follow directions and check the weather on my watch that going to my phone for these things can feel cumbersome and less than immediate or intuitive. I can't wait until it can control my connected home tech, open my car, pay for my coffee and the other uses that hundreds, thousands, of developers are working on right now.

Battery life? Never had to think about.

In the end I bought the link bracelet. It's fantastically well made, clever and beautiful.

*Before the Android Posse ride into town guns blazing I should point out that I've owned 6 Android phones from LG, HTC and Samsung over the years, the last one, a Nexus 5 with Android 5.1, ended up on eBay last month. They, and Android, are not (yet) for me but I'll keep checking.