I got a pretty nice tax return this year, and decided I wanted to buy in to all the hype and get an Apple Watch. I usually can’t afford to buy any first-gen tech, so it was a nice treat.
Before preordering, I dropped by the Apple Store in my local mall and booked an appointment to try it out. The entire process was kind of ridiculous — I went into a store and scheduling a guided appointment with an Apple specialist to try on a watch. Is this what rich people do, like, normally? It was honestly pretty cool.
When I was called over to try on the watch, I went for the Sport first. The 38″ felt perfectly proportioned on my wrist, while the 42″ felt way too big and clunky. The band felt perfectly smooth on my wrist, both comfortable and breathable.
While I knew going in that I was going to get a 38″ Sport, I decided to try out at least one or two other model as well. The specialist I was working with recommended trying out the Stainless Steel edition with the Milanese Loop bracelet, since it was “the most fun” to physically put on. The loop clasped into place with the hella satisfying snap of a slap bracelet. I also tried on one of the Leather Loops, but it was a letdown after the Milanese.
Picking between green and blue Sport was hard — I’d had the same issue when picking my 5C — but like my 5C, I went for the blue, because I’m ridiculous and it’s kind of fun that my watch and my phone match.
I ended up preordering right there in the store, and was bummed to discover the Watch wouldn’t ship until June. That’s when I was extra surprised last week when suddenly Thursday afternoon I found out it was going to ship and be delivered the next day (when I’d be on a plane to Minneapolis).
Finally, Monday, I had the box in my hand. The unveiling was just as great as any other Apple product: easy, guided, and seamless. When I finally got the Watch on my wrist it took forever to start up, which caused a fair bit of anxiety. Finally it finished booting up, and I was able to (manually, since the camera detection didn’t work) sync it up with my phone.
I spent my entire first day swapping it between my left and right wrists. I’m right handed, but wear my Fitbit on my right wrist, because that’s what feels most natural to me. I finally landed with the Watch on my right wrist, upside-down so the crown was reachable, and my Fitbit tucked mournfully into my back pocket, maybe forever discarded. Potentially discarding my Fitbit in favor of the Watch was the most painful part of the adjustment process. I’ve sunk almost a year’s worth of data into my Fitbit. It felt a little bit like I was losing all of that progress. I’m still not totally sure what I’m going to do with it. I don’t want to think about it.
Now that I’ve lived with my Watch for the work week, I’ve started to form some more thoughts. Physically, it still feels pretty great on my wrist, though my skin gets clammy underneath the sensor. Everything feels just a beat too slow.
The watch doesn’t always light up when I rotate my wrist towards me, but always seems to light up when I’m doing something else, like eating — which, as you can image, gets really distracting. Bring fork to mouth. Wrist lights up. It’s frustrating. What I’d really like is to be able to turn off the display, like a secondary Do Not Disturb, unless prompted by the crown.
The haptic feedback is absolutely fantastic — until it isn’t. When you get as many notifications as I do, it’s like this little creature sitting next to you and poking you, going “hey! HEY!” every couple minutes. I have to turn Do Not Disturb on during meals, otherwise I just get so distracted. It’s even harder to ignore than my phone, since all I need to do is rotate my wrist to see my notification, and the tap tap feels more urgent than the buzz in my pocket did. I also had to turn off sound notifications, since they disturb not only me but everyone else around me.
Above all else, the Watch has made me realize that I want less notifications, and I want the notifications I receive to be more meaningful. Tap tap — someone liked your post! Tap tap — someone else did, too! It gets tiring. I really only want to know when someone’s trying to talk to me.
The rest is just distraction.
So far, the periodic “you need to stand up!” notifications have been pretty annoying, and not really accurate — especially when I receive them while standing, or after having walked around a bunch. It just doesn’t feel like it knows when I’m actually doing something. I need to play around with the health settings more to boost my target activity, but exploring the Watch sometimes feels intimidating — I’m still getting the hang of the controls, which are not as intuitive as I was hoping. There’s a lot that’s hidden behind new gestures, and I keep discovering new ones. It feels a little bit like trial by fire, since there was no sort of orientation.
Speaking of which, here’s a fun, embarrassing moment I experienced — answering a client call on my Watch, assuming it would answer on my phone. Surprise! Suddenly a voice was coming out of my wrist. (She took my “Crap! Crap! Hold on! One sec! Sorry!” very well.)
Another things I’ve noticed it that overall, usage of my phone has gone way down. I no longer take my phone out to check a notification, only to get sucked into something and then realize fifteen minutes later that I’ve just been dicking around on my phone the whole time. My phone is now mostly just used when I want to kill some time, or really check something. For all that notifications are distracting, it’s getting easier to ignore the desire to immediately check them at their source. I can just glance down at my wrist, see if it’s important, and keep moving.
I’m liking my Watch so far, and I’m glad I got it. I’m really excited to see where the technology is going to go in the future, and how we as people are trained by it, and in turn influence its development and the way we shape our technology moving forward.