Steve Jobs famously said that people don’t know what they want until they see it. To which I’d add that sometimes we don’t know what we want until we’ve used it for a while.
I’m old enough to have been around when the first Macintosh was launched. In that case, I knew I wanted one the moment I saw it. This was how computers were supposed to work. The total cost of the Macintosh plus second floppy drive plus ImageWriter printer was a frightening amount at the time, but I didn’t care – I had to have one.
The iPad was a different story. I originally bought one intending it to be nothing more than the movie equivalent of the Kindle, yet within a very short time it became my primary mobile computing device.
The Apple Watch was different again. As someone who started out as a total smartwatch skeptic and has now been fully assimilated, I thought it might be interesting to briefly look back on that journey and also think a little about what the future might hold for the device …
Prior to owning one, smartwatches had always struck me as a solution in search of a problem. They didn’t do anything the iPhone couldn’t do (ok, bar automatic heart-rate measurement), and I couldn’t see any good reason why I’d want to spend additional money on an extra device merely to repeat some of its functionality.
But I wasn’t totally dismissive of the Apple Watch. It was clear that Apple had made a better job of it than existing models, and while I couldn’t see a compelling reason to want one, I could see potential applications for it. I also knew that sometimes I have to use a device to find out how useful it will be. Plus, of course, it was a gadget – and since when did I need a good reason to try a gadget?
On day one, I was starting to see the benefits of notifications on my wrist, but wasn’t really sold on the look, and didn’t think I was going to keep it.
By day four, the look had grown on me quite a lot – and more so when I later swapped the white band for the black one I wanted in the first place. The user-interface had become familiar. Notifications were definitely convenient, though less so in winter, with multiple layers of long sleeves. The Activity rings sucked me in. Some of the apps were proving their value.
By day seven, I was still of the view that nobody needs an Apple Watch, but it was undeniably useful – and it was, I had to confess, a cool gadget. A month in, it no longer felt like a cool new gadget, it had simply become part of my life. Something that added just a tiny amount of convenience a dozen or more times a day.
The arrival of Apple Pay in the UK then sealed the deal. On its own, not quite a killer app, but a very, very appealing one. Added to the conveniences of wrist notifications and it was enough to make me realize that this was a device that was slowly transforming itself into a ‘first world essential.’
So what more does the Watch need to do to complete that transformation? I chatted with my colleagues, and we came up with a few thoughts.
The first very obvious thing is performance. There are definitely times when you open an app – or even a Glance – and you find yourself staring at the progress wheel. If you’re opening an app you haven’t used for a while, the delay can even amount to four or five seconds. This would be unacceptable at any time, but even more so in a device which is all about quick glances.
Whether through hardware or software improvements or both, Apple needs to make the performance snappy enough that everything feels instant.
Another obvious one is some combination of battery-life and fast-charging capability. For my personal use, the Watch makes it comfortably though a typical day. The only times it’s failed to do so are when travelling, when switching time-zones has meant a very long day. But others are not so fortunate – either because their days start rather earlier than mine, or because their usage patterns are more demanding.
And even when the Watch makes it through a day just fine, there’s still a good reason to demand more from the battery: sleep-tracking. It’s not that the device can’t do it – there are a whole bunch of apps out there for it, and they don’t actually use too much power. But most people need to charge the Watch overnight to make it through the next day, so this is rather a theoretical capability.
Even if you don’t want to track your sleep, you may still want to wear your Watch at night: some apps allow you to set an alarm not for an exact time, but for an approximate time. The Watch then waits until you’re in a light phase of sleep before waking you, which has you wake feeling less groggy.
Apple could address the battery issue in a couple of ways. The hard way is to significantly boost the battery-life. But that’s really tough. If we’re wearing the Watch both during the day and in bed at night, when do we charge it? This is not an e-ink display that will ever make it through a whole week.
So the more practical approach is fast-charging capability. Seth notes that his Moto 360 can be charged from around 35% to 95% in about 40 minutes. That makes it practical to use the watch all day, use it for sleep-tracking at night and then just charge it while showering and breakfasting in the morning.
The main reason I started out as an Apple Watch skeptic is that it’s just a companion device. It can’t do very much without the phone. Adding a few more chips to the device would be handy.
The Watch is never going to become a fully-fledged iPhone substitute. That’s not realistic, and even if it were, Apple is never going to do anything which reduces sales of the product that generates the vast majority of its revenue. But it could make the device more useful when used on its own for a time.
For example, you can’t really use the Watch for activity tracking without the phone because it doesn’t have its own GPS – it gets location data from the phone. Admittedly the Watch does its best in that situation using its own motion trackers, but you need the GPS for the most accurate data, so you can’t leave the phone at home when you go for a run. Giving the Watch its own GPS chip would make a big difference to some.
Even with a GPS chip, though, people may still be reluctant to leave their phone behind when jogging because they’d be cut off from communication. Including GSM and LTE capabilities into the Watch would mean that it could be used for emergency communication, at least, and you’d also continue to receive notifications without the phone in your pocket or strapped to your arm.
There are a couple more hardware improvements we’d like to see. First, while the Apple Watch is impressively water-resistant, many people would feel more comfortable if it were properly waterproof. Sure, some people have showed the Watch surviving when used underwater, but that’s not a use Apple recommends, and not one many would want to risk on a regular basis. Being able to wear the watch while swimming or snorkeling without having to worry about it would be welcome.
Apple also needs to make the sapphire screen more readable in sunlight. Ironically, the cheapest model – the Sport – effectively has the best display when used outdoors. Sapphire may protect the steel and Edition models from scratches, but it makes the display harder to read in sunlight.
When the Apple Watch was but a rumor (the ‘iWatch’ label feels so long ago now!), there were suggestions that it would be packed with health-oriented sensors. That turned out not to be the case, and we now know why: Apple didn’t want to get tied-up in FDA approvals. Instead, it intends to release separate sensor devices that can communicate with the Watch. That’s less convenient, but better than having to wait much longer for new models.
But things like pulse ox would be welcomed by many fitness folks, and blood sugar monitoring would be a real boon for diabetics. If those devices could sit under the Watch without obscuring the heart-rate monitor, they would be far more convenient than existing products.
Finally, while the Watch UI is generally extremely well thought-through, there’s one aspect of it that is a total mess: the main apps screen! The icons are just too small to be distinctive, and having to scroll around randomly enlarging sections of them in an effort to figure out which is which is not what we expect from Apple. The more Watch apps that become available, the messier it gets.
Personally, I use Siri to open apps, but there are those who get on less well with Siri than I do, so this is an area Apple urgently needs to address.
What are the things you really want to see in future Apple Watch updates, either hardware or software? As ever, please let us know in the comments.
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Very good article. Actually as I was reading it struck me that I could have written it myself. If that is I had gotten an Apple Watch. I’m still on the skeptical side of the divide. Apple Pay is in Canada in name only, (American Express is a card neither I nor anyone I know uses). The battery life issue is still huge for me. Not that I run particularly long days, it’s just that my existing systems always seem to go flat at exactly the wrong moment. I don’t want to add another one with even shorter life. Then there’s the commercials. All they’ve said to me is the Apple Watch will alert you at precisely the wrong moment. And it has to do a heck of a lot more on its own before I’ll make the jump. Lastly I gave up wearing a watch a decade ago. I like not having a mass on my arm all day. It’ll take something much more capable than the current version to get me to go back.
Just wanted to note that the battery life is not shorter. The watch outlasts my 6s Plus everyday. In fact, my watch has only run dry twice – one of which times I had been using it for more than 24 hours.
I agree with you, the battery life last throughout the day. I wear my watch all the time, even when sleeping. I have timed the charge time and my Watch Sport goes from 20% to 100% in less than two hours. I make sure to charge it when I begin working in the morning and I make sure to charge it connected to electricity instead of a USB. I use to plugged it to my Thunderbolt Display but I notice it takes about 30 mins longer to charge.
I can wear my 42mm Apple watch for 18 hours and still have over 50% of the battery left! I could go 2 days with it all the time. I don’t want it to get down that low just in case, and it takes no effort to throw it on my Apple watch stand as I do my iPhone.
I haven’t worn a watch since I got my first dumb phone many years ago. I figured, I have a clock on my phone, why keep wearing a watch? I still feel that way now. But the Apple Watch does so much more then just tell time that it makes it’s self useful. It’s all the little things that put together as a whole that makes it so great. I wear it every day now since I got it and it feels strange not to have it on. I have a number of bands for it. In general I use the rubber whatever Space Grey one that came with my watch, but I have other colors, and a couple 3rd party metal bands to really dress it up when going out.
Just my 2 cents on the battery-charging-night-use-front: I wear it at night and charge my battery about 30 minutes before going to bed and in the morning when I wake up. That’s enough to have it at 100% at night and in the morning when I leave for work. I usually have about 70-80 % in the evening and only lose like 5-10 % during the night. (42mm, steel)
that’s me too. I charge before I go to bed, wear it to bed for the silent alarm and charge it when I wake up. Never had battery issues. i use the workout app probably about 2 hours total in a day.
I wear all day, it’s about 40% at night – i like seeing HR data from sleeping so I wear at night, pop it on charge 7am, have a shower, make breakfast and it’s back to 100% before 9am.
The biggest question I have about Apple Watch usefulness: Is there a threshold of notifications at which the Apple Watch becomes useful? I turn off notifications for almost all apps, get very few phone calls (because I don’t use my phone for work), prefer to reply to texts when I have time, and don’t want to be notified when I have new email (again, my preference is to check when I have time). As such, I cannot see how the Apple Watch would make my life better.
BUT… BUT BUT BUT… for people who like notifications, it seems likely to be a totally different case!
So, what does everyone think? Is there a threshold of notifications at which the Apple Watch becomes a very useful device?
It’s not about that one particular thing.
It’s a multitude of things at the same time.
I don’t know if number of notifications would matter so much as how important it is that you can see or action them right away, at least for certain applications. If I had the watch I still wouldn’t want to get nagged a lot (I also turn most notifications off), but certain types might be convenient to go right to my wrist where I’m less likely to miss them.
I really limited the apps that can give me Notifications on my Watch. You know on your phone to get to a point of just ignoring them you have to much. So I really limit it down. So imessage’s and SMS messages I allow, but I really don’t get many. A few Apps. I had gmail going at first and email was driving me nuts so I ended that.
Limit the notifications to really important things is key!!! Also not everything on the iphone should be on the watch!!! I sure as hell don’t want twitter or Facebook on my watch!!!
just being able to do a quick glance and see the time and date and what the temp is currently outside and my next calendar appointment is great without having to grab my phone and look in a bunch of apps is nice!!! Taking my heart beat every 15 minutes and seeing that on my heath app, over the day, week or year is good data to have. I like it when it notify’s me to stand up every hour for a minute. That’s good for your heath. Sometimes I’m on my computer longer then I though. Getting up, stretching, taking a break, Yes!!! Apple Pay is great to use and support is growing. Siri comes in handy to leave a quick reminder or look something up without grabbing the phone. There’s a lot of great 3rd party App’s and it’s only growing. My Newest called REC will record anything going on around my watch. Record a conversation, (Not over the phone which is illegal) and then it saves to you iPhone when it’s done. Maybe find out what song that is with Shazam again without getting out your phone. At work I’ve been working on a new Packaging line. So I’m up stairs bending conduit and running wires, and have my Bluetooth headset on and streaming Amazon Prime, one if it’s channels, which is kind of like Pandora, but unlimited skips, no commercials and can even go back and replay a song or skip back a few. But being able to just go to my watch and skip to the next Song quickly is great!!!
I set a reminder to notify me when I go to Home Depot. I go there for one thing, and then my watch buzzed and dings and shows me something else I also needed t get. That’s great. When using Apple Maps for Navigation, the Apple Watch will buzz when you near to the turn and show a directional arrow. The buzzing is good for when driving, and when Walking, you can look at your Apple Watch instead of pulling out your phone. Maybe you need to know how to get out a mass transit station for example.
I can go on and on, and it’s only getting better. 3rd part Apps that now can be installed on the watch will speed things up for 3rd party Apps that can take a while to load. I was going to wait until the second generation Apple Watch, and maybe that’s what some should do. I cold no longer wait. If the next generation watch is a Upgrade worth upgrading to, I’ll do it and sell this one. Being able to swap out bands in a snap is a big deal. I now have a number of different bands. Different colors or Metal bands. Depending on where I’m going and what I plan to do. Just to be different. Past watches, I never changed the band. it starts to grow on you like a weed and then you wonder how you got along with it.
I don’t see it as replacing the iPhone. Who wants to use a Apple Watch and it’s tiny screen as their main input device? Do you really want a Camera on it, and Facetime on it? Let alone enter data on it? On the other hand, a great device that works along side the iPhone!!!
Down the line I think we can expect waterproofing, smart bands (for extra power) and a larger square model. After that maybe a round but I don’t see it happening any time soon. But the killer feature for me would be something along the limes of “Pulse ID” allowing you yo use blood preasure and God knows what else in your body as an extra source of security.
Great article! I think longer battery life or faster charging and being waterproof are the improvements I would like to see.
I really wanted to comment about Apple Maps though. I never thought about it before I bought my Apple Watch, but I love the tap on the wrist when it’s time to turn. It may have saved lives already. Think about it, you’re in traffic in an unfamiliar area and you are trying to watch the road and the GPS Map at the same time. That’s pretty dangerous.
However with the Apple Watch and iPhone, Siri let’s me know which lane I need to be in by saying “Right turn in 2 miles” and the Apple Watch taps me on the wrist when it’s time to turn. I can focus on the road, not on the map. I still look at the map, but not nearly as much as before I got my Apple Watch.
It is waterproof though. Or at least water resistant enough for rainy runs, showers and baths. I guess they could go for a higher rating but would miss and speakers work as well then?
Its not waterproof. Waterproof is going with me while I do laps in the pool, not I got caught in the rain. Granted its better than nothing, but definitely not the same as waterproof.
I was going to ask why you would want sound on the watch but I guess there is that guy randomly screaming into his watch while making a call on the train.
There’s the Speaker and the Mic! Besides the crown. It’s water resistant. Not Water Proof. If Apple can make it Water Proof enough for at least swimming in a normal pool, that would be more then good enough for me. Rain, you shouldn’t have to worry about and I don’t wear it in the shower just because I don’t want anything on me!!! Is that possible? Normal water proof watches don’t normally have a Mic and Speaker.
“35% to 95% in about 40 minutes” – I’d say the Apple Watch is about the same. Surely 0-100% is 1:30hrs? 2 max, right?
I’ve had one a couple weeks now and the only thing it needs, IMO, is processing speed. Other than that, the lack of GPS is the reason I waited so long but, surprisingly, the watch’s sensors measure distance very well! After I calibrated the watch (extremely simple) I have run only with the watch and Bluetooth headphones. It has been nearly identical to my Garmin test measurements. Good enough for me.
Everything needs to be 2-3X faster – faster wireless, faster processor, shorter animations, more stripped-down UI. Far too much time is spent waiting, scrolling, swiping, and tapping. Glances aren’t really “glances” if you have to raise, swipe up, swipe to the side multiple times, and wait for the content to refresh. The Crown is a neat idea for scrolling, but the fact is, the user shouldn’t be scrolling much at all on a watch app.
IMO more apps need to be designed in the spirit of the Contacts app. Make more of the options visible to the user (as opposed to off-screen requiring scrolling/swiping), and use the center of the screen as a “picker”. It sounds crazy to someone who’s never used a smartwatch, but interaction over 5 seconds starts to get really annoying.
I’m such a fan of the Watch, and I legit used to think it was a dumb idea. Of course it’s first gen, but it’s so good for being that, and I think a lot of people really take for granted just how good it is, we are spoiled by Apple, that’s the era we’re living in. They really have something special with this. Of course it isn’t a need – not for me, just a helpful want, same with the iPad. My “needs” are limited to my Mac and iPhone and that’s perfectly ok. I hope they do it right because if so it WILL be the next “thing”.
Apps….Apps….Apps…we need more apps, apart from speed of course. Battery life is not a concern for me as of now but may be with more apps it will be.
Also need more merchants to accept apple Pay, that was the reason I bought the watch in the first place.
I don’t want a bunch of crap Apps!!! In fact I like to limit what is even allowed on my watch. I don’t want it over loaded with a bunch of crap. Twitter and Facebook? No way in hell!!!! Apps that really make sense on the watch, great.
I think the Speed is pretty good. Sure you can go faster, but more speed means more battery drain!!! I really don’t have a issue with speed other then some 3rd party app’s are slow to load, mainly because they’re loading from the iPhone and not the watch!!!
My biggest complaint is not enough places support Apple Pay, which is great to use on the watch!!!
A really interesting article. Personally I’m waiting for the second generation watch before I buy one. It will be interesting to see what Apple changes now the first model has been in the wild for so long. Also, it’ll be interesting to see how their marketing might change in response to customer perception of the first Watch.
On the whole I agree with pretty much everything said in this article. As a UK resident Apple Pay has also added a new dimension of utility to the Watch for me. It is definitely a standout feature and far more usable than that on the phone.
The battery I also find absolutely fine but I’m intrigued to hear about this ‘whole bunch of sleep tracker apps’?? I didn’t realise there were sleep tracking apps for the watch??? Someone please enlighten me!!
http://www.smartwatch.me/t/the-best-sleep-apps-for-the-apple-watch/1311 I haven’t tried any yet, but will be doing so.
Here is my story.. I bought the watch to replace my Breitling while it was in for service. I’ve gotten used to and like the notifications.. I travel for work and use it for an alarm clock.. Like the author I can go all day and when I plug it into the charger it usually still says it has 40% left.. Today is the first day after I got my regular watch back.. and this morning I was faced with a dilemma.. put on my faithful and trusty Breitling.. or the iWatch.. The iWatch won.. I’m looking forward to some more applications to be made available and the ability to change the watch face… I don’t really like most of the faces.. but now it looks like the Breitling is going to be for special occasions.
I am an avid runner and cyclist, who runs and cycles with my iPhone, in order to interface with Strava. Running with my phone is a pain. I anxiously awaited the rollout of the Apple Watch last year, so I could dump the phone, and use the watch, rather than buying a Garmin. I was very surprised and disappointed when I found out that the Apple Watch had to be paired with my phone, due to the fact that it does not have an onboard GPS. To me, a GPS was a no brainer, especially in the Sport Watch version. After a year of waiting and no GPS in sight, I think I am going to break down and buy a Garmin! Come on Apple!
I hear the distance ran is almost spot on to what Garmin says!!! The GPS on iPhones is built into the Cell Chip. Which is why if you buy a ipad for example without cell service it doesn’t have GPS either. GPS is also a huge battery drain. After you run with it ON, you’d have to go charge your watch back up for a while before you could use it for the rest of the day. A case you can strap on your waste or Arm I don’t see as a big deal.
i thought i don’t need one even a watch fan until i bought one used and man do i like that thing. i don’t even care about any apps. i like “hey siri” i also like the battery life. i can go two days without a problem. love the different watch bands a lot. like the little widgets on the watch face that tells me how long it takes to get home. the watch is actually waterproof because i tried it and with apple care no problem.
there is only one thing i am missing but that is a apple thing because i like google now. when i had my 360 the cards were so useful to me, when i had a meeting at 3pm the 360 kept me updated where i am and how long it takes to get there….
i think we see same service in iOS 10 until than waiting