“Did you hear what Newt Gingrich said about the Apple Watch?” sounds like the opening line to a Stephen Colbert joke. In fact, it’s a genuine question, since the former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and “keen observer of technology” just published his first review for Mashable — offering his thoughts on Apple’s debut wearable device.
Testing out an Apple Watch Sport, Gingrich recounts a day spent on airplanes and in McDonald’s restaurants (yes, really!), before giving his final verdict on Cupertino’s first crack at a smartwatch.
Check out the highlights below:
Gingrich describes the Watch as a good tool for the busy person on the move — particularly praising the device’s calendar, which he calls one of the Apple Watch’s most useful features.
He’s also complimentary of its overall appearance, noting that:
“Physically, the Watch is very light on your wrist and the screen is nice and easy to read. The Apple Watch Sport model I tested had a light blue rubber strap, which can be tricky to put on and looks a little too goofy for me to wear with dress clothes on a daily basis. Someone visited my office recently wearing an Apple Watch with a metal band and I thought it looked a lot better.”
He does, however, criticize the Apple Watch’s battery life and writes that notifications could run the risk of spamming users — with this particular observation, which reads a bit like a Mad Libs:
“Speaking of McDonald’s, one of the stranger experiences with the Apple Watch was getting a notification on my wrist from the McDonald’s app telling me the Washington Nationals had scored six runs the previous evening, entitling me to a free six-piece Chicken McNuggets. You could see how this might be urgent information to some people, but you can also see how ads on your wrist could become an unwelcomed phenomenon.”
Overall, he considers it a good, yet imperfect first-generation device. “[I]t’s not as seamless as you’d think but it’s a big step toward the future,” he writes.
Now if only he could find the Watch app that would help him correctly identify the woman he’s married to!
You can read the rest of Newt’s Mashable review here.
