I’ve decided to take a step back and take a good, hard look at what I’ve been wearing on my wrist for an entire year. It feels like it was just yesterday the Apple Watch was revealed to the public, and everyone wanted one.
Has it become an essential bit of kit on my wrist, or is it another gadget for the junk drawer, left to gather dust?
Here’s my take on the year I’ve spent with Apple’s magical wrist computer.
As I mentioned in my Apple Watch review video, I don’t feel the device is essential at all. It’s not changed my life the way the iPhone did when that came out back in 2007. On top of that, despite many updates to watchOS, Apple has not sorted out a lot of the problems we noticed on Apple Watch’s release day.
It’s a great wearable, and I’ll continue to wear it every day. But if it got lost or stolen tomorrow, I wouldn’t panic the same way I would if I lost my iPhone. I wouldn’t be hassling my insurance company to hurry up and send me a replacement, either.
My Apple Watch review in a nutshell: nice to have, but not essential.
Make sure to subscribe to the Cult of Mac YouTube channel to catch all the latest video reviews, news and much more!
Ste Smith is Cult of Mac’s video guy based in the UK. Ste has been working in the media industry for over 8 years and is a keen Apple fan. Follow Ste on Twitter @stesmith10 and Facebook.
5 responses to “After a year with Apple Watch, it’s time for a frank appraisal”
Remember that the original iPhone in its first year was lacking on a lot of features and functionality which we now consider indispensable. That original iPhone was just another phone on the market, albeit one with a huge screen that held all kinds of possibilities. It took several years for the iPhone to achieve its indispensable state, and I believe the same is true for the Watch. I agree that the current Apple Watch is something anyone can easily be without. I haven’t bought one myself because of this fact. However, I’ll give Apple another couple of years to see what they develop before I definitively say it’s something I don’t need. I’m looking forward to the holographically projected screen that displays an image about the size of a 17″ monitor, and have the power of the full version of Mac OS X — but it may take another 10-20 years for that technology to arrive. Sigh.
About what I expected, builtin GPS seems to be the killer feature that would actually make this useful for traking runs without an iPhone
And it beats the hell out of the Android competition. I know. I’ve used both. Complications alone make Apple Watch faces superior – and there is so much more to them than that.
The two features I use every day are activity tracking & ApplePay. For those two things alone, I find my Apple Watch essential.
I agree. If I forgot my iPhone, I’d panic and run back to retrieve it. If I forgot my watch, I’d kick myself and get on with the day. It a great start, but needs work. Two obvious deficiencies 1) a “you forgot your iPhone” alarm (trivial to implement I think) and 2) the ability to read full news articles. The screen is fine; even at my advanced age of 41 hex, I have no problem reading long emails on it. Would be great to be able to read long news articles during boring meetings :). Also, I had anticipated that apple would have done something useful with the band. It’s a lot of wasted real estate to lie fallow – lots of space for battery, processor, sensors etc.