The Apple Watch is not a watch (and what it is instead)

On April 10th 2015 Apple started taking preorders for the long awaited Apple Watch! Unfortunately for me, The Netherlands was not on the list yet, but France, Germany and the UK were.

A few years ago, when the Apple TV had not yet been released in The Netherlands, it took me a specially crafted American Apple ID to watch American content. I had to top this American Apple account up with US iTunes gift certificates, because Apple would not take my Dutch creditcard. My US mail address did not help, nor did my PayPal account, because Apple knew the main financial source was The Netherlands instead of the US. Apple has had an extensive history of artificially limiting availability of international products and services.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Apple allowed me to buy an Apple Watch using my Dutch Apple ID. It did have to be shipped to the UK, though.

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Instead of ordering one, I could have made an appointment (abroad) to carefully inspect the different models instead. Choosing my model would not be easier with every available model in front of me, so I decided to choose based on the videos and reviews that were available to me. But what did I order? What is the Apple Watch, anyway? To answer that question, let me start by saying what the Apple Watch is not.

The Apple Watch is not a watch. There, I’ve said it! Of course, it is worn around the wrist and it tells the time, but the same goes for my fitness tracker, that I wouldn’t call a watch.

A watch tells the time. Its price varies between several tens and thousands of euros. Within this price range they offer a variety of characteristics. My love for watches began when I was a little boy. My first watches were digital and cheap. As I grew older, my watches became more sophisticated and more expensive. Nowadays, I own several special watches, not to speak of the many watches that are no longer with me. I have always been fascinated by mechanical automatic watches. You can wind them by wearing them around your wrist. In difference to a battery powered quartz watch, its second hand moves fluently in tiny steps, that can hardly be noticed by the human eye. My kintic and solar watches are using a battery to store their energy and their second hands don’t move fluently. The charm of a hand made automatic watch is what watches are all about and the Apple Watch is no watch in that traditional way.

Apple has presented its Watch as a watch, which is very confusing. Its price ranges between $350 and $17,000 for the most expensive model. They are all digital and far from cheap, especially if one considers this is the first model of a brand new concept. Within this price range one can buy many watches of well established manufacturers and proven technology. Watch maker Patek Philippe advertises with the following slogan:

“You never actually own a Patek Philippe. You merely look after it for the next generation”.

Herein lies the biggest difference with the Apple Watch. Will the Apple Watch still exist in five years? I think it will, but not in its current shape.

After Apple changed the world forever in 2010 with the iPad, they produced over five models in five years time. Of course, it won’t take longer than a year before they release a new model Apple Watch and my next generation (six year old son) won’t really be interested in the old 1.0 model of 2015. I do still have my first 2010 iPad and I cannot throw it away for sentimental reasons. But it hardly runs any app, although its hardware is fine. The new software won’t run on it anymore, so it has basically become an expensive frisbee. The Apple Watch is heading for the same direction.

With my passion for “real” watches and a very limited product life expectancy of the current model Apple Watch my purchase is doomed for disappointment. I do, however, value continuous improvement over delayed perfection. The perfect model will never be launched and I look forward to witnessing how the Apple Watch will change the world. How it will change my world. So, if the Apple Watch is not a watch, what is it, instead?

Fitness
I’ll be using the Watch as a fitness tracker, to keep track of my physical activities. My other wrist hosts a Fitbit Charge, which I will continue to use (for now). Fitness wise, Fitbit has been around for much longer than Apple and they offer much more functionality than Apple. The Charge is connected to my weighing scale and it keeps track of my sleeping activity. It automatically registers when and how much I sleep. The Apple Watch, on its turn, has a built-in heart rate sensor, which by itself is not that interesting. We’ll have to wait and see how software will turn this sensor into something that actually has meaning.

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Notifications
The Apple Watch has the potential of being really useful around your wrist, provided it is correctly configured. If your wrist vibrates upon every single email you receive, you’ll go mad in less than a day. I’ll be very selective in which apps I allow access to my wrist. The iPhone supports the use of VIPs, allowing you to select which messages and/or calls you want to receive on your wrist. Tuning these notifications requires granular settings, that should be provided by Apple. This is where Apple can make or break the future of the Apple Watch.

Water
The first information about the Apple Watch mentioned it would not be waterproof. Newer articles mention water resistance instead. Apple’s website states very clear: the Apple Watch is IPX7 rated, which means it can resist water at 1m of depth for thirty minutes without any water getting in. This allows for regular swimming at the surface. I would stay away from diving into sea or even a swimming pool. Fortunate enough IPX7 makes the Watch suitable for regular daily activity, including the shower. I’m very surprised to see a lot of websites with wrong information about this very important subject. Without IPX7 I never would have bought an Apple Watch. When I want to go swimming or diving, I will leave my Apple Watch at home and instead wear a real watch with pleasure.

iPhone
The Apple Watch can only be used in combination with an iPhone 5 or newer, meaning it is just an expensive iPhone accessory that happens to show you the time! The communication between your Watch and iPhone uses both Bluetooth and WiFi. This means you can have your iPhone charging somewhere at home or in your office and take incoming calls and/or messages on your Apple Watch via WiFi. Taking calls on the Apple Watch uses the built-in speaker, which may not always be desirable with other people around. It’d be interesting to find out whether you could pair your Bluetooth headset with the Apple Watch, which would significantly extend its range.

Apple Pay
I have seen various trendy videos of your people flashing their Apple Watch to pay for stuff. Living in the conservative Netherlands, I don’t expect to see Apple Pay implemented for the near future. Apple Pay might be nice to see some time when traveling abroad, but that would probably require my Dutch Apple ID to be prepared for Apple Pay, too.

Apps
Apple was very early to announce its Watch. This has put the market under enormous pressure. Several vendors have tried rushing their smart watches to market, ahead of the Apple Watch. The big difference between their watches and the Apple Watch is in software: apps. Android hardware is not uniform enough to guarantee long term software development. If you develop and app for a particular Android smart watch today, that watch may not be available anymore after a year and hunderds of other Android powered smart watches will have difficulties running your apps due to their differences in hardware. This is where Apple has shown a very different track record in upward compatibility for apps than Android. Apple apps run on hardware that only Apple produces. On iOS, there are no other hardware parties involved, whereas for Android there are many. Hardware develops rapidly, yet the oldest iPhone apps can still run on the newest hardware. I hope that this will be the case for the Apple Watch, too. The first apps for the Watch look very promising, going from newspaper headlines to controlling your lights at home, opening the garage door remotely, monitoring surveillance cameras and scanning the barcode of your boarding pass when boarding a flight. There is a hotel chain that no longer requires its guests to visit the front desk for check in. You can simply use your own Apple Watch to open the door to your hotel room! The possibilities are endless and I can’t wait to be amazed by creative apps. The Apple Watch offers software developers the opportunity to show to the world that they mean serious business. Any 2015 app that refuses to benefit from the bigger screen of the iPhone 5, 6 or 6 Plus will be discarded as soon as a competing app does. Users of the Apple Watch will find apps and services that work with their Watch. They will stop using platforms that refuse to play ball.

Models
Many websites are telling you to buy the cheapest model Apple Watch, if you have any doubts. This may sound like a good plan, but even the cheapest Apple Watch isn’t really that cheap anyway. Besides: the cheapest Apple Watch Sport is made of aluminum instead of steel (or gold!), making it less heavy and less strong. Its glass it not sapphire glass and the cheapest model is 38mm, which is not only a smaller display, but it has fewer pixels: 272 x 340 versus 312 x 390 for the 42mm model. My advice: if you are not sure, just don’t buy an Apple Watch and if you feel you want one, you might as well get the model you’d like to wear every day. If you have $17,000 to spend, try to imagine how long this device will stay current. My guess is that the 38mm model is the first to become obsolete. A subset of apps may only be able to run on the 42mm model and history indicates that only few of the software developers will continue supporting every display available, just like the good old days before the launch of the Apple Watch.

Modern hardware keeps amazing me. Apps will continue to define the functionality of that hardware, which to me is a very exciting idea! Of course the English word Watch is not only a noun, but a verb, too. I will definitely be watching my Apple Watch a lot. Apple just should not have called it the Apple Watch, but rather: The Wearable iPhone Accessory That Tells You What Time It Is, Amongst Other Things. That probably won’t fit on the box, but would have saved a lot of discussion 🙂

The future is smart and wearable. Are you getting an Apple Watch, too?