Ode To Apple Watch: My Favorite Apple Product
TL;DR: The Apple Watch is my favorite Apple product, and I'm really excited for its future.
I have a bad habit of leaving my iPhone on conference rooms tables and random desks through the office. It is often the case that a coworker of mine is returning my iPhone back on my desk, or that I'm using my Apple Watch to ping my iPhone, and walking around to hear where the “ding!” is coming from.
It could very well be that I'm just forgetful and I'd likely leave any other item in the conference room. Having an Apple Watch, however, has made me enjoy not having my phone on me so much more.
Don't get me wrong. I love the iPhone and, if you know me well, you know how I feel about it and iOS compared to its competitor operating systems and smartphone manufacturers. But it's not the upcoming iPhone that I'm excitedly anticipating for every September anymore. Nor is it the latest MacBook or the iPad Pro (although those things are getting sexier by the year). It's the upcoming Apple Watch. And I can't wait to see what the new Apple Watch Series 5(?), and watchOS 6, bring to Apple's customers.
I could write a bunch about how the Apple Watch has life-saving health tracking abilities, how Apple and the Stanford University School of Medicine collaborated on the largest ever heart study using Apple Watches wearers who volunteered their data (including me), how it automatically dials 9-1-1 a minute after it detects your fall and you don't interact with it, and can be great for a family or friends communicating on a trip together using Walkie Talkie. But I'll focus more on how I personally benefit from it.
What the Apple Watch has done is reduced my dependence on always reaching for my iPhone. The common user experience rule people attribute to the Apple Watch (I'm not sure if it came from Apple itself) is this:
- Using a laptop is measured in hours
- Using a smartphone is measured in minutes
- Using a smartwatch is measured in seconds
All the seconds-only interactions that I previously had to pick up my iPhone for, which then encouraged me to stay glued to the iPhone for more meaningless interactions, were replaced by my Apple Watch. And on the Apple Watch, it's absurd to have any meaningful medium-to-long term interactions.
I don't like getting notifications for things. I curate my notifications settings on my iPhone very aggressively so that I don't get bothered by seeing or feeling things (more on hearing things later). Even more are my notifications curated on my Apple Watch. Apart from the timer notifications I set, I only get bothered for by four things:
- Text messages
- Severe weather alerts via the brilliant Carrot Weather app
- A tap 15 minutes prior to my next meeting
- Notifications for transportation-related information (Uber driver approaching, Delta flight changes, etc)
I'm currently using the Siri watch face (shown below), which is essentially a “smart” watch face that shows me the most relevant data at the time based on my usage behaviors and the data I enter into my iPhone. And while it's not always super helpful, it usually is. So, at a glance, I can see the current weather conditions, the time, the next meeting, and a photo that often makes me smile.
And then there are the other icing-on-the-cake, but regularly-used, features:
- I can take calls on the Apple Watch.
- I use it to track my sleep every night with the excellent AutoSleep app.
- Siri and voice dictation work way better than you'd expect on a device like this.
- I can unlock my Macbook Pro with it, and the security technology that undergirds this feature is pretty awesome.
- My shopping list is right on my watch using the Things app. This life is the good life.
- It's a very convenient remote for the Apple TV or for taking pictures on an iPhone across the room.
So about sound notifications. Silence is bliss. With my Apple Watch, I don't need any sound notifications. If a call comes in, I get taps. If I get messages, taps. Sound notifications seem barbaric now by comparison.
I am not athletic and do not exercise much at all. So I am aware that I'm not taking advantage of one the Apple Watch's most popular and robust feature sets: workout-related features. Maybe some day.
Now, there's one thing about the Apple Watch that makes me yearn for a regular ol' watch: that I can't inconspicuously sneak a glance at the time.
Due to the small form factor, the Apple Watch is designed to aggressively manage battery usage. This means that you have to raise or flick your wrist for the display to turn on and check the time. I'd love if it could one day have always-on time display dimmed very low, and I can only hope that Apple's working their best to make that a reality in future versions.
🤞🏻