A year with the Apple Watch

I’ve been using an Apple Watch since April 24, 2015, the day that they first went on sale.  I love the device, and I wear it every single day.  But it also drives me crazy, especially when I try to use third party apps.  I first reviewed the Apple Watch after only using it for a weekend.  Here are my thoughts after using it for a year.

What I love

I love getting notifications with a tap on my wrist.  I don’t let many apps send me notifications, but when I get a text message, an email from folks on my VIP list, or a notification from Reminders that it is time to do something, the Apple Watch works great.  First, the notification is silent, just a tap on my wrist, so folks around me don’t hear a beep or even hear the buzz of my iPhone vibrating.  Second, it is super fast and convenient to just lift my wrist to see what the notification is about.  And for less important notifications, such as emails from anyone who is not a VIP, I love that I can just glance at the top of the screen and see a red dot if there is something new — or no red dot if there is nothing new for me to worry about.

Almost as useful as receiving notifications is responding to them.  I love that my wife can send me a text or a colleague can send me an email, I can glance at it on my watch, and then I can quickly tap on an appropriate response and send it.  Sure, I sometimes take out my iPhone when I want to compose a longer response, but the standard responses combined with the ones that I added manually are sufficient most of the time.

Swiping down from the top of the screen works reasonably well, although I wish that there was a quick way to delete an email from that view without having to first tap on the notification and scroll all the way to the bottom of the email message — which can be a long way for much junk mail — to delete.  But for the most part it is very fast and convenient to use the digital crown to scroll through new messages.

I love complications on the watch face, which is why I use the Modular face to see the time, upcoming appointments, the temperature, the date and my activity circles.

And speaking of those activity circles, they have resulted in the first exercise regimen that I have stuck with for more than a few months.  Being conscious of the Move and Exercise circles has prompted me to walk during the day more than I ever did before and use a treadmill almost every night.  As for the Stand circle, while I don’t know if there are actual health benefits to standing once an hour for 12 hours a day, I love that it prompts me take a tiny break when I am sitting at my desk doing research and writing for 50 minutes straight without realizing how much time has passed.  If I take just 30 seconds to stand up and move around a little bit, not only do I get another notch on the Stand circle, but more importantly I give myself a little jolt of energy to get back to work for the next hour.

I don’t use Apple Pay very often, but when I do it is both convenient and fun to pay with my watch. 

I don’t walk around in other cities very often, but when I do, I love getting turn-by-turn walking directions.  Instead of having to stare at my iPhone (and look like a target), I can just walk and feel the different taps on my wrist to tell me if I have to turn left or right at the next intersection.

I like using Siri on my Apple Watch, especially to give myself reminders.  I have my Apple Watch set so that Siri activates only when I push in the digital crown.  I find it very convenient to hold it down for a second and tell my watch to remind me to do something at a specific time, or when I get to some specific place like home or the office.  I’ve long used Siri on my iPhone for the same thing, but it is even more convenient to do so on a watch.

I love using my Apple Watch as a remote control for podcasts and music.  I listen to podcasts and Apple Music quite a bit, sometimes just using my iPhone’s built-in speaker, often when connected to a Bluetooth speaker.  I love being able to swipe up on my watch to see the Now Playing Glance, where I can play or pause, jump back 15 seconds if I missed something, or jump forward 30 seconds to skip through a commercials that I’ve heard many times before.

Finally, I love what Apple is doing with watch bands.  There is an incredible selection to choose from.  After trying out many of them, I’ve settled on two that I really like:  the Milanese Loop, which I wear at work, and the black XL sport band, which I wear when working out and on weekends when I want something more casual, durable and waterproof.  I love how easy it is to swap watch bands, and it is fun to see that Apple is constantly releasing new options, all of which are very high quality.

What I don’t like

There are also many things that annoy me about the Apple Watch, and I will definitely upgrade to a second generation Apple Watch if it addresses all or many of these concerns.

First, third party apps are just too darn slow.  It takes forever for them to launch.  And it often takes a ridiculous amount of time for them to get updated information.  For example, for over a week I’ve been testing an Apple Watch app called Events Widget.  The app has a complication for the center of the Modular face that can show you a little bit of information on your next three calendar entries, which I find more useful than a lot of information on just the next entry. 

 

But I’ve decided to hold off on posting a formal review of Events Widget because about 20% of the time, the information displayed in the complication is not accurate; it is missing an appointment.  If I tap on the complication to launch the app on the Apple Watch and force it to retrieve updated information, and then return to the watch face, the events will show correctly.  Normally I would be tempted to blame the developer for a bug like this, but I know from using many other third party apps on the Apple Watch that data is often slow to update, no matter what the developer does to try to avoid it.  I don’t know if this is because the Apple Watch hardware is too slow, or because the Apple Watch software is trying to preserve battery life at the expense of third party apps working in the background.  But whatever the reason, I really wish that this could be fixed so that third party apps can be truly useful on the Apple Watch.

Speaking of third party apps, Apple needs to let developers do even more with complications on the watch face — and why not let third parties design their own watch faces.  Looking at the watch face on the Apple Watch is something that I do all of the time, and I find myself wishing that this aspect of the Apple Watch could be made even more useful by third parties.

I also wish that Apple would do something different with the button on the side of the watch.  Pressing it once brings up the favorite contacts screen, which is a feature that I virtually never use — and from what I hear from others who use the Apple Watch, neither do they.  I’m not sure what else that button should do, but for now it is just a waste of space.  (I do like pressing the button twice to activate Apple Pay.)

I also wish that Apple would let third party Glances be more powerful.  Apple’s own Glances, like Settings and Now Playing, have useful buttons.  But third party apps can just display a static screen — often with information that is out of date until you wait for it to reload. 

Although Siri is one of the things that I really like about my Apple Watch, it is annoying that Siri sometimes doesn’t work.  It is more reliable than third party apps, but at least a few times a week my watch has trouble accepting voice commands, which virtually never happens on my iPhone.

And finally, it bugs me that the Apple Watch itself is sometimes painfully slow.  Most of the time, the built-in functions work well, and much better than third party apps.  But sometimes the Apple Watch will have a brain freeze and even the basic functions will slow to a halt, and there is nothing I can do but just wait it out.

The future

Although the negatives really bug me, the things that I love about the Apple Watch are more than enough for me to be a big fan.  Having said that, when people now ask me whether they should get an Apple Watch, I usually say no.  If you have waited this long without getting one, I recommend that you continue to wait until Apple releases the second generation of the watch, which I presume will happen later this year.  Virtually every complaint that I have about the watch is something that I’ve seen others write about online, so surely Apple knows about the drawbacks from those articles, if not from the experiences of the Apple employees themselves.  I have to think that Apple has been working to address these issues, and will do so soon.

The Apple Watch is already incredibly useful and a lot of fun to own.  It might take a second, or even third or fourth generation, to address all of the problems that annoy me and others, but I’m sure that they will be addressed eventually.  Just look at how far the iPhone and iPad have come over the years.  If Apple preserves what is great about the Apple Watch while addressing the drawbacks, then I will be recommending the Apple Watch to everyone.