Yesterday Tim Cook showed off all the things you can do with an Apple Watch. You can transmit your heartbeat and open your garage door; you can summon an Uber and peruse Instagram. Basically, you can do a lot of the things you can do on your phone, but on your wrist. That seems nice but doesn’t really answer the question of why you’d spend a few hundred dollars (or more) for a device that does the same things as the device in your pocket. Apple’s challenge was to present a compelling use case for the watch, and it mostly failed to. "It still feels like an awful lot of interesting ideas without a unifying theme," Nilay wrote after testing the watch.
The thing is, the watch does have a use case, it's just one that’s hard for Apple to talk about. Last week Matthew Panzarino at TechCrunch wrote that the best thing about the watch, according to the Apple employees who’ve been demoing it, was that it let them basically stop using their phone. Instead of fishing their phones out of their pockets every couple minutes, they could check incoming notifications on the watch and choose to ignore or respond to them. Panzarino imagined a future where the watch helps us be less distracted and more present.
Read next: Read our Apple Watch review.
But how do you get up on stage and say that the best thing about this new gadget is that it lets people use this other gadget, the one you spent the last eight years turning into a fetish object, less frequently? Of course you still need an iPhone for the Apple Watch, so it’s not like the watch threatens to replace the phone — but rhetorically it’s a tricky argument to make. You’d have to acknowledge that people can have fraught relationships with their phones, and that their attachment to them is deeply ambivalent. True, I feel relief when I check my phone and anxious when its battery dies, but that’s a very different type of obsession than the sort Apple encourages in its lavish videos of cold-forged steel watch cases. It’s much more compulsive and dependent. Making the best pitch for the watch would mean acknowledging that devices can be burdens, not just tools for empowerment.
It’s also a paradoxical case to make. How do you tell people who feel queasy about being too immersed in their phones that the solution is buying another device that they physically strap onto their body and buzzes them whenever they get a message? Do you feel too plugged-in? Maybe you’re just not plugged in enough! Cook’s statement that the watch is "not just with you, it's on you" is both appealing — no need to compulsively reach for our phone — and ominously oppressive, depending on how you feel about your phone's incessant pings.
And of course there’s the strong possibility that the watch won’t free you from your devices — instead, it’ll do exactly the opposite. Will you really stop twitchily checking to see if you might have missed something, or will a screen that’s less of a hassle to glance at only make it an easier itch to scratch? Will you be able to relax in between pings, or will you exist in a constant state of anticipation and half-distracted awareness? At least now you can put your phone on silent and turn it face down if you want to log off for a bit; a watch is always on — and "on you," as Cook said — at least when it’s not charging. Moreover, if the watch becomes the norm, everyone will know you received their text, snap, or mention and expect you to reply immediately. Now a delayed reply might mean you didn’t hear your phone; with a watch, it means you’re just being rude.
I’m willing to entertain the possibility that a wearable device could alleviate some technological anxieties — in fact, I think it’s the strongest case for them — but I can also imagine plenty of cases where it makes all these problems far worse, which is just another reason for Apple to stay away from the subject.
Verge Video: Initial takeaways from the introduction of the Apple Watch
Comments
Does anybody really know what Smartwatches are for, other than doing things that you can already do on a phone/tablet, just on a smaller scale and in a sometimes less efficient way? They are nice to look at, but i can’t justify spending money on one.
By SkywardKing on 03.10.15 2:07pm
Well from my point of view, here’s why I want one :
I recently bought my iphone 6 plus, which I love. It’s way too big though. The size of it made me lose a lot of good things, such as portability, easy to use, one hand use. But I gained a lot too. I never used safari on my iphone 5 or watched netflix etc.
And that’s where a smartwatch would come handy (same thing if you have a note). I wouldn’t need to pull out that big flat thing from my pockets just to read a text or reply to it. To pick up a uber (i use uber a lot). To just call someone or change my music. I think to me its mainly that possibily to just be walking and do a lot of things without having to do anything.
By OlivierDud on 03.10.15 2:13pm
and then there’s all the health companion thing that comes with it that I could really need because i’m a lazy mother****** and it seems fun to do stuff with it.
By OlivierDud on 03.10.15 2:25pm
Smartbands do much of the same, but you can’t draw useless images on the smartbands.
By chesterharry on 03.10.15 2:26pm
One man’s useless image is another man’s quick form of communication.
By GigaMonster on 03.10.15 2:32pm
Besides, smartbands can not make you phone-free in things that like receiving notifications, reminders, messages or ordering Uber or passing through airports, or going to cinema theater or Apple Pay or any other countless cases where currently you are forced to pull out your iPhone and waste time with it.
Apple Watch will immediately make things much quicker, and it will make you never miss important reminder or message or call. It is fundamental life-changer.
And the types of notifications that passed to Watch are configured separately from iPhone itself, so one of the points of the article how Watch will make rude not immediately replying or how it will make you even more attached to the Internet is not very strong.
By DERSS on 03.10.15 3:09pm
Translation: your phone is a pain; buy another gadget to make it less of one.
By loopyduck on 03.10.15 4:44pm
That’s one way of looking at it. Another is to say "Your phone does a lot of cool things, buy another gadget to make those cool things more quickly and easily accessible."
By lkalliance on 03.10.15 5:12pm
So what comes after smartwatches when its a "pain" to use your smartwatch?
By bobsbilder on 03.10.15 8:04pm
smaller google glass + dictation ?
By Mr.Mulderfox on 03.10.15 11:52pm
The Apple Ring. "Why should you have to reach all the way for your Watch?"
(sounds tasty!)
By phero on 03.11.15 12:47am
Ha, ha. Good jingle, @phero.
"…Just barely lift a finger."
Move the cursor with your eye?
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn26968
I was personally hoping the watch could throw holograms & such.
By Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious on 03.11.15 1:58am
If people are complaining about $350 for an Apple Watch, wait until they see the price of a miniaturized Google Glass.
And now that I think of it, the Google Glass Explorer actually did fewer things than the Apple Watch (or Moto 360, etc). Hmm.
By MacEnvy on 03.11.15 9:54am
The next gadget is a brain-augmented implant that will interface with your visual cortex and other functions of your brain. Images can be overlay with your actual vision!
By sy1492 on 03.11.15 9:22am
Ads can be overlay with your actual vision
FIFY
By Darkzone on 03.11.15 4:01pm
All I know is with the Apple variant a zipper will need to be installed on my skull to facilitate the yearly upgrade due to:
1) glued in batteries
2) planned obsolesce
But even then, having zipper scars on your head will then be recognised as a sign of "cool", so it is ok.
By SissyPoopycocks on 03.11.15 7:44pm
Based on iFixit reviews of most apple products, you will have to replace your entire brain if the brain augumentation breaks.
By Xaxxus on 03.12.15 4:50pm
What comes after the smart watch: chips under the skin. It will work great for authentication during payment.
If roaming profiles can be made efficient every device you ever touch will have your apps, accounts, data etc.
Instead of the combination of a large cumbersome phone and a watch, it would be better to have a small tablet and a really small feature phone. The funny thing here is that the new wearable os’es would be brilliant feature phone os’es.
By erikmartino on 03.13.15 4:24pm
Enhancing the use of your phone makes it less of one?
Wow…
I’d hate to hear what you think of remote controls for televisions…
By Krom on 03.11.15 12:14am
You have to be a complete pillock to buy one. What a gaffe.
By Roenbo on 03.11.15 1:17pm
Fundamental life-changer? Seriously?
By simoferraro on 03.11.15 10:18am
Yes, why not? If you buy iWatch and you have no money left to buy food till next month it could be real life-cahnger :-)))
By poponaj on 03.15.15 5:55am
This doesn’t sound any different from what I can do with my Pebble, save Apple Pay. For hundreds of dollars less.
By bsanr on 03.11.15 10:49am
I can buy transportation for significantly less than a BMW. Why buy a nice car with excellent design and attention paid to all the small details if a Ford sedan can do the same things as the BMW — namely drive you from point A to point B?
By PedroMarques on 03.11.15 9:24pm
the problem with that comparison is that it implies that the apple watch is a BMW. It isn’t it is basically a designer label edition of a ford sedan with solid gold windscreen wipers and an extra small gas tank
By hoggleboggle on 03.16.15 1:25pm