Apple Watch

I got this as a new year present from my brother and over the last few weeks I've been pushing this little gadget to it's odds and ends.


I'll be honest. I thought it would be too much of a toy to actually work well. I don't have high hopes for high-tech watches or wearables just yet since we haven't solidified the form factor with the expected use cases. There's still a long way to go and this watch had me asking for more.

The set up was fairly painless, albeit slow. I know it's always connected to my phone whenever it detects that both devices are in proximity and I do wish it had either LTE or Wifi built in, falling back to a phone connection when Wifi isn't available.

Things that works really well, and I mean for this form factor and for perhaps every day use are: Maps, Calendar and of course the Watch. The health and activity functions are pretty good but I found those to be more of a later value add than out of the box features. I do use them, just not as much as I want to.

Voice functionality is getting better but it's pretty terrible. Google does a really good job at voice control and parsing, but Apple really needs to step up their game. I also found that Siri is really slow on the Apple Watch, likely due to being connected to my phone all the time.

Trying to find locations via saying "Hey Siri" is a hit or miss 50% of the time. Trying to call people or take actions for apps is also something that needs work. It's great when it works, but those 'when' moments are far few and in between. Maybe my voice is just weird, but maybe it isn't.

I do like the watch as an overall package, and this model with the leather band is quite stylish. The size is prefect even for my chubby fingers and I haven't run into any serious issues tapping on this device. I found myself trying to use the voice search more than actually opening each app or widget manually, and with that I found myself running into voice search/parsing issues and wanting more out of it than it provided.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure Apple is aware of it and if not then I fully expect someone else to take over this market. Apple watch leaves a bit to be desired and I'm sure one day we'll get to that perfect balance between form and functionality. Until then though, I want to start working on wearable tech and experiences more and more.