Following Amy’s time with the Apple Watch, I put it through its paces. Overall, for an initial release product, it does what it does very well. Before I get into my thoughts, here are some further words from Amy on her second experience with the watch.

Some Thoughts from Amy

Hey, it’s Amy again. Karl has been very kind to allow me to take a couple lines of his post to update you all on my second bite at the Apple… Watch. *Cough* Anyhow, in my second round of testing, I found most of the quirks that were most frustrating to me were better if not entirely fixed. Upon resetting the watch I had much better luck with the exercise reporting. I cannot speak for why it didn’t work for me the first time, but it is working now, so let’s call that a fluke. Stand measurements are still not always accurate, but seem much improved since the first software update, so there’s good news there as well.  Lastly, in maps, after playing further, I did finally feel the difference between left and right hand turns when walking with the watch. I also noticed that I have to be paying very close attention to that to notice the difference, so on that, your mileage may continue to vary. Either way, I’m glad I gave it a second go.

My First Impressions

The Apple Watch was very much a novelty at first. I spent the first evening I had with it playing with apps and settings, and generally getting a feel for the device. I started with a 38MM version, and have since also used a 42MM watch. Personally, I prefer the larger watch, both because I like the size on my wrist, and I have more finger room for gestures. I noticed a few things right away.

• Activate on wrist raise is very distracting and almost useless with VoiceOver, as the time is announced whenever I do almost anything with my arm.
• The speaker, due to the small size of the watch, gets overpowered very easily by any moderate or higher noise level. It is necessary to pair a Bluetooth headset to use the watch in anything louder than a room with normal conversations going on.
• I have a habit of turning on Reduce Motion in the accessibility settings of any iOS device I use, as I feel it somewhat improves performance, and also seems to benefit the watch.
• I have medium-large hands, and doing two-finger swipe gestures on the 38MM case feels cramped at times.
• The Taptic Engine, Apple’s name for the vibration feature of the watch, is very noticeable, especially when the prominent mode is turned on.

After all the fiddling was complete, I settled in to start using the watch properly. One aspect I was rather curious about was making and receiving calls from the watch.

Making Calls from My Wrist

The Watch’s phone app is very similar to that on the iPhone, though it is lacking the keypad functionality. I can select a favorite, a contact, or listen to a voicemail. I initiated a call and got a rather tinny sound as I expected, but the person on the other end could hear me quite well. Taking a call is similar, with the watch having an identical incoming call interface to the phone. The watch has a high-pitched ring, and taps your wrist rapidly to tell you a call is incoming.

Listening to Music

The music app on the watch serves two functions. The first is as a remote for the phone. The watch can also play music directly, but requires a Bluetooth headset be paired first. Loading music is done through the phone, and requires a playlist. It’s not possible to load an artist or album directly. Loading music also takes a very long time, as I started loading a two gigabyte playlist just before I went to bed, and in the morning only just over half had transferred. Otherwise, the app works just fine.

Other Third-Party Apps

Most Apple Watch apps fall into one of two types, either remotes for the phone, or apps that provide quick access to information. For example, the TuneIn Radio app lets you select a station to play on your phone. The MLB At Bat app, on the other hand, provides a method to check scores and schedules. Many third-party apps worked well, though several had unlabeled buttons. As developers continue building apps, and Apple opens up more of the watch’s sensors, I am curious to see how the app selection will continue to improve.

Faces, Glances, and Notifications

One of the main, and more useful, areas of the watch is the watch face. This is where it is possible to get quick access to various pieces of information such as time, weather, calendar events, battery status and more. The face I generally prefer is the modular face as I feel it gives me a good mix of information. I found customizing the face very straightforward. From the face it is possible to reach two other areas, glances and the notification center. Although glances are useful, I didn’t use them all that often as it was generally more complicated to scroll through the different glances to find what I wanted than I felt it was worth. Similarly, I usually ended up either checking notifications as they came in on the watch, or on my phone, rather than using the notification center.

Fitness

I also used the watch’s fitness features regularly. I regularly got movement and standing measurements, and could usually get exercise to register, though not always. The workout app also has a nice variety of workouts that it can track, all of which are accessible.

Day-to-Day Use

I found that I mostly used the watch for checking alerts without pulling out my phone, checking the time, temperature or next event, or my progress toward my fitness goals for the day. Occasionally, I would check my email though reading a message with VoiceOver. This could use some work, as it is not possible to flick through the contents of a message. When I tried the GPS, I could distinguish the different patterns, but it took a few times for me to be sure which pattern was which.

The Verdict

As I said at the beginning of this post, the Apple Watch, for a version 1.0 product, has been executed very well. However, the current lack of apps that do truly interesting things with the watch, coupled with a few limitations of the watch I discussed earlier, make it so that I don’t feel the watch is quite to where it would be compelling for me. The main things I would like to see in the watch are a Taptic time face which conveys the time through the Taptic Engine, Braille display support so the watch can be used by deaf-blind users or when audio is not appropriate, and a wider selection of third-party apps. I am very interested to see where the watch will go in the future, and I may eventually end up owning one.