Two weeks and one trip with the Apple Watch

I will admit I have really been excited since the Apple Watch announcement to get a smart watch on my wrist to make my life easier. I was a little envious of my Android friends that already had smart watches. I didn't care that they looked clunky or cheesy. I just wanted access to data quickly on my wrist.

I eagerly ordered my watch on April 10th and hoped it would arrive on April 24th and to my delight it did come on Friday April 24th at 1:40 in the afternoon. By 2:15 I had it unboxed, paired to my phone and begun the task of configuring my watch.

Setup was pretty easy and after asking it to mirror my iPhone for preferences I just had to wait for apps to install and the watch to be completely ready but I could wear it in the mean time. I thought the look didn't matter but after slipping the stainless steel watch with milanese loop on my wrist I realized the look does matter.

For the most part my watch goes largely unnoticed looking like a normal but somewhat large watch. When it gets attention is when I do something that a watch doesn't do and even a Android watch still lacks. Paying for purchases at the store with Apple Pay, or answering my phone when my phone isn't in easy reach just to name a couple of examples.

So far I use my watch as a quick way to:

• triage my notifications
• answer my phone
• check a recent voicemail
• pay at stores with Apple Pay
• find a local Starbucks and pay for my coffee
• request an Uber car
• scan my boarding pass at the air port
• check into my hotel from the car so everything is ready when I arrive
• check the weather
• monitor my activity levels
• keep tabs on the weather
• turn lights off and on in my home with Hue
• as a remote for keynote or powerpoint
• quick email triage
• monitor my workouts
• use Siri to set reminders and appointments
• check what is next on my calendar 

I'm sure there is more that I do with it but it has become so enmeshed with my daily life I am already starting to not think about it. I just put it on as soon as I get out of bed and wear it until I am ready to go to sleep. 

The battery life is even better than expected. I have gone past 18 hours of using my watch and still had 25% of my battery left to spare. I haven't needed to use the Power Reserve Mode yet after two weeks of heavy use and charging nightly. 

A few things I found surprising in the watch was the ability to Ping my phone when I leave it somewhere. Something I do quiet a bit at home and in the office. Although less now that my phone doesn't leave my pocket nearly as much during the day. The phone and watch also mirror each other in Do Not Disturb and Airplane modes. Of course once you put it in airplane mode you will need to access both devices to get them out of airplane mode. 

The watch faces are delightful and while there are not many of them, they are all customizable and all look good. Mickey faces opposite directions in the morning and in the evening. The animations for the moon and the planets are very smooth and rolling the digital crown can show where the planets will be or were on a given date.

As for the things I am not crazy about, the load times for third party apps is quiet long. I am sure it is to preserve the battery life but wouldn't it benefit battery life more to load quickly so I can get back to whatever else I might want to be doing? I wish there was a setting to allow the user to set how long the watch face stays active when it is being viewed and to be a little more lenient when I put my arm down or change position to not think I have turned away and turn off the screen immediately. I wish the sensors on the watch did more. After seeing the new Jawbone UP 3 having temperature sensors to measure both ambient and skin temperature. As well as a bioimpedance sensor which could be cool add ons for the quantified self. I want my watch to tell me when I am getting stressed and encourage me to call down a bit.   

The things we don't know yet, will it be upgradable? I would love to see an Apple watch update program which would make sense for the price point and peoples tendency to keep watches. I know as Apple develops the watches they will get thinner and they styling will be enhanced. It would be great if people who wanted the new style could just buy a new watch but people who like the style they have be able to upgrade the internals when a faster CPU, more memory, improved battery, or more sensors become available. 

The OLED display is absolutely beautiful and is easy to read in bright light. The watch fit and finish feels like a very high quality and something I could wear for a long time to come. Overall it is a beautiful watch with a lot to like. Now that it is getting into the hands of developers something that is already useful is going to go crazy with possibilities. As time goes on Apple will loosen the reigns a bit and let developers take the watch even further. 

The Apple watch was an excellent 1.0 device from Apple and I am excited to see where it goes in the future and how it will tie in with HomeKit and other future Apple technologies. 

Predictions for the Apple Spring Forward Event

I love writing prediction pieces, it is fun todo and gives me a chance to imagine what I would design or like to use if it was made available. We already know Apple is going to talk about details of the Apple Watch. We will finally get pricing on the mid range and high end watches, as well as ship dates and pre-order dates. I can't wait to line up to get my Apple Watch.

Analysts are predicting 5 million units have been made, I think that will not cover the opening weekend demand for the new device. I bet sales will be strong and supplied constrained until summer. The entry level watch and mid tier the big sellers with just a few high end watches being sold. Estimates that the high end watch being around $5,000 is probably not far off base. For that price Apple I believe will announce the devices to be the most upgradable device ever with internal component upgrade options in the future for a substantially more modest price or the Edition and maybe the mid tier watches.

The demos will of course include some highlights from developers doing some amazing things with the watch software. I hope some of the health information rumors are just that rumors, I hope the device has the ability to monitor stress levels and remind the wearer to calm down. I know this writer could use that reminder from time to time. I will be surprised to see if it can monitor blood pressure but heart rate should be fairly simple.

I will say that accessories for the Apple Watch will also sell very well. I would bet that most owners of the mid tier and edition models will probably choose two or three band options and the price of the magnetic bands or more modern clasps will certainly be higher than what we see with traditional watch band tech.

Overall I expect that Apple watch to be a huge hit and outsell the rest of the smart watch industry and likely take the traditional watch industry by surprise. Even if a small percentage of iPhone owners buy Apple Watches it will still be a huge market.

The big surprise will come in the form of the One more thing. Apple never just rolls out one item at these events. The rumor mill has been loaded with talk of a pen, a 12" iPad, and a 12" Macbook Air. I am just seeing a flashback to the iPhone announcement when Apple announced three new products and they are all the same thing.

My prediction is the iPad Pro 12" and the Macbook Air 12" will actually be the same device. A

modified version of iOS and OS X, with better multi-tasking and enhanced UI for better touch interface. When docked with the keyboard it would behave like a Macbook Air, when undocked it would behave like an iPad. The ability to run both OS X and iOS Apps. Not with emulation but by putting both an ARM processor and Intel processor in the same machine. Toss in a high quality pressure sensitive pen and you have a strong competitor to the Microsoft Surface tablets. Which I have used and find them to be likable devices. Some elements of the UI are still too small to be effective for touch but I am sure Apple UI designers would address and correct that.

I could envision the workflow being something like quick communications and notifications coming in on the watch. Slightly longer interactions and light work, pull out the 10" iPad tablet for single tasking work and entertainment. Then the larger tablet for serious work, multi-tasking and laptop replacement when traveling for days and the large desktop machine for the heavy duty computing tasks and large amounts of data storage.

I hope to see a new announcement regarding AppleTV. Something that will give the cord cutters a reason to rejoice and some new technology around home to make home automation easier and more user friendly. They may even throw in an announcement on upgrades to iCloud for enhanced security and maybe a new feature or two.