Steve Kovach April 24, 2016 at 09:05AM
Happy birthday to the most over-hyped consumer product in recent history.
April 24 marks one year since the Apple Watch went on sale, along with the lofty expectations you'd expect from any new Apple gadget.
Even before Apple announced the Watch, its competitors were scrambling to beat it to the next big thing.
In the year and a half between New York Times columnist Nick Bilton's scoop that Apple was working on a smartwatch and its initial unveiling in September 2014, Samsung released six (yes, six!) different smartwatches. Google launched its own watch software, Android Wear. The smartwatch startup Pebble was the darling of tech geeks everywhere.
And then the Apple Watch arrived and we got a taste of reality.
After using the Apple Watch for a year, I don't think it's the breakthrough gadget many were hoping for. It hasn't freed us from our smartphones, which was the reason why Apple said it made the Watch in the first place. App developers aren't innovating on the Watch, and most apps feel like shrunken-down versions of what you get on your iPhone. (Why anyone would want to squint at teeny Instagram photos is beyond me.)
Apple doesn't discuss sales for the Apple Watch, but the fact that it dropped the price $50 can be seen as an indication that it isn't meeting expectations. Meanwhile, KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, who is often very accurate with Apple reports, said Apple Watch sales are expected to decline significantly this year.
After wearing the Apple Watch nearly every day for the first few months, it has spent more time in my nightstand drawer than on my wrist. It's a fashionable accessory to the iPhone, not a new computing platform. And it won't achieve that until it becomes much more powerful and capable than it is today. It's a nice thing to have, but not essential like the iPhone.
My original criticism from when I first reviewed the Apple Watch a year ago still stands: Apple made it do too much and you're better off ignoring most of the features.
But that's only a tiny fraction of what the Apple Watch is capable of. Unfortunately, it either doesn't do those things well, or the features are buried under layers of confusing interfaces. Siri? Sending doodles or your heartbeat to other Apple Watch users? Sending a text with your voice? Glances? They just don't make much sense on the Watch given today's limitations.
A year after launch, there are thousands and thousands of apps available for the Apple Watch, but I haven't found a single one that's good enough to use every day. Most of them feel too similar to their smartphone counterparts, and are a clunky to use on such a tiny screen. But even worse, they're painfully slow because they rely on a Bluetooth connection to your iPhone for everything. You end up spending more time looking at the spinning loading screen than using the actual app itself.
I think the most significant addition to the Apple Watch was third-party complications, which lets developers turn their apps into glanceable information on the main clock screen.
For example, I really enjoy the weather app Dark Sky's complication that lets you know the temperature and when it's going to rain next. That kind of functionality fits the form factor much better than a traditional app. You look at a watch for a second or two to get the information you need right away. You don't need to spend time tapping and swiping and pressing buttons to uncover what you want to know, especially when whipping out your phone is much faster. In the future, I think smartwatch "apps" will look more like Apple Watch complications and less like the mini versions of iPhone apps you see today.
The Apple Watch would've been more successful if it did a lot less from the beginning. Give us notifications, fitness tracking, and third-party complications. Sell it for $199 and let people get addicted to it. Then, over time, add new features like apps, Siri, voice calls, whatever. Those slow, iterative advancements worked well for the iPhone, and it could've worked well for the Apple Watch.
Instead, we got everything Apple could pack into the Apple Watch at once, which is too much to swallow given the device's limitations.
In the near term, I predict the Apple Watch will be more like the iPad, something fun to use on occasion, but not center to your life the way the phone or computer is today. And it'll stay that way until Apple irons out a lot of the device's limitations.
The Apple Watch's first birthday may look a little grim, but things could get a lot more rosy a few years from now.
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The Apple Watch isn't the breakthrough product we were hoping for from Business Insider: Steve Kovach
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