"I Let The Apple Watch Run My Life For 48 Hours"
And after spending 48 hours chained to the Apple Watch as my Mobile Communications Lifeline, it became clear to me that the watch needs more than perfect tech to become a household product — it needs a paradigm shift. Like answering a call on a selfie stick, a grown man yelling into his watch in public just isn’t normalized behavior — yet.
During the full 48 hours, I never had that breakthrough ‘wow’ moment: the feeling I got when I first scrolled through a 2,000 song iPod library, or when I first opened the New York Times on Safari on an iPhone. That moment — the one where the device magically seems to transform from a luxury into a necessity, the moment Apple has managed to turn into billions and billions of dollars — simply never came.
I find this experiment to be particularly odd (or misguided, or terrible), starting with its headline. Apple Watch is not intended to “run your life.” Even Apple’s marketing (with its almost comically ambitious exultations) doesn’t go that far. By their account, the wearable is primarily intended to make users’ lives more convenient by condensing or eliminating the ceaseless chatter they begrudgingly put up with on iPhone. That seems pretty clear.
Somehow, though, Warzel — like so many other tech-minded folks — seems to be looking at the Watch with the belief that it is a standalone product meant to eliminate entirely the need for the iPhone. It’s not. And I suspect that it won’t be for many, many years to come (if ever).
The only honest way to look at Apple Watch is to frame it as a complement to the iPhone. It is a product that takes whatever the iPhone is incapable of doing efficiently and enhances it. If you’re expecting Apple Watch to replace your iPhone outright, however, you’re going to be very disappointed.