"Apple Watch Feels Like a Stalled Platform"

Dan Frommer writing for QZ:

The watch was designed as a sibling to the iPhone. Its capability feels constrained, because it is. Everything has been optimized for power efficiency. It relies on the iPhone for configuration, intelligence, and internet access. This has been a known issue since the beginning.

But after months of use, it’s increasingly clear that this is what needs to change the most. The watch needs to be untethered from the iPhone for speed, independence, and direct access to the power of the cloud. Or it will never be more than a cute sidekick.

Frommer is dead on. The Apple Watch needs to quickly lose its dependance on the iPhone if it’s going to be a product that people will continue to want. The biggest reason is because so many things are super slow because it relies on your phone to get data and information.

This is why my argument has been that the two biggest things that Apple can do with the next version of the Watch is put a faster S2 chip (obvious) and an LTE chip. LTE would allow the Watch to pull data without having to ask the phone first, something that is super important when you really want information within a couple seconds.

As an example, when I ask Siri on my Watch to give me directions, it takes many seconds, several times longer than asking my iPhone, for for it to pull the proper information and then give me directions. What’s the purpose of the Watch if it takes longer for it to do tasks?

In the end, I expect to see some pretty big steps over the next few years with the Apple Watch. If Apple wants to see this product category grow, the Watches dependency on the iPhone needs to virtually disappear.