Apple Watch: Your future digital concierge

Instant accessibility is something we all appreciate. We want things now and we want them delivered fast. This is why we love TV remotes and power windows. It’s not that it’s that much harder to do the task without them, it’s simply that we’d just rather do it faster and with less friction.

The smartphone has certainly made things easier when it comes to a variety of modern tasks. But the problem is that completing those tasks usually requires some form of physical activation, like the press of a button or a few taps on the screen. On top of that, we almost always need to have the devices in our hands, too. The tasks, made so much easier by our iPhones, still can’t really be “hands-free.”

But with the Watch, hands-free is entirely possible. And how that could change our lives could be profound.

In reading all the available Apple Watch reviews (or previews), many of the critics said that Siri on the wrist was something they really enjoyed using. What’s great about Siri on Apple Watch is that you can activate the service — without having to touch your Watch — via a simple “Hey Siri” command. Yes, you can set this up to work on your iPhone, but remember, your phone is typically in your pocket, bag, briefcase, etc. The Watch, on the other hand, is literally inches away.

The potential use cases for having a product that can respond to your spoken command sounds very compelling. If I want to know the weather, I can easily say “Hey Siri, what’s the weather?” If I want to know the score of some live baseball game, all I have to do is ask. Literally. I can even make a query like “What song is playing?” and Siri will go all Shazam on me and tell me what the song is. Magic! And this all happens without me ever having to touch anything at all.

I imagine that this can be taken even further with the ability to control items in my house, from changing the TV channel to dimming the lights. Or maybe one day, I can be at the mall and ask “Hey Siri, how do I get to the Apple Store?” and my Watch just navigates me there via silent Taptic  tugs and pulls as if someone were right there with me, holding my hand.

The more I think about it, the more I see the Watch as a digital concierge on my wrist, capable of accomplishing a variety of tasks with a simple voice command. And because it doesn’t require that it be physically activated, it’s almost as if it’s a living digital spirit that can help me in ways I never imagined. That’s crazy.

All this is only possible because of the nature of wearables, that you can wear some device that’s just inches away from your mouth and that’s listening in case you ever need to make a request. It’s lightweight, it’s zero-impact (while being infinitely impactful), and it’s there with you for the entire part of your waking day. All you have to do is speak up.

It looks like Apple listened.