Hands-On With Apple Watch In The Big City

You may have noticed that I’ve been AFK for the last two weeks. That’s because I’ve relocated to parts unknown, where reliable Wi-Fi and cellular signals are equally impeded by the thick, faded cinder block walls of the windowless extended-stay motels of my nightmares.

Thankfully, I’m all set up back in civilization now. And while I’ve never been one for the big city, the logistical and geographical upshots are undeniable, not the least of which being that I’ve managed to go from one Apple Store within 3.5 hours to two inside of 20 minutes. So this past weekend, I visited one.

And two-thirds of the place was dedicated to Apple Watch.

Interestingly, most of the customers crammed about the popular mall spot seemed completely clueless as to what Apple Watch is and what the thing purports to do. I was explaining some of the UI to my (much, much) better half (who, it should be noted, had no time for the timepiece and promptly excused herself to Victoria’s Secret), when a gentleman overheard my excited nonsense and decided to forego the Genius Bar to pick my idiot brain.

Donning my Sunday salesman’s best, I explained as best I could what Apple Watch is actually for. The guy seemed to waffle between hot and cold on the device, ultimately concluding how it was damned unfortunate that an iPhone tether was necessary for Apple Watch to do its thing. “So it’s just an accessory, then,” he said dejectedly.

“Yes and no,” I told him, and why. I also mentioned how I don’t think any truly useful mainstream smartwatch would ever cut the wire(less) and go completely solo.

He was unimpressed.

Nevertheless, that’s my contention. And while I’ve got an entire other post almost ready to go on why, the takeaway for this one is that Apple Watch — conceptually and practically — will require no small learning curve for the unreasonably expectant masses. Their unrealistic ideas of an iPhone-replacing wrist communicator will need to be eschewed, just like my unrealistic ideas of a totally natural first-gen UX will need to be significantly dialed back. Apple Watch is a magnificent triumph of wearable hardware and software, but it has its flaws, and it didn’t take more than ten minutes with a couple of demo units for me to find the most immediately glaring ones.

First and foremost, the Apple Watch OS is chuggy. Granted, this may have been due to the always-on, full-power setup of the demo units themselves, but it was still disappointing to see the abject beauty of the Apple Watch display bogged down by so many jumpy, less-than-responsive animations between key system-level elements. Swiping through Glances was smooth enough, but backing out to the home screen, as well as using the Digital Crown to zoom the array on said screen, were both fairly jerky. Herky, even.

Speaking of the home screen, its built-in zoom function is much too expansive, allowing the user to back so far out of the constellation that no icon is more specifically discernible than a brightly colored speck on the black display. More constrained parameters here would go a long way towards enhancing the overall experience.

Additionally, I found it somewhat bizarre that launching apps can actually be done through two different methods. Obviously, you can tap on an icon to call up its app. But you can also drag the entire icon array around such that your desired app is more or less centered on the screen, and then you simply roll the Digital Crown up to “zoom” into the app itself. Like the inconsistent fluidity mentioned above, though, this particular animation is less refined than it could be, and there’s an odd disconnect that comes with this technique: Once you’ve rolled up on the Digital Crown to get into an app, you can’t roll back down on it to get out. It’s literally a one-way input mechanism that uses a two-way toggle, and that — at least to me — breaks the metaphor a bit. It breaks Apple’s crown.

But that Crown is broken in more ways than one. Sometimes, a quick press on it will take you back to the home screen, exactly as expected. Other times, it doesn’t. On these occasions, it’ll drop you back one parent-level in the menu or app structure, but there isn’t any immediately intuitive way to know when you’ll end up where or where you’ll end up when. So, pragmatically speaking, sometimes it takes one press on the Digital Crown to go home, and other times it takes two. From the earliest days of Apple Watch, the Digital Crown was likened to the iPhone home button, but it simply doesn’t work that way. And that’s going to frustrate a lot of people.

But probably not as many as the “friends” button will. Unless this thing has a few big-time tricks up its sleeve, the nameless wonder is bound to be deprecated by Apple Watch version two. Why it even exists in the first place has been something of a mystery since day one, but as demoed, it is so seemingly useless that it doesn’t remotely justify the comparative manufactory complexity of its own moving parts. I’m sure developers will find interesting uses for the button once the SDK is fully opened up to them sometime this summer, but as a stock talking point, it’s a barely audible whisper at best.

The last thing I noticed in my limited time with the limited demo units was the size of Apple Watch itself. I could have sworn that the first one I laid eyes (and hands) on was the 38mm model. It wasn’t. Folks, this thing is small. Unless you’re very, very petite, the 42mm Apple Watch should be adequately diminutive for whatever use you’ve got in mind. Personally, I can’t imagine navigating the UI on the smaller version, and apparently, Apple can’t either: The store I was in only had the 42mm models on open display (albeit you could certainly make an appointment to try on and test out a 38mm unit).

Overall, I was surprised by my first hands-on with Apple Watch. On the one hand, I enjoyed the build quality and screen fidelity of Cupertino’s new wearable. On the other, I didn’t expect such a rough-around-the-edges retail experience with the demo units I played with. I remain cautiously optimistic that these few problems will be resolved by launch.

Which, incidentally, will be June for me.

Hey, when you’re finally able to fall asleep in some nasty $30 hotel room, you don’t wake yourself up for 3:00 AM preorders. I don’t care what’s on sale.