07 May 2015

The Message: “Upon This Wrist”

Upon This Wrist

Can you read on it? they ask. Yes, I say. You can read news on it, I say. But I wouldn’t recommend doing so. Not if you like news. Or reading. Or life. Or the universe. For they are very slow, the small apps that show you news. And they are clumsy. One shoots text into your face, a single word at a time, from your wrist. This thing on the wrist. Out of its infinitude of blackness yellow words fly. But as soon as you spend any time with these apps, these news apps upon the wrist, you realize, quickly, they do not work well. They are not useful. You should not be reading the news on your wrist. You should not be glancing at the news on your wrist. You are rendered impotent. You cannot read the articles. You can only shift the articles to your pocket. You can only make more work for your future self, a self which probably doesn’t care about the thing you see, presently, upon the wrist. And so, no, I do not recommend reading on the thing on the wrist, certainly not the news. It is not yet good. It is not yet smart. It is not yet fast.

Craig Mod

Another couple of negative reviews of the Watch, filled with frustration and the general feeling that everything can be done easier on the . It all comes down to the tiny screen: as consumers are embracing larger smartphone screens (something that Apple grudgingly recognized only last year), why would anyone go back to squinting at a piece of glass smaller than the displays of feature phones a decade ago?

Paging Escher.

A photo posted by Jody Rosen (@jodyrosen1) on

For one thing, I can’t wrap my mind around the Watch’s relationship to the iPhone. The closest analogy I can come up with is that of a suckerfish and a manta ray: an irksome hanger-on (Apple Watch) and a smooth swimmer (iPhone). You use your iPhone to control the settings of the Watch, which, when activated, does subpar versions of things that the iPhone does very well. You can receive email on the Watch, but it’s hard to read, and if you want to write a reply — well, you can’t, you have to write the email on your phone. When someone calls you on your iPhone, your Watch rings, too. I answered a phone call from my father on the Watch, but the conversation didn’t go well: Every other word was cutting out. (I called my Dad back using my iPhone. Turns out, he’d rung me up to find out how it was going with the Apple Watch.)

Jody Rosen

I’m perfectly happy with all the rest of it. I love the screen. It’s slickly designed overall. The apps are pretty clever. It’s well-thought out and solid, and it’s fun (and fun is worth a lot to me), but after using it for about two weeks, I realize what I use it the most for is…a watch, and I don’t need a watch that requires me to baby sit the battery or buy a second one to make up for the really bad battery life.

That’s why I’m dumping my Apple watch

So, today I’m going back to my simple, $85 Fossil watch (seen below), and the next time I’ll have to worry about the battery is probably sometime in 2019.

Scott Kelby

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