“Why would anyone want a smartwatch, if all it does is duplicate information that’s on your phone?” David Pogue writes for Yahoo Tech. “The Apple Watch makes clear that at least one company has put a good deal of thought into this matter… The average person pulls out his phone 100 times a day. This watch, like all smartwatches, serves as a gatekeeper, a filter. You can glance at your wrist, discreetly and briefly, to see why your phone is trying to get your attention. When you’re in a meeting or in transit, a lot of communiqués aren’t so urgent that you have to deal with them now. With a smartwatch, you can take a peek before committing to hauling out your phone.”
“When the Watch is in a known WiFi hot spot, the watch can perform the most essential online functions even when your phone is completely dead, turned off, or absent. It can query Siri, for example, send and receive texts, and send/receive drawings and tap patterns to other Watch owners. That’s impressive,” Pogue writes. “As you drive, your watch is a tiny GPS screen. (The Watch doesn’t have GPS of its own, but your phone does.) When it’s time to make a turn, the watch taps you twice on the wrist and displays a big arrow. It’s fantastic.”
“The Apple Watch is light-years better than any of the feeble, clunky efforts that have come before it. The screen is nicer, the software is refined and bug-free, the body is real jewelry,” Pogue writes. “First-time technologies await at every turn: Magnetic bands, push-to-release straps, wrist-to-wrist drawings or Morse codes, force pressing, credit-card payments from the wrist. And the symbiosis with the iPhone is graceful, out of your way, and intelligent.”
Tons more, with many screenshots, in the full review here.
MacDailyNews Take: This is a very comprehensive review – recommended for prospective Apple Watch buyers.
Related articles:
New York Times’ Manjoo reviews Apple Watch: ‘A power you can’t live without’ – April 8, 2015
Bloomberg’s Topolsky reviews Apple Watch: ‘The world’s best smartwatch’ – April 8, 2015
USA Today’s Baig reviews Apple Watch: ‘Second to none; I want one’ – April 8, 2015