“You won’t find the Apple Watch on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs,” Peter Cohen writes for iMore. “That doesn’t diminish the watch’s fundamental utility, though. A funny thing’s happened to me a number of times since I started wearing an Apple Watch: I see people staring at my wrist. Inevitably, if I catch their gaze, they’ll initiate a conversation with me about it.”
“There’s a lot of interest in the Apple Watch. But people are still trying to get their heads around it,” Cohen writes. “Ultimately people want to know how I’m using it: What I’m using it for. Getting important notifications, I tell them. Starbucks transactions and using Apple Pay. Making calls, sending messages, activity tracking. Those are my top uses. Things that make it so I don’t have to reach for my iPhone.”
“Many people are certainly interested in the Apple Watch, but more often than not, they’ll shrug and say something like, ‘Well, it’s not for me.’ Or ‘It sounds nice to have, but I don’t need one.’ Well, no kidding. No one needs an Apple Watch,” Cohen writes. “The Apple Watch is, by design, an accessory for the iPhone — something that improves the experience of using one.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Once again, you really have to use one in order to understand. It’s like trying to explain “Why Mac” to a Windows PC sufferer. There are just too many details, too many nuances; a list of benefits simply doesn’t do it justice. With Apple Watch, as with the Mac, it’s the whole experience. It’s indescribable, yet indescribably better.
We’ve now worn our Apple Watches every day for 2 months and 24 days.
We will never go back to the primitive days of not wearing an Apple Watch.
It’s amusing to watch those without Apple Watches wasting time obsessing over their phones all day, saying things like “Well, Apple Watch isn’t for me” – especially knowing that one day, sooner or later, they’ll also be wearing Apple Watches and then they’ll finally get it, too.
SEE ALSO:
Taking off the Apple Watch for one week – don’t ever make me do that again! – July 14, 2015
My week without Apple Watch – July 7, 2015
The Inquirer reviews Apple Watch: ‘Undoubtedly the best smartwatch’ – June 26, 2015
Newt Gingrich reviews Apple Watch: ‘Very helpful and surprisingly natural’ – June 19, 2015
One month with my Apple Watch: Why I’m loving it – June 17, 2015
Dalrymple reviews Apple Watch: ‘My most personal review ever’ – June 16, 2015
Apple Watch: 45 days later – June 8, 2015
Computerworld’s deep-dive Apple Watch review: ‘After a month of use: Very positive’ – June 8, 2015
Living with Apple Watch: One month in – June 3, 2015
Apple Watch: The early adopter’s take – June 1, 2015
Jean-Louis Gassée: Five weeks with Apple Watch – May 31, 2015
Ben Thompson: Apple Watch is being serially underestimated – May 20, 2015
BGR reviews Apple Watch: ‘A major technological achievement; you won’t want to take it off’ – May 7, 2015
The Telegraph reviews Apple Watch: Object of desire – May 7, 2015
Cult of Mac reviews Apple Watch: ‘Futuristic, fun and fan-flipping-tastic’ – April 28, 2015
PC Magazine reviews Apple Watch: ‘The best smartwatch available’ – April 28, 2015
Apple Watch owners shame so-called professional reviewers – April 27, 2015
Tech.pinions’ Ben Bajarin reviews Apple Watch: ‘Powerful’ and ‘completely new’ – April 8, 2015
Ditto the MDN response……Since my Apple Watch arrived my Casio G-shock has been sitting unused.
For me the overwhelming Watch benefit is the notifications it provides without having to physically look at the phone and respond using the phone. Some boiler plate responses geared to the message 99.9% of the time do the trick…..!!
Notifications are NOT why I wear an WATCH at all. And they need not be your reason for wearing one either. I think only iMessage alerts falls into that category which I appreciate. But my prime apps are Runtastic Pro, the Timer and Alarm apps with weather taking up the rear. great thing about the Timer and Alarm apps is you don’t even have to set them. You just tell Seri to set them and they are ON immediately.😃⌚️ Plus they are displayed live in the Complications of my watch face. So the notion that Notifications are the killer app feature of WATCH are greatly exaggerated.
Forgot to mention Pay as a primary reason for my WATCH SPORT ownership and among my favorite things to use it for.⌚️😃
Not only that:
* No one needs a ripoff Macbook with a single port
* No one needs an expensive lightning cable that frays and wears faster than any 30-pin connector ever did
* No one needs to be reminded every week that the CEO of Apple is gay
* No one needs retina Mac anything, if the screen coating is going to rub off in a few weeks, and Tim Cook will tell you to pound sand
* No one needs a crappy, expensive, hobbled Apple Watch
* No one needs Apple Music, when there are a plethora of FREE alternatives
Lastly, no one needs Tim Cook (lifepartner excepted).
wah, wah, wah, pout, foot-stomp.
Try not to confuse actual technical problems with your personal preferences.
And try REALLY hard not to confuse your personal preferences with Universal Truth.
nothing to see here…move along
This clown posts every day under different names (yesterday it was “jughead”), the central content of which focuses on his homophobia and class envy. (The “class” here being any product made by Apple Inc., that to which he obviously aspires but can never achieve.) He is unique, this troll: Someone who is to be pitied AND censured.
The idea of not having to “physically look at the phone” seems a false benefit. You have to “physically” look at Apple watch. I’ll grant that some people keep their phones in less-accessible places, but if you’re wiling to wear a computer on your wrist, it certainly seems like you’d be wiling to carry your phone in your pocket.
Beyond that, suggested auto-responses to texts seem like a feature that could trivially be added to Messages app on the phone, yeah?
It’s not “not for me,” I just haven’t seen a feature to justify the cost.
The Messages app does have that.
I think for me, the fact that I’m not checking my phone every few minutes is one reason why I don’t feel the need for an Apple Watch yet. I check my news feed when I get home and spend half an hour going through it and reading what I’m interested in, then I leave it. Unless I’m expecting something personal email is dealt with in one go. The things that take up most of my time are typically things where even my phone is not as good as just doing it on my Mac. I used to get loads of notifications on my phone but I realised it was mostly crap I didn’t care about so turned off most of them. I suppose for people who are being bombarded by notifications and messages a Watch may make that easier.
This article comes down in MDN’s park, totally. And it makes good points- yes, the Watch is an accessory to the iPhone ecosystem. And no-one _needs_ it. I have all notifications turned off at all times. I have to look at my iPhone to know someone has texted me. That’s just the way I am, so, yeah, the Watch means little to me. I prefer the isolation of _not_ receiving notifications. I’ll get back to you on my own time, thanks.
Technically, no one “needs” a smartphone either… 🙂
Technically food, water and shelter are all we need.
Two needs that Maslow missed are luck and ammunition.
Good one!
Ditto on Mac/PC computers, iPads and iPods. My Indigenous Native American ancestors got by with practically nothing but essentials to live and the world was a better and healthier place because of it. They’re called “conveniences” and modern civilization loads up with as many of those as possible, sometimes to their detriment.
The Watch is like sex. It is hard to explain to someone who has never had any. It is also something that you don’t need but want. 🙂
I have an Apple Watch and I wish it was more like sex. Or anything like sex. Or at least gave me some pleasure other than the occasional haptic vibration like sex.
You’re wearing it wrong! 🙂
I wish people would just use macs so i don have to keep listening to their damn PC woes, especially about how things that worked yesterday simply don’t for no apparent reason do so today… but thats going over old wounds I guess.
No one needs another knee-jerk click-bait pop-psych dim-bulb ho-hum speculation.
No one needs another knee-jerk click-bait pop-psych dim-bulb ho-hum comment.
Those without Apple Watches are confused. They’re in the dark. They require enlightenment. Every one of these articles helps them realize that they’re missing out on something important. Apple Watch is already indispensable to me. Those without Apple Watches are at a disadvantage to those of us with Apple Watches.
As an Watch owner, your words carry more weight than any blogging non-owner. So if you think the articles do some good, that’s fine. Still, blunt headlines like this, by themselves, can’t possibly do the cause any good.
“But people are still trying to get their heads around it”
No, certain tech writers are still trying to get their heads around it. People get it, they just want to know how YOU are using the watch.
No one really needs most of their stuff…
This is news?
Like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod it was never about need it was about want.
Pretty much everything in your life is something you don’t really need. Do people ask Xbox owners if they really need one? Why does this just apply the Apple Watch?
No one needs Android or Windows or Blackberry. No one needs sports teams in their town. No one needs to own guns. This BS about “not needing a Watch” is the same thing. Duh, we like them. Some people amazingly enough think they need a Dell POS PC…They don’t…but they are entitled. Some of the staring is envy, some of it is self congrats to self for resisting making a luxury purchase. It is luxury…the Watch does everything that a Rolex does (who needs those??), oh also, alerts to weather, news, sports, remotes for garage, tv, Mac, instant messaging, not to mention activity tracking. My Rolex doesn’t do anything but look nice and tell me the time. I can’t change the look of the face though. Some of us like our toys. For the rest of you, get over it. Not everyone can live such a lame boring unneeded existence. I like the watch for myself and could not possibly care less about whether anyone else likes it or not. I don’t need to worry as the product is clearly being embraced by at least a couple million people. I doubt that dumb watches will dominate the luxury category in coming decades. The horse and buggy was great, until it wasn’t. Oh yeah and no one needed those either.
No one needs an Apple Watch, but they also do not need indoor plumbing, modern medicine, the internet or Air Conditioning. I would not recommend giving any of them up.
I am no fan of the watch and consider it a waste of resources better deployed elsewhere, but this article was pulled out of someone’s ass for clickbait.
I think the resources were well spent (disclosure, I’m a watch owner and like it a lot). It’s clear that wearable computing is the future. You gotta start somewhere. I didn’t buy the first iPod and thought it was a ridiculous waste of time…but a few years into it, Apple changed the world…
Don’t forget the wonder of toilet paper.
You won’t find The Computer on the Maslow pyramid of needs either. What an odd thing to say. The Amish do quite well without computers, from their perspective. All their needs are met, right up to the top of the Maslow pyramid.
Meanwhile, among those who’ve discovered a ‘need’ for computer devices, the tiny power of wearable computers, such as the Watch and its descendents are increasingly enticing as their power magnifies. This is only Watch gen 1. It’s going to get better and more useful with time, as has almost every other computing device! Isn’t that right Siri?
If someone needs Apple Watch to bring meaning and purpose to their lives only begs the question how did these same people endure their inadequacies before this wrist device. It seems these people who were incomplete without this device are simply pathetic and lacking real purpose.